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From a geopolitical perspective, the Turkish presidential election on Sunday may appear to be one of the most crucial nonviolent political events of this year. But appearances can be deceptive in Turkish politics. 

In the surcharged polarization of “West versus Rest” in international politics, Western media are rooting for the defeat of incumbent President Recep Erdogan so that one of the leading proponents of multipolarity and strategic autonomy in the emerging world order who is setting a horrible example for the Global South, walks into the sunset. 

Truly, the importance of Erdogan is that, unlike so many self-styled proponents of the Global South who have mushroomed lately, he practices what he preaches.  

The Western media’s excitement stems from a simplistic notion that Erdogan, a charismatic “strong man” who has been riding the wings of his immense popularity and astuteness to exploit the fragmentation of the Turkish electoral scene, is meeting his nemesis in the unified opposition candidacy of Kemal Kilicdaroglu. 

Although Sunday’s election may seem too close to call, it may well produce a clear-cut victory for Erdogan in the first round itself (with over 50% votes) that would obviate the need for a runoff. The known unknown today is whether Kilicdaroglu’s eclectic brand of party politics, which helped him clinch the presidential nomination and paper over ideological divides that are as much historical as cultural, would be sufficient to persuade enough voters to help him win the race. 

Erdogan is a man of history with a formidable track record in power in consolidating civilian supremacy in a working democracy.

Kilicdaroglu, on the contrary,  has nothing to show and never held an elected post. Yet, if Western capitals are dreaming about a Kilicdaroglu victory, it underscores the high stakes in Sunday’s election.  

However, the paradox is, even if Kilicdaroglu is the winner, western powers shouldn’t expect an outright alignment of Turkish foreign policies with Western demands. Kilicdaroglu himself remarked recently that Turkish foreign and defense policies “are managed by the state” and are “independent of political parties.” 

What does he mean by that strange remark? Make no mistake, Kilicdaroglu is an old-world “Kemalist,” a social democrat passionately devoted to the ideological foundations of the Turkish state that Ataturk created, who believes in the core principles of nationalism, secularism and statism.

The Western hope is that,given the alchemy of the rainbow coalition that may propel Kilicdaroglu to victory, he will be leading a weak government — unlike Erdogan’s assertive, stable government. 

Indeed, the West does have immense experience in manipulating weak allies and partners in directions that suit the requirements of Western hegemony. But, as current happenings in the West Asian region testify, especially in the Gulf, the United States’ erstwhile vassal states are resisting being pushed around, are asserting their strategic autonomy and are systematically plotting the advancement of national interests from a long-term perspective. 

The Saudi-Iranian detente; Saudi-Emirati reconciliation with President Bashar Al-Assad; the nascent peace talks over Yemen and Sudan — these show that regional states are perfectly capable of navigating their national interests, and that the exclusion of Western hegemony can actually have productive outcomes rather than perpetual conflict and strife.  

Turkish foreign policies are rooted in its history, geography, national interests and the ethos of a classic “civilizational state.” Ankara largely followed a non-aligned independent foreign policy with the accent on preserving its strategic autonomy in the highly volatile external environment that surrounds it. 

Typically, half a century ago, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit risked US sanctions and ordered military intervention in Northern Cyprus to safeguard the security and welfare of the ethnic Turkish community. No successor government rolled back that decision and the Turks learned to live with Cyprus and Greece’s veto on their EU membership. 

Kilicdaroglu will adhere to the Cyprus policy (and strategy). Considering that President Biden is fully in the orbit of the influential Greek lobby in US politics (which lavishly funded his political career through decades), Kilicdaroglu will have no illusions while upholding claims of maritime boundaries, special economic zones or exploration of gas reserves in East Mediterranean.

The single biggest impediment in Turkish-American relations is the trust deficit and that is largely attributable to Washington’s intentions toward Turkey being a national security state. This is not only about the failure of the CIA-backed coup attempt in 2016 to overthrow Erdogan, but specifically, about Washington’s alliance with separatist Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq (who also have long-standing ties to Israeli intelligence) that destabilize Turkiye (and Iran). 

Ironically, Kilicdaroglu himself is an ardent proponent of normalization of relations with the Assad government. He would favor resuscitation of the Adana Agreement (1998), which envisaged bilateral cooperation between Ankara and Damascus in counter-terrorist activities, something that would horrify Washington, Paris and Berlin. 

