 And we're talking about, uh, Recept, and Turkey is spelled T-U-R-K-I-Y-E, right? Okay, and we're going to talk about that with, uh, Tim Epicella and Chuck Crumpton. We're going to try to find out, A, what's going on in Turkey, and how that affects Russia and the EU, and how it affects the United States. Because, um, you know, these days we live in a flat world. Thank you for being here. Let's talk about Turkey. Tim, what about Erdogan? Can you give us a, like, a preachy about who he is, where he came from, what's the deal? Can't tell you much about where he came from other than the country that we're discussing, but I can't tell you that, like, uh, many autocrats, he has the desire to be in control, um, not necessarily welcoming democratic principles, particularly on how the government is run, uh, like dictators, or would-be dictators, has a high sense of insecurity and paranoia. Um, he is still tracking down those that he perceives as responsible for a would-be coup attempt many years ago. Um, that, that, um, Ernest of tracking the, the guilty down, or the would-be guilty, has led for him to not allow Sweden to become part of one of the NATO members. He's accusing Sweden of being, um, harboring, uh, Kurds that, uh, were involved or could, could potentially have knowledge about the, uh, the coup attempt in Turkey. And, um, he has done basically very oppressive, uh, tactics against people of his own society, um, journalists, uh, people that would speak out, uh, critics, um, certainly anyone of the LGBTQ, um, population, he's really clamped down on them. And then to top it off, he has some really bizarre ideas about how to run an economy. Right now, Turkey, I believe, is sitting around 40% inflation rate, uh, thankfully to, due to, uh, an artificial reduction of interest rates. And, and you can't just artificially lower rates because you want success during your, your term. Uh, that leads to bad things and that bad thing is inflation. We'll talk about the election in a minute, Chuck, but let's, let's talk about the autocracy thing here. The Purge that he had a few years ago that went well before the election and he was brutal about that. And a lot of people lost their jobs and a lot of people had to leave the country of Turkey. And if you try to cast Turkey as a Western country, sometimes you have a problem with that. Remember, it straddles both sides. You know, it has West and East and the boss person at one bridge, you know, divides the country and maybe the world, you know, that that's where the silk road went right there. And so, um, you have to see him as a guy who is straddling many sides. Okay. But at the end of the day, he's an autocrat. He likes purges. He hates the Kurds and he hates the Syrians now. Um, and take all that of two decades of power and, and you begin to wonder what, what side of the phosphorus is Turkey really on? But how much an autocrat is he? Well, Erdogan is beginning his third decade in power. He was prime minister from 2003. He became president in 2014. He's now won his third five year term should be his last, as I understand under Turkish law. Also, his health is not that great. Uh, so there are people and machinations in work to, uh, prepare to replace him potentially before that five year term is up. But he's got a lot to deal with. And so power is essential. And the conservative faction that backs him agrees with that because he's been using the power consistently with their preferences against Kurds for Islamists, squashing down opponents. The guy most likely to beat him in this election wound up with a two year prison term, thanks to his influence over the courts in Turkey. So it's, it's a long way and moving farther away from anything approaching democratic features and toward autocratic. The perception of his support group is he needs that power in order to be effective. And again, it's kind of like the mega Republicans here. Hey, it's, it's an enemy's us versus them approach to governance rather than a bipartisan collaborative consensus building approach to government. And that's what autocrats do. And they have scapegoats, like the Kurds, like the Syrians. And, you know, it creates a hate and divisiveness. And then you use that in order to achieve power. One of the interesting elements, by the way, about hate in Turkey is the Armenians, you know, the Armenian genocide of 1915. And going way back, Turkish government decided to do a propaganda campaign. And there's a movie about this, you know, called Intent to Destroy. This came out, we reviewed it earlier this week. The Turkish government decided that it was going to deny the genocide in Turkey of the Armenians. Now 1.5 million Armenians were killed brutally, intentionally, they vulnerable, they had no defense. And the propaganda was that they were killed because they were real troublemakers. Really, a small child, troublemaker, and the women and the old people, they're troublemakers. Is that why you killed them? Anyway, 1.5. And what troubles me about Erdogan is that he continues the propaganda on that, that is to deny the genocide of the Armenians. It's really extraordinary. And it helps him, I guess, or he thinks it helps him as an autocrat to, you know, have these continuing positions that enunciate, hey. And so anyway, going into it, it was kind of weak, Kim, wasn't he? He had some trouble. The vote that was taken last weekend was a runoff. Can you give us a thumbnail of what happened, what was his weakness, and why did he not achieve, why did he not prevail in the original vote? Why did he have to go to a runoff? I think you can attribute that to existing criticism of his form of government, oppressive form of government. But I think recently you had to examine how all these buildings collapsed during their earthquake. And clearly there was shortcuts around permits, inspections of permits, once the work was done, that structural integrity was not maintained when these buildings were put together. And that is a reflection on his government. Again, the buck stops with him. And when you are accepting perhaps bribes to a short circuit to proper