A Coup in Turkey?

I don't normally comment on ongoing situations but too many of my friends asked for my take on what is happening in Turkey, so here it is.

And please bear in mind that I am posting this within the hour of what news channels are reporting as a coup d'etat in progress in Turkey.

First question: Is the coup for real? 

Unlikely.

If it was, they should/would have arrested the President, Prime Minister and Cabinet members before anything else. They didn't.

Not only that, these people were free to get on TV to ask their supporters to call on them to defend "their democracy."

Second question: Could the coup succeed?

When you consider that 49 percent of the electorate voted for the ruling party in the last elections, any attempt to wrestle power from them would meet with serious resistance. So in the unlikely instance that the coup is for real, we should expect serious upheaval, perhaps even a civil war.

The President Tayyip Erdogan has just asked his supporters to march to the airports to defy army officers who took over them and there are reports that they have complied by the tens of thousands.

Mr Erdogan called on people to take to the streets to oppose the uprising.
He said: "I urge the Turkish people to convene at public squares and airports. I never believed in a power higher than the power of the people."

This is a live picture from tonight.

Third question: What happens if the coup fails?

Well, Erdogan will become the unchallenged leader of Turkey.

I mean, really unchallenged. You know, Sultan-unchallenged.

He will establish a presidential system in the next few months and Turkey's move towards an autocratic and conservative Islamist state will accelerate.

In other words, there is no good outcome.

Stay tuned.

Trump: The Gift That Keeps on Giving

In my previous post on Trump destroying the GOP positions, I said that "by far his boldest and scariest move was his tweet in the aftermath of Orlando shooting announcing that he will push for stricter gun control."

That was because this would force the Republicans to defend the indefensible, namely the right to bear arms for terrorists.

And it happened.

When a very timid measure introduced by a Democratic Senator was defeated in the Senate, this was the front page of Daily News.

Moreover, the USA Today, hardly a liberal paper, had this to say:

Yet in an extraordinary act of cowardice on Monday evening, 56 senators — 53 Republicans joined by three Democrats — threw away yet another opportunity to keep guns out of the hands of more felons, fugitives, the mentally ill or people prone to domestic violence.

These spineless lawmakers voted against advancing a commonsense measure to expand background checks to virtually all sales of guns, not just those sold by federally licensed dealers. The existing gap allows buyers who purchase from private sellers at gun shows, online or from newspaper ads to simply avoid the federal background check system.

And a Washington Post headline was "A week after Orlando, Republicans protect terrorists’ right to bear arms."

Ouch.

Democratic Senator Barbara Mikulski put it in terms that everyone could understand.

"Why is it we would go through such incredible scrutiny to board an airplane to protect me against terrorists, and yet we have no scrutiny of the people on the terrorist watch list to be able to buy a gun?"

Why indeed.

Then the Democrats organized a sit-in protest in Congress, led by the legendary civil rights veteran John Lewis, to force a vote on the measure. The Republicans did not allow it but the damage was done.

The BBC's Laura Bicker in Washington says the protest follows years of Democrat frustration at being unable to pass stricter gun control measures. 

She says that although 100 bills have gone before Congress in the past five years and all have failed, this is an election year and Democrats are making it clear to the electorate that if they want change, they know which way to vote in November. [my emphasis]

I simply don't understand why liberals are so upset about Donald Trump.

Will Trump Be the GOP Nominee? A Contrarian Perspective

The Donald's candidacy was a disaster for the GOP.

As I wrote before, GOP establishment thought that they could get rid of this buffoon easily. They forgot that "the buffoon" was the true heir of Nixon and his voice was the clearest expression of Milhous' Southern Strategy.

They tried to organize a "Stop Trump" movement. They had prominent GOP figures like Mittens and Bill Kristol attack him virulently.

They even tried siccing the Chairman and his giant echo chamber on him.

Nothing worked and the Donald won. In the process, he proved that he stood exactly where the GOP electorate was. And we are not just talking about primary voters. The Republican rank and file largely support Trump for the general elections.

According to a Washington Post survey, 85% of Republicans plan to vote for their man. A New York Times offering finds a similar number.

The problem for the Republican establishment is that Trump's unconventional campaign seriously damaged their conservative principles and tarnished the GOP brand.

Trump and the GOP Brand

Take the supposedly moralistic evangelicals.

This is a foul-mouthed, thrice-married bully who brags about "nailing" women. Yet Values Voters flocked to him like street pigeons to bread crumbs.

