Turkey

Something has changed in the way we cover Syria. In 2015, Turkey began building a wall along the length of its 550-mile frontier with the war zone. The reasons were valid: Turkey wanted to cut the jihadi highway through which tens of thousands of foreigners had travelled into Syria and joined up with Isis. It also wanted to stop them travelling back the other way. The wall is now almost finished. It is three metres high, made of reinforced concrete topped with razor wire, and mounted with security cameras and automated guns. The area around the wall is heavy with soldiers and parts are periodically declared restricted military zones – especially when operations like the battle for Afrin – which is in northern Syria – are underway.

 Beirut ‘If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense,’ said Alice. ‘Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?’ For the United States, and for the rest of us, Lewis Carroll is as good a guide as any to what is happening in northern Syria right now. Turkey — America’s Nato ally — has sent tanks rolling across the border to attack the Kurds, America’s ally against Isis. Thus the United States finds itself supporting both sides in the same war. You see? Some wit in Turkey’s defence ministry has named the offensive ‘Operation Olive Branch’.

What, you might well ask, could possibly make the situation in Syria look much worse, after President Erdogan’s assault on the Kurds in Afrin? The Turks are, obviously, attacking the forces that did most of the heavy lifting when it came to dealing with Isis on the ground. Indeed, If it hadn’t been for the Kurds, it’s at least arguable that Isis would still be sitting tight in Raqqa rather than dispersed elsewhere. They are the only really reliable ally in the area for the US – though I take on board the argument that it was the US’s move in establishing a force of 30,000 border guards, dominated by Kurds, that set off the ever excitable Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest move. What, I repeat, could make this situation even worse? Let me answer myself.

Turkey’s decision to send troops into Syria to fight the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) shouldn’t come as a shock to anyone who has seen how the country is changing over the past few months. Turkey has become increasingly determined to forge its own way in the world, ignoring the entreaties of western countries, and indeed blaming the West for many of its troubles. The Erdogan government says the YPG is a terrorist organisation that, along with the PKK, is determined to do Turkey harm.

Istanbul President Erdogan has spent much of this year slinging muck at Europe's heads of state, and he has damaged a number of already precarious relationships. Now it looks as if he is about to come up against the force of US diplomacy and Turkey may find itself in trouble. Turkey and the US have been Nato allies since 1952. During that time, Turkey has played up its strategic position for military bases close to the Middle East. In turn, the US has downplayed a number of disputes between the two countries, particularly in recent years as the conflict in Syria has raged on. Even as they seemed to be at each other's throats over the difficult issue of US support for Kurdish fighters in Syria, top officials worked hard not to cause too much upset.

A hundred years after the Russian revolution, Russia has a tsar and a court. Proximity to Putin is the key to wealth, office and survival. The outward signs of a court society have returned: double-headed eagles, the imperial coat of arms, the cult of Nicholas II (one of whose recently erected statues has ‘wept tears’), an increasingly wealthy and subservient Orthodox Church. In 2013, ‘to strengthen the historical continuity of the Russian armed forces’, the main honour guard regiment in Moscow was renamed Preobrazhensky, after the oldest regiment of the Imperial Guard, founded by Peter the Great in 1683.

Istanbul The most dramatic part of President Erdogan’s visit to Washington this week was the punch-up between his security guards and Kurdish demonstrators on the lawn outside the Turkish embassy.  The protest was nothing unusual for a president who seems to provoke adoration and disgust in equal measure wherever he goes. Neither was the violent scuffle a surprise; Erdogan's bodyguards did the same last time he was in the States. The news barely touched the Turkish press, and not only because there are few titles left on the news stands which offer opposition to Erdogan. When similar fights break out in the Turkish parliament, as they have done regularly over the past year, such scenes are barely worth writing about.

Istanbul President Erdogan hardly swept to victory yesterday. But with 51 per cent of the electorate turning out in favour of his plans to transform Turkey into a state ruled by a hugely powerful presidency rather than the parliament, he now has his mandate to reshape the country in his own image – more religious, more authoritarian, and set to swivel away from Europe while forging new relations with its old Ottoman territories. His supporters celebrated well into the night, lighting flares, driving around the cities with their horns blaring, and waving flags bearing the face of their hero. Meawhile, thousands of distraught people took to the streets in my Istanbul neighbourhood, a proudly secular district which delivered an 81 per cent no vote.

Well farewell then Turkey.  Or at least, farewell the Turkey of Kemal Ataturk.  It’s a shame.  Ataturk-ism nearly made its own centenary. But the nation that he founded, which believed broadly in progressive notions such as a separation of mosque and state, has just been formally snuffed out.  President Erdogan’s success in the referendum to award himself Caliph-like powers for life finally sees the end of Turkey’s secular and democratic experiment. Perhaps the poll which gave him victory was rigged.  Perhaps it wasn’t.  In the same way that perhaps the ‘coup’ last summer was real.  Or perhaps it wasn’t.

Ask any two Turkish nationalists how they will vote in their country’s upcoming referendum, and you’re likely to get two different answers. In just under a month, Turks will vote on a constitutional amendment that, if passed, will usher in the biggest political revolution since Kemal Ataturk founded the modern republic. It would shift the country from parliamentary democracy to executive presidency. This weekend I called round my contacts from Turkey’s various nationalist groups and asked them how they will vote. Exactly half said they will tick the box supporting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his bid to become executive president with almost unchallenged power, and a potential mandate until 2029.