Turkey

This article originally appeared here on Politico.com on Tuesday, November 24, 2015. To Westerners, it might seem that Vladimir Putin was exaggerating in anger when, after a Turkish F-16 on Tuesday shot down a Russian fighter jet allegedly violating Turkish airspace, he referred to the government in Ankara as “terrorists’ accomplices.” Americans aren’t used to thinking of Turkey—our NATO ally and most powerful backstop in the Muslim world—in this way. And surely Putin is just engaging in some saber-rattling. But as Turkey and Russia dispute the incident, it is casting a spotlight on one of the most troubling developments in the evolving struggle in the Middle East: When it comes to fighting the Islamic State and extremism more generally, Turkey—and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—has become a significant part of the problem, rather than part of the solution. You wouldn’t know this from the official rhetoric. NATO is standing firmly by Turkey in the wake of Tuesday’s incident. And the Obama administration often trumpets the critical importance of Turkey’s participation in the international coalition to counter ISIL. Brett McGurk, the special presidential envoy for that coalition, told Turkey’s Hurriyet Daily News this summer that the United States “can’t succeed against Daesh [the Islamic State] without Turkey.” And after a bloody two weeks—during which ISIL claimed credit for the Paris shooting and bombing spree, the killing of 43 people in another bombing in Beirut and the downing of a Russian airliner over the Sinai Peninsula—Erdogan, an Islamist who runs a country that is 99.8 percent Muslim, appeared with President Barack Obama ahead of the G-20 summit in Antalya and spoke firmly against jihadism: “We are confronted with a collective terrorism activity around the world. As you know, terrorism does not recognize any religion, any race, any nation or any country. … And this terrorist action is not only against the people of France. It is an action against all of the people of the globe.” Continue reading here...

Farah Halime studies how continued violence in Egypt, particularly against the tourism industry, negatively impacts the country’s economy. The blogger Maysaloon discusses teaching identity, philosophy, and Descartes to Syrian refugee children. Aras Ahmed Mhamad reflects on how corruption and nepotism is weakening the Kurdistan Regional Government of Iraq.

CFR’s Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy (CSMD) Program highlights noteworthy events and articles each Friday in “This Week in Markets and Democracy.”  The terror attacks in Paris dominated global headlines and U.S. foreign policy discussions over the past week, though regional and global economic summits went ahead as scheduled. From Turkey to the Philippines, leaders discussed the way forward on economic growth, trade, and reform. G20 Targets Corruption, Tax Avoidance At this week’s G20 meeting in Turkey, world leaders considered technical reforms to increase revenue by addressing tax evasion and corruption. Bureaucrats officially endorsed the Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS) plan to close international tax loopholes and prevent multinationals from moving profits from where they are earned to other jurisdictions. Companies worry about adverse BEPS effects such as double taxation. Others warn of U.S. job losses if companies relocate to countries with lower tax rates. And many outside the G20 argue the BEPS system will favor richer nations that made the rules, even as the UN estimates developing countries lose $100 billion each year to offshoring. Another technical issue on the G20 agenda was beneficial ownership transparency—whether governments enable corruption by not legally requiring companies and trusts to identify their real owners. According to Transparency International, the United States, China, and Brazil are among the biggest transgressors in shielding assets’ owners, despite a G20 commitment to fix the problem. Trade Dominates APEC Agenda Trade took center stage at this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) meeting in Manila, gathering leaders from twenty-one countries accounting for more than half of the global economy. Supporters argued for greater regional integration as a way to counter extremism and described trade as a “human right,” while opponents protested free trade as the cause of poverty and inequality. With the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement awaiting a U.S. vote, President Obama pushed others to ratify the deal, meeting with the heads of each TPP country. China, as Asia’s largest economy outside the TPP, countered by laying out an alternative trade proposal. Chinese President Xi Jinping also responded to concerns about Chinese growth, saying the slowdown shows his country is making the transition from export- to domestic consumption-led growth. This narrative did little to explain China’s record trade surplus on record last month, up 36 percent since 2014.

