The Peter Zeihan Podcast Series - Let's Talk Turkey (BIG Strategy Changes) || Peter Zeihan

Episode Date: July 19, 2023

There's been a lot of movement in Turkey's neck of the woods, so the Turks have had to change their stance on several issues. Given Turkey's strategic positioning and importance, expect huge regional implications. Full Newsletter: https://mailchi.mp/zeihan/lets-talk-turkey

Hey everybody, Peter Zion here, coming to you from just below James Peak in the James Peak Wilderness. Today we're going to talk Turkey. There's been a lot of motion in that part of the world in the not too distant past. In the lead-up to the NATO summit in Vilnius during the summit and days after, the Turks have changed their positions on a number of significant issues with huge regional implications. So just a quick rundown. The Turks have said that they're going to intervene in, grain shipments coming out of Ukraine. Now, there has been a deal that the Russians, Ukrainians, and the UN have agreed to that allows Ukrainian grain to leave Ukrainian ports and not get shot at by Russian ships, as long as the Russian ships can inspect the ships on the way in, on the way

out to make sure that they're not engaged in any sort of smuggling. The Russians have been backing with that agreement. It's basically more abundant at this point. The Turks are no longer serving as a middleman for a lot of financial transfers and good transfers. From the west of the world to Russia, they have traditionally, traditionally, I should say, during the ward at this point, they have been the weak spot in the NATO wall, if you will, and anything that would be West used to

sell to Russia or something that's under sanctions would be sold to Turkey first and forwarded on to the Russians in violation of the stations, or at least to do an end run, no longer doing that. In addition, the Turkey may be like that Sweden can join NATO. They've been blocking that now for over a year, and all of a sudden it just evaporated. Now, a lot of people in the last were now talking about how the Turks are back in the club.

Those statements are a less premature and probably just completely wrong. And the reason is that the Turks are their own thing. Now, unlike the Western world or the Russian world, there's a very clear geography that binds everyone together, the Turks have their own. The Sea of Mamara region and eastern Thrace are one of the richest chunks of agricultural land in the world. It's got a navigable waterway system, and it straddles a number of re-piltrater routes. So the Turks are always going to matter.

Whoever controls this area is always going to be a significant region of the local power. But this area is not endless. This is not the America Midwest, something that allows the United States to protect the power globally. This is a zone that is bracketed by a number of other regions that all, matter, the Aegean, the Caucasus, southern Ukraine and the Crimean Peninsula, the Balkans, Mesopotamia, the Levant, the Turks can't project and do project power into all of these regions, but the CEMMR region is not sufficiently powerful to give the Turks the ability to project in all of them. And so Turkish foreign strategic policy has always been about making choices, and that means they have to

evaluate their neighborhood on a case-by-case basis, and those evaluations have to be updated from time to time. Well, if you go back to 10, 15 years ago, we had the start of the Syrian Civil War, and the Turks were very upset with the entire Western coalition because of the war and what had led to it. The Turks didn't want to see an independent Kurdistan, but the Americans relied upon the Kurds of northern Iraq in order to fight part of the war against Saddam Hussein. And with the Syrian Civil War, you had again a Kurdish enclave northeast Syria that basically existed under Western de facto sponsorship. There were also spats with the Israelis to a degree backed by the United States and the Europeans. And so the Turks entered into a period where they found it easier to

protect power south into areas where the Americans and the Europeans were not being very successful. In that sort of environment, there is a softness in relation with the Russians, because the Russians were perceived at the time as being a bit on a role, and the Turks found it easier to accommodate the Russians rather than to stand against them. Well, in the last year and a half, a whole lot of things have changed. Number one, the Americans are losing interest in Iraq and, to a lesser degree, Syria, meaning that the de facto sponsorship of the Kurds has weakened quite a bit. The Russians have shown themselves to be not nearly as impressive as they look like they were. And with the Ukraine is doing better, better and better day by day by day,

the Turks are wondering whether or not it's really worth the effort, especially in the face of strong American opposition. During and leading up to the summit, the Biden administration from the very top, we're talking here, the president and secretary Yellen, the Treasury secretary, made it very clear to the Turks what would happen to their banks if they continued serving as middlemen for the Russians. And since then many of those banks are linked to the ruling party,

that message was taken loud and clear. So the costs and benefits have changed, and all of a sudden the Turks are looking at this in a different light. So all of a sudden the South is not wide open and open to fissures that they can exploit. Suddenly, relations with the Israelis are a little bit better.

Suddenly the Turks are evaluating the Russians from a different point of view and seeing them as perhaps the weak spot in their periphery these days. And so we've seen a lot of changes. And, of course, with the summit, everyone was together and everyone could have these conversations in real time. As regards to the United States, negotiations about the transfer of F-16s to Turkey were off the table because there were concerns they were going to be used against the Kurdish minority or against countries that the United States really didn't what the Turks going to war with. All of a sudden, that's back on the docket.

The Canadians have restarted negotiations on drone transfers, military technology to help make drones. Now, these are the same drones that the Turks have been transferring to Ukraine over the last year and a half. But the reason the Canadians had had an embargo on it is because two years ago, the Turks had transferred them to the Azerbaijanis in their war with Armenia. All of a sudden, everyone's getting along again. And we'll probably see some warming in relations between the Europeans and the Turks as well, on a number of issues that deal with the visas and migration and everything else. Anyway, the bottom line of all of this isn't so much that Turkey has flipped.

It's that Turkey's evaluation of its neighborhood changes regularly, based on the strength, the power, the accession, or the fall of every country in their region. And in the last two years, we've had a massive shift in the power balance, and it would be strange to think that the Turks would not adjust. accordingly. Now, winners and losers, it all depends upon who you are and what you care about. Obviously, the West broadly is pleased with the direction that the Turks are going right now, and there's reason to believe that this has some legs. But if you're on the other side of the equation, especially if you're in interest of the Russians, all of a sudden, this is really scary.

So, for example, Armenia, Azerbaijan, the Azerbaijani's are ethnically Turkic. The Turks consider them, their ethnic brethren and their friends. The Armenians, on the other hand, are the complete opposite. And now that you've got countries like Canada saying it might be okay for use your weapon systems in the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict, if you were Iranian that's in many ways a world's. A Azerbaijan that is coming

high off of the last war win, the Turkey that's probably going to start shipping weapons in mass again, and a Russia who has been here a treaty who all of a sudden is up to its eyeballs and a problem that it can't solve in Ukraine. Things like this are going to be reshaking out across the entire region as the larger geopolitic evolves. Okay, that's it. Take care.