According to the most recent polls, Trump is one of the top picks for president among evangelical Christians. One Washington Post poll even had him as the group’s favorite by a margin of six points. His first major rally in the Bible-Belt fortress town of Mobile, Alabama, drew an estimated 18,000 attendees.

What about "read my lips, no new taxes"?

Republican leaders like Grover Norquist made signing pledges about never raising taxes and starving the beast the sine qua non of the party's support of any candidate. You don't sign and GOP funds go to your challenger.  Usually a tea party firebrand. And as you will remember, this is one of the cornerstones of GOP orthodoxy over which they shut down the federal government more than once.

Yet Trump gleefully said that he would raise taxes on the wealthy. Although he went back and forth a couple of times to end up with a tax cuts for everyone position, the fact that he could even argue the point so freely is a huge problem for the Republican establishment.

There is more.

In the last four decades GOP has portrayed itself as a party of conviction with solid and immutable conservative principles. They famously made fun of John Kerry for "being for it before being against it" or of Michael Dukakis or Jimmy Carter. Conservatives never flip flop because they have deeply held common beliefs.

Well, Donald Trump changed his position on almost everything, usually more than twice. And yet the supposedly principled conservative GOP electorate continued to support him unwaveringly.

Trump also pushed GOP positions to their logical extreme, sometimes to comical effect.

If GOP had climate deniers, Trump went three steps farther and claimed that climate change was "created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive."

If GOP was anti-choice, Trump offered to jail women who had abortion. Which freaked right out the anti-choice folks because that is the easiest way to lose the support of all women on either side of the issue.

And true to form, Trump changed that position three times in one week.

If the Republicans were against immigration, Trump had a quick solution: deport 11 million undocumented immigrants in no time and have wall built across the entire US-Mexico border paid by Mexico.

It was funny, childish and embarrassing at the same time.

But by far his boldest and scariest move was his tweet in the aftermath of Orlando shooting announcing that he will push for stricter gun control. The NRA and GOP held their collective breath.

You see, it is immaterial that he wants the limitation to apply only to people on terrorism lists. NRA has always maintained that no limitation is permissible because once you give in, it becomes a slippery slope. That is why they defended hollow point bullets or automatic assault rifles in the aftermath of school shootings and cop killings.

And they always prevailed.

Within a day of his tweet, a Democratic Senator staged a 14-hour filibuster to bring the issue to vote. He is unlikely to succeed but the GOP will end up publicly defending the indefensible: the terrorists' right to buy arms legally.

I am sure both the NRA, which recently endorsed Trump in glowing terms, and the GOP are simply petrified.

You know where I am going with this, right?

By redefining conservatism in his own image (and succeeding in the process) Donald Trump essentially destroyed the GOP brand.

And he is now their presumptive nominee.

Now, if he becomes the candidate and faces Clinton, win or lose, GOP will never be able to claim that they cannot give in on taxes or abortion or gun control as these are immutable principles that define conservatism.

The Donald questioned them all and exposed them as farcical posturings. If he runs for presidency, the Clinton campaign will hammer every flip-flop, every silly position and every improbable claim and they will damage the GOP brand for years to come.

There is also the question whether Trump can actually win the presidency.

And they know that it is very unlikely.

Before you yell at me "but Orlando and Muslims" let me remind you his many shortcomings.

First, Trump has a constituency problem.

Take women. He has a 20-odd point gap between male and female supporters. And that is not just on abortion but pure misogyny.

What about Hispanics who now make up 12 percent of the electorate?

So far, Hispanic voters have a very negative view of Mr. Trump, a Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey conducted this month shows. Some 68% would back Mrs. Clinton and 20% would back Mr. Trump if the two faced off in the general election, the survey found. Mrs. Clinton’s 48-point advantage among Hispanics is far larger than her 3-point lead among voters overall in the survey.

What is surprising is that there is still some 20 percent willing to vote for a man who called Mexicans rapists and murderers

As for the African American voters,

A staggering 94 percent of black voters view the real estate mogul negatively, as do 89 percent of Latinos, despite his predictions that he will “win the Hispanic vote” in November.

You cannot win the presidency with only the angry and uneducated white males. The numbers, as they say, don't add up.

Granted, Hillary Clinton has an unusually high unfavorable rating (55 percent). But 

A Washington Post/ABC survey released Wednesday shows seven in 10 Americans view the presumptive GOP nominee unfavorably, up 10 points since he announced his candidacy for president. 

