Turkey’s Runoff Election, Debt Ceiling Dangers, Nigeria’s Tinubu Inaugurated as President, and More

MCMAHON:
In the coming week, Turkey heads into a runoff election, the U.S. nears its deadline to raise the debt ceiling, and Bola Tinubu is inaugurated as Nigeria's president. It's May 25, 2023 in time for The World Next Week. I am Bob McMahon.

ROBBINS:
And I'm Carla Anne Robbins. Bob, great to see you.

MCMAHON:
Likewise.

ROBBINS:
Let's start in Turkey. The results of the presidential elections in mid-May seem to surprise pretty much everybody, the polls, the analysts, high inflation, devastating earthquake. All this suggested it was going to be the end of the Erdogan era. Instead, Erdogan came away with 49.5 percent of the vote, and his prime challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, with 44.9 percent. Now, there's going to be a runoff. This is the first one ever in Turkey on May 28th. How did Erdogan pull it off. And dare we handicap the next round?

MCMAHON:
We can dare. I think it's worth kind of running down some of the points that were made by our colleague, Steven Cook, and his kind of readout of the elections a week and a half ago, which is, you cannot underplay the power of incumbency in a country, a quasi authoritarian country like Turkey, at this point. Power of incumbency means things like, Erdogan able to offer patronage to federal workers to dominate the broadcast media in particular. He had far more airtime on television, for example, which is where many Turks get their news, than did Kilicdaroglu, and overall playing the nationalism card, I guess one could say, really playing up the threat of Kurds, one of the opposition parties that was United behind Kilicdaroglu is affiliated with Kurds, and Erdogan play that up to the hilt, and this seems to have been one of the reasons that he has won the support of the third place candidate, Sinan Oğan, who had put together about 5 percent of the vote in the first round, and he has said he is throwing a support behind Erdogan.

It's not clear whether Oğan followers will all come in lockstep and all 5 percent will go for Erdogan or not, but that particular aspect has gotten a lot of attention because Kilicdaroglu himself, has veered to the right after elections and has come out with all sorts of proclamations about what he would do in terms of expediting the sending of refugees back home, mostly them are Syrians, for example, and other nationalist themes that he's been playing up. It's not clear if that is going to work. Erdogan seems to be in a dominant position, an unbeatable position, but as you say, we haven't had a runoff before, and there was significant enough dismay by Turks that they created this situation, so we'll see whether there were some silent voting going on that will now come to the fore in this runoff, but I would say again, if we're going to sort of go with hunches, Erdogan does seem to be in the dominant position.

One other thing I would add, Carla, which is that with that anticipation being pretty widespread that Erdogan will win, there's a lot of concern about what's going to happen with Turkey's economy. We said in the run up to this election that was a big issue, was one of the issues that could have thrown most of the support behind his challenger, and he's got some tough decisions to make and there have been a great deal of scrambling from his advisors about potentially positioning Turkey in another direction on its policy. For example, interest rates. Erdogan is firmly opposed to raising interest rates. He has interceded to stop Central Bank from raising them, and he has his own strategy about what he believes is going to be export led growth. It has not worked the country currencies in a crisis mode. Inflation is in a very bad state and there's a lot of concern that very major economy, an important world economy could be teetering if Erdogan comes back to power sticking to his positions.

ROBBINS:
If Erdogan is reelected, internationally, do we get the good Erdogan or the bad Erdogan? Because there are two. Domestically, there's just the bad Erdogan, increasingly autocratic, but internationally, we've seen two sides of him. He's been a negotiator, certainly for the Black Sea grain deal, which we've discussed. He's also blocked NATO expansion, Sweden getting in, and done a lot of other naughty things. So, which one are we going to get? Is he going to see this as, "Oh, I'm off the hook now so now I can go out and play well?" He certainly enabled Putin, so what are you predicting for that afterwards?

MCMAHON:
It's always a tricky game to predict, especially with someone like Erdogan who keeps his own council, but we have seen a template for such leaders before, Carla, which is they feel vindicated at the ballot. They then double down and use their levers to further squash voices of dissent, potentially moving against political parties that oppose him. One thing I didn't note in my initial comments was that his party, Erdogan's party, is already in a very dominant coalition position now going into a next term. If he were to lose, for example, Kilicdaroglu would face a opponent party in parliament and have to reconcile with that.

