 Hi everybody, I'm Chris Lethem and this is another episode of The Economy and You and today we're going to be talking with a guest who's a correspondent, he's been spending some time in Turkey and we're going to talk about some of the issues that are going on in that part of the world because it's, you know, I think the impact of what's going on in Istanbul, in Turkey and their neighbors, what's going on with Syria and so on, I think it deserves commentary and some discussion. Then I think today we've got the perfect guest. Today's guest is Russell Kohler. Russell is visiting with us today through Skype, through technology, of course that's what we do so well here at ThinkTechAway and so I want to welcome Russell to the show. Thanks Chris, it's great to be here. Nice to have you Russell. So anyway you, you lived in Turkey for a while. I did. Yes and now you're currently, where are you currently, where are you today? Currently I'm living in Washington D.C. I've been, I've moved there from Istanbul, Turkey, having worked there this past summer and I've lived there for about a year, a year and a half, two years ago so I spent a couple of years in the immediate region and so it's a great place, very interesting, very exciting but I'm glad to be back. Well Turkey certainly is an area where East meets West. It's positioned just west of the Caspian Sea and provides the only real outlet to the, what do they call that, the sea there, where Russia connects? The Black Sea, yeah okay there it is, the Black Sea. I don't know why I have a hard time remembering the Black Sea but anyway it's, it is a land of contrasts over there, right? I mean you've got, you've got a country that's supposed to be practicing democracy but we have a president who currently now in Turkey has, he's been playing, playing a new, new game and we saw a recent coup and so I'd like to get some of your feedback on what do you think or what do you think he goes from here now? Absolutely, I mean you're absolutely right to point out that Turkey is a country of different contrasts. It's a country with a very tumultuous history and it's really a country that you know it lends itself to being really the epitome of pluralism. There are dozens if not a hundred different cultures, religious sects within Turkey and you know the governments of the past have reflected that based upon practicing policies of intense secularism so as to not create or intensify sectarianism within the country. Now unfortunately this, the current government has been utilizing and propagating conservative policies, consolidating its political power within the country and really legitimizing its actions through this more Islamic ideology. Well there is, yeah there is that sort of Islamic ideology that has been a part of Turkey's you know culture for a very long time and now that we see Erdogan and his policies and the impact of his policies of course is the pushback that we had with the coup d'etat or the attempt at the coup d'etat. We've seen thousands of people being arrested and I think we're seeing a further dissolution of what we would call part of a secular democratic structure, whereas you have an independent court system, you have a free and functioning legislature, you have a military that answers to the government but most importantly to a citizen government. So the question is is that was this coup, does this help him more than hurt him from where you look at it today? Is this something now that is going to make it harder for him to, or easier for him to dismantle the democratic structures? That's a great question. I mean for a long time since 2003 when, or 2002 rather, when the AKP, the Justice and Development Party within Turkey, Erdogan's party came into power in 2003 when he became Prime Minister, there was a real struggle for this new conservative party to overtake and eventually dissolve the military's political power within the country and over time along with some mock really pretty ridiculous trials based upon fraudulent evidence and really to destroy the power of the military in the country, they've been able to do that and this now, this new coup d'etat which is one of four that have happened throughout Turkey's history. So this is a country that's not, it's not a regular development but it's certainly, you know, it's not absent of this, of this happening but this coup, it's what seems to have happened is this has given him sort of the final, sort of final justification. Exactly, yeah, the final justification was allowed him justification to really take the gloves off and go after his political enemies once again, wherever they may be, whoever they may be. Now is this necessary? Is this necessary because of what's going on in the surrounding area? I mean is it an imperative that he needs to take sort of take on a totalitarianistic bent in order to protect Turkey from what's going on with ISIS and some of the concerns or considerations with the sort of the recent empowerment of the Kurds because we've seen the Kurds who were previously part of the PKK and considered a terrorist organization, they're now taking and pushing back against ISIS, I think quite effectively and as you were saying when we talked earlier that they have sort of solidified their position east of the Euphrates, is it important or does Erdogan see this as a part of or a rationale for taking and putting himself into a more a a dictator type role? You know I think given what's happening