The bottom line is, of course, the close, friendly, mutually beneficial relationship that Erdogan forged with Russia. Now, this has an old history. The new kids on the block do not know that Ataturk himself was on friendly terms with the Bolsheviks. In the Cold War era, too, Ankara, its NATO membership notwithstanding, maintained a certain non-alignment. Succinctly put, Erdogan has not only reverted to that past but has done it openly, and built on it rapidly, being in a hurry to position Turkey optimally in the emerging multipolar world order. 

The Turkish neutrality in the Ukraine conflict cannot be understood as a “stand-alone” issue. In reality, geoeconomics has been a driving force in Turkish-Russian relationship. Whether Kilicdaroglu may or may not have uses for the Russian S-400 anti-missile system is a moot point, but he certainly cannot do without the $20 billion Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, which Russia’s Rosatom is not only constructing but will also be operating in future. 

The Turkish economy is partly built on the “German model” — Turkish companies use cheap energy from Russia to produce industrial products at competitive prices for the European market. Why would Kilicdaroglu emulate the folly of the present “trans-Atlanticist” leaders in Berlin to terminate cheap long-term energy supplies from Russia at the cost of deindustrialization?

Scholz has deep pockets and can probably afford to replace Russian piped gas under long-term contracts with LNG supplies from America at phenomenally marked-up prices, but Russia has proven to be a highly reliable source of abundant energy through pipelines that run just across the Black Sea to Turkiye. 

The raison d’être of Turkey’s dual orientation – eastward and westward – corresponds to an old tradition in Turkish foreign policy. The country has its own understanding of Russia, borne out of a long, difficult common history. Therefore one can’t view as aberrational the great deliberateness and congruent interests involved when Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, each a complex personality in his own way, take such pains to understand each other and work together. 

The Western powers are fantasizing that by manipulating the right-wing, pro-western parties aligned with Kilicdaroglu in the Faustian deal to keep Erdogan out of power, they can bring the dour Kemalist to his knees. In reality, though, Erdogan, too, has largely followed a foreign policy rooted in the ideology of the Turkish state that Ataturk founded, including the fetishism over secularism that’s typical of an archetypal Kemalist like Kilicdaroglu. 

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Yesterday my Bakhmut update noted that it appeared the Ukrainians had launched a major offensive on the southern flank of Bakhmut. The evidence for this was news reports, Ukrainian claims of a big victory, and the claim by the head of private military contractor Wagner, Yevgeny Prigozhin, that Russian soldiers had not fought but run away, and that maybe 500 of them had been killed. He went on to claim he would fix the problem, although it was not his area of responsibility.

But was this what actually happened? Even the Institute for the Study of War, which tends to be strongly pro-Ukrainian (although it tries to keep some objectivity), isn’t so sure because it was unable to confirm the Ukrainian success “visually.”

At least one excellent video analyst on You Tube describes the action by Ukraine as a sort of reconnaissance in force, but one that only chased away a small group of Russian soldiers. The channel goes on to say that the chance for any Ukrainian followup is very small, because Russia’s flank defenses beyond the trip line are very strong.

But the real issue is Prigozhin who, in the last few days, savagely attacked the Russian army leadership and called Putin, who in Russia is known as Grandfather, an “a**hole.”

Prigozhin lives off of Putin’s support and Putin is regarded as his “best friend.” So what is going on?

Prigozhin has had his aides put out that he wasn’t taking about Putin but about Colonel General Valery Gerasimov, Chief of the General Staff of Russia’s armed forces. There is little likelihood the nomenklatura in Moscow will believe this excuse.

To begin with, Prigozhin was not at the front and his line of information seems to be coming from Ukrainian statements. When he heard about Russian army people running away – as Ukraine claimed, providing a video of a half dozen soldiers running – he exaggerated it even beyond Ukraine’s own declarations, saying that 500 Russian soldiers were killed.

Since there were, at most, only a couple of Russian army companies along the contact line for the alleged battle, this is statistically impossible.

This blast at Putin, along with Prigozhin’s claims about ammunition and his attacks on the Army’s leadership, add up to evidence indicating that while Wagner is being used for Bakhmut urban fighting, Prigozhin is not receiving intelligence briefs outside of his immediate mandate.

That would mean, among other things, that he is not trusted and not regarded as a “real” military commander. And, in truth, Prigozhin has no military training or background. He relies on field commanders, lately some drawn from the top ranks of the Russian military, to run Wagner operations.

All this said, some think that this time Prigozhin may have crossed a red line with Putin. In simplest terms, Prigozhin is demanding recognition and prestige, and he is getting neither.

His credibility is now at an all-time low.

Furthermore, he may have dug a deep enough hole to suggest his days as head of Wagner are numbered.