structural inspections, and things are getting built without proper plan review, you have what you have in Turkey and buildings that should have been able to stand did not. And as a result, thousands and thousands of people were killed. And I don't think that really sits well for the popularity of any leader that this kind of thing happens under their leadership. Are you suggesting corruption? Absolutely. So one very interesting article, Chuck, that appeared in the Times was the people who voted for him seemed to be on the religious side. As I mentioned, Turkey is divided. On the west side of the Bosphorus, it's like European. And on the east side, it's like Middle Eastern. And the Middle Eastern means Muslim. And the article in the Times said, thank goodness for the women, because he had courted the women. And he got the women to vote for him. But the put note to that is the women who voted for him were Muslim. They were on the east side, so to speak, and they were in great number because he has been courting them. He used his power. He used the propaganda machine to achieve success in the runoff election. After all, an autocrat could always get the votes if he plays it right. And so I think that's what happened here. Do you have any sense of who voted for him and why they voted for him and why he prevailed? And then, of course, why he jailed his adversary? Well, it all fits together. I mean, the puzzle pieces form a pattern. And you've raised a really good point. Turkish scholars, at least independent ones, have indicated that Erdogan has for some time controlled over 90% of the media. If the only information getting out, particularly to rural areas, which have been subjected to exactly the same things that Tim talks about, the earthquakes, the building collapses because of shoddy construction and the failure to institute and implement standards, all of those things, if they don't know there's a choice, then the only choice left to them is the one that the media says is the only way to save Turkey. It's kind of like the Trump line, I'm your savior. Put me in power and I will set everything right and I'm the only one that can do it. The streets. I want to tell you a story about the streets. Ten years ago, I was in Turkey. I was a tourist. And one day, there was a protest. It was a very peaceful protest in Taksim Park, which was two or three blocks away from my hotel. And in Taksim Park, they were protesting with the women and the children and the balloons and the baby strollers, that kind of protest, right? That Erdogan wanted to build a shopping center there and they really rather have a park. It's that same autocratic thing. I will decide and I will do it. And so they protested and that's on day one. It was very peaceful with the balloons and everybody having a picnic. On day two, he had his police in there with crunches. On day three, he had his police and each time he accelerated, it soared the crowd. Day two with the crunches, more people showed up, not less. And the baby strollers were no longer there. And that now became much more serious. I was there. I was in Turkey when this happened. Day three, it was no longer crunches. It was tear gas. Day four was rubber bullets and so forth. And each day it accelerated because he was determined to squash the protest in the street. And I think we can learn how autocrats work from what happened there. At the end of the day, he beat them good and they left back some of the park. And I don't know if there's a shopping center there, but I doubt this park. In any event, Tim, Chuck mentioned the name Trump here. I think it's worth dwelling on that. There was an article also in one of the papers I read to say that this is reminiscent of Trump. Erdogan is reminiscent of Trump. And the point the article made was that he had a terrible record. He had a bad record with the economy. He had a bad record in civil and human rights. He had done so many things that were ineffectual and damaging to the country and the people. And yet he won. And the proposition is, for an autocrat, it doesn't matter what your policies are. It doesn't matter if you have no policies. You can still win. That was the point of the article. Do you agree with that? Is there really a comparison between Erdogan and Trump? Well, it's not just Erdogan. Let's take two steps back and look at the characteristics of a would-be dictator. And they're all as you've described. But here's the thing. They like to rub shoulders and elbows with other dictators. No doubt Trump had an influence on Erdogan. But more importantly, Erdogan had an influence on Trump. It's basically a cycle of autocrat characteristics. And who did Trump always praise? Kim Jong-un, Putin. I mean, every dictator that you can think of, they came up as words of praise and glory for Donald Trump. And that's just why, because there's so few dictators out there that they have to rely on one other. It's kind of like a club. It's like a fraternity club. And by God, they belong in it. And our former president still is a member. Yeah, very troublesome. And it seems so clear, because Erdogan gets along with Victor Orban in Hungary, another autocrat gets along with... I mean, he's really part of that club. You're absolutely right, Kim. He gets along with Vladimir Putin in Russia. Well, by the way, what's two countries are keeping Sweden from going into NATO, Hungary and Turkey? Right. And why is that? Why is that on the superficial level, and why is it in reality? Why? Because he is a vindictive personality. He believes that these people in Sweden are harboring their terroristic tendencies and he wants them turned over. Once they're turned over, they won't see the light of day the next day. They'll be shot or never to be seen again. And Sweden is doing everything they can not to be part of that murder. And this is what's holding up the passage of Sweden. I think the only leverage the United States has is that Turkey wants a bunch of F-16 fighter jets and parts for their aging fighter fleet. And that is the leverage the United States has. And most likely, that will win the day to allow