in the region and more so than not what's happening within Turkey itself, this has given him especially the justification for this further political consolidation. Now this has happened in the past, in 2013 we had the massive Gezi Park protests which really were the first time the Turkish population had risen up against Erdogan, President Erdogan's policy at that time, Prime Minister Erdogan and then of course you had in December 2013 you had the corruption scandal protests which really that was the final straw between Fethullah Gulen who was apparently the leader of Kudatah according to the Turkish government and you know this has been sort of an ebb and flow over time with President Erdogan. Well Erdogan is blaming this Muslim cleric that's been living in the United States. Now is this guy just a this cleric is he just sort of the goat and again further justification of Erdogan's actions or is this guy really, does he really have an interest, has there been any proof that he is in fact driving a different agenda to get rid of Erdogan? Well there's definitely a tense relationship between the two, you know they were former allies, political allies, former ideological allies during the time of the AKP's rise during the time of you know the type Erdogan's political rise but you know eventually when it when it did fall apart the two did become very bitter and use any in all means to diminish each other's power within the country. It sounds like an ugly divorce. Exactly yeah yeah yeah but going you know whether or not Fethullah Gulen was actually a part or a main plotter within this this coup d'etat it is you know analytically hard to believe it's when we consider you know looking at autocracies and authoritarian governments you know whenever there is the need for a distraction especially in times of crisis the first thing you do is externalize the threat and more or less what ended up happening was a very disgruntled group within the military had actually organized itself and planned this coup within the actual institution itself not necessarily had any form back and it's actually come out that these military officials including actually the the commander of injury base which is the air base we use to strike right siri and striking off they'd actually use WhatsApp to to plan this this entire operation and the reason for that is the end-to-end encryption and so to think that you would have now a outside actor from the United States communicating that's a lot of technicalities that would be hard to believe in an operation really seem to be insular and seem to be military to your right right well but is it plausible that he may have had some role to to play in this even if it was just you know what a role of simply you know cheerleading these the military's attempt to take power because the military has had power for quite a long time they've always had a very fairly political military and and they have been sort of maybe maybe they were given too much authority perhaps he was concerned about them having too much clouds absolutely I mean ever since the founding of the Turkish Republic and the death of Mustafa Kemal of the Turk the you know the father of Turk the first president of Turkey he had really given the role to the protection of the Turkish constitution not to the political leaders but to the Turkish the institution of the military in Turkey right and so they had taken that role up and had really executed that role quite a few times now in the in the past in the last six seven decades so do you think we've seen the last last we've seen the last attempt at a coup by the military you know that's a that's an interesting question because from talking to from hearing talking to studying all the experts on Turkey uh not a single person would have would have predicted this could have happened this was probably the biggest surprise of any real global development that that could have been because this was a this was a country seemingly prosperous from the outside that had gotten control over its institutions its government had already started to purge people over the last five or six years or so and you would have expected that well this sort of level of planning you know given the given the political consolidation would not have been possible but that's that's quite amazing yeah well you know when we come back I want to talk a little bit about some of the current things that are happening today there was an announcement by Russia that they had taken out Abu Muhammad al-Adnani which we are saying uh no that they weren't responsible for that but we think that we were so we're going to take a commercial break and we'll be right back and let's talk about some of the current other current events going on in the region okay this is Hawaii the state of clean energy a wonderful show we do uh four to four thirty every single Wednesday and the progenitors of this show uh Sharon Moriwaki race darling to my left so how's it going how's it going Sharon do you like the show I love the show and I hope everybody watches the show and joins in and gives us their comments on clean energy yeah every week every week with incredible guests and topics and discussion and mostly candor this month is all renewable energy and next month we're going to look at procurement each month we have a different series uh and so it's it's going very well learn so much we keep the public so well advised the best we can right what do you think