After 10 hectic days, Cypriots will return to economic life. The price, however, is an inevitable and costly adjustment plan. But contrary to many predictions, the eurozone and the Cypriot government have been able to find a solution in less than 10 days. Moreover, the eurozone has avoided yet another financial hurdle that, despite its small size, was described as having the potential to start another acute phase of the euro crisis.

The management of the eurozone crisis over the last three years has proven to be extremely tortuous. It remains so, and this episode will certainly not be the last. However, observers might also point to how the management by congressional leaders of the U.S. fiscal and deficit problems reveals similar political complexities. Could both be the inevitable result of a democratic, diverse, continental political constituency?

What people need to understand about the eurozone is its continuous willingness to ensure the future of the euro, and its (until now) proven capacity to find compromises despite diverging national interests.

Cyprus has been recognized for months as a ticking bomb within the eurozone, mixing a hypertrophied banking system (that produced jobs and wealth for Cypriots) with huge Russian deposits and suspected money laundering.

Cyprus has been recognized for months as a ticking bomb within the eurozone, mixing a hypertrophied banking system (that produced jobs and wealth for Cypriots) with huge Russian deposits and suspected money laundering. It seems that this had become Cyprus’s most important comparative advantage. The fight against money laundering is supposed to be a great cause of the OECD countries, and it is surprising to note that this aspect did not receive appropriate weight when commenting on the unconventional tools used by the troika to design its plan. The Cypriot banking system is not like the average banking system of Southern Europe. It is a case in itself and deserves a solution of its own.

The “success story” of Cyprus was destroyed by the haircut on Greek bonds; Cypriot banks hold massive amounts of Greek bonds on behalf of their foreign clients. Incidentally, this says a lot about the prowess of this supposed “international financial center” and the awareness of its clients. For many reasons, mostly the country’s democratic process, the active search for a solution to problems in Cyprus had been postponed for months until Saturday, March 16, when an agreement was reached between the newly-elected president of Cyprus, the eurozone governments, and the troika. On that date, every old prejudice about the mismanagement of the eurozone crisis, that had been shelved for the last year, suddenly resurfaced with a new torrent: of criticisms (an ill-conceived plan); of denunciations (a crisis of stupidity); of rejection (Europe is for people, not for Germany); of financial horrors (inevitable propagation of the Cypriot bank run); and finally of doomed forecasts (be alert, the breakup is coming).

Yet one week later, it is interesting to visit the control room and watch the radar screens:

• The agreement? Better designed and operational as of Monday, March 25; 
•  Bank runs propagation? No sign (even in the London branches of the two Cypriot banks);
• European periphery bond market? A definitely strong first quarter;
• Stock markets? Stable;
• Exchange markets? Stable.

However, we should not consider this summary to mean that this new episode in the eurozone saga has been more efficiently managed than the previous ones. Definitely not!

Two examples among many explain why this is not the case. First, the idea to tax every bank account whatever its amount was not a product of “German stupidity” but reflects a demand from the Cypriot president, who was willing to preserve the image of the island as a financial center; as if the confidence of dirty money could be a sustainable comparative advantage for Cyprus! The stupefying thing is that the other euro governments accepted this clause even though it was financially dangerous and certain to be rejected by the populace and its representatives. In following the relief produced by the substance of the new agreement, the Dutch finance minister and chairman of the Eurogroup announced that the Cypriot treatment was great news because it showed that bank depositors may be expected to contribute to future bailout packages. However this is explosive and potentially as damaging as the PSI initiative adopted at Deauville. There was immediate backtracking but this reminds us that the whole process remains fragile. All this being properly considered, we should examine the ongoing euro crisis along a different narrative.

And after having described the situation in Cyprus as potential chaos in the waiting, experts now explain the absence of collateral effects by referring to the July 2012 famous commitment of Mario Draghi.

What the above mentioned facts demonstrate is that markets and people outside of Cyprus adopted (at least until the Dutch minister’s proclamation) a much calmer view than specialized commentators. And after having described the situation in Cyprus as potential chaos in the waiting, experts now explain the absence of collateral effects by referring to the July 2012 famous commitment of Mario Draghi. This is at best an excuse for not exploring other explanations and at worst a superstition for placing too much power in his mouth. Rather, two broader facts should be emphasized:

• First, looking outside the eurozone, the euro has remained as attractive an international currency as before all the vicissitudes of the sovereign debt crisis despite all the aggressiveness on part of the international financial press. The exchange rate with the dollar constantly remained close to 1.3— a rate which reveals an over-valuation of the euro; such stability is surprising given all the daily announcements of its forthcoming collapse. This fact, which has never received proper attention, at the very least proves that the euro has always remained as attractive as the dollar. After all the drama we have gone through, there was little chance that the Cypriot episode will change this global perception of the euro.
  
  
• Second, within the eurozone, there is an underestimated willingness to stick to the euro as the currency of the European continent. Austerity measures are never popular and governments that adopt them have been punished in Greece, Spain, France and Italy. Nevertheless, this is the natural product of democracy, and when it comes to the explicit question— “do you prefer to stay in the eurozone, with its mechanisms and constraints, or move on your own?”— the popular answer everywhere has been “we stay”. This is what popular votes have proven in Ireland, Greece and Spain, as well as in Germany where local elections have regularly promoted euro-friendly candidates.

So what can we conclude from the recent crisis in Cyprus? The first conclusion is that Cyprus will pay a high price for exiting a dramatic situation and securing access to eurozone support; no other feasible deal was better than that one at that particular moment. Second, we have witnessed once again the willingness of the eurozone to stay the course, and its ability to design imperfect but feasible compromises, which is not so bad when compared to what’s going on in Washington. In brief, this is another Euro-solution. However, Cyprus is certainly not the last challenge confronting the governments and people of the eurozone. In that sense, the most problematic lesson from this chaotic week is not financial but political. The future of Europe more and more lies in the hands of Germany and there is no place here for accusing the Germans of egoism. Financially speaking, they have moved forward at every step during the last three years and they are the ones that repeatedly take the biggest risks. There is no question that Germany has a prominent voice and that it defends its financial security before entering into an agreement. This is what should have been expected and this is what we have seen with what happened in Cyprus. Looking forward, the bigger problem facing the eurozone is the urgent need to design a macroeconomic policy that will spur a return to growth for the region. On this issue, there is still no visible Euro-solution and that could prove to be the biggest risk facing Europe.