There is more.

Trump's life is a treasure trove for Opposition Research.

I am not going to bring up his ex-wives or super model girlfriends and regular stories that doom politicians. I don't need to. Even the financial stuff and business acumen he brags about is toxic.

He went through many bankruptcies and yet miraculously survived them all. There are many unsavory tales in those incidents that are being unearthed as we speak.

His Trump University has just been exposed as being a money trap for poor people, a scam that is being investigated by the New York Attorney General.

There is also the Veterans controversy where he forgot to donate the money he so loudly announced. And tried to cover it up.

Imagine a GOP candidate scamming the veterans.

His tax returns are likely to contain elements that will embarrass him (and that is hard to do) and contradict his previous statements.

While none of these might matter to his angry white male supporters, a man with 70 percent unfavorable rating is unlikely to succeed despite these shortcomings.

In short, barring some unforeseen situation like like FBI indicting her for email server incident, even with her high unfavorables, it is hard to see Clinton losing against Trump.

So put yourself in the the shoes of GOP leadership. If you know that letting Trump run for presidency would (a) destroy the GOP brand and (b) end up in humiliating defeat what would you do?

A better question perhaps: what can they do?

Convention Tricks

In recent weeks, serendipitously,  I am sure, a spate of articles and one book emerged, all arguing that GOP delegates were not bound by the choices made by primary voters. They are supposed to vote their conscience, these pieces claim, if they follow the GOP rules.

The book (Unbound: The Conscience of the Republican Party) is by Curly Haugland, a member of the Republican National Committee and Sean Parnell, a consultant. They point out that, from the beginning, the GOP Convention rules stated that delegates could vote their conscience and this had been the case between 1880 and 1976.

In 1976, the campaign of President Gerald Ford managed to get the convention rule amended to permit binding of delegates as part of a strategy to block former California Gov. Ronald Reagan from getting the nomination. In 1980 this language was removed, and the temporary rules for the 2016 convention include almost exactly the same language as the rule first added in 1880.

Moreover, they say, Trump got 43 percent of the primary votes and he needs to get another 3.5 million vote to make the claim that he won the majority of the primary votes cast.

So if Trump wants to be the Republican nominee, he will have one last sales job of persuading the delegates to nominate him – and this time he'll need a majority, something he hasn't managed so far in caucus and primary votes.

This argument was supported and amplified by David French, a writer for National Review.

He brings forth a Supreme Court decision (Cousins v, Wigoda) that prevents Convention rules (or state rules) to cancel First Amendment rights of delegates.

He also cites the Unit Rule, which states:

No delegate or alternate delegate shall be bound by any attempt of any state or Congressional district to impose the unit rule. A “unit rule” prohibited by this section means a rule or law under which a delegation at the national convention casts its entire vote as a unit as determined by a majority vote of the delegation.

All of this is well and good.

What about all the votes cast during the primary process?

French acknowledges that that the Rule 16(a)(2), adopted in 2013, recognizes state bindings and compels delegates to vote accordingly.

But then he cites Haugland and Parnell who maintain that the rule “will expire upon the start of the 2016 convention and will not be part of the standing rules of that convention.”

All of which means that, if the GOP establishment wants to do something about Trump, they could.

But here is the crux of the matter. David French states that whether GOP delegates vote for or against Trump, it will all be perceived as a choice because it will be.

If Donald Trump does emerge as the nominee of the Republican party, it will not be because anyone forced him on the GOP. It will be because every level of the GOP made a decision that he should represent its principles and values in 2016. No one can hide, and no one can run for cover. The party will decide.

What he is saying that if Trump becomes the actual nominee, this will be on the GOP.

And the party will have to live with that choice.

In other words, a Trump candidacy has no upside but a huge number of downsides for the party.

Do I think that they will dump him at the Convention?

I don't know, but I would not be surprised if they did.

PEGIDA and the True Meaning of Irony

Patriotische Europaeer Gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes which stands for Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West or PEGIDA is a German organization.

Its purpose is clearly stated in its name. They are against Muslims because they say that they cannot be assimilated.

In the last two years, it has been organizing large anti-Muslim rallies which were joined by thousands of Germans.

Recently, the PEGIDA leadership became incensed by an advertising campaign.

Kinder, a famous German chocolate bar manufacturer, known for the Aryan kid pictures on its packaging, committed a horrible sin.