This article originally appeared here on the New York Times website on Friday, November 6, 2015. The Turkish authorities have blamed the self-declared Islamic State for the attack on a peace rally in Ankara that took the lives of more than 100 people, though others in Turkey are not so sure. Critics of the dominant Justice and Development Party (A.K.P.), and some victims say the violence is more likely the work of either the government itself or the so-called deep state, designed to destabilize Turkey in a way that undermines Kurdish political goals and the A.K.P.’s efforts to transform Turkish politics. The existence of the deep state is widely accepted in Turkey, even though the evidence that it is actually real is circumstantial at best. The name refers to an alleged network of military, intelligence and civilian officials along with policemen, journalists, academics, business people and mafia figures. Working in the shadows and beyond the law, the group’s goal is to subvert the government and any centers of power that would challenge “the system” and this coalition’s interests in it. A car crash in November 1996 involving the deputy police chief of Istanbul, a member of parliament, a hit man and the hit man’s girlfriend traveling in the same vehicle was, to some, tantalizing evidence of the deep state’s existence. Yet what became known as the Susurluk scandal revealed official corruption and criminal activities among a network of officials and politicians, but it did not shed light on an alleged larger conspiracy of individuals who control the Turkish state. Still, the belief that a deep state exists and that it would perpetrate an act of terrorism against fellow Turkish citizens remains strong. Continue reading here...

This article originally appeared here on Fortune.com on Monday, November 2, 2015. Just five months after failing to secure a parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002, Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) came roaring back on Sunday with 49.4% of the popular vote and a renewed mandate to govern without any coalition partners. Going into the elections, all the polling indicated that the AKP would garner about 40% of the vote, which would force it to seek coalition partners to form a government. This was precisely the outcome of the June elections, after which the inability of the AKP and Turkey’s other main parties to agree on a government produced a “hung parliament” and Sunday’s re-run elections. There are already questions about the AKP’s turnaround, improving almost ten percentage points in an environment where the country is once again at war with the terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), where the self-declared Islamic State has perpetrated horrific bombings taking the lives of 134 Turks since July, and where the economy has been on the slide. Opponents of the AKP and critics of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who sabotaged coalition talks in June because he did not like the election results, suspect the outcome was manipulated. Erdogan and AKP party officials insist that voters opted for stability during increasingly uncertain times. Regardless, neither Erdogan nor the AKP have answers for the multiple crises buffeting the country. The most obvious and pressing problem for the new Turkish government is security. For the better part of the last 18 months, Turkey avoided direct confrontation with the Islamic State, fearing retaliation on the streets of Turkish cities. Continue reading here...

When this post goes up Turkish electoral officials will likely still be tallying the results of Sunday’s do-over parliamentary elections. Like the voting that took place on June 7, this round is widely regarded to be crucial. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s quest for the executive presidency, the coherence of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the integration and normalization of the Kurdish-based People’s Democratic Party (HDP), and the quality of Turkish politics going forward are all thought to be riding on the outcome. If the pre-election polling is accurate—and they have been stable for months—Turks will be faced with the same, inconclusive result that they produced five months ago, resolving nothing. Then again, anything can happen. I have been told that Turkey’s political institutions are both robust and meaningful, giving them the capacity to process people’s grievances and prevent excesses of both winners and losers. I have my doubts. Last June’s elections were supposed to have proven the resilience of Turkey’s democracy, but Erdogan demonstrated his ability to manipulate the political system because the elections did not go his way. Turkey is actually more fragile than people believe. One of the paradoxes of the AKP era is that it has reproduced many of the pathologies it sought to resolve thirteen years ago. In 2002, but certainly by 2007, Erdogan, with the help of Abdullah Gul and other party leaders, took a badly split electorate and forged a broad coalition of religious Turks, Kurds, big business, cosmopolitan elites, and average Turks to political victory on the promise of a wealthier, Western-integrated, and more pious society. Part of the AKP’s appeal at the time was its potential to resolve what had been, in the context of Turkish politics, the inability to reconcile the competing desires to be part of the West and reaffirm its Muslim identity. When the European Commission offered Turkey a formal invitation to begin European Union membership negotiations in October 2004, the economy was growing after a wrenching financial crisis in 2000 and 2001. Moreover, Turks were given an opportunity to explore their Muslim identities with greater freedom and Erdogan rallied millions of Turks around what seemed like his Islamist “third way.” Yet almost immediately after voters returned the AKP to power in 2007 with another parliamentary majority, Erdogan’s political strategy shifted. Consensus was out and confrontation was in. Erdogan was likely never a democrat, but the context in which the change came is important. In June 2007, the Turkish General Staff sought to prevent Abdullah Gul—who had been foreign minister