Pepe Escobar
ISTANBUL – The scene is a Circassian
restaurant off fabled Istiklal street in historic Beyoglu. On the table, a
geopolitical banquet – served by some of the best independent analytical minds
from Bursa to Diyarbakir. The menu, apart from a meze feast, is simple: only
two broad questions about Sultan Erdogan’s approach to BRICS and to Syria.
Here’s a concise synopsis of our dinner
– more relevant than a torrent of Western-manufactured word salads. Enjoy it
with a hefty dose of the best arak. And let the table have the first – and last
– word.
On BRICS: “Türkiye feels
itself as part of the West. If we look at our political party leaderships and
Turkish elites, right-wing or left-wing, there’s no difference. Maybe a little
bit part of the East… Ankara is using its membership in BRICS as a bargaining
chip against the West.”
Türkiye
simultaneously could be a member of BRICS and NATO?
“Erdogan has no clear future plans.
After Erdogan there’s no clear answer for the future of the AKP party. They
could not establish a normal, permanent system. We have a governmental system
just for Erdogan. We are receiving gas from Russia. We buy materials from
China, assembling them in Turkish factories and selling them to Europe and the
U.S. We have advantages in foreign trade compared to the EU, according to
statistics published by the Turkish government. The biggest trade deficit is
against Russia – and then China. This is our special position – and explains
why Ankara does not want to lose the Eastern option. And at the same time we
depend on the West to defend ourselves. All that explains our unique foreign
policy behavior.”
So there’s no
guarantee Ankara will agree to become a BRICS partner?
“No. But Ankara will not completely
close the door to BRICS. Türkiye knows the West is losing its power. There are
new dynamics, rising powers, but at the same time we are not a completely
independent power.”
On the three pillars of Turkish society: “You can’t
think about geopolitics without ideology. Erdogan and the AKP decided that it’s
only possible to integrate Türkiye with a liberal-Islamist project. Almost two
generations have grown with them – and they don’t know what happened before.
They are neo-Ottomans, Islamists, pro-Arabization guys. In Türkiye, if someone
openly supports Islamism, he is Arabized, ideologically. Here we have three
pillars. The first one is a nationalist view – we have right Kemalism and left
Kemalism. The other one is a Western perspective. And the third one is
Islamist, also divided in two factions; one is nationalist and the other is
liberal Islamist, integrated with Western institutions, NGOs and capital.
That’s why we can say that wokeism and Islamism are different sides of the same
coin. These guys are using the Turkish state to maneuver in the broader Middle
Eastern geography – but in fact they are focused on Western-minded neoliberal
economy, politics, society.”
Neo-Ottomanism, revived: “The West
planned Syria together with them – the neo-Ottomans. During the Gaza war they
kept sending oil to Israel, it was a P.R. thing for Erdogan, he needs to give
this message to the grassroots anti-imperialist, Islamist part of Turkish
society. The problem for Erdogan is that Türkiye is different from Arab
countries, while Turkish capital is connected to the West, some of it connected
with Russia, and Türkiye is dependent as much as 40% on Russian energy. Ankara
needs to act in a balanced way, but that does not change the whole picture:
Capital that supports Erdogan, and benefits from Erdogan, including 40% of the
Turkish exports going to Europe. When it comes to BRICS, they can try to manage
the relationship but they will never agree to join the BRICS directly.”
The Sultan never sleeps: “Erdogan is a
pragmatist. Ideological. He can sell out the Palestinians – easily. He may be
very powerful, and grasp how the state system works, but he does not enjoy
total obedience from society to rule. That’s why he’s always aiming for some
sort of balance.”
Can we say that with Greater Idlibistan
under the control of Türkiye’s MIT – with Jolani as one of their main assets,
if not the top asset – the MIT knew about the capabilities of HTS, and they
knew this would stop in Aleppo?
“Not all the way to Damascus. That was
the original plan. The aim of the operation was attacking the regime, The aim
was not the conquest of Damascus. This was the best unexpected result of the
attack. The military leadership of HTS said, “we lost our best warriors in the
first moments of the operation”. But then came the collapse of the Syrian
Army.”
So what does
Erdogan really want? Rule over Aleppo or over the whole of Western Syria?
“Syria was part of the Ottoman empire.
In his dreams, this is still the Ottoman empire. But he knows Türkiye’s limits
in trying to rule over Syria – and the Arab world, enraged, could align against
Türkiye. It’s possible – partly – to have a proxy government in Damascus. This
is what Erdogan wanted from the Assad government only six months ago. Erdogan
was begging to Assad, ‘please come to the table’. It turned out that he was
actually sincere. Jolani said “we were really anxious that Assad would accept
the offer by Erdogan’. This was the Assad government’s big mistake. Assad had
already lost the ability to rule the country. Ankara never wanted the sudden
collapse of the Assad government. To rule this chaos is not easy. And Türkiye
does not have the military capacity to do it. HTS also does not. And without
Türkiye HTS cannot survive.”
So Syria as a
province of neo-Ottomanism is not gonna happen?
“This is not just Türkiye’s strategy.
This is American and Israeli strategy – to cantonize Syria. So they achieved
something, but it’s not finished. We don’t know what’s gonna happen. Remember
before October 7, geopolitically no one could foresee what happened in Gaza. In
Turkey’s case, this was a joint project. It began in 2011. The main goal was so
obvious, to integrate Syria into the Western world. That failed, but the
Americans stayed there, because they created a brand called ‘ISIS’, American
investment in the Kurds, and in the end Türkiye, what they got was Idlib; it
was necessary at the time, because Syria, Russia, Iran, they are not like the
Americans or American-connected Islamists, they are not a destructive power.
Step by step they wanted to “earn” Türkiye, with the Astana process. Türkiye in
the end stuck with the American policy, they waited and waited and waited, and
now they have something other than what they wanted. And that’s an alarming
situation for Türkiye – because they don’t want Syria to be partitioned. It’s
not even certain that the Americans will let Türkiye train the new Syrian army.
The West now has total economic leverage.”
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