This is the traditional package.

This is the recent package.

Did you notice the problem? 

PEGIDA folks were outraged. Will they stop at nothing, they hollered. Tweets and social media postings blasted the company for pandering to Islamists and immigrants.

It turns out that the pictures were childhood photos of members of the German national soccer team. The one above is Ilkay Gundogan, who plays for Borussia Dortmund and the one below is Jerome Boateng who plays for Bayern Munich.

In other words, these are exactly the kind of kids that PEGIDA is dead set against allowing into Germany. And now they are part of an elite squad. And when they score during the World Cup, Germans will have to cheer them on despite their less-than-Aryan identity.

This is very much like the point Banksy was making with Steve Jobs whose father was a Syrian immigrant.

All of this is ironic enough. 

But do you know why I used the expression "true meaning of irony" in the heading?

PEGIDA has a "19-point manifesto [that] says the movement opposes extremism and calls for protection of Germany's Judeo-Christian culture."

Yes, Judeo-Christian culture. 

Judeo.

You know, the people who needed to be exterminated because they could not be assimilated.

The Donald vs the Chairman

If you are wondering who the Chairman is you are not familiar with American politics. He is the Chairman of Fox News, Roger Ailes.


If Nixon was the architect of the Southern Strategy, Roger Ailes was -according to GOP strategist Ed Rollins- its Michelangelo.

What that means is that he elevated the idea of using white resentment to divide and polarize a society into an art form.

He was already the "go to guy" as a political consultant but he got bored with retail polarization and wanted to move up to wholesale. In 1996, he convinced his buddy Rupert Murdoch to get him a shiny new toy, the Fox News.

The network, at its core, is a giant soundstage created to mimic the look and feel of a news operation, cleverly camouflaging political propaganda as independent journalism.

He applied the tried and true GOP formula to make it into a very effective and profitable tool. And he used himself as the mold.

To watch even a day of Fox News – the anger, the bombast, the virulent paranoid streak, the unending appeals to white resentment, the reporting that’s held to the same standard of evidence as a late-­October attack ad – is to see a refraction of its founder, one of the most skilled and fearsome operatives in the history of the Republican Party. 

It was thanks to him that Koch brothers pet project called Freedom Works was transformed into the Tea Party as we know and love today.

He not only made conservative politics acceptable (even though it kept moving to the right and had no anchor) he also became the referee who decided what conservative was to become the darling of the right.

Until the Donald.

From the get-go Trump adopted an adversarial position vis-a-vis Fox News. It was a typical alpha male posturing. He famously attacked Megyn Kelly in sexist and disparaging terms. He demanded money to appear on Fox News, as he claimed his presence amounted to a rating bonanza. He even boycotted a Fox News debate.

The Chairman responded with virulent coverage of Trump's campaign. He enlisted all the big stars in the GOP firmament to speak out against Trump. They relentlessly accused him of everything under the sun. The same echo-chamber that so successfully destroyed many Democratic candidates like John Kerry or managed to get the House and the Senate back to GOP in 2012, turned against Trump.

And, surprise, surprise, nothing happened.

Trump continued to climb in the polls, won most of the significant primaries and eventually became the presumptive nominee.

In the cynical conservative world, this was a major catastrophe. The invincible Chairman was shown to be vulnerable. This is a man who convinced millions that one of the most conservative Democratic Presidents of all time was in fact a Kenyan Marxist out to destroy America with his extremism. This is a man who could sell any statement or any position no matter how outrageous that is.

The Donald showed that it was no more. If he couldn't destroy a man who says the first thing that comes to his mind only to reverse himself two days later why should anyone fear him.

The magic spell was broken.

Since then you see a huge effort to mend their relationship. As Trump knew he couldn't finance his own campaign (news flash, despite his bombast, he is not that rich), he decided to go to the GOP establishment to ask for their help to raise money.

And they said, sure, but you first go and make it nice with the Chairman.

And they told the Chairman, no more attacking the Donald.

That is why, the other night, Trump was explaining his bimbo tweets to the target of those tweets.

And that is why Kelly, who accused him of sexism in the past, was telling him "you're so powerful" against a backdrop of Central Park.



These are the folks who will block Merrick Garland's nomination claiming the new President should be the one to choose and will vote him in during the lame duck session, if Hilary Clinton wins in November.

The word cynical doesn't even begin to cover them.

But that is why the Chairman is so important. He can make such contradictions disappear and turn cynicism into a moral virtue.