from 2003 to 2007—from becoming president. The following summer the Constitutional Court found that the AKP was at the center of anti-secular activity, but was one vote short of closing the party. Erdogan, who had served jail time in the late 1990s for allegedly inciting religious hatred, was the product of an Islamist movement whose political parties had been routinely banned and closed since the 1970s. Deeply paranoid—as many good politicians are—and then some because of his past experiences, Erdogan pressed his political advantage to keep his opponents on the defensive. The AKP’s victories were now mandates to govern with little consideration of the still-large numbers of Turks who disagreed with the party and its leaders. The party won again in 2011 with its high watermark of almost, but not quite, 50 percent of the vote, proving that there were political benefits to a confrontational and divisive approach to politics. Erdogan and his party governed half the country that supported him and sought to intimidate the other half into silently accepting the AKP’s vision for Turkish society. When people refused to be silent, they were called marginal, terrorists, and not authentically Turkish. They were also fired from jobs and even arrested. Under these circumstances it is hardly surprising that a Pew Research Center poll conducted last spring found that Turks were evenly divided between the 49 percent who are “satisfied that Turkey’s democracy is working” and the 49 percent who believe otherwise. The result of Erdogan’s retreat to majoritarianism and populism is not just the “polarization” that has been repeated ad infinitum over the last few weeks. The term actually tells us little about the multiple conflicts roiling Turkish society, much of which can be traced to politicians seeking to benefit from them. The most dangerous of them is, of course, the conflict with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has once again become a hot war. The tragedy is that the AKP was best positioned to resolve what is euphemistically referred to as the “Kurdish question.” The party’s emphasis on development and worldview, which de-emphasized the ethnic component of Turkish identity in favor of religious solidarity, held out hope that Turks and Kurds could accommodate each other in Anatolia. Erdogan tried to do so with a massive investment package in the Kurdish southeast in 2005, by undertaking a “Kurdish opening” in 2008 and 2009, and by launching a peace process with the PKK in 2013. All of these initiatives failed, but it was the only the latter that Erdogan himself undermined. He no doubt had help from the PKK leadership that was negotiating with guns under the table and that had lost interest in the talks, but the Turkish president bears responsibility for creating an environment that made the new round of violence possible. In the past year and more, Erdogan tacked hard to the nationalist, anti-Kurdish right after the local elections in late March 2014; he sat on the sidelines as the self-proclaimed Islamic State pounded Syrian Kurds in Kobani, enraging their Turkish cousins; and he sought to link the HDP with the terrorism of the PKK after it became clear that the HDP had a genuine chance to break Turkey’s 10 percent parliamentary threshold, thereby denying the AKP a fourth majority in the Grand National Assembly. The result is the opposite of what the AKP, whose constituency of religious Kurds has disappeared, hoped to achieve when they came to power in 2002. Instead of peace, parts of Turkey’s southeast look like the war zones of the late 1980s and 1990s. If Erdogan has pursued polarization as a political strategy and renewed warfare with the Kurds is one of the consequence, then so is the return of the military. I am not suggesting that a coup is in the offing. The military does not seem inclined to take on the responsibility, and there seems to be little interest among Turks for the officers to intervene. According to last spring’s Pew poll, 56 percent of Turks believe that democracy “is the best way to solve their country’s problems,” but that is down from 68 percent in 2012, and the number of people who say that a strong leader is preferable to democracy is growing. Among those who hold this view, almost two-thirds are AKP supporters, which means that the strong leader they want is Erdogan and not General Hulusi Akar, the chief of staff of the armed forces. That said, the Pew Research Center also found that 52 percent of Turks regard the armed forces as the most trusted national institution. That has got to be a historic low, but against the backdrop of social tensions, economic troubles, terrorism, war, and Kurdish political gains in Iraq, Syria, and Turkey, it may help pave the way for the return of the Turkish General Staff as an actual political player. In the past, the officer corps justified their routine intervention in politics in part on the military’s popularity. I can hear my fellow Turkey analysts groaning. I have no idea how many times I have heard the refrain “the era of coups is over,” but I am not suggesting that the Turkish General Staff is going to surround the Ak Saray—the White Palace—with tanks and troops. Rather, as violence continues and the military takes on greater responsibilities and a more public role, political paralysis sets in, and the economy slides, the officers may find that the current environment is a propitious opportunity to assert themselves once again. If this does not sound like the 1990s, I don’t know what does. The outcome of the elections is irrelevant to the larger story in Turkey, which is how familiar the violence, tawdry politics, and economic uncertainty all feel. This is the astonishing irony of the AKP era. The president’s political needs in the service of personal and national ambition have actually brought Turkey full circle. Erdogan is a towering figure in comparison to Turkey’s 1990s-era political leaders—with the exception of Turgut Ozal, who died in 1993—but for all of his talents and all the changes he has wrought, it is hard to overlook the fact that, in important ways, Erdogan’s Turkey today looks like the country he inherited when he first became prime minister in March 2003.