However, Erdogan looks poised to renew, to come back into power with his party in a dominant position and could really take powerful steps on all sorts of ways. He keeps his own council. We've certainly seen that on the economic front, even though a previous version of Erdogan has been one who's been a bit more orthodox in his economic policies. Maybe he returns to that, it's hard to see. Maybe he turns around and says, "You know what, NATO? Let's add Sweden, let's move forward," or maybe he tries to squeeze out some further possible concessions. I'm not sure what that would be. I guess my unsatisfactory answer is, not sure, Carla.

ROBBINS:
If there's another upset, surprise if the opposition wins, he's made a lot of promises here and some of them quite unsavory, ousting immigrants. Do we have any sense? I think The West tended to turn him into the great potential savior for Turkey. These promises he's made in the interim are rather disturbing. No?

MCMAHON:
Well, especially the one involving the refugees because three and a half million is the rough count of Syrian refugees who've been given haven and quite a large outlay by Turkish authorities to provide shelter, support, and to host the international agencies providing the international support. However, it's rubbed against the grain of many Turks and it's been seen as electoral issue, but a policy where he would expedite the return of refugees to a very dangerous situation in Syria runs against another part of Kilicdaroglu's platform, which has been reaching out to the European Union, for example, to international human rights bodies to be more of a conventional Turkish leader in terms of working with international organizations on broader responsible governance areas. How does that square with some sort of abrupt turn against three and a half million refugees? I think we'll probably see some sort of softening in that position if he were to come to power. So, it remains to be seen. 

Well Carla, if we turn our attention back to the U.S., it could seem like the sky is falling, but it's not falling, but maybe the debt ceiling is. Let's discuss that. The U.S. is due to reach its so-called "X" date, which is the date the country can no longer pay its bills as early as next Thursday, which is June 1st. President Biden has had a number of negotiations with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to try to reach a compromise that will convince especially Republican-controlled House members to raise the debt ceiling. With only a week before that default deadline, why is this still being delayed given that the consequences have been mapped out in pretty clear and stark terms?

ROBBINS:
Partisan politics and a system that allows it to happen. Congress has raised the debt limit, the legislative amount the government can borrow seventy-eight times since 1960. Seven times over the last ten years. This sort of political hostage taking when it does happen is incredibly dangerous for the U.S. economy, for the country's global reputation, for the global economy. Remember in 2011, when the face off between Obama and the GOP controlled house brought the country within two days of default, the bond rating agency, S&P, lowered the credit rating in the U.S. by one notch, and it hasn't raised it since. Fitch, another bond rating agency is already warning that they're going to knock it down unless we get it together soon. Even without a downgrade, if investors around the world start doubting the reliability of the U.S. government as a lender, if they get spooked, the U.S. could find it harder and more expensive to borrow going forward, so there's lots of bad things that could happen and we can talk about that.

As for where we are now, I really hesitate to predict since this seems to change daily and as we get closer to June 1st, we're at the beginning of June, we're increasingly hearing maybe that June 1st date is not set in stone. It could change hourly. On Monday, after Biden and McCarthy met both sides were describing the conversations as productive. On Tuesday, McCarthy said they were nowhere close. On Wednesday, all sides were back to using the word productive and who knows exactly where they are. We have no idea what's happening inside the room, but the basic disagreement is around whether to freeze or cut discretionary spending. As you can imagine, the White House wants to freeze, the GOP wants to cut. Washington loves a cliffhanger. Nothing focuses it like a deadline, but the political culture in the capitol these days, especially within the GOP caucus, is not much open to compromise.

I think the summary point, Matt Gaetz from Florida, who's a particularly voluble, some would say irresponsible voice, on the far right of the GOP caucus declared earlier this week that his conservative colleagues, "Don't feel like we should negotiate with our hostage." Whether he meant the hostage was the White House, the full faith and credit of the U.S., or the American people, wasn't clear, but that was a pretty chilling statement, and McCarthy is in a particularly vulnerable position. You recall it took him fifteen rounds to win the speakership and he won in part by agreeing that a single disgruntled member, and there are a lot of them out there, of his caucus, could call for a snap vote to ask him. To get any deal through, he's going to need Democratic votes, which means Biden and Hakeem Jeffries are going to have to do their own sales job, but if McCarthy doesn't pitch this right, he could lose the gavel, so the politics on all sides are very challenging, the time is very short, and let's hope the sky doesn't fall.

MCMAHON:
Well, and this doesn't say a lot about Brand U.S.A., Carla, which has already been a tarnished brand for a few years internationally. I'm sure President Biden heard an earful at the G7 Summit recently in Hiroshima about this issue. What are some of the global implications we should be concerned about?