That is why he is the Chairman.

Who Will Be The Next Secretary General of UN?

This is probably not the most pressing political issue for most people and certainly not as interesting as watching Donald Trump driving GOP elites nuts.

However, in one respect, the identity of the next Secretary General (SG) is more important than that of the American President: in an era where alliances are fluid and partnerships are formed and dissolved on an almost daily basis, the UN will either move to center stage or will be completely sidelined.

The first clue about the future direction of the organization will be the identity of the next SG.

There are several traditions that govern the selection of the SG.

First, none of the permanent member states, the so-called P5, i.e., the US, UK, France, China and Russia can field a candidate. This is not an official rule, just a gentleman's agreement.

Secondly, the P5 generally prefer someone from a smaller country. Between Brazil and Burma, they always opt for the latter. That is partly due to the fact that they do not want an SG with the clout of a regional power behind him.

Thirdly, the Security Council tends to avoid ex-Presidents or Prime Ministers. Again, partly because they do not want a strong personality with a solid political constituency at home. If you look at the eight previous Secretaries, there is not a single Prime Minister or President among them.

The fourth informal rule is some type of geographical rotation. Members of the UN are divided into five regional groups. They are:

• the African Group, with 54 member states
• the Asia-Pacific Group, with 53 member states
• the Eastern European Group, with 23 member states
• the Latin American and Caribbean Group (GRULAC), with 33 member states
• the Western European and Others Group (WEOG), with 28 member states, plus 1 member state as observer.

So far, there have been 3 SGs from the WEOG, 2 from the Asia Pacific group, 2 from Africa group (one being Boutros-Ghali, who belonged to the Arab sub-group) and one from GRULAC.

As you can see, there has never been an SG from the Eastern European group. And of course, no woman has ever served as SG. Consequently, early speculations were directed towards women candidate from Eastern Europe.

But geographical rotation is not an iron-clad rule (otherwise, 3 out of 8 SGs would not have come from WEOG) and it was and will be put aside whenever the P5 feel like it.

Candidates

There are eight declared candidates.

Top row (from left):

• Irina Bokova, 63 - Bulgarian politician and director general of Unesco
• Helen Clark, 66 - former prime minister of New Zealand (1999-2008) and current head of the UN development programme
• Natalia Gherman, 47 - Moldovan politician who was deputy prime minister and minister of European integration from 2013-2016
• Vesna Pusic, 62 - Leader of the liberal Croatian People's Party. Served as a first deputy prime minister and minister of foreign and European affairs until January this year

Bottom row (from left):

• Antonio Guterres, 66 - Former prime minister of Portugal (1995-2002) and UN High Commissioner for Refugees (2005-2015)
• Srgjan Kerim, 67 - Macedonian economist and diplomat. Served as Macedonia's foreign minister from 2000-2001 and was president of the 62nd Session of the UN General Assembly from 2007-2008
• Danilo Turk, 64 - Former president of Slovenia (2007-2012). Served as an ambassador to the UN from 1992-2000 and as the UN assistant secretary general for political affairs from 2000-2005
• Igor Luksic, 39 - Former prime minister of Montenegro (2010-2012) and current minister of foreign affairs

Beyond these eight candidates there is talk about Kevin Rudd, the former Australian Prime Minister and Angela Merkel the current German Chancellor.

Starting from that end of the list, in the last year or so there were rumors about Merkel being the perfect candidate and in recent weeks, these speculations intensified quite a bit.

But I can categorically rule her out by using my own list.

Germany is practically a member of the P5 since 2006, as the permanent members wanted to include Germany in their dealing with Iran (the moniker is P5+1). A German SG would go against the spirit of the P5 gentleman's agreement.

Secondly, Germany is a world power and certainly more important than two or three current members of the P5, depending on how you count. No P5 state would want to see the leader of such a powerful nation at the helm of the UN. At least one of them would veto Merkel.

Then there is the principle of choosing someone not quite as high as a Chancellor but rather stick with a former minister or a senior diplomat.

Finally, regardless of the fact that Merkel was born in East Germany, from a geographical rotation perspective, Germany is still part of WEOG. A German SG would mean the 4th SG for that group.

I can also add that Merkel would probably see this as a demotion for herself and never apply for it in a million years.

And to finish off, I doubt that she has the diplomatic skills and patience needed for the job.

Kevin Rudd, check list: important regional power, former PM and wrong geographical membership. And probably zero push from his own country.