In his presidential campaign in 1928, Herbert Hoover promised to help impoverished farmers by increasing tariffs on agricultural products; after the election, he also asked Congress to reduce tariffs on industrial goods. In April 1929, well before Black Thursday, U.S. Representative Reed Smoot, a Republican from Utah, introduced a bill that passed the House in May. The bill increased agricultural and industrial tariffs at levels that had not been seen for a century. This was a relatively benign beginning of what would become one of the most tragic policy measures of the 1930s. Within a few months of the bill being passed in the Senate as the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, other countries in response raised their own trade barriers, which started a vicious circle of contracting world trade flows and economic activity, and rising unemployment from 1930 to 1933.

There are three main lessons from the policies mentioned above: 

1. “Beggar-my-neighbor” policies are bad.
2. Bad policies can have tragic consequences.
3. Beware of benign measures that can ignite uncontrollable chain reactions.

Indeed, these lessons have been in every policymakers’ mind since the Lehmann Brothers failure. In fact, the creation of the G-20 was a spectacular effort by the major economies of the world to cooperatively answer the challenges raised by the most severe financial crisis since the 1930s. The G-20 coordinated the management of strong macroeconomic policies, including huge deficits and easy monetary policies. These were bold decisions but not radical, and those who condemned government intervention have been rebutted by the urgency of these measures. And it is now widely acknowledged that these unconventional measures successfully avoided the transformation of the Great Recession into another Great Depression.

In the U.S., the recovery is at best shaky, unemployment is artificially reduced by the growing number of discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work, and the median income is dramatically lagging.

Today, there are reasons of hope that have been eloquently described by Roger Altman [1]: it can be argued that in the U.S., and to a lesser degree in Europe, the crisis has inspired significant reforms that have pushed the economy closer to a sound and sustainable growth trajectory. However others rightfull so object that enormous challenges are still facing the populations and their respective governments. The price paid for curing the damages of the global financial crisis is extremely high everywhere. In the U.S., the recovery is at best shaky, unemployment is artificially reduced by the growing number of discouraged workers who have stopped looking for work, and the median income is dramatically lagging. In Europe, austerity is the name of the game in every country except Germany and despair is growing among the populace. Japan has been stuck for two decades in deflation. Many citizens around the world feel that the efforts have gone too far, yet the benefits and retribution have benefitted too few. Electoral frustrations are on the rise as demonstrated in Italy where Mario Monti’s wise policies have been followed by the success of the Five Stars Movement of Beppe Grillo. Italy turning ungovernable is a bad sign for democracies. Could we see a comeback of desperate national policy experiments like the ones that democracies were progressively pushed to adopt after facing insurmountable difficulties in the early 1930s?

Now, a really radical policy experiment is already taking shape in Japan with the introduction of what has been named “Abenomics” after the name of the newly-elected prime minister, Shinzo Abe. It has taken only one election and one nomination at the head of the Bank of Japan to really revolutionize monetary policy. This revolution can be qualified in two ways, one benign, one threatening.

There is first reason to rejoice. After two decades of failed policies, it’s finally good to see bold politicians ready to do whatever it takes to extract Japan from its deflationary trap. Should Mr. Abe succeed, he would unclench the domestic brakes to economic growth, which deflation has so lengthily opposed: declining prices in effect are discouraging consumption (goods will be better and cheaper tomorrow, why spend now?) and investment (facing massive excess capacity of production and weak final demand, why invest now?). The new mission of the governor of the Bank of Japan is to raise inflationary expectations to 2 percent, which would make Japan converge with the world average inflationary trend and monetary policy. Demand would restart and Japan would contribute to an improved global economic outlook. This is the view that the IMF chief recently endorsed. As expected, Mr. Kuroda last week unveiled a much more aggressive package of quantitative easing than what we have previously witnessed, with a view to double the monetary base. Japan’s central bank will buy more long-term government bonds, pushing private investors to invest more in risky assets. Since the election, the Nikkei has risen 34 percent. Different polls and surveys suggest that the public is positively reacting to Mr. Abe’s promises.

Is success already underway? That would be good news for Japan and for the world. But it is clearly too soon to celebrate because this virtuous circle can simply fail to happen. No central bank until now has ever tried to raise inflationary expectations and no one knows if this can turn to be a practical and manageable reality. Inflationary expectations could also easily turn out of control. Before exercising traction on the economy, they could impose higher interest rates that would have devastating consequences for the Japanese Treasury in the management of a huge public debt (more than twice the size of the GDP). But there is something worse than the risk of Abenomics having poor or adverse domestic consequences.

The other side of Abenomics is currency management, a much less propitious theme for a government to communicate in the weeks leading up to the IMF Spring Meetings in Washington. This aspect of the policy is not only bold, it’s actually radical. As a candidate, Mr. Abe made extremely clear that he was willing to help the manufacturing sector by depreciating the yen and that monetary policy would be designed with this goal in mind. Remember that Japan, despite all its woes, remains a formidable exporter with an external surplus close to ¥650 billion in February (approximately $6.5 billion). As my fellow economists at Brookings have recently shown [2], the Japanese bilateral surplus with the U.S., which is $23 billion according to reported trade statistics, would dramatically increase by 60 percent and reach $36 billion if measured in added-value terms. Mr. Abe’s message was well received by investors who quickly after the election started to short the yen. As a result, the yen has slumped 21.5 percent in the past five months— the worst (or the best?) performance among the currencies of the developed economies. Following last week’s announcement that the Bank of Japan was really acting to debase monetary policy, the yen weakened beyond 99 yen per dollar and dropped against 15 major currencies.

A weakening yen also poses challenges for China, complicating the China’s strategy to reach its 8 percent target growth for this year; it could also trigger huge capital flows into China destabilizing the delicate control of financial stability

This is where Mr. Abe and Mr. Smoot cross ways: both are local politicians inspired by the difficulties facing their countries; both are willing to use every available policy tool to soften these difficulties; neither is willing to shock the global economy, which has never been the case when arguing in favor of protectionism or competitive devaluations. But these measures are nonetheless radical because they have the potential to ignite uncontrollable chain reactions. South Korea for one already declared itself very concerned by this aggressive policy, which is totally understandable. For instance, when Toyota and Sony take some advantage of Abe’s policy, the ones that would likely be first to suffer are Hyundai and Samsung. South Korea has vital interests at stake and, over In the last five months, it has been struggling with a pernicious appreciation of its currency. A weakening yen also poses challenges for China, complicating the China’s strategy to reach its 8 percent target growth for this year; it could also trigger huge capital flows into China destabilizing the delicate control of financial stability; SAFE, the financial institution that manages China’s huge official reserves, last week published its yearly report for 2012. Commenting on the global environment, the report emphasized that “a yen’s depreciation can’t solve Japan’s structural problem, … [but] could turn out of control and trigger a suspicion about its sustainability,… and finally have dangerous spill-over-effects”[3]. Chinese officials at the Boao Forum also expressed similar concerns.

