Author: Ani Tigranian

AL-Monitor
[Electricity bills have doubled and even tripled in Turkey after
massive price hikes, fueling frustration with Erdogan’s economic
management.]
By Hazar Dost
ISTANBUL, Turkey – A wave of protests has spread across Turkey over
whopping electricity price hikes last month as millions struggle to
pay the ballooning bills and many businesses face the threat of going
broke amid already galloping inflation.
The hikes of up to 127 percent came atop other sharp price increases,
aggravating the economic woes of ordinary citizens and businesses
alike. Annual consumer inflation hit a two-decade high of 48.7 percent
in January, while producer inflation climbed to 93.5 percent. With its
poll numbers already sagging ahead of elections next year, President
Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government has come under growing pressure to
review the electricity hikes.
Small shopkeepers have been at the forefront of the outcry, posting
their electricity bills on shop windows and dimming their lights in
the evenings in protest. Many complain that electricity bills now
outstrip their rents. A growing number of cafes and restaurants have
pulled the plug on outdoor heaters — in high demand due to the
COVID-19 pandemic — or begun to charge clients for their use.
In Besiktas, a downtown Istanbul district, the owner of a tiny but
long-established teashop lamented that his electricity bill had jumped
to some 500 Turkish liras ($37) from 105 Turkish liras (about $8) the
month before. The 65-year-old, who introduced himself only as Kemal,
said his business was already reeling from pandemic lockdowns and now
his daily profit was often as low as 30 liras. “I have to work 20 days
to cover the electricity bill alone,” he told Al-Monitor.
In the district of Fatih, a traditional stronghold of Erdogan’s
Justice and Development Party (AKP), grievances with the government
are growing louder as well.
Kenan Kirik, who runs a dry cleaner in the area, quickly produced his
two most recent bills, which showed a jump from 523 to 1,244 liras.
Factoring in other expenses, he worried his livelihood might be at
stake. “To save [on electricity] as much as I can, I’ve come to hold
the coming items and iron them in batches at a time,” he said. But he
is averse to raising prices, wary of losing clients and eventually
having to close shop.
The skyrocketing energy prices in Turkey are due not only to the
global crunch but also the severe depreciation of the Turkish lira
last year. Critics blame also Ankara’s privatization policies. The AKP
government, in power since 2002, has privatized power distribution
across the country and most of the grids are now run by companies
close to the ruling party. The Energy Market Regulatory Authority, a
public agency, sets the prices.
According to energy and climate expert Onder Algedik, the price hikes
favor the private companies in the energy sector, which are saddled
with hefty debts. “This crisis does not stem from [the currency
turmoil] alone. The big hikes are meant to transfer money from the
people’s pockets to the companies,” Algedik told Al-Monitor. "The
crisis on the global energy market would not impact the citizens’
pockets to such an extent.”
Amid the nationwide outcry, Erdogan announced Jan. 31 that the
threshold of low consumption, which is priced more favorably, was
raised to 210 kWh from 150 kWh per month. But even the new level
remains below the 230 kWh that the Electrical Engineers Chamber cites
as the minimum standard of a household of four. Earlier this week, a
senior Erdogan aide pledged “fresh steps to alleviate the burden of
citizens.”
Yet, Ankara’s economic management remains under fire and even loyal
AKP supporters appear increasingly frustrated. Yusuf Karakol, a
30-year-old Istanbulite who said he had voted for the AKP all his
life, grumbled about his worsening livelihood woes, including an
electricity bill that has doubled since January. Erdogan needs “to
draw a new road map” to fix the economy, he told Al-Monitor.
The owner of a small tobacco and spirits shop, who identified himself
only as Sercan, said he was struggling to keep his business afloat –
not only because the soaring electricity cost, but also a drop in
sales after a nearly 50 percent tax hike on cigarettes and alcoholic
beverages in early January. “My real worry,” he said, “is for the
summer, when the fridges consume two or three times more energy than
in the winter.”
Fatih Baydan, a butcher whose shop’s electricity bill has more than
doubled, said the hike would cost him 15 percent of his profits. “The
price of meat has reached 120 liras [$9] per kilo. Many people can no
longer afford it and our sales have dropped by 30 percent,” he told
Al-Monitor.
Baydan has lost hope that the government would enact measures to help
small businesses weather the crisis. “Our only hope is for the AKP to
go,” he said.