If you look at the official male candidates, three of them are ex-Presidents and PM and one is from the wrong group.

And of course, they are not women. As Justin Trudeau said, it is 2016.

For the women candidates, let's go through the list.

Vesna Pusic is a Croat. Croatia has a tainted history with other Eastern European states due to their Ustashe regime, which was a bloody mixture of Roman Catholicism, fascism and Croation ultra-nationalism and they were responsible for the murder of Serbs, Jews, Roma and anybody they didn't like, including fellow Croats.

I don't see a Croat representing Eastern Europe.

Moldovan Natalia Gherman may fit the bill in all respects except for her country's turbulent relations with Russia. As it was part of the Soviet Empire (wedged between Russia and Ukraine) Russia is not happy with its efforts to move closer to the West. A Moldovan as SG of UN would mean a green light to Moldova'a membership to the EU.

Unlikely to succeed and very probably to be vetoed if she climbs up after the first round.

Helen Clark has two problems: one is being a former PM (three-term) and two, belonging to the wrong group. Besides these negatives, she has a fearsome reputation as a dogged and stubborn politician and as such, she might not be ideally suited to facilitate dialogue and diplomacy. Her resume is that of a doer and go-getter.

In fact I can say this: if the P5 powers want someone who will turn the UN into a powerful presence that can vigorously push its principles, she would make a great Secretary General.

The problem is that I doubt that the P5 want a strong UN.

That brings us to Irina Bokova. If you go through my list, she ticks every box.

Most importantly, her tenure at UNESCO was marked by her willingness to listen to member states and to act like their emissary. Upon their urging, she reformed the organization and turned it into a much smaller entity.

If the P5 is interested in a weaker UN that is willing to work for them (rather than standing up to them) then she is clearly the best candidate from any regional group, regardless of gender.

I should also add that she is dialogue-oriented and highly diplomatic and self-effacing. And she is the only candidate who speaks fluently four of the six official UN languages. (English, French, Russian and Spanish)

Apparently, China, Russia and France look warmly on her candidacy and the US and the UK are said to be on the sideline. If you ask me too much has been made of her decision to allow the Palestinian vote (which granted them UNESCO membership) and the American opposition to it.

If you are one of my long time readers you might remember that, at the time, I maintained that the US was aware of the UNESCO membership bid and they encouraged it behind closed doors as a way to further their own plans for the region. So, I am not convinced by the idea that the US might be opposed to her candidacy for that reason.

Consequently, if, as I believe, the P5 is interested in keeping UN as a docile organization that will not make life difficult for them, Irina Bokova has a better shot at this than the rest.

But there are still many things that can go wrong between now and September, such as the resurgence of hostilities between Russia and Ukraine.

In any case, if Mrs. Bokova is selected, you will know what the P5 are thinking about the future direction of the UN.

-----------------
UPDATE:

To bolster my checklist:

Brian Urquhart, one of the first U.N. employees ever hired, wrote in his memoir, “A Life in Peace and War,” that the secretive selection process resulted in “a candidate who will not exert any troubling degree of leadership, commitment, originality, or independence.” John Bolton, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, wrote in his own memoir that his boss, then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, confided to him that the U.S. preferred a weak U.N. leader. “I am not sure we want a strong secretary-general,” he recounted of her private comments.

Is A Perfect Storm Brewing for Erdogan?

In my previous post, I outlined the precarious position Turkey found itself thanks to the misguided and selfish actions of its president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

And I posed the question whether Erdogan can be stopped.

Let's review it together.

Erdogan's polarizing tactics worked well and there are no internal actors left to put up a fight with him. Opposition is fragmented and the main opposition party CHP has never been able to set the agenda or counter Erdogan's discourse effectively. Consequently, the electorate believes that there is no viable alternative to Erdogan.

External actors do not have much leverage as Erdogan seems to have outfoxed them through a number of cynical moves.

Last year, he allowed (perhaps actively encouraged is a better term) a huge refugee exodus towards Europe as a way to blackmail the European Union (EU).

Thousands died in the process but the gambit was successful. Hundreds of thousands reached Europe, threatened the Schengen space and exposed EU's internal divisions.

EU crumbled, offered a sizable bribe to strike a cynical and possibly illegal deal and promised to be silent about Erdogan's strategery.