We still don’t know the end. Hope is that we could see the positive interpretation of a bold Japanese policy experiment contributing to a better functioning world economy. Experience should nonetheless make us cautious. What the movement by the Bank of Japan does is to increase an already huge excess liquidity, inundating global markets. In addition, the Japanese government has added a dangerous touch of currency manipulation. Both aspects should be alerts for the IMF rather than too quickly fuel the artificial satisfaction of promises regarding higher inflationary expectations and increased domestic demand. In the end, competitive devaluations always prove inefficient and dangerous because they inevitably provoke reactions and retaliations. “Currency wars” have made headlines from time to time in the recent years but these were skirmishes. This time it could be for real, and this should be a major concern for the United States. It is a great thing that Japan recently expressed interest in joining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, but these are words with long delayed potential results. A more constructive and immediate task is to continue the cooperative global approach of exchange rate policies and to strongly discourage any temptation of national radical policy experiments. This should be a central issue next week during the IMF Spring Meetings in Washington.

[1] Roger C. Altman: “The Fall and Rise of the West”, Foreign Affairs, January-February 2013

[2] Kemal Dervis, Joshua Meltzer and Karim Foda: “Value-Added Trade and its Implications for International Trade Policy”, Brookings Opinion, April 2, 2013

[3] http://www.safe.gov.cn/resources/image/076044004f1fb34a9da59ff675a23beb/1365377817854.pdf?MOD=AJPERES&name=2012年中国国际收支报告.pdf

• {9ABF977A-E4A6-41C8-B030-0FD655E07DBF}, 978-0-8157-2554-1, $28.00 Add to Cart

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By the end of May, citizens of Europe will have left the polling booths and a new European Parliament will have been directly elected for the eighth time in the institution’s history. Since the last elections were held in 2009 on the heels of the global financial crisis, the eurozone has developed stronger economic stability mechanisms, kept its membership intact, and even added additional members. Yet Europe also faces a resurgence of extreme nationalism, political fragmentation within nation-states, and frustration and protest driven by high rates of unemployment. There are very different visions for the future of Europe.

On June 3, the Global Economy and Development program at Brookings hosted a discussion on Europe’s future and what Europe’s election results mean for critical choices like the formation of the new European Commission, fiscal policies, U.S.-EU relations, TTIP negotiations and the future of the EU-United Kingdom relationship. Some of the issues that were addressed are also analyzed in Europe’s Crisis, Europe’s Future, a recently published book (Brookings Press, April 2014) co-edited by Kemal Derviș and Jacques Mistral.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #EuroFuture

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• The European Elections and the Future of Europe

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The issue of Armenia enters the Turkish foreign policy agenda almost exclusively in the context of Western attempts at legislating genocide resolutions. The result is often a reactive nationalist defense.

In less than two years, by 2015, Turkey will find itself in a similar dilemma. Once again, it will be external dynamics that will drive the domestic and foreign policy debate, and quite predictably Turkey will react with anger and resentment to Western attempts at commemorating the centennial of the Armenian genocide. In order to avoid such an ordeal, Ankara needs to think about Armenian-Turkish relations now, before Western pressure builds up. The fact that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu visited Yerevan last week is a step in the right direction and needs to be congratulated. Instead of panicking shortly before 2015, the Turkish government needs to pursue a multidimensional strategy, starting now. The first dimension of the strategy should be the opening of the border and the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

As it is well known, shortly after the signature of the two protocols aiming at achieving these two goals in 2009, Ankara decided to index the ratifications of the protocols to the resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Linking the normalization of relations to a “frozen conflict” had the impact of freezing the protocols as well. It also showed that Turkey had no empathy for the Armenian political leadership, which took a lot of heat from the diaspora for dropping genocide recognition as a precondition for the normalization of relations with Ankara.

In retrospect, the Turkish decision to establish a precondition for normalization with Armenia was shortsighted because it practically gave Azerbaijan de facto veto power over Turkish-Armenian normalization. Instead, what Turkey should have done was to establish diplomatic and economic relations with Armenia with the hope that such a policy of engagement would in time create positive momentum and leverage in favor of a resolution in Nagorno-Karabakh. It remains unclear whether a breakthrough in this frozen conflict can be achieved in the absence of Turkey gaining more leverage in relations with Armenia. It looks like sequencing is the main problem here. The Turkish side is reportedly ready to open the border, establish diplomatic relations and even provide financial support to Armenia in return for an Armenian withdrawal from two of the seven occupied regions surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh. This proposal looks like the same one Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan made a few years ago to his Armenian counterpart at the time, Robert Kocharyan. Kocharyan had refused the Turkish demand on the grounds that there should be no linkage between Nagorno-Karabakh and normalization with Turkey. It is hard to see why today the Armenian reaction to a very similar Turkish proposal would be any different.

Therefore, this most recent Turkish attempt at rapprochement with Armenia is also likely to fail in the absence of a unilateral Turkish gesture such as the opening of the border without preconditions. On the other hand, since Turkey is always in some kind of election season, it is almost impossible to see the Justice and Development Party (AKP) invest serious political capital in rapprochement by taking such a courageous step. Under such circumstances, it is not surprising that the Armenian media saw Davutoğlu's Yerevan visit as nothing more than a public relations campaign. If Turkey is really serious about normalizing relations with Armenia, it will have to take some risks in relations with Azerbaijan. The key will be to convince Baku that only the normalization of Turkish-Armenian relations will create positive momentum in solving the Nagorno-Karabakh dispute. Turkey needs to open the border first and expect its diplomatic and economic engagement policy with Armenia to pay off in the long run. The alternative is to continue with the current policy. The current Turkish policy has produced no change in Nagorno-Karabakh in the last 20 years. It is time to think more creatively.

Introduction

Ninety years after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, Ankara appears to be on the verge of a paradigmatic change in its approach to the Kurdish question. It is too early to tell whether the current negotiations between Ankara and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) will manage to accommodate Kurdish cultural and political demands. Yet, for perhaps the first time in its history, the Turkish Republic seems willing to incorporate Kurds into the political system rather than militarily confront them. For decades, Turkey sought to assimilate its sizable Kurdish minority, about 15 million people, or around 20 percent of its total population. From the mid-1920s until the end of the Cold War, Ankara denied the ethnic existence of Kurds and their cultural rights. It took a three-decade-long PKK-led insurgency – which started in 1984 and caused a death toll of 40,000 – for the republic to start accepting the “Kurdish reality” and introduce cultural reforms. This perhaps explains why the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan is a national hero in the eyes of significant segments of Kurdish society.