well I think this is the place where it's happening this is where we discuss the latest of what what is going on in the energy world and it's a great place to be a great place to meet some new people that are into the energy world that uh we uh we haven't talked to you before so I'm happy to be here okay this is a you know energy is the biggest thing happening in hawaii where they realize that it's not going to affect all of our lives is affecting all of our lives and it's like a million things are happening in energy how could you possibly understand what's happening unless you are informed this is your way this is the deal hawaii the state of clean energy every wednesday four o'clock right join us i knew you'd say that and hey hi i'm brisley the man we're back here with the economy and you at think tech hawaii uh today's guest um we've been talking to rustle polar rustle is in washington dc so this is sort of one of those sort of weird and wonderful shows that we do with think tech where we actually have an interview with somebody over skype um skype still has his challenges but we i i think it's always interesting when we have an opportunity to gauge people outside of hawaii um and rustle thank you for being on the show today we're you know one of the things we're talking about is is uh is some of the current activities that are going on and turkey's role you know turkey um is probably no lover of asad syrians president asad and we're seeing lots of activity going on of course isis has made a move into that region um in their attempt to create a uh a caliphate is a caliphate i think the word is caliphate to create a caliphate and uh and then there's been a lot of pushback and we've got a lot of different players in the field today right there on turkey's border we've got um you've got fsa we've got the curds we've got the russians of course who um who are supporting al-asad we've got the iranians apparently the iranians are are in the middle of this battlefield as well over turkey and are over syria and so how is this impacting how is this impacting turkey and turkey in terms of their economics in terms of what they're doing politically um what is the fallout from all of this absolutely that's a great question and you know turkey you know other than syria which of course is has been the greatest victim and the syrian people have been the greatest victim of this horrific civil war oh sure turkey turkey has has probably been the second greatest victim within all this and the reason for that is with the um the intensification of the of the war of the involvement of outside actors and the inclusion of course of of more advanced weaponry more and more people being pushed out of syria and leaving and run and running between syria and more and more of those people if not i believe turkey now has almost three million refugees within its borders and so you know over the last four years for a long period of time turkey had actually been paying and financing the the housing and really the asylum of those refugees um itself and really been fitting uh fitting the bill but there was sort of turkey was a bit of a conduit though for those people who wanted to go fight either against or for isis their their border was rather fluid for quite some time i think it's only recently that they've started to tighten up their border to mitigate um the opportunity for people to come in and out of out of uh southern border exactly and you know i was you know a couple months ago i was out of at a briefing regarding the syrian refugee situation there was a a former turkish national police official who had actually been the director of their border security the national security and he had actually stated that you know it's difficult to close down a border at this time the united states was telling us you know requesting turkey you need to shore up your your war security and he said you know to the audience that you know it's difficult to shore up your border security when it's a government policy not to do so yeah um and and it had been that way for a couple years which was turkey was allowing these these fighters and these volunteers to move through this territory in order to bolster the numbers and the ranks of syrian rebel forces uh of course many of those as we now know ended up fighting for isis many of those ended up fighting for al-musra um for turkey you know they've not been supportive of isis or al-musra in any any way or any fashion in any financing or or security or or any any of those aspects thereof but um they are very supportive of specific turkman groups within syria and wanted the border to be open so that way a very easy flow of supplies could go back and forth well that's interesting because you know you get a collateral consequence of having allowing supplies to go through is that you allow people to go through as well and i would it would seem to me that this has exacerbated the situation on some level because if supplies are going through that could also mean that military arms are passing through absolutely and you know historically the turkish syrian border you know is a is a place for smumbers the turkish syrian border has always been a place whereby the pkk and moved its fighters back and forth across the border the pyd which is the syrian northern the northern syrian Kurds they moved back and forth across the border and so historically this border is extremely difficult to manage extremely difficult