In fact, the sharp decline in the number of refugees within days of the deal clearly shows the artificial nature of the crisis:

Between March 20 — the day the deal went into effect — and March 26, daily arrivals fell from 930 to 78. On Sunday there were 73 arrivals, according to official figures published by the Greek government.

As for the US, when Erdogan realized that Obama was turning against him he made a u-turn and offered Incirlik airbase as the coalition HQ. He figured that he could participate in sorties against ISIS only to hit Syrian Kurds. He gambled that the Americans might allow some operating leeway for the use of Incirlik.

And they did.

In fact, the only black spot in Erdogan's foreign policy moves aimed at neutralizing his potential opponents was his disastrous chess game and the check mate he suffered after the peculiar jet downing incident.

In the span of a few months, Putin destroyed the oil trade between ISIS and Turkey, stopped the arms and personnel flow from Turkey to ISIS, energized Syrian troops and caused ISIS to lose 22 percent of its territory.

Russia is leaving because Putin is reluctant to risk a confrontation that might pull NATO in but by leaving behind the S400 missiles, heavy artillery and armored vehicles he is still boxing Erdogan in.

The long rumored palace coup whereby the founding members of AKP Bulent Arinc and Abdullah Gul (former Prime Minister and President) were going to form a new political party to challenge Erdogan is a case of too little too late.

While it is true that senior AKP figures have been attacking Erdogan since mid-January, something unheard of in Islamist circles, Erdogan ended up getting the upper hand and silencing them effectively.

Bulent Arinc, former Deputy PM and a smarmy faker of sincerity, criticized Erdogan sharply throughout January and February and he even hinted that he might disclose where the skeletons are buried.

Similarly, Abdullah Gul had a long meeting with Erdogan after which he was reported to have said that he pulled the plug on him (he later denied that).

But nothing came out of these outbursts as Erdogan now controls the media and government contracts. Any criticism is met with a barrage of counter attacks by troll-journalists in the pro-Erdogan media. And given the spoils distributed by Erdogan himself in the form of large government contracts, no media owner or CEOs of large corporation want to displease him.

However, a recent development might turn these disparate elements into a perfect storm that could engulf Erdogan's increasingly autocratic presidency.

Iranian Money Launderer Arrested in the US

This haggard and well-fed man in the picture is Reza Zarrab, Iranian-born and naturalized Turkish businessman who was arrested in Miami last week.

He was indicted by Preet Bharara, the pugnacious US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. The indictment alleges that Zarrab was a key player in the international scheme to help Iran bypass UN and US sanctions and asks for up to 70 year jail sentence and confiscating of his multi-billion dollar assets.

You see, when Iran was pushed out of the SWIFT international money transfer system used by almost all companies in their daily transactions, it had to find a way to sell its oil and import goods. 

Tehran then decided to use a bypass system based on Turkey’s Halkbank. SWIFT was sidelined first by setting up front companies in China. Money was sent to the Chinese bank accounts of these companies from Iran as if they were reimbursements for exports. That money was instantly transferred to front or real companies in Turkey, also as export reimbursements. Gold bought with that money was moved to Iran via Dubai. 

And Iran used those gold bullions to import what it needed, including, I am assuming, hardware for its nuclear program.

Zarrab and Babak Zanjani were the two pillars of this oil-for-gold-to-evade-sanctions arrangement. Zanjani, recently sentenced to death in Iran, handled the Iranian end and Zarrab was in charge of the Turkish side. 

A Turkish investigation showed that he was paying huge sums to the CEO of Halkbank and several Cabinet ministers.

Zarrab, who assumed the Turkish name of Riza Sarraf after acquiring Turkish citizenship, allegedly was running his operation with the cooperation of some Cabinet ministers and their offspring. According to a local allegation, Zarrab was paying the minister of economy, Zafer Caglayan, a commission — that is, a bribe — of 0.3% to 0.4%. Zarrab is known to have paid Caglayan 103 million Turkish lira (some $35 million) and to have paid Halkbank CEO Suleyman Arslan 16 million lira (about $5.67 million).

When the whole thing became public, Erdogan moved swiftly to quash the investigation. He fired or removed all prosecutors, judges and police officers involved in the case. And for good measure, he passed a publication ban to prevent journalists asking question about it.

Despite leaked audio tapes clearly implicating Erdogan in the corruption scandal, he went on to get himself elected President in 2014 and last year, he helped his party get almost 50 percent of the vote in legislative elections. 