Of the approximately 30 million Kurds in the Middle East, about half live in Turkey. Kurds also constitute a significant minority in neighboring Iraq, Iran and Syria. The Palestinians are often referred to as the most famous case of a “nation without a state” in the Middle East. But the Kurds, who outnumber the Palestinians by a factor of five, are by far the largest ethnic community in the region seeking national self-determination. The future of Turkey - and the Middle East - is therefore intimately linked to the question of Kurdish nationalism.

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• Turkey and the Kurds: From Predicament to Opportunity

Supporters of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) who often use the term “New Turkey” believe that the 12-year rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has opened a new phase in Turkish history.

They are partially right. Even those who resent Erdoğan's autocratic discourse need to recognize that the country has come a long way in the last decade in areas such as health-care, infrastructure, fiscal discipline, inflation, municipal services and civil-military relations. The big question that continues to polarize Turkish politics, however, is whether the new Turkey is more democratic than the old one.

Again, the supporters of the AKP answer this question with a resounding “yes.” In their eyes, the AKP represents the will of the people and, for the first time in modern Turkish history, the military is unable to exert real influence behind the scenes. The critics of the AKP, however, strongly differ. They believe Erdoğan's understanding of democracy is based on a simplistic and populist notion of winning elections. To them, this is a majoritarian and electoral understanding that comes at the expense of pluralism and liberalism. Such electoral autocracy does not pay attention to freedom of speech, the rule of law and the separation of powers and, thus, condemns Turkey to a second-class category among democracies. For them, this is exactly why the new Turkey of Erdoğan resembles the old one, where the military used to call the shots. In other words, the old type of authoritarianism has been replaced by a new one.

It is important to note that the West -- mainly the United States and the European Union -- tend to agree with the critics of Erdoğan. In the wake of recent local elections, it was hard to find a single editorial in Western media praising the "new" Turkey's democratic standards. Instead, the focus was on corruption scandals and the bans imposed on social media like Twitter and YouTube. There is now a general consensus among Westerners that Erdoğan's growing authoritarian style has eroded the positive image of the Turkish model that was praised only a few years ago. Under such circumstances, the question that most Westerners ask is simple: Why is an increasingly authoritarian Erdoğan still winning elections? The answer to this question is equally as simple: “It's the economy, stupid!”

The AKP voters come from the largest segments of Turkish society: the urban-rural poor as well as the lower-middle classes aspiring to upper-middle class status. These masses amount to probably 60 to 70 percent of Turkish society. In their eyes, bread and butter problems take precedence over the Twitter ban, political freedoms, the independence of the media, crony capitalism or separation of powers. What really matters for most of these AKP voters are economic services and living standards. The fact that they come from conservative and nationalist backgrounds and share the patriarchal culture of the prime minister is the icing on the cake.

As a result, it should not be surprising that Erdoğan will keep winning elections as long as the economy performs reasonably well and adequate socioeconomic services are provided to these large segments of society. This is also why the real paradox of the new Turkey is to be found beyond the economy and elections.

The real paradox of the new Turkey is the following: If Erdoğan is indeed becoming increasingly authoritarian, why is he the only hope of Turkey for solving the Kurdish problem? This paradox is even more puzzling, since solving the Kurdish problem requires the opposite of what Erdoğan seems to provide: democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law, separation of powers, liberalism, decentralization of decision-making and less patriarchal governing structures.

Can Erdoğan provide all these attributes with his more authoritarian style? If the answer is “no,” why do the Kurds seem ready to support him? To answer this paradox, we need to analyze the pragmatic and Machiavellian side of Erdoğan. We will do so next week.

This piece was originally published in Today's Zaman.

As I tried to explain in this column last week, there is a glaring paradox about the so-called “new Turkey.” I will remind readers and clarify what the concept of “new” means exactly, but one needs to have some basic familiarity with how the Justice and Development (AKP) and its supporters define the “old” Turkey.

The old Turkey, in their eyes, was a place where the economy was in shambles -- with high inflation, chronic public deficits, poor municipal services and systemic corruption. Most importantly, the military, the guardians of the system, called the shots by toppling or pressuring civilian governments. And as far as foreign policy was concerned, they believed Turkey used to punch below its weight and had almost no regional soft power in the Middle East as a model of Muslim democracy.

Those who don't buy the rosy picture of today rightly point out that the current state of Turkish democracy in this so-called new Turkey leaves a lot to be desired. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's understanding of democracy is indeed based on a simplistic and populist notion of winning elections. His majoritarian and electoral understanding comes at the expense of individual rights and liberties, an independent media and the freedoms of expression and association. The absence of rule of law as well as problems with the separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers still condemns Turkey to a second-class category among democracies. This is why, under the populist and hegemonic style of Erdoğan, the old type of Turkish authoritarianism (dominated by the military) has been replaced by a “new” one based on the tyranny of the majority and the hegemony of Erdoğan.

What about the economic achievements of the new Turkey? Although it is hard to argue against the fact that the country is a more prosperous place compared to the 1990s, the latest corruption scandals clearly revealed that political networks of tender-fixing, influence-peddling, patronage and cronyism still plagues the Turkish system. Corruption is indeed still systemic in the new Turkey. It is also important to remember that the structural reforms that changed the “old” Turkey, dominated by state-owned enterprises under import substitution, came not with the AKP but thanks to the visionary leadership of Turgut Özal in the second half of the 1980s.

However, those who don't buy the rosy picture of the new Turkey face an important dilemma. Why is an autocratic Erdoğan still the only hope for solving the Kurdish problem? Everyone agrees that the Kurdish problem is the most daunting challenge facing Turkish democracy. As argued last week, solving the Kurdish problem requires the opposite of what Erdoğan seems to provide: democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law, separation of powers, liberalism, decentralization of decision making and less patriarchal governing structures. The fact that Erdoğan is the best hope of fulfilling such a promise -- by negotiating a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- is indeed a glaring paradox that requires explanation.

Some argue that the peace process with the Kurds is cosmetic, tactical and hollow. They believe Erdoğan calculated in a Machiavellian way that he needs the support of Kurds to get elected to the presidency and to change the system into a presidential one after the AKP wins the next parliamentary elections. But this is a highly risky strategy since winning the Kurdish vote also means losing a significant amount of support from Turkish nationalists -- an important segment of the AKP base. Another way to analyze the paradox is to actually believe that Erdoğan is genuine in his willingness to solve the Kurdish problem by adopting a more Ottoman system of multiculturalism and decentralization, where the sultan delegates power to regions.

