EDITOR’S NOTE: We are truly jealous of the patriotic Turkish politicians… Erdogan has been playing a tough bargaining game for months, and he finally got many things in exchange for agreeing to let Sweden into NATO. Above all, he received a much-needed loan offer from IMF for $13 Billion! However, much of what he gave and received are promises to be materialized by October. Please allow me to doubt how much of these promises will materialize, as explained last week.
I doubt this because I noted that Erdogan felt the need to publicly restate twice recently (July 7 and yesterday), that his meeting with Putin in Ankara for August remains on schedule and the agenda is heavy. Russia has the upper hand, threatening Turkey militarily from the North (Black Sea) and the South (Syria). Russia also controls Turkey’s energy supply: two natural gas pipelines and two nuclear power plants under construction (one almost finished)…
The West can just expect Turkey’s door to remain open for a while – but no chance of Turkey acting as an ally… We Greeks must be careful of PM Mitsosakis’ readiness to relinquish sovereignty (as he publicly said yesterday!) in exchange for peace… Shameless Greek politicians!!
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FEAR AND LOATHING ON AIR FORCE ONE
Biden’s anxieties over the Ukraine War and the election in 2024 come into view
Let’s start with a silly fear but one that does signal the Democratic Party’s growing sense of panic about the 2024 Presidential election. It was expressed to me by someone with excellent party credentials: that Trump could be the Republican nominee and will select Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as his running mate. The strange duo will then sweep to a huge victory over a stumbling Joe Biden, and also take down many of the party’s House and Senate candidates.
As for real signs of acute Democratic anxiety: Joe Biden got what he needed before the NATO summit this week by somehow turning Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan inside out and getting him to rebuff Vladimir Putin by announcing that he would support NATO membership for Sweden. The public story for Biden’s face-saving coup was talk about agreeing to sell American F-16 fighter bombers to Turkey.
I have been told a different, secret story about Erdogan’s turnabout: Biden promised that a much-needed $11-13 billion line of credit would be extended to Turkey by the International Monetary Fund. “Biden had to have a victory and Turkey is in acute financial stress,” an official with direct knowledge of the transaction told me. Turkey lost 100,000 people in the earthquake last February, and has four million buildings to rebuild. “What could be better than Erdogan”—under Biden’s tutelage, the official asked, “finally having seen the light and realizing he is better off with NATO and Western Europe?” Reporters were told, according to the New York Times, that Biden called Erdogan while flying to Europe on Sunday. Biden’s coup, the Times reported, would enable him to say that Putin got “exactly what he did not want: an expanded, more direct NATO alliance.” There was no mention of bribery.
That’s right. Erdogan is cash strapped. And so it goes. “ I will do anything for you as long as you lend me a buck or two.”