This is largely due to the fact that he succeeded in convincing his constituency that, regardless of the validity of the allegations, the Gulen sympathizers were trying to get rid of him and, as I mentioned in my previous post, nothing terrifies the Islamists and the conservative coalition behind Erdogan more than the massive backlash that they will very likely face after his departure. 

Now, if Zarrab decides to cooperate with the US authorities, as I suspect he will for a reduced jail sentence and a portion of his assets, the pro-Erdogan media will simply claim that the US government is in cahoots with Fethullah Gulen, the moderate Islamist preacher who supported Erdogan from the beginning and provided most of the technocrats that assisted his successive Cabinets.

In fact, they have already begun.

The pro-government newspaper Sabah used Twitter to share a doctored photograph that supposedly showed him [Bharara] collecting an award from a charity linked to Mr Gulen, the President’s arch-foe.

Erdogan, who survived worse crises, would not be worried under normal circumstances. He would assume that the US would not push the Zarrab investigation too far, as Turkey remains an important player in the region. And if unpleasant revelations surfaced, he could always use his almost total control over media to block them and to convince his supporters to stick with him. 

There are two problems with this normally reasonable calculation.

Contrary to what new Turkish Twitter fans of Bharara think, this is not a move directed against Erdogan. In my opinion, it is the first critical move to strengthen Rouhani's administration in Iran and to force a significant reform of the Islamic Republic.

Zanjani and Zarrab were helping Ahmadinejad's conservative administration to evade sanctions. All the corruption and money laundering that went with it are their problem. Not only them but the religious clergy and the Revolutionary Guard, who supported them, are implicated.

Since taking office, Rouhani has systematically sought to discard corrupt remnants of the Ahmadinejad era and also counterbalance the IRGC and other hard-line elements. Indeed, in the past two years, Zanjani has been sentenced to death for allegedly embezzling oil money, businessman Mahafarid Amir Khosravi has been hanged for defrauding Iran’s banking system and Ahmadinejad’s First Vice President Mohammad Reza Rahimi has begun serving a 5-year prison term for bribing members of parliament.

In that context, I view the Bharara indictment as Obama Administration helping Rouhani curb the power of the conservative clergy and transform Iran into a more moderate force.

The confrontation is already happening.

While Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei emphasized the “resistance economy” in his March 20 Nowruz speech, Rouhani underscored the necessity of constructive engagement with the world.

Zanjani could not point fingers as he is in Iran and that would only hasten his execution. But Zarrab will. And when he exposes the scheme, he will implicate not only Ahmadinejad but also, by sheer necessity, Erdogan and his party.

This context could prove much more problematical for Erdogan than a simple corruption scandal. He has been claiming that Turkey, and therefore he was the leader of the Sunni alliance in the Middle East. As Iran is the bete noire of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and every other Sunni country in the region, a Zarrab confession would mean that Erdogan was, Allah forbid, helping the Shia.

This would have serious repercussions inside the core Islamist behind AKP as well. As I keep repeating, Sunni Muslims hate Shia more than the Jews, Christians (as they are People of the Book after all) and even perhaps the atheist infidels.

It is a big deal.

When that happens, Abdullah Gul and dissidents within AKP might surface as a solution that is acceptable to everyone.

Think about it.

What is it that everyone says is the main problem with replacing Erdogan and AKP? Why, they have no alternative. CHP is a joke, MHP is a bigger joke and HDP, well, they are an ethnic party. AKP is serious, they are the governing party. Look what they have achieved in the last 14 years.

Well, what if the other founding member of AKP were to take over. 

He and Arinc and Celik were part of the success story, right? In fact, these were the folks who distanced themselves from Erdogan as soon as he began acting crazy. They are clean and they were not part of the Zarrab scheme. They can take over and return to the pre-2013 era of stability and economic prosperity with no polarization. 

The non-Islamist would be relieved as they had been looking at Erdogan as someone who could not be toppled. There were opinion polls from two years ago indicating that CHP voters would support Gul as President.

The Islamist core group would be happy as a clean and pleasant Islamist would come to power. No backlash and no secular government to replace AKP.

The Kurds might extend a hopeful hand that they would assume that Gul and his people would grab.

And the business people would join the party seeing a period of stability and prosperity.

Externally, EU, Russia and the US would rejoice.

Regional actors would be pleased. That improbably includes Iran, Syria and the Sunni powers. Which tells you how isolated Erdogan really is.

In that scenario, Erdogan would be all alone. 

Perfect storm indeed.

We'll see.