Just pray Erdogan stays quiet
The last thing we on our little boat want is for the Turkish PM to blurt something silly and set rockets flying
BY the time you read this I will have caught a fish, any fish, somewhere in the Lycian archipelago on the western shores of Turkey. My travelling companions have told me to shut up about Syria in the south, the value of the lira and the health of the Borsa Istanbul 100 share index.
I will, I will, I promise. But just this last time let me fret about the socioeconomic lie of the land I’ve now invaded.
On Friday, Barron’s stressed how vulnerable the “fragile five” economies are after US job numbers came out better than expected. Turkey is grouped with South Africa in that arbitrary collection, along with India, Brazil and Indonesia.
We should be more flattered than afraid to be part of it, mainly because a more confident US means more carry-trade appetite for our high-yielding bonds and booming stock market.
I do have to wonder about Turkey. It is not part of the eurozone and does not face Greece’s impossible task of making its somewhat third-world economy conform to the dictates of Germany and its lackeys in Brussels. However, Turkey is riven with ethnic divisions. Imagine that 20% of South Africa’s population consisted of separatists who had no intention of taking part in our democratic process and parliament.
That is the mess inherited by Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Sunni Muslim who runs a moderate Islamist government. He has been forced to make conciliatory noises to the fifth of his country made up of Kurds.
As reported by Business Insider this week, Erdogan is courting the separatist vote by suggesting that he would support an independent Kurdish state. Not in Turkey, though — in bordering northern Iraq. The idea has not exactly delighted Iraq’s Shia-dominated government or that of neighbouring Iran.
Consider a parallel in southern Africa: say our regime offered its largest minority sect a sop by saying it sees nothing wrong with them hopping across the border and taking over a chunk of Zimbabwe. That would go down well.
Reuters on Friday reported how fraught with uncertainty the situation here is: “As al-Qaeda-inspired Sunni militants spread right along Turkey’s southeastern border last month from Syria through Iraq, seizing Turkish hostages as they went, the normally loquacious Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had little to say.”
Great. In the past, Erdogan has laid into all Middle Eastern regimes that didn’t please him, not only in Syria, Iraq and Iran, but in Israel and Egypt. So around about now is a good time for him to keep shtum.
The last thing we on our little boat want is for Erdogan to blurt something silly and for rockets to start flying around our ears. I intend to watch a bit of football when I’m not wrestling massive fish from the Aegean deeps. There might be some beer drinking involved.
So steady on, chaps. I don’t want to spill anything.