In his famous and much-criticized 1993 Foreign Affairs article, “The Clash of Civilizations,” the late Samuel Huntington described Turkey as a “torn country.” For Huntington there is an irreconcilable difference between the Western-style political institutions of the Republic of Turkey and the Islamic cultural and civilizational foundations of Turkish society. It was a controversial assertion in a controversial article, though Turkey’s current prime minister (and political scientist), Ahmet Davutoglu, made a similar claim in his 1984 dissertation. I disagree with both professors. Turkey may not be “torn” in the way that Huntington and Davutoglu believe, but it is tearing itself apart in a war with itself. The background for Saturday’s horrific bombing is about another seemingly irreconcilable difference, that between Turkish and Kurdish nationalism. Ever since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk founded the Republic after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I on a specifically ethno-nationalist basis that made “Turkishness” a singular attribute of identity, expressions of Kurdish identity have been suppressed, often violently. In return, Kurdish alienation has often been expressed through force. The most recent example is the three-decades-long war between the terrorists of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Turkish state. There are, of course, many Kurds who are well integrated in the political, social, and economic life of Turkey. This has considerably less to do with any flexibility or accommodation on the part of the state or the dominant social group—Turks—than an apparent willingness on the part of the Kurds to accommodate themselves to the mainstream culture and negotiate their way in it. That the conflict between nationalisms is the central drama of Turkish politics does not mean that one could not imagine its resolution. The problem has always been politics and the way that politicians—leftist, rightist, centrist, Islamist, secular, and Kurdish—have leveraged the conflict to advance their own agendas. And so the “Kurdish question” has become a permanent feature of Turkey’s politics. And yet this conflict is only the toxic context for a series of other struggles—some well established, some new—that have contributed to the current moment in which bodies are piling up on Turkish streets at an unprecedented rate (even by the bloody standards of the late 1970s when violence between leftist and rightist political forces wracked the country, killing about 4,500 people). Today, the conflicts roiling Turkish society include: The Justice and Development Party (AKP) vs. the Republican People’s Party (CHP); The AKP vs. the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP); The AKP vs. the People Democratic Party (HDP); The AKP vs. the Gulenists; The HDP vs. the PKK; Everyone vs. the PKK; The MHP vs. the HDP; Everyone vs. the self-proclaimed Islamic State (though there are persistent questions about the government’s position on this group and other extremists); and Alevi Muslims vs. orthodox Sunni Muslims. Beyond the immediate tragedy of the Ankara bombing, this is an environment rife with hard-to-resist opportunities for politicians to deepen Turkey’s instability. This is particularly so as November 1 approaches—the date set for the rerun of the country’s June national elections. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s opponents would have it that he and the AKP caused Saturday’s violence and the Suruc and Diyarbakir bombings before it. This seems unlikely, though “cause” can be an expansive term. At the very least Erdogan’s political strategy going back to the run up to elections last spring, but actually further back to the local elections of March 2014, is a testament to how the combination of unbounded ambition, the political conflicts outlined above, and identity can radicalize a society. No matter who is directly responsible for Saturday’s bombing—the Islamic