to secure nonetheless and so securing it in any way or any fashion is is a monumental task unfortunately it seems like over the past couple years there have been no political will to do so because it really was the agenda in order to support these specific so now we know that russia's president putin has been has been sort of snuggling up to iran lately what do you think is the motivation behind this and i think people would like to know i mean this is sort of the dynamic that's going on in that region is that we're now seeing turkey which has been a nato a member of nato for quite some time now sort of cozying up to russia and i guess the thing that if i would were somebody wanted to understand these issues is is why would they want to have a titan or or a an improved relationship with russia at this point you're right and it's a very complicated situation it's one of those instances where two states compartmentalize their you know their their problems and their you know their periods of cooperation for instance as you know we briefly mentioned you know we while we cooperate or wish to cooperate with russia on you know within syria we don't cooperate with them within ukraine and so it's one of those it's one of those issues specifically for turkey for a long period of time that they had been able to manage their disagreements with russia regarding regarding bashar all of syria but also have a burgeoning trade and economic relationship between each other between their two countries unfortunately the the term from all that was note this past november the downing of the russian fighter jet in turkish airspace that's what really broke the relationship for a long period of time between two countries that really were looking to align their interest economically and regionally um fortunately or unfortunately um it's seen exactly it seems as though they've as you as you said they've started to restart this new relationship and the reason for that for both parties is you know both are hurting financially both are hurting economically both are hurting politically uh even though Putin has uh very much politically consolidated his country he still is a man that has personalized politics and he always needs to seem strong he needs political interests the same for regent ty bird along in turkey but and so but there are also russia still has an issue too if they want to be able to move goods in and out of uh in and out of the black sea they have to go through istanbul absolutely yeah absolutely so it's really important it's an imperative for them to maintain a working relationship with with the turks exactly and you know as as again as we spoke earlier the um russia phone the russian atomic agency is actually helping build and construct a nuclear power plant uh the akku plant in southern turkey which it will provide a base power supply for pretty much all the southern turkey and on of course very low rates because of the state-owned industry um there along with that we have the new south stream pipeline which is has been installed but will most likely be restarted which will be a a russian natural gas pipeline going through the black sea into northern turkey and then to assemble which will supply the european union and so there there are many uh there's a few uh issues of disagreement where there are many possibilities for cooperation between these two countries what that means specifically for united states or what that specifically means for uh the region as a whole is is really unknown at this point do you think that this is a foreshadowing of perhaps losing turkey as part of the the european union uh do you think that that could be a potential fallout at some point it's i along with along with certainly the um i think that the european union would would welcome any any possibility for turkey's um prosperity and turkey's ability to right the ship unfortunately more so than not it it's it's been the reaction by the erdogan government of the latest coup d'etat in um detaining tens of thousands of people purging the country of of political enemies um that has really uh put a uh put a wrench in the in in that process it sort of gives off a smell of something like north korea i think that the sort of same sort of fragrant uh of what we've we've been seeing in north korea lately um yeah it's and what would with amazing is that turkey over the last 10 years have had the worst record of a press meteorite in the entire world um and this is a country that considers itself a a socialist democracy yeah considers itself of course um even more so than north korea when it comes to uh uh clamping down on press media freedoms because well germans don't really go to to know pretty well but they think they generally work out very well but yeah but they go to turkey yeah and they find themselves many times in prison beaten find uh or fire well rustle i want to thank you for being on the show today um it was very interesting doing this over skype i hope next time you make it to hawaii we can actually do a live interview and bring you into the studio but i want to thank you for for coming on think tech away and being my guest on the show today i think uh it's a it's an area of the world that deserves observation and again thank you thank you chris it's great to be okay aloha and everyone i want to say aloha to you and uh hopefully we'll see you again right here back on think tech hawaii in two weeks with the economy news thank you