ROBBINS:
Well, I think internationally, people look at this as one of these odd American spectacles, the way they look at the electoral college. There are only three countries that have a debt limit in nominal terms, the U.S., Kenya, and Denmark. Of course, I had to look that up. The EU, according to the BBC is the only other Group of 20 member with a debt limit of any kind, and it requires that members debt cannot exceed 60 percent of GDP, and if a member does blow past that limit, there's a review process and it could eventually face sanctions, but nothing like this implosion that we're talking about here. If the U.S. were to default, this is an impact we've felt around the world. We have an enormous economy. The hit here would be enormous, and this is a weak global economy as it is coming off of COVID, the war in Ukraine. This is not a time to be messing around this way. 

So many foreign investors and countries own U.S. treasury bonds, some 7.6 trillion worth. They're going to take an enormous hit from this. A U.S. default could drive up interest rates in other countries just because a general lack of confidence in all government debt because of this. Value of the dollar would go down sharply, uncertainty about commodity prices around the world, and of course, the stock market, which hates uncertainty, is not going to take it well, and that, too, is going to have global implications since there's so much global money on the U.S. market. This is a bad thing, and then of course, people predict the ultimate hit for the United States, are investors around the world, people who trade around the world going to say, "We don't trust the dollar anymore." Now, that I think, is premature to say, but everybody's going to take a hit and particularly given the vulnerability of the global economy.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, and it's been mapped out by the way, I think this is fully something that many Democrats and Republicans are fully cognizant of, and yet the politics, as you spelled it out are so toxic right now that a rating degrading could be in the cards, and I recall the day that happened back in 2011, I believe, and the markets just absolutely tanked, and there was a real sense of, what is going on here? That did finally hasten actions and a deal was reached, but it feels like the climate is even worse this time. I guess we'll look next at what the Fitch raters have to say to see if that focuses minds, but we're looking at a Memorial Day weekend that's going to have a bit of a funk hanging over it.

ROBBINS:
What's so odd about it right now is, everybody knows that the partisan environment is so terrible for a compromise. At the same time, the stock market seems really calm. You don't know whether that's because we've had so many other near death experiences over the last few years or whether people just think this is so unthinkable that responsible voices eventually will get it together. I hope that's right, but Washington has been pretty irresponsible, so we'll have to see.

MCMAHON:
Stay tuned.

ROBBINS:
Bob, let's move to West Africa. On Monday, Bola Tinubu will be sworn in as the president of Nigeria. This election was a very close race and he's the first president to win with fewer than 50 percent of the votes. I gather he only got 37 percent. That's a pretty low percentage for an already deeply divided country, and President Buhari leaves behind inflation and debt. What are the prospects for this presidency?

MCMAHON:
Well, it's not clear there are many in the glass half empty camp, or even barely empty at this point, given that Tinubu seems to be like the Nigerian version of a machine politician. He's been widely called the king maker behind the presidency of Muhammadu Buhari in terms of him coming to office in 2015 and then winning reelection, and as our colleague, Ebenezer Obadare, pointed out in a recent blog post, Buhari squandered ample political capital that he came to office with as someone who was really seen as being able to clear through some of Nigeria's messy politics and cronyism to get things done,  and didn't. And instead, the country is worse off than it was before Buhari came to office according to our colleague. 

And we're looking at a country as mentioned, the largest economy in Africa, largest population, a population that could be the world's third largest by 2050 according to some projections, and depending on where you look even with its problems, it's also, there's a great deal of dynamism around Nigeria. It's just it's governance. If we're looking at the theme of poor governance, which seems to be a theme of this particular podcast, Carla. Nigeria's had it in spades and we have someone who campaigned under the theme of, "it's my turn," which doesn't necessarily rouse you to feel like he's going to change things. It was also a campaign in which a third party candidate Peter Obi did remarkably well, and there has been a concern still percolating about whether or not the campaign was actually fairly conducted in that it could end up reaching a challenge at some point. 

But Tinubu, who is the former governor of Lagos State, is someone who is extremely well-connected. He's by some accounts also considered to be a very strong judge of sort of talent and might be capable of putting together a strong cabinet that could help power the country through some of its problems, and by the way, they're not just economic. They still have security concerns involving the Boko Haram, especially in the north, and other places in the country where lawlessness has arisen during Buhari's term, and so he's got to get this country steering in the right direction. He's got to engender a bit of optimism. He's got to clear through the perceptions of not only cronyism, but corruption. He's been accused of that multiple times. He's extremely wealthy. He has denied vehemently any taint of corruption, and so he's got a lot on his plate. Nigeria has a lot on its plate and it's going to be worth the world's time to watch how he sets things in motion come next week.