Hairdresser Deniz Arslan agreed. The electricity bill of Arslan’s shop
has tripled, swallowing about a third of his monthly revenue. He put
the blame on the AKP’s economic policies, saying that early elections
have become a must.
The main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) led street
protests across the country Feb. 9, as party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu
vowed to not pay his own electricity bill until the government
retracted the hikes. The CHP has petitioned the Council of State, the
country’s top administrative court, to cancel the hikes, arguing that
they are unlawful and against public interest.
 

The National Interest
[The United States assumed that Russia would be scared of the risks to
go into Syria. That is a mistake that should not be made when it comes
to Ukraine.]
By Nikolas K. Gvosdev
Feb. 12, 2022
enior U.S. national security officials, diplomats, and military
officers are all sounding similar warnings. “If Russia intervenes,
they face a difficult fight.” “Russian forces will have to cope with
an insurgency.” “As the bodies of dead soldiers return home, Vladimir
Putin will come under increasing public pressure.” “Russia will not be
able to achieve its objectives—and will become bogged down in a
quagmire.”
You might think this is referring to ongoing statements coming out of
President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ national
security team trying to warn the Kremlin over starting a military
adventure in Ukraine, but these comments echo pronouncements that were
being delivered in September 2015 by the Obama/Biden administration
prior to the Russian intervention in the Syrian civil war. There are
some important lessons from how the Russian military and security
establishment has pursued that operation that are relevant if the
Kremlin decides to choose military force as its option for coercive
diplomacy against Ukraine. These lessons may lead to a different type
of fight than the United States is expecting and has been training and
equipping Ukrainian forces for.
First, the Russian intervention in Syria focused primarily on
destroying capabilities and fighting formations of the anti-Assad
opposition, rather than on occupying territory. The Kremlin made the
decision to become directly involved in the Syria conflict when, in
the late summer and early fall of 2015, opposition forces acquired
sufficient capabilities and momentum to push on Damascus and attempt
to dislodge Bashar al-Assad. By focusing on airpower, missile strikes,
and unmanned systems, the Russian task force concentrated on breaking
up and degrading opposition military formations.
The subsequent reoccupation of much of Syria’s territory by Assad’s
military was a byproduct of the massive pounding the opposition took,
rather than the initial purpose of the intervention, which was to
stave off Assad’s collapse.
Second, the Russians have maintained a relatively light footprint on
the ground in Syria. They chose not to focus on occupying territory or
taking on the responsibilities of governance. Indeed, in a number of
cases the Russians brokered a series of ceasefires that left local
leaders and notables in control of their immediate territory in return
for accepting overall government control. To the extent that the
Russian military has defined areas of control in Syria, they are
focused on a few pieces of critically strategic real estate.
Third, whenever ground forces were needed, the Russians turned to
private military companies or other irregular formations, limiting as
far as possible the exposure of uniformed members of the Russian armed
forces. As in the United States, Russian public opinion seems to draw
a very clear distinction between “soldiers” dying for the motherland
versus contractors who signed up and took the risks.
Finally, the Russians demonstrated, particularly in the launch of
Kalibr cruise missiles from the Caspian Sea Flotilla, Russian
capabilities to deliver lethal strikes from assets based inside
Russian territory. The subtext of the use of the Caspian ships was to
subtly demonstrate that key Russian capabilities did not need to be
sent out and “exposed” but could be utilized without fear of reprisal
or counterattack.
So, in contrast to the predictions that Syria would be “Putin’s
Afghanistan,” where a large land-based Russian force would be ground
down by insurgent attacks and eventually Putin would risk popular
unrest at home as casualties mounted, the Russians focused on
delivering strikes to disrupt and degrade Assad’s opponents. Watching
the Russian campaign unfold, I was reminded of comments that Sergei
Ivanov, then Russia’s defense minister, delivered at a U.S.-Russia
dialogue in 2006—in perfect English with a command of American
military jargon—about how the Russian military was closely studying
and learning from the U.S. campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Avoiding
large-scale land deployments seemed to be one of them.
