Turkey

Donald Trump has made it clear that he’s attending this year's NATO summit in Ankara for one reason only: “respect for President Erdoğan.” Trump told NATO’s Secretary General Mark Rutte last month that if it hadn’t been for the veteran Turkish President’s invitation, “I don't think I would have gone to it.” NATO’s summit will, therefore, be dominated by the alliance’s two most militarily powerful and at the same time most problematic members. Trump seems set on pursuing his long-held goal of making Europe pay for its own defense, while Erdoğan is determined to leverage his strategic relationship with the US, Russia and Ukraine to scrap restrictions on Turkish purchases of US military hardware.

One word stood out in the florid and overwrought announcement of the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader by a tearful state-television newsreader on 1 March: ‘Leader and Imam of the Muslims, His Eminence Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei, on the path of upholding the exaltation of the sacred sanctuary of the Islamic Republic of Iran, drank the sweet, pure draft of martyrdom and joined the Supreme Heavenly Kingdom.’ The dreaded ‘m’ word – martyrdom – immediately takes anyone familiar with Muslim history back to a legendary 7th-century battlefield in central Iraq. In 680, the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn ibn Ali – regarded as the third Shia imam – faced a much larger army commanded by the Umayyad caliph Yazid I at the Battle of Karbala.

The world is moving into a more dangerous age. According to the Peace Research Institute Oslo, last year set a grim record, namely the highest number of state-based armed conflicts in more than seven decades. At the same time, we are seeing a fundamental realignment of global geopolitics – made clear from the recent meeting of the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation in Tianjin and the ‘Victory Day’ parade held in Beijing shortly afterwards. There, the leaders of what many in the West see as an emerging new world order stood shoulder to shoulder as Chinese military hardware was put on display to mark 80 years since the end of the second world war. That anniversary underscored the commemoration last month to mark the only two occasions where atomic bombs have been used.

All wars end, one way or another. One of the longest wars in the Middle East, between Turkey and Kurdish separatists, may finally be over. After 40 years of bitter struggle, the Kurdistan Workers’ party, the PKK, has declared that it will disarm and disband. It’s an achievement, of a sort, for the PKK’s imprisoned founder, Abdullah Ocalan: he might become a free man. It’s a triumph for Turkey’s leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan: he might become President for life. The Kurds have adjusted to a new reality in the region. From Ankara to Riyadh, the chess pieces are shifting and the board might end up looking very different. This might even be accomplished without blood being spilled. The PKK is designated as a terrorist group by Britain and many other western nations.

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has never been so weak – nor so strong. At home, he is facing the most potent challenge to his power since an armed coup in 2016, in the form of a serious electoral challenger whom he has just jailed, causing massive protests and unsettling the money markets. Internationally, though, he has never been stronger. Every major power bloc in the world, it seems, needs Turkey’s help, with issues ranging from immigration to peacekeeping and energy supplies. Instead of sinking his main rival’s candidacy, the Turkish president has created a martyr For Europe, Erdogan remains a major gas supplier and an essential bulwark against immigrants from Syria and Afghanistan.