One should also not underestimate the fact that Erdoğan manages to identify with the victim narrative of the Kurds. He, after all, has a similar narrative of victimhood based on being a pious Muslim under secular Kemalist hegemony. What we may be witnessing in the new Turkey is a coalition of pious Muslims and Kurds taking their revenge on Kemalism. In that sense, the best way to analyze the new Turkey is to remain skeptical of the rosy picture and focus on what post-Kemalism will bring to the country in terms of solving the Kurdish question. The "newness" of Turkey can only be confirmed when a more democratic and multicultural Turkey does emerge and peacefully solves the Kurdish problem in a post-Kemalist context.

This piece was originally published in Today's Zaman.

Ahmet Davutoğlu, Turkey's new Prime Minister, is a familiar name in Western capitals. It is also a name that generates mixed feelings among his peers.

What most agree is that he is was an incredibly ambitious and hardworking foreign minister, always willing to travel wherever necessary, even when the outcome of such visits generated little concrete results. There is also consensus about his willingness to lecture his counterparts. He probably believed that his academic background and the relative ignorance of his counterparts entitled him to do so. But in most cases he had a tendency to forget that he was dealing with fellow foreign ministers and not students of history. This tendency generated only a begrudging sense of respect, even among his most graceful and objective peers.

It is also clear for people who knew him when he was an academic that politics has changed him. In the eyes of most his students, he was a reluctant policymaker when he began his political life. He often mentioned that his real goal was to go back to academia, where he could once again enjoy the intellectual life of an analytical thinker who can keep a healthy distance from events. Yet, in a matter of few years he discovered the irresistible pull of power. It was maybe "Kissinger syndrome" — realizing that power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.

Perhaps most important is the question of Davutoğlu's ideology. There are numerous articles written about this question, and the emerging consensus is that he is an incurable idealist. It may be reductionist to argue that he is an Islamist, but it is undeniably true that he has focused on parts of the world where Muslims are facing injustice with much enthusiasm. Although he rejects being labeled neo-Ottoman, it is also undeniably true that he speaks of Ottoman tradition, tolerance and governance with great nostalgia. As most of his students, he is very critical of the West and its Orientalism. His years in Malaysia as a professor bring a colorful interpretation to his critic of colonialism and imperialism. Yet, what he often fails to realize is that in his criticisms of the West, he often repeats the methodological fallacy of Orientalism. The result is what can be best labeled "Occidentalism" — a tendency to generalize and construct a Western civilization with a prejudice similar to the one displayed by Orientalists.

Finally, there is the issue of missing modesty. Although Davutoğlu appears to be very modest and unpretentious, he often displays a stubborn resistance in admitting mistakes. This is perhaps a defense mechanism in dealing with the press. But combined with his unabashed sense of idealism, his reluctance to recognize failure and to see the world as it is rather than how it should be is very troubling for a policymaker. The reluctance to admit policy failures creates two major problems: a disconnect from reality and an inability for course-correction.

In short, there is a lot of ambivalence towards Davutoğlu in the West. He is coming to his new position with a lot of baggage and the looming shadow of a powerful president. Newly elected President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wanted someone who would follow his lead without hesitation. His choice speaks volumes about Davutoğlu's new persona and about how much he has changed since the early days of his political career.

This article was originally published in Today's Zaman.

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For the first time in Turkey’s history, the electorate directly cast their votes for president earlier this week, overwhelmingly electing current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the position with 52 percent of the votes. After 12 years in power, Erdoğan’s victory was widely expected, even though the two main opposition parties chose Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu as their common candidate in a rare show of unity, and Selahattin Demirtaş the leader of the main Kurdish political party in Turkey, tried hard to appeal to an electoral base beyond just Kurds. The impact of the election’s results, however, remains to be seen.

How should the election results be interpreted? Will Erdoğan succeed in transforming Turkey from a parliamentary system to a presidential one? Who will he chose as prime minister? What will this outcome mean for Turkey’s economic performance and its foreign policy at a time when the neighborhood is sliding deeper into instability, if not chaos? What will happen to Turkey’s European vocation and its transatlantic relations?

On September 4, the Turkey Project of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings hosted a panel discussion to consider what President Erdoğan’s new mandate means for the nation, its government and institutions and the ruling Justice and Development Party. Kemal Kirisci, TÜSİAD senior fellow and Turkey project director, moderated the conversation. Panelists included Robert Wexler of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, Kadir Üstün of the SETA Foundation, and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Ömer Taşpınar.

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• President Erdoğan: Turkey’s Election and the Future

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20140904_erdogan_turkey_transcript

I have been writing for years about the Armenian Genocide. The issue is of great emotional as much as ethical and historical significance to me. But for reasons I will explain for the first time, 1915 is also a very personal matter for me. No, not because I suddenly discovered I am of Armenian descent, but mainly because 1915 is the main reason my career took a turn toward academia rather than diplomacy.

I did not join the Foreign Service because I was detained almost 20 years ago, when I was a 25-year-old tour guide. The reason? I dared to answer a couple of questions about 1915 from a group of American tourists visiting the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. That day changed my life. I'm not naïve; I knew answering their question in public would be risky. And I would have probably refrained from doing so had they not asked me first whether there is freedom of speech in Turkey. Trying to make light of it, I quipped: "Yes, there is freedom of speech, but freedom after speech can get tricky." I did not know my joke would turn into self-fulfilling prophecy.

Shortly after explaining to my group why the term “genocide” is problematic for Turkish officialdom, I was arrested by guards in the museum, taken to a police station and interrogated for five hours. This unexpected encounter with Turkish law enforcement convinced me about a couple of things. First, I realized how difficult life in Turkey would be if I were of Armenian descent. "Are you Armenian?" was the first question I was asked in the police station. When I said "No," the police officer laughed and said I was not the first Turkish traitor they had interrogated. To this day, I wonder how life in Turkey would be if my name was Onik instead of Ömer.

Second, I was also convinced that I no longer wanted to become a diplomat. As a diplomat, I knew you turn into a defense attorney for your country. I also knew that in the larger scheme of things, what happened to me that day was not tragic or even very consequential. But the idea of defending a country that arrests a tour guide for speaking about what happened 100 years ago turned me off intellectually and emotionally. All of a sudden, Turkey's predicament had gained a disturbingly personal dimension in my eyes and thoughts. I remember having a conversation the night I was arrested with my father, a Turkish diplomat himself and in disbelief about my lack of situational awareness. "Do you think you think you live in Sweden?" he asked me with sarcasm and some anger. Anyway, the case was closed for me. I now had a police detention record. And this was enough to disqualify me from the Foreign Ministry exam.