Stephen Bryen is a senior fellow at the Center for Security Policy and the Yorktown Institute. This article was originally published on his Substack, Weapons and Strategy. Asia Times is republishing it with permission.

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Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s visit to Seoul on May 7-8, 2023, represents a triumph of geopolitics over the search for historical justice. Both South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and Kishida are now driven by the ominous international environment, led by threats to the international order from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China.

Kishida remained cautious when responding to South Korean calls for an apology and compensation for the victims of Japan’s colonial and wartime forced labour system. These issues were compounded by later trade and security tensions.

But he acted with urgency in restoring normalcy to South Korea-Japan relations and tightening cooperation on a wide range of shared concerns. These concerns spanned from regional security in the face of North Korean missile and nuclear advances to supply chain resiliency and controlling the flow of advanced electronic technology to China.

Both Japan and South Korea are embracing the strategic direction coming from Washington. They understand that their survival, both nationally and politically, depends on subordinating themselves to the US President Joe Biden administration’s global and regional priorities.

“Korea cannot strengthen its alliance with the United States unless Korea maintains a good working relationship with Japan, and Yoon knows it very well”, former foreign minister Yu Myung-hwan, advisor to Yoon, told me.

He added that “Chinese bullying might also have been a motivation to restore trilateral security cooperation” and that “increasing North Korean nuclear threats are a good excuse for him to strengthen trilateral security cooperation.”

The compressed diplomatic calendar of early 2023 reflects the determination of both leaders — and their US backers — to accomplish the dramatic shift in relations. The shift in South Korea-Japan relations began in early March 2023 with Yoon’s decision to end deadlocked negotiations on the forced labor issue.

Instead, Yoon used a South Korean fund to unilaterally offer compensation to survivors and their families who have gone to court, removing the demand for an apology and payments from Japanese companies. Within days of his decision, Yoon visited Tokyo and took important steps towards returning to a business-like atmosphere.

The Tokyo trip was necessary for Yoon’s state visit to Washington in April 2023. A diplomatic showcase of the alliance is embodied in a ‘Washington Declaration’ that strengthened extended deterrence in return for South Korea forswearing any nuclear ambitions.

There is some indication that the Biden administration now aims to create a trilateral extended deterrence dialogue. Yoon told reporters that Japan might be added to the Nuclear Consultative Group created under the Washington Declaration but his office weakened that formulation as it would undermine his achievement with South Korea.

Yet a trilateral security dialogue between Japan, South Korea and the United States would convey a formidable response both to North Korea and to China, and even to a potential Chinese-Russian military axis. It would also lead to a June trilateral meeting between defense ministers which would reportedly formalize data sharing on missile defense — a goal set in 2023.

Both Yoon and Kishida made ample reference to geopolitical goals in their one public appearance together at a joint press conference. “We are the key US allies in Northeast Asia,” Kishida said. He also emphasized that Japan and South Korea are seeking to strengthen their deterrence and response capabilities to North Korea through a series of security alliances between Japan, South Korea and the United States.

Still, unresolved issues of historical justice could not just be put aside. Leading up to the visit, progressive and conservative South Korean media expressed expectations that Kishida would go beyond previous statements and make a personal apology — perhaps opening the door to Japanese corporate payments to victims.

Kishida, under pressure from vocal conservatives who oppose any further Japanese apology or admission of responsibility for repression in South Korea, was hesitant to go that far. But he decided to make his personal sympathy for the victims clear — telling reporters that his “heart aches” over their suffering.

He also offered South Korea access to the Fukushima nuclear site to allay concerns over radioactive contamination in waters being released. According to Japanese media, Kishida wanted to offer some concessions to bolster Yoon against criticism within South Korea of his eagerness to give in to Japan without much in return.

The gestures met a divided response in South Korea — progressive politicians and media were dismissive and while conservative backers of Yoon were appreciative of Kishida’s apparent sincerity, they were not overwhelmed.

Former foreign minister Yu said that “Kishida failed to apologize directly to the Korean people and obviously lacks the political courage to do so,” but that President Yoon “believes that begging the other side to apologize is not politically correct.”

This leaves historical issues still buried like landmines, not far from the surface and ready to be set off. More court hearings on forced labor victims in a separate suit against Mitsubishi Heavy Industries are scheduled to start on May 11, 2023.

For now, the imperatives of geopolitics will sustain the momentum created by early 2023.

Daniel Sneider is Lecturer of International Policy and East Asian Studies at Stanford University and a Non-Resident Distinguished Fellow at the Korea Economic Institute.

This article was originally published by East Asia Forum and is republished under a Creative Commons license.

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