State, the PKK, or some other group—Kurds, who have overwhelmingly been the victims of these kinds of attacks, have been portrayed as collectively subversive. They are terrorists or terrorist sympathizers who seek to undermine Turkey’s unity. None of this is new, but it has taken on a new urgency especially since the June elections when the legal Kurdish-based party, the HDP, earned 13 percent of the popular vote. This vote total denied the AKP a parliamentary majority and a pathway for Erdogan to force a new constitution that would give him his coveted “executive presidency.” Erdogan’s nationalist gambit and the bloodcurdling rhetoric that has gone with it, which seeks to connect the HDP with the terrorists of the PKK in order to push the former below Turkey’s 10 percent parliamentary threshold, has made Kurds—all Kurds—a target. The PKK has a role to play in creating an environment of violence. The murder of two police officers while they slept in Sanliurfa on July 22 was reported to be the work of a PKK youth wing only marginally under the control of the organization’s leadership. Be that as it may, the PKK was itching for a fight as the peace process, which began in 2013 between the group and the Turkish government, faltered. Also, the organization’s leadership seems unwilling to countenance the rise of the HDP with is own charismatic leader who is committed to playing by the existing rules of the Turkish political game and has been successful at it. It seems that the AKP, the nationalist hardliners of the MHP, and the PKK have an abiding political interest in cutting the HDP down to size. Needless to say, the cycle of violence Turks and Kurds are currently enduring serve that purpose. The unfortunate reality is that Turkish society is now made up of mutually distrustful camps. The political sniping between the AKP and the HDP as well as the CHP’s disingenuous call for the resignations of the justice and interior ministers and accountability are little more than preelection posturing that only reinforces the political polarization that is contributing to Turkey’s bloody impasse. Accountability would be welcome and likely advance Turkey’s ever-elusive search for national unity, but the set of conditions necessary for this kind of leadership simply do not currently exist. All of the political incentives for Turkish politicians actually run in the opposite direction, encouraging them to use the deaths of more than a hundred people to delegitimize their opponents and win votes. This does not make Turkish politicians any more craven than politicians elsewhere, but in the context of Turkey’s encounter with Kurdish nationalism and its myriad of related political struggles, the resulting suboptimal outcome is more blood. I was in Istanbul very briefly last week; about thirty-six hours. I spent part of the time chatting with my Turkish friends about the elections, the war in Syria, and the conflict with the PKK. The profound sense of unease and uncertainty was revealing. No one knew where Turkey was headed after November 1, but it was also clear that the principles and ideals of democratic politics and the importance of Western-inspired political institutions had become embedded in their minds. So much for Huntington. I spent the other part of my time wandering around Kadikoy on the Asian side of the Bosphorus, eating and snapping photos of everyday life, including AKP, CHP, and HDP activists electioneering. It was fun to play tourist for a day and it all seemed so normal, even if there was a war going on in the country. After Saturday, that is the part that is so worrying. The normality of a country at war with itself.

Natasha Lennard examines the altering dynamics between Turkey and the European Union brought about by the refugee crisis. Read the press release announcing that the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet won the Nobel Peace Prize for 2015. Linda Dorigo explores life in Iraqi Kurdistan’s Qandil Mountains.