Since the Turkish Foreign Service had now lost a brilliant (!) future diplomat, I turned my gaze to academia and decided to continue my seditious activities in the United States by writing a dissertation on Turkey's identity problem. My focus was on the interplay between Kemalism, the official ideology of the republic and the Kurdish question and political Islam. Ever since I started working in academia and think-tanks, I made an involuntary reputation for myself as a public intellectual with pro-Kurdish, pro-Islamic, pro-Armenian tendencies. I guess that's a small price to pay for trying to be a liberal in today's Turkey. The alternative would have been a life in Turkish diplomacy talking about the "so-called Armenian Genocide,” the separatist-terrorist organization called the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and various "coup" attempts against the sacred Turkish state during the Gezi protests and the corruption investigations.

At the end of day, my arrest 20 years ago was a blessing in disguise. I'm happy my Armenian journey took me where I am.

This article was originally published in Today's Zaman.

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This year marks the centenary of the atrocities perpetrated against the Armenian people of the Ottoman Empire during World War I by the governing Committee of Union and Progress. Most scholars and many governments consider these horrific events––in which more than one million people were systematically massacred or marched to their deaths––to constitute the first modern European genocide. Turkish society has begun to open up and confront the issue over the last decade. Turkish authorities, however, continue to reject the use of the term genocide, contest the number of deaths, and highlight the fact that many other minority groups, Muslims, and Turks were killed in the same period as the war-ravaged empire unraveled. For descendants of the survivors, Turkey’s official refusal to reckon fully with this painful chapter of its past is a source of deep distress and concern and undermines societal efforts toward understanding and reconciliation. Armenians have also raised the question of reparations, further adding to the problem.

On May 13, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings (CUSE), together with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Center for International Studies, the Hrant Dink Memorial Human Rights and Justice Lectureship at MIT, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace held a conference with several leading scholars of the Armenian genocide and other international experts. Speakers considered the historical record and circumstances of the genocide amid the disorder of World War I; how Turkey, Armenia, and other key actors have dealt with the legacy of 1915; and how this legacy continues to reverberate in the region today, with protracted conflicts in the Caucasus and where religious and ethnic minority groups have been deliberately targeted for expulsion and death amid the upheavals in Iraq, Syria, and other states that emerged from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #Armenia1915

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• 1915 and the unmaking of peoples: Deportations, massacres, and genocide
• The making of an “almost intractable conflict” and attempts at its resolution
• 2015 and its horrors : A century after 1915

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• Armenians and the legacies of World War I

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• Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20150513_armenia_transcript

Real political change in Turkey has been hard to come by in recent years. Establishment parties in Turkey have, time and again, proven unable to change the political system. Now a new hope for reform has emerged in Turkey from an unlikely source: the Kurds.

During most of the Cold War—and particularly during the 1980s and 1990s—Turkey had, for lack of a better word, a Kemalist consensus: The military played a major role behind the scenes, and those outside the consensus, especially the Islamists and the Kurds, were essentially excluded from politics. 

The first wave of democratization in the post-Cold War era in Turkey came from the Islamists—specifically, from the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In 2002, when the AKP came to power, it decided that accession to the European Union should be its main goal and that effort could serve as tool to undermine the political power of the Turkish military that still lurked behind the scenes. So, incredibly, an Islamist party, the AKP, decided to bring about a post-Kemalist system by pushing for membership in the EU’s essentially liberal, democratic project. This strategy explains why Turkish liberals supported the AKP and could hope that the Islamists would push the system in a liberal direction.

But then something tragic happened. The AKP became the establishment. After the military was essentially defeated as a political force, the AKP ceased to be an anti-establishment party. Rather, it became a party that started to use the privileges of power, and itself began its own networks of patronage clientelism, and became a victim of this entity called the state. The AKP became the state. 

Now we're in a situation where the second wave of democratization may also come from an anti-establishment party, this one mostly representing the Kurds. The most democratic, the most liberal, the most progressive narrative that you hear in Turkish politics today is coming from Selahattin Demirtaş of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)—not the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), not the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and not the AKP.

There is reason to think that, in Turkey, only anti-establishment parties can actually improve the system. The old AKP was an anti-establishment party. What gives me hope about the HDP is that, even when it enters the parliament—and even if a miracle happens and it enters a coalition government—it will never become the state. 

By definition, the HDP is a Kurdish political party. The Islamists could become the state, because Turkey is 99 percent Muslim, and people could establish basically a sense of supremacy based on Muslim identity. The Kurds will never be able to represent the majority. They will never be able to become the state. They have vested and permanent interest in the rule of law—indeed their very survival depends on it. Their survival depends on minority rights and on checks and balances. This stark fact gives me hope about the HDP and its agenda.

What’s wrong with the rest of the Turkish opposition?

The real puzzle is the failure of establishment political parties to challenge the system. It would have been wonderful for a center-right party or a center-left party to have taken Turkey to the post-Kemalist phase, to a post-military, pro-E.U., pro-progressive phase. But the mainstream political parties have failed. The establishment of Turkey has failed. The Kemalist order in Turkey has failed.

The agent of change was first the Islamists, and now the agent of change has become the Kurds. 

What is it that creates this mental block of establishment political parties? Why did it take so many years for the CHP to understand that it can become an agent of change, too? In the absence of a left-wing movement in Turkey, there will never be balance. We need a progressive left. We need something that can challenge the strong coalition on the right. The HDP alone cannot be there.

One thing that is not being discussed in Turkey is the possibility of a CHP-HDP coalition, yet this is the most natural coalition. The CHP, if it's a progressive political party, it should be able to get rid of its Kemalist, neo-nationalist baggage and embrace the progress of liberal, democratic agenda of the HDP. 

One reason that the CHP voters and the CHP itself are unable to really embrace the HDP is because the CHP, deep down, is still the party of Atatürk, still the party of Kemalism, still the party of nationalism. And what the Kurds want in Turkey—make no mistake—what the Kurds want in Turkey is autonomy. They want nothing short of autonomy.

The days when you could basically solve the Kurdish question with some cosmetic cultural reforms are over. They want democratic decentralization. And to me, that translates into autonomy. And this is a very difficult step to digest for the CHP. Add to this the fact that the disgruntled CHP voters are voting for the HDP, the fact that people who usually could vote for a central-left progressive party are so disillusioned with the CHP that they're gravitating to the HDP. Therefore, there is also a tactical obstacle, in terms of cooperation between the HDP and the CHP right now. 