I do not know whether the Russians will go into Ukraine, or whether
U.S. assessments are correct that the Russians will seek to occupy and
control large pieces of Ukrainian territory and send personnel and
systems into Ukraine to engage in close combat. The Syria campaign,
however, would suggest that if the Russian government decides to use
military force against Ukraine, it would focus on long-distance
strikes to destroy Ukrainian equipment, particularly its stockpiles of
drones, and try to break up organized military formations. The Syria
case also suggests that the Russians would try to avoid having people
cross the border, whenever possible, and direct fire from across the
line. (This might be part of the hair-splitting on sanctions to
suggest to the Germans and others that the promise that economic and
energy sanctions on Russia would come only if Russia “invaded”—that
is, sent large, organized formations across borders—and that this
would qualify as a more limited “incursion.”) It would also raise the
cost of any response, because the United States and other NATO
countries would be very skittish about any Western weaponry crossing
the border in return to strike at Russian artillery or airfields. And
the Kalibr strike in Syria from the Caspian Sea could easily be
replicated with no one willing to respond by returning fire into the
heart of Russia. Finally, with Chechen president Ramzan Kadyrov
already talking about sending Chechen auxiliaries to Ukraine, the
pattern, as we have seen in Syria, Libya, Mali, and the Central
African Republic may hold here as well: any ground personnel needed to
take strategic sites or important nodes of communication would not be
formal Russian forces. Again, the Russian gamble may be that some of
the European states will hair-split and that private military
contractors would not constitute a formal Russian military
intervention.
Preparing Ukrainian special forces for partisan warfare, or assuming
that U.S.-supplied Javelins would be used against Russian tanks and
armored vehicles making the rapid dash to Kyiv, is not going to be
effective against the type of campaign Russia used in Syria. We have
been expecting a ground campaign to occupy territory, but the Russian
General Staff may be looking to destroy capabilities, demoralize the
Ukrainian military, and create conditions for political upheaval. And
if operations begin anytime soon, the types of military aid and
training that would be needed would come too late.
The United States assumed that Russia would be scared of the risks to
go into Syria. That is a mistake that should not be made when it comes
to Ukraine.
*
Nikolas K. Gvosdev is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research
Institute and a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. The views
expressed are his own.
 

AL-Monitor
[War would bring Turkey under intense pressure from its Western allies
to join putative sanctions against Russia, a critical trading partner
and supplier of natural gas.]
By Amberin Zaman
Feb. 7, 2022
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Feb. 3 meeting with his
counterpart Volodymr Zelensky in Ukraine yielded a string of accords
aimed at deepening economic and military ties between Ankara and Kyiv
and significantly raising the stakes for both sides should Russia
attack the former Soviet state.
Russian land and naval forces remain massed around Ukraine as Western
leaders scramble to find a diplomatic solution to defuse the crisis.
Erdogan has offered to mediate between Russia and Ukraine and for good
reason.
War would bring Turkey under intense pressure from its Western allies
to join putative sanctions against Russia, a critical trading partner
and supplier of natural gas. Turkey will do its best to remain
neutral, as signaled anew by Erdogan in comments to reporters en route
home from Kyiv. He accused Western governments of making the
Ukraine-Russia crisis “worse” and rued the absence of former German
Chancellor Angela Merkel, long accused of appeasing the Kremlin. He
said Europe was suffering “serious issues at the leadership level”
after her departure. US President Joe Biden had failed to “demonstrate
a positive approach,” he added.
His comments echoed Moscow’s accusations that the United States and
NATO are escalating tensions including through their deployment of
additional troops to eastern Europe and continued arms deliveries to
Ukraine. Many believe Erdogan’s comments are meant in part to assuage
Moscow over Turkey’s sale of combat drones and other military
equipment. During Erdogan’s visit the Black Sea allies agreed to
jointly produce Bayraktar TB2 combat drones in Ukraine and build a
maintenance and training center for operators alongside the planned
facility.
Ukraine has bought at least 20 drones from Turkey since 2018 and has
used one only once in combat against Russian-backed separatists in
Donbass in October 2021, eliciting growls from Moscow.
However, Turkey’s worries go beyond having to balance its NATO
commitments with Russia, a key economic partner and since 2016
security partner in Syria. An actual war could have crippling
consequences for Turkey’s battered economy.
The national currency, the lira, shed 44% of its value last year and
spiraling inflation hit an annual 48.69%, the highest in two decades,
according to official data released on Feb. 3.
Sharp hikes in utilities, notably electricity, have unleashed a wave
of protests across the country amid power shortages and blackouts in
major cities.