Exactly a decade ago I became a father for the first time. At the very moment I first laid eyes on my daughter I experienced something I had never felt before. It was total. In an instant my life’s mission became: At all costs, whatever it takes, ensure the health and well-being of this human. I went from a guy existing in the goofy, unreal world of impending first-time fatherhood to “parent,” with all the primordial and overwhelming—until it aches—feelings of unconditional love that come with it. These are the reasons why I have been unable to bring myself to read about poor Aylan Kurdi, the Syrian-Kurdish toddler who washed ashore in Bodrum on the southeastern coast of Turkey, fleeing the cataclysm that has engulfed his country. It is why I had to fight back tears at just the sight of his father who has lost Aylan, his older brother, Galip, and their mother. Abdullah Kurdi’s reality is my night terror. So much has been written about the Kurdi family, Europe’s “migrant crisis,” and the Syrian conflict since the photo of Aylan lying facedown on the beach was published last week, but how many little boys and girls have died in the Syria disaster? We have collectively averted our eyes to unbearable suffering. Another picture of Aylan cradled in the arms of a Turkish police officer reminded me that not everyone has, however. Readers of this blog know that I have been routinely critical of the Turkish government, the Justice and Development Party, and especially Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but when it comes to handling the situation of Syrian refugees in their country, the Turks deserve praise. It is true that the Kurdi family—which no longer exists—was from the Syrian town of Kobani, which is within eyesight of the Turkish border and where Turkish military units sat idly by in the fall of 2014 as forces from the self-proclaimed Islamic State pounded the area. American airstrikes and Syrian Kurdish forces, with help from their cousins in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga, eventually beat back the attackers, but at great cost. There is not much left of Kobani, and responsibility for the carnage and destruction there is partly Turkey’s. Still, numbers do not lie. Whereas the United States has taken in 1,500 people fleeing the conflict and Europe has taken in a larger, but still small number of refugees, Turkey has accepted over 1.9 million. That is an official number. There are believed to be many more. Even so, it represents about half of the people who have fled Syria—most of the rest have found refuge in Jordan and Lebanon. The number of Syrians seeking refuge in Turkey is such that according to my friend and colleague, Soner Cagaptay, in the five Turkish provinces where these people are concentrated, they now comprise 6 to 59 percent of the population. (Those numbers are from the summer of 2014). It is not so much that the Turks have let people in; it is the way they have done it. In contrast to past refugee crises like the Iraqi Kurdish rush to safety in Turkey in the spring of 1991, Ankara has upheld internationally accepted practices and norms for the care of refugees. I would not want to be a Syrian refugee in Turkey; who would? Yet to be a Syrian refugee in Turkey is better than being a Syrian in Syria or a Syrian refugee in other places. It has not been easy for Turkey. The recognition that Syrians—many of whom are Kurdish—might be in Turkey for a very long time has produced some political tension, though for the most part Turks have taken the refugees in their midst with a good deal of equanimity. That said, there seem to be few in Turkey who have an appetite for getting more deeply and directly involved in the conflict across the border and question their government’s aggressive posture toward Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. This does not change the fact that whatever criticism can be leveled against President Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu for their approach to Syria—and there are many—Turkey has borne the brunt of the conflict there and acted responsibly. Late last week Davutoglu said he was “proud” that Turkey had taken in so many refugees. His words came in the context of scoring cheap political points in an address to business leaders representing G20 countries, but Davutoglu was correct. Europe, the United States, and the Gulf countries—the wealthiest countries on Earth—have left Turkey (and Lebanon and Jordan) to deal with the “greatest humanitarian disaster since Word War II,” as we have been told several times over this weekend. True, the United States and its European allies have contributed $1,112,683,736 to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, but at some point writing checks is not enough. I hope there will not be more Aylan and Galip Kurdis in the future, but I know better. Thanks to Turkey, there have been fewer than there might have been.

CFR’s Civil Society, Markets, and Democracy (CSMD) Program highlights noteworthy events and articles each Friday in “This Week in Markets and Democracy.”  International Anticorruption Efforts Seem to be Working in Guatemala A far-reaching battle against government corruption is unfolding in Guatemala. Prosecutors have uncovered a widespread customs bribery ring through the use of wiretaps, email interceptions, close monitoring of individuals, and financial analyses. They accuse government officials of siphoning off tens of millions of dollars in import duties. Evidence suggests that the fraud’s biggest beneficiaries have been Vice President Roxana Baldetti (who resigned and is awaiting trial), and President Otto Pérez Molina, who so far is resisting demands for his resignation. Whether now or later, it is quite likely both will face jail time—a first for this nation and all of Latin America. These investigations should hearten international anticorruption fighters, showing that international efforts can make a difference even in places with weak institutions and long legacies of graft and impunity. Leading the