But down the line, I think the best reconciliation between Turkish nationalism and Kurdish nationalism would come from a CHP-HDP coalition. Turkish nationalism needs to reconcile itself to the fact that the Kurdish genie is out of the bottle. The good old days of assimilating the Kurds are over. The Kurds want autonomy. They will probably get it, hopefully in a bloodless way.

When Süleyman Demirel died last week I asked myself why such a permanent giant of Turkish politics failed to change the country during his 40 years of active politics. Why is it that genuine political change in Turkey proved to be so elusive during the long decades of Demirel's public service? The answer has partly to do with the fact that Demirel was synonymous with the establishment. Establishment parties in Turkey have, time and again, proven unable to change the political system.

During most of the Cold War—and particularly during the 1980s and 1990s—Turkey had, for lack of a better word, a Kemalist consensus, and those outside the consensus, especially the Islamists and the Kurds were essentially excluded from politics.

The first wave of democratization in the post-Cold War era in Turkey came from the Islamists—specifically, from the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In 2002, when the AKP came to power, it decided that accession to the European Union should be its main goal and that that effort could serve as tool to undermine the political power of the Turkish military, which still lurked behind the scenes. So, incredibly, the AKP, an Islamist party, decided to bring about a post-Kemalist system by pushing for membership in the EU's essentially liberal, democratic project. This strategy explains why Turkish liberals supported the AKP and could hope that the Islamists would push the system in a liberal direction.

But then something tragic happened. The AKP became the establishment. After the military was essentially defeated as a political force, the AKP ceased to be an anti-establishment party. Rather, it became a party that started to use the privileges of power, and itself began its own networks of patronage clientelism, and became a victim of this entity called the state. The AKP became the state.

I think similar dynamics were at play in Demirel's political career. Demirel, too, started his career by challenging the establishment but ended up becoming one of the most permanent politicians identified with the state. His ability to change the system vanished the minute he became the system. The real puzzle is the failure of establishment political parties to challenge the system. It would have been wonderful for a center-right party or a center-left party to have taken Turkey to the post-Kemalist phase, to a post-military, pro-EU and progressive phase. But the mainstream political parties have failed. The establishment of Turkey has failed. The Kemalist order in Turkey has failed. And together with that order, Demirel failed.

There is reason to think that, in Turkey, only anti-establishment parties can actually improve the system. The old AKP was an anti-establishment party. Now we're in a situation where the second wave of democratization may also come from an anti-establishment party, this one mostly representing the Kurds. The most democratic, the most liberal, the most progressive narrative heard in Turkish politics today comes from Selahattin Demirtaş, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) -- not the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), not the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and not the AKP.

What gives me hope about the HDP is that, even when it enters Parliament—and even if a miracle happens and it enters a coalition government—it will never become the state. By definition, the HDP is a Kurdish political party. The Islamists were able to become the state because Turkey is 99 percent Muslim and people could basically establish a sense of supremacy based on Muslim identity. The Kurds will never be able to represent the majority. They will never be able to become the state. They have vested and permanent interest in the rule of law—indeed their very survival depends on it. Their survival depends on minority rights and on checks and balances. This stark fact gives me hope about the HDP and its agenda.

This piece was originally published by Today's Zaman.

You were probably just thinking to yourself that the civil war in Syria isn’t complicated enough, that there aren’t enough warring parties, and that the constantly shifting sides have become predictable and tired. Well, don’t despair, there are now rumors emerging out of Turkey that may introduce enough new dimensions to the conflict to keep you confused well into the next decade.

The Turkish press is reporting that the Turkish government may be about to invade Syria along a 70-mile stretch of Turkey’s border with Syria to create a 20-mile deep safe zone. This issue is currently the subject of heated speculation and controversy in Ankara, making it quite difficult to figure out what is really happening.

But beyond the fevered speculation, why would Turkey want to invade Syria anyway?

Syria has long been a threatening mess, but neither Turkey nor anyone else has exactly been lining up to send their national armies into Syria. Sure, foreign fighters are plentiful in Syria and all of the regional powers, as well as the United States and Russia, have supported proxies there. But even after more than four years of bloody, destabilizing warfare, national armies have avoided it like the plague. The reason is quite simple: The complicated Syrian civil war has quagmire written all over it. As hard as it is to send a foreign army into Syria, it would be harder still to get it out.

In Turkey, particularly, the idea of military intervention into Syria remains very unpopular among the populace. The possibility that intervention might backfire and unleash Islamic State (or ISIS) terrorism within Turkey, or even reignite the bloody Kurdish insurgency in Turkey’s southeast, remains an ever-present fear.

Now, however, the theory goes that Syrian Kurdish advances against ISIS have caused such concern in Turkey that the Kurds will create some sort of state or autonomous region along Turkey’s southern border. To prevent that outcome, the Turkish government, we are told, is finally willing to intervene in Syria.

Well, maybe. But, in our view, the reason that Turkey might now finally be contemplating such a step says more about changes in the domestic and international standing of the Turkish government than about the course of events in Syria.

Domestically, the outcome of the Turkish election of June 7 has seriously scrambled Turkish politics. After nearly 13 years in power, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its absolute majority in parliament. The AKP, which still holds a plurality of seats in parliament, has 45 days to form a government with at least one of the minority parties. But it seems clear that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has very little interest in coalition government. The leaders of the two main opposition parties, the nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the center-left Republican Peoples Party (CHP), have both demanded the re-opening of corruption cases against the AKP. Erdoğan may fear that those corruption cases may eventually touch even his family.

Erdoğan would undoubtedly prefer an early election to subjecting his party or even his family to the indignities of prying prosecutors. But to achieve a better outcome than the AKP managed in June, he needs to demonstrate to the population the pitfalls of weak, coalition governments. As the possibility of intervention in Syria increases, as the markets spooks on the prospects of war, and even if a few bombs were to go off in the Kurdish areas, the growing sense of national insecurity would only serve to make Erdoğan’s case that the country needs the firm hand of one-party leadership. With a big enough victory, it might even serve to bring back prospects of constitutional change to increase the powers of the presidency. At that point, an early election would be worth having.

Insecurity works

Internationally, Turkey may be driven by the sense the White House now prefers their Kurdish partners in Syria to Turkey. The Turkish government is extremely angry about the emerging alliance between the United States and the Syrian Kurds, especially the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Syrian affiliate of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). They attribute Kurdish success against ISIS to the American willingness to support Syrian Kurdish forces with air power and supplies. In the Turkish view, the PYD is simply a branch of the PKK, which both Turkey and the United States have branded a terrorist group. Allowing the PYD to unite the Kurdish areas of Syria would therefore represent an existential threat to Turkey.  