ROBBINS:
"It's my turn," as you said, is not really a persuasive argument in a democracy, but Tinubu's presidency marks two back-to-back Muslim presidents, and this is in a country which has this unspoken rule that the presidency is supposed to alternate between a Muslim from the north and a Christian from the south. How much do we have to watch on this ethnoreligious splits spilling over?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I think we have to watch that very closely in Nigeria. There was always an alternation between Christian and Muslim. The Muslims would come from the north, the Christians from the south, and so it's a backdrop. It's not a front burner concern at the moment. Again, we're going to have to see how Tinubu works to try to pacify some of the really insecure parts of the north, in particular where Boko Haram has been active, where kidnapping has been rife now. That was the group that was responsible for the infamous Chibok girls capture back in the mid-2010's, so we'll have to see on that front. It doesn't seem like it, there's going to be any immediate percolation of violence over the mere fact of his being the second Muslim in a row, but it's got to be an area where he treads very carefully.

ROBBINS:
Nigeria's big. Nigeria, it's oil sector is shrinking, but it's still comparatively very wealthy for Africa, and it was looked to as one of the leaders on the continent. Is this guy got the chops to be a leader to solve continent problems?

MCMAHON:
Yeah, this gets back to the governance thing. Nigeria's got to get its own house in order, I think, before it can start to spread its wings again regionally in particular, if not internationally. You're absolutely right. It was seen as this emerging major power broker in a positive way. It's still a fairly young democracy obviously, but it was starting to consolidate some of those democratic gains and showing a willingness to support African Union values and its desire to keep political succession moving in a peaceful non-violent way, and democratically, and so forth. In some countries in Africa, democracy is on its heels at the moment. There's always been the problem of the gerontocracy in African countries, male dominated, older leaders who refuse to leave power, so here you have an older leader. He's about seventy years old coming in.

ROBBINS:
That's young by our standards.

MCMAHON:
Which is young by U.S. standards. It's worth pointing out very, very correctly, but there was a bit of a sigh from some in the reformist camp in Nigeria saying, "Can't we for once have someone who's not this old guard figure?" Again, Tinubu, certainly a man of talents, certainly extremely well-connected, and there is a hope, the optimist would say he does have the wherewithal to try to right the country, which has to happen before Nigeria can start to, I think, exert itself in an effective regional or even international way. 

Carla, let me pivot to another topic. I wanted to take a moment on this podcast to talk about a fellow journalist, Evan Gershkovich. Evan was accused of espionage and arrested back in March by the Russian government as he was doing his normal reporting for the Wall Street Journal. He has since been held in pre-trial detention at Moscow's Lefortovo Prison. He was supposed to be released from detention to begin his trial this upcoming week, May 29th, but now, that pretrial detention has been extended until the end of August. Can you say it a little bit about why his trial has been delayed?

ROBBINS:
His detention has been extended because the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, says it needs more time to investigate. In other words, gin up evidence. No one should take this legal process seriously. Gershkovich had been doing hard-hitting reporting, including on the Russian military facing an artillery shortage and the last piece that was published before he was taken, the increasingly serious impact of sanctions on Russia's economy. This is utterly political and utterly unacceptable. 

And Bob, being a journalist is a dangerous job these days, whether you're a foreign correspondent, and more often and even more dangerous, a local reporter and these people have even less protection than we do, and since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the criminalization of reporting in the war, we've seen large numbers of journalists leave Russia. And it's incredibly gutsy for those who have stayed and worked. 

According to the Committee to Protect Journalists, there were 363 media workers, journalists, reporters detained in more than thirty countries last year, and with the highest number of detainees held in Iran, China, and Myanmar nearly doubled the number from 2015. For Evan Gershkovich, the most likely resolution is a prisoner swap, like the one that led to the release of basketball star, Brittney Griner. The Russians say a verdict has to be issued before they would consider a swap, and it's not clear what the U.S. has to trade with. For Griner, the Russians got back an arms dealer. We don't know who's in the pipeline there, but there's just no justification for Evan Gershkovich's arrest, no justification for continuing his pretrial detention. The Russians need to free him right now.

MCMAHON:
I can't agree more. I think you're absolutely right as well. There's a transactional nature at this point and it's not clear what is the quid pro quo that Russia requires. I think they will continue to milk this cynically and awfully. It does seem like, back to the small number of journalists who are operating in Russia that they particularly went after Gershkovich because his reporting was authentic and resonating. He was getting real reports out about both what was happening in the country, and what Russian sentiments were in a way that was not reflecting well on the government but was very credible. I think that example is meant to further chill any valid reporting out of the country, and we know less and less about what's going on. Other than the utterances seemingly, of the head of the Wagner Group, Mr. Prigozhin, we don't seem to know much else about any ruffles in the Russian regime.