charge is the International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala, or CICIG. Founded in 2006, CICIG is a UN-funded independent prosecutor’s office (the United States has contributed some $25 million since its formation) dedicated to strengthening Guatemala’s judicial and security institutions. In this latest and most ambitious case, CICIG’s head, Colombian-born prosecutor Iván Velásquez Gómez, has worked closely alongside the Guatemalan public prosecutor’s office, bolstering their investigations into government corruption. CICIG’s success has led to calls by citizens of El Salvador and Honduras for their own version of the organization. How Democratic Are Snap Elections in Turkey and Greece? In the past week, both the Greek and Turkish governments have called snap elections. With ruling Syriza party ranks split over heavy austerity measures, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras resigned and called for new elections September 20th. In Turkey, where the neighboring Syrian war and Kurdish insurgency threaten stability, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan called parliamentary elections for November, and designated his hand-picked successor, Ahmet Davutoglu, as interim Prime Minister to oversee the vote. Scholars tout the benefits of this parliamentary electoral mechanism, enabling leaders to avoid gridlock or a lame duck administration (both perils of presidential electoral regimes). Yet politicians use these elections strategically—dictating the schedule to maintain their political advantage at times in ways that do little to further democratic inclusion or legitimacy. In Greece, Tsipras looks to shuffle his coalition, abandoning the anti-austerity platform that brought him to power last February. The quick turnaround leaves little time for other parties to form a government or rally around voter opposition voiced in a July referendum. Meanwhile, Erdogan is betting that early elections will bolster his power after the Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its parliamentary majority in June and Davutoglu failed to form a coalition. (Opponents charge the move was an attempt to thwart them from forming their own alliance). In both places the leaders are following the democratic rules, yet invite debate over their democratic legitimacy. While shoring up support through early voting may be preferable to an imminent “no” vote, leaders can also manipulate snap elections to extend power in times of political and economic crisis. AGOA’s Challenges Rooted in Structural Weakness U.S. and African officials met this week in Gabon to flesh out what Congress’s ten-year extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) can mean. Since AGOA began in 2000, duty-free market access for thirty-nine sub-Saharan African countries has boosted U.S.-bound exports fourfold to over $26 billion. Yet to truly increase African global competitiveness, a renewed AGOA pact will need to grapple with the economies’ structural challenges. Commodities dominate African trade—oil comprises nearly 90 percent of AGOA exports. The trade deal won’t move Brent crude prices. Another source of exports, agriculture, has yet to modernize—the majority of sub-Saharan African jobs remain in low-productivity farm work. And the United States is reluctant to provide market access—the newly-authorized AGOA provides more technical assistance for agriculture but does little to eliminate tariffs and quotas for African sugar and cotton producers. The U.S. and African officials could and should focus on helping get goods to market. Sporadic electricity, bad roads, silted ports, and general transportation costs are up to ten times higher in sub-Saharan Africa than in Asian economies, eliminating the upside of large and affordable labor forces. For example, slow logistics and customs procedures keep Ethiopia’s growing coffee and flower industries from reaching their full potential. Though total U.S.–Africa trade increased during AGOA’s first fifteen years, the $26 billion represents just a small fraction of U.S. imports. And the vast majority of non-oil imports came from South Africa. Unless agriculture, infrastructure, and structural barriers are tackled, AGOA won’t make a significant difference for Africa’s companies, workers, and broader economies.

This article originally appeared here on Politico.com on Friday, August 21, 2015. On July 23 virtually every news outlet in the United States ran some version of the following headline: “Turkey Joins the Fight Against ISIL; Opens Air Base to Coalition Forces; Washington and Ankara Agree to Safe Zone in Syria.” The media, being what it is, dubbed Ankara’s decision to order up airstrikes on Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s forces a “game changer,” which is what journalists say when they have nothing else to say, do not understand a situation and are itching to get back to covering Donald Trump. The only game that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is actually interested in changing is the political one that he has been uncharacteristically losing since mid-June when his Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost the parliamentary majority it has held since November 2002. Erdogan’s military actions against the self-proclaimed Islamic State are best understood as one part a desperate, highly complex attempt by Erdogan to win back the power he lost. If his plan fails, the risky multi-front war Erdogan has just launched may become his undoing. It’s hard to believe that Erdogan took a fresh look at what was happening in Syria and Iraq and came to the conclusion that joining the American-led fight against the Islamic State was in Turkey’s national interest. The prevailing theory among Turkey watchers instead is this: Ankara agreed to fight against the Islamic State so America would allow it to attack the Kurds (who are also at war with ISIL) and thereby improve the AKP’s political prospects in parliamentary elections that will be scheduled for the fall. Continue reading here...