By threatening to intervene in Syria, the Turkish government seeks to change a U.S. policy that it finds potentially very damaging to Turkish interests. As Erdoğan no doubt reminded Vice President Biden when they talked the other day, Turkey has the ability to have a far greater impact on the fight against ISIS than the Kurds do. (The Turkish government might tell their domestic audiences that a prospective intervention in Syria is to stop the Kurds, but they will tell international audiences that it is to fight ISIS.)

Interestingly, to achieve both these international and domestic advantages, it is not necessary or even wise to actually go through with the intervention. Domestically, all that is necessary is to convince the population that the situation is sufficiently insecure to require firm, one-party leadership. Internationally, it just requires using the prospect of intervention to gain U.S. attention and convince the U.S. government to reduce its support of the PYD. At the current moment, the prospect of intervention is very useful for the Turkish government. Actual intervention, with all of the attendant risks of quagmire, is significantly less appealing.

So that means that it is probably not strictly necessary to spend your time trying to understand how the myriad factions within Syria will respond to the presence of the Turkish military on Syrian soil. On the bright side, you now have some really good reasons to enter into the nearly as confusing realm of Turkish domestic politics. Maybe start with our Turkish election series.

For another take on this issue, see the post from Kemal Kirisci and Sinan Ekim. 

How to reconcile the approaches of Turkey and the United States over Syria? Both countries seek to depose President Assad while defeating ISIL, and also while reducing the terrible humanitarian plight of the Syrian people which has, among other effects, sent nearly two million refugees onto Turkish soil. But Ankara, wary of its own Kurdish population and particularly the militant PKK, which espouses violence in the pursuit of potential independence, is extremely reluctant to see Syrian Kurds armed and otherwise assisted by Washington. Alas, the Syrian Kurds, mostly aligned with the PKK, appear to be the only element of the so-called moderate opposition gaining any real traction, or showing any real military competence, within Syria. To lose the ability to work closely with them may, among other things, call into serious doubt Washington’s aspirations to help Syrian moderates mount a campaign against Raqqa, the capital of the region now controlled by ISIL. What a mess.

There are no easy answers here, but there may in fact be a plausible path forward—a strategy that, if Washington were to adopt it, could assuage many Turkish concerns and lead to gradual progress in the campaign to put real military pressure on both ISIL and the Assad regime.

The first element of the new strategy begins with a more realistic framing of the military goals of the international coalition opposing both Assad and ISIL. Washington must take the lead on this. The starting point is to begin with a vision for the future of Syria based on confederation.

Declaring such a goal could help reconcile, or at least “deconflict,” American and Turkish views on the conflict. By now, it must be clear that aspiring to a strong successor government to the Assad regime is to hope for a miracle. Even if such a government could be constructed on paper, what army is going to give it authority? The current Syrian army is too tainted by Assad’s barbarism; the various militias in the country are too fractured and weak; ISIL itself must be defeated, so its fighters cannot be part of any solution. One reason Turkey does not trust the United States now in the conflict is that Washington’s stated goals are so out of kilter with the means it is willing to devote to the effort. A confederal model for Syria, though still ambitious, could help reduce the chasm between ends and means, making the strategy more credible.

A weak central government, tying together various separate sectors of the country that are governed and protected by their own autonomous institutions, makes much more sense. Confederation doesn’t mean the partitioning of Syria. In fact, a confederal solution is probably the best way to avoid disintegration. Such a concept could, among its other virtues, provide an outlet for Assad (he could go into internal exile in the future Alawite sector of the country). It could cap any aspirations among Kurds for self-rule well short of the possible goal of independence—the latter being something that Ankara would find fundamentally unacceptable. It could also provide a viable path forward for Russia—as principal protector of the Alawite sector in a future peacekeeping mission, after an eventual negotiated settlement.

As for the specific matter of the Kurds, additional steps are needed. The PKK needs to commit not to employ violence against Turkey any longer—not now, not in the future. But it can be given a new role, for those of its fighters seeking to stand up for their own people in a responsible way: as part of the Kurdish opposition within Syria. The PKK can be allowed safe passage into northern Syria, where its fighters can join the PYD militia there. They can help take on ISIL in support of the campaign now being envisioned against Raqqa as well as other missions. In return for the PKK’s demilitarization in Turkish territories, Ankara should immediately restart negotiations with the organization and this time quickly deliver on its promises of reforms.

There is one more key piece to this: American special forces would need to deploy on the ground too, building further on the very modest but welcome decision to several dozen Americans into Northern Syria. The Kurdish zone in Syria is reasonably well-established, so the risks associated with this move are likely manageable. The special forces would help further recruit, train, equip and advise these fighters as they work with nearby Arab units to prepare the next steps in the war. In addition to strengthening the Kurdish forces, the Americans would help monitor the custodianship of any weapons that were delivered to these units to help ensure they were not taken back into Turkey. The American commitment would have to be open-ended, until the conflict could be brought to a reasonable settlement. But it would not be large.

None of this is easy or particularly appealing. But neither is any dimension of the Syrian war. Right now, it is a war we are collectively losing. We need a new path forward, and the starting point has to be one that Turkey and the United States can truly rally together behind.

Event Information

As Turkey prepares for highly-contested elections on November 1, concerns are growing about the country’s politics, economy, security, and foreign policy. Just a few years ago Turkey was recognized as a model of democracy and beacon of stability and economic growth in a challenging region. However, more recently, Turkey’s economy has lost its dynamism, its leaders’ commitment to democratic principles seems to be eroding, and doubts are emerging about the country’s interests and engagement in the region. Even more disturbing, as the conflicts in Syria and Iraq continue unabated and massive refugee flows spill over into Europe, violent Islamic extremism has now surfaced in Turkey. With the government and opposition trading accusations, the horrific, recent bombing attack in Ankara has further polarized an already deeply-divided and anxious country.

On November 2, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings will host a discussion on the Turkish elections. Panelists will discuss how recent events might influence voters what the election results might portend for Turkey’s strategic orientation. Panelists will include Ömer Taşpınar of the National War College and Brookings; Gönül Tol of the Middle East Institute; Kadir Üstün of the SETA Foundation; and Robert Wexler of S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace. Brookings Turkey Project Director and TÜSİAD Senior Fellow Kemal Kirişci will moderate the discussion.

After the program, panelists will take questions from the audience.

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20151102_turkey_elections_transcript