“Commodity prices, particularly oil and gas, are a lead indicator for
inflation and Turkey has struggled even without these headwinds due to
the government’s eccentric policies regarding interest rates,” said a
London-based banker who closely monitors Turkey. The banker, who
requested anonymity, was referring to Erdogan’s stubborn refusal to
raise interest rates based on the idea that it would fuel inflation,
while most economists hold that the opposite is true.
“A Russian incursion or, worse still, a full-scale invasion,” the
banker said, “would add further price pressure on commodity inputs,
which would only spur more inflation.”
It was not surprising, the banker noted, that some Western banks were
forecasting that the Turkish lira would slump to 20 to the dollar or
even lower this year, “with the myriad of dangers that lie ahead and
with Erdogan being seen to have played his last card on linkage of
Turkish lira deposits to US dollar rates last year."
Under the scheme, the state compensates Turkish lira depositors for
any loss incurred by a drop in the national currency that exceeds the
deposit rates paid by their banks. Since its December launch, the lira
has stabilized at around 13.5 to the dollar but would likely melt anew
in the event of a Russian invasion.
According to data published Monday, Turkey’s Central Bank sold its
state-run energy importer, BOTAS, a record $4.15 billion in foreign
currencies in January alone. The trade deficit, in turn, soared to a
decade high of $10.44 billion, a year-on-year increase of more than
240%, largely due to ballooning energy imports.
In Ukraine, Turkey’s flourishing defense cooperation would likely
suffer in a Russian attack as well. Motor Sich, one of the world’s
largest manufacturers of engines for airplanes and helicopters, has
been supplying engines for the Turkish drones along with Ivchenko
Progress, a stated-owned Ukrainian company, since 2020. That is when
the US Congress began blocking military sales to Turkey over its
acquisition of Russian-made S-400s and Canada over the use of Turkish
drones against Armenia in support of Azerbaijan. Experts reckon that
Ukraine’s defense industry would be an obvious target for Russian
forces.
In the event of a full-scale invasion by Russia, “defense industry
facilities as well strategic industrial and infrastructure elements
would be primary targets for the Russian military," independent
defense analyst Arda Mevlutoglu observed in the most recent issue of
the Ankara-based weekly English-language Anka Review. "The destruction
of manufacturing facilities as well as the loss of skilled personnel
would deal a devastating blow to the Ukrainian defense industry as
well as to Turkish defense projects."
“Developing defense industry relations between Kyiv and Ankara should
not be perceived as a direct threat by Moscow. However, Turkey’s
possible increase influence and activity in Ukraine would be an
undesirable outcome for Russians,” Mevlutoglu told Al-Monitor. “It’s
also a fact Russia puts great emphasis on cyber and electronic warfare
operations. Based on these premises, there is considerable risk that
Russia might conduct kinetic and/or cyberattacks on Ukraine’s defense
industry base, which in turn would affect the supply of products to
Turkey.”
Recent deals between Turkey and Ukraine include the supply of gas
turbines for Turkish-designed naval vessels by Ukraine’s Zorya
Mashproekt. Ukraine has ordered four of the MilGem class corvettes for
itself.
Tourism, which Erdogan is banking on to help with an economic recovery
ahead of parliamentary and presidential elections that are scheduled
to be held by 2023, is also at risk.
In the event of war, Russian tourists may well continue to flock to
the Turkish coast this summer. But what of the millions of Ukrainians
who jostle with them on Turkey’s Mediterranean beaches? Will they want
to share the same space?
When Russian President Vladimir Putin banned chartered flights to
Turkey in retaliation for its shooting down of a Russian air force jet
over Syrian skies in November 2015, many Ukrainians were delighted.
“We had a perfect time, no Russian tourists in Turkish hotels,”
recalled Yevgeniya Gaber, a leading Ukrainian scholar of Turkish
affairs and a senior fellow at Carleton University’s Center of Modern
Turkish Studies.
As for Erdogan’s chances of brokering peace between Zelensky and
Putin, they are pretty slim, Gaber predicted. Putin’s planned official
visit to Turkey, which the Kremlin said would take place after the
Beijing Olympics though it gave no date, is more about “testing the
waters, seeing how far Turkey can accommodate Russia in its standoff
with Ukraine and who can compromise on what,” and not about
acquiescing to Erdogan’s proposal to mediate, Gaber told Al-Monitor.
At best, Turkey can provide the two sides with “an optional diplomatic
channel of communication” through which their respective messages are
relayed.