ROBBINS:
Well, we don't usually take strong advocacy positions, but this is clear here. Free Evan.

MCMAHON:
Well said. Carla, let's continue to talk about figures in the news. In this case, the audience figure of the week, which is chosen by listeners by voting Tuesdays and Wednesdays at CFR underscore org's Instagram story. This week, Carla, our audience selected seven. As in, "Sudan Generals Agreed to Seven Days Ceasefire," so does this mean the Sudan conflict might be beginning to calm down?

ROBBINS:
If only. Bob, the two rival militaries, the Sudanese army, controlled by General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, and the paramilitary rapid support forces led by Lieutenant General Mohamed Hamdan, agreed last weekend to a seven-day ceasefire starting on Monday, and after these talks were brokered by the Saudis and the U.S. and Jeddah, it seemed to hold for about a day and a half, but on Wednesday, there were reports of pretty widespread fighting in the capital and a few other cities. Thursday, today, Reuters reported more sporadic fighting, so we'll just have to see what happens. The ceasefire's supposed to facilitate the delivery of humanitarian relief and it's supposed to set the stage for peace talks. It's not clear how much progress is being made on either front.

UN's OCHA, which coordinates relief said different agencies were ready to move in aid. There's supposedly many trucks waiting to move in, but their efforts were being slowed by security issues and bureaucratic obstacles, and that's not good news because the situation on the ground is really bad, very little food, very limited power, very little water. Since the conflict began in mid-April, more than 300,000 people have fled the country, mainly to neighboring states, which really can't help them either. They're poor countries, and more than a million people have been displaced inside of Sudan. It's a really tough situation and they need to ceasefire and they need to move this forward. To persuade these two generals, there's not a lot of leverage. On Tuesday, Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, tweeted that the generals need to respect the ceasefire or face sanctions. I don't know if they're listening,

MCMAHON:
Carla, it's been an outside initiative, I believe still led by the U.S. and the Saudis. Do we know whether they are getting any traction at all or how well they're working together to try to make something happen?

ROBBINS:
Well, they are working together. There is this monitoring group that's made up of American representatives, Saudi representatives, and representatives of the two groups. One could say it was better than it was before the ceasefire, and it's an hour by hour monitoring, but the most important thing is that this has to lead to something, to a genuine peace negotiations, and in the most immediate term, they have to get those trucks in to help people. What these guys really want, they both want power, and the people who are supposed to have power because this broke out at a period of time when there was supposed to be a transition to civil rule. Those people are not even part of the negotiations and that's not a good sign.

MCMAHON:
Yeah, I'm afraid you're right, and part of Africa that could ill afford any more upheaval is getting it. We have a new piece, a short explainer up on our website about the humanitarian toll and mapping out the direction of population flight, which has been in almost every direction north to Egypt, down to South Sudan, which is one of the world's newest countries, and it's poorest. It doesn't have the ability to deal with these flows either of South Sudanese who themselves had been refugees in Sudan or others, Chad, which is also in a very precarious state taking in a lot of people. This does not bode well for the region getting under control, as it's facing multiple cascading crises, including just food and famine type concerns.

ROBBINS:
Climate displacement. This is a, remember the excitement when Sudan finally got rid of their ICC indicted leader, and we did think there was going to be a transition, but as I said, peace negotiations, let's hope that moves forward, but really what Sudan needs is the transition back to what was supposed to be the civilian rule, and we don't see that yet.

MCMAHON:
Well, that's our look at the shakily governed world next week. Here's some other stories to keep an eye on. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, meets with Baltic leaders in Estonia. The GlobeSeC Security Conference takes place in Slovakia, and Chile's President Gabriel Boric delivers his annual State of the Nation.

ROBBINS:
Please subscribe to The World Next Week on Apple Podcast, Google Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast, and leave us a review while you're at it. We really do appreciate the feedback. The publications mentioned in this episode, as well as a transcript of our conversation, are listed on the podcast page for The World Next Week on cfr.org. Please note that opinions expressed on The World Next Week are solely those of the hosts, not of CFR, which takes no institutional positions on matters of policy. 

Today's program was produced by Ester Fang, Director of Podcasting, Gabrielle Sierra. Special thanks to Sinet Adous for her research assistance. Our theme music is provided by Miguel Herrero, and licensed under Creative Commons. This is Carla Robbins saying so long and let's hope the sky does not fall.

MCMAHON:
And this is Bob McMahon saying goodbye and let's be careful out there.