Sweden, at least from the Turkey side, authority to become part of NATO. Hungary is a different story. Yeah, it is. And Erdogan says, oh, I'm opposing Sweden's entry because there's courage there. And they're my enemy. And they're a hated enemy. And not only during Erdogan's term, but as you suggested, we're going back to the early 1900s, the late 1800s. This is a called the Rwanda, you know, Hutus versus the Tutsis. I mean, they are absolutely hated as a population than anywhere you could find in the world. What is revealed, though, is that he makes the argument that Sweden should not be permitted because Sweden is sheltering Kurds. But Viktor Orban and Hungary, they don't give a rip about the Kurds. They've got nothing to do with Kurds. Part of the fraternal club. It's the club. It's absolutely the club. So, you know, I'm in trouble about this. And I wonder what the dynamic is. If Trump got back in office, Erdogan would be a hero for him. So would Vladimir Putin, by the way, just add that. And so you have, you know, serious foreign policy issues around Erdogan and the United States. And Chuck, you know, what should the United States do? Should it provide the military weapons or provide the F-16 parts to help Erdogan? It has encouraged Erdogan or tried to get Erdogan to not sidle up to Russia. But I don't think that's worked at all. The United States has the opportunity to push on this, should it? I think you have to give the Biden administration credit for one thing that has been a strength of Joe Biden's for many, many years. He picks some pretty bright, knowledgeable David Halberstam best of the brightest people, particularly in his foreign policy work. Maybe not so much in a domestic but in foreign policy. And one of the things that's clear about Turkey is that their key economic relationship is actually with the EU. They need to try and play Russia off against EU and the US and the West to the extent possible. But they're very limited because EU is their primary trading partner. And their economy is in serious trouble. They're not only at 44% now, they were over 85% last year inflation rate. And artificially keeping the interest rates low, any economist will tell you that ain't going to work. So there will be coming and most of the experts are saying inflation is going to continue to increase, unemployment is going to soar and Turkey's economy is going to continue to take major, major hits. In fact, after Erdogan's election, the Turkish lira continued to go down against the US dollar. So to the extent that Biden's team is putting its chips on and with the European team, that's a smart move that in the end, whether it's Finland or even Sweden, the pretext stuff is going to have to fall away because the economic need for Turkey with the EU is too overwhelming. He can't put that at risk. Well, there was another article, Tim, about these problems that Chuck describes, the economic problems, the social problems, the problems that took place on Erdogan's watch, including the earthquake and construction problems, they're not gone. None of that is gone. And so he slid in on the runoff by a thin margin. But these problems are still there. And the Times was speculating on what is the future of Erdogan the next time around. Is he going to be able to hang on to this given the possible decline of the country? Well, he would be the first autocrat to run a country into the ground. And I would say that if he's trying to apply the lipstick on a pig approach for his economy, and what is that? He's bringing in, and he brought them in before, a new finance minister, I think his name is Sid One, or Sid Yen. But he's an ex-Wall Street guy. He worked for UBS. And I can't remember the bank he worked for in London. But he's a Wall Street guy. And he asks actually some fairly good principles to apply, which are in direct opposition to the artificial and to maintain artificial low interest rates. So he's being brought in again. But really, it's just window dressing. And he's a figurehead. And thinking that will buy time and maybe things will turn around. But it won't. So there it is. Is an autocrat's approach to try to fix a problem that he's not willing to fix? Well, what it suggests is he's going to continue to do these power things, as autocrats do, because he's losing power, or he's worried about losing power. Well, it's all about the show and the propaganda. And unfortunately, this guy has a lot of credibility, but he won't have much credibility much longer if he's just the window dressing for the economy. And trying to relieve people's fears that the economy is getting worse, because they've installed him as the finance minister. Yeah, there was a piece about how he didn't listen to the finance minister at all anyway. Bringing the window dressing, yeah. Yeah. Well, he's got two other problems that are out of control. One, of course, is the earthquake destruction. I mean, over 50,000 people were killed. The estimated conservative estimate of the cost of reconstruction is about 4% of Turkey's entire GDP, with a failing economy with inflation over 44%, and dependence on European and Western trading relations. How is he going to maintain that? In addition, they've got over 5 million refugees, most of them Syrian, but a lot of Afghan as well. That's out of control. He's going to have to construct transitions and residences. He's promising to construct hundreds of thousands of homes for the Syrians to incentivize them to move back to their country. Where's the funding and the support for this going to come? Sorry, Chuck, to interrupt, but I believe he is getting money from Russia. Well, that's a good segue to Russia. Chuck, I wanted to ask you about the Russian relationship here. Why exactly does he support Putin? Is it the club? Is that what it is? Or does he have some real economic interest in being close to Russia? And Russia, vis-à-vis the United States, is really not in a position to help him that well, but he seems to be siding with Russia in the Ukraine matter, which is the biggest issue in Europe. Why is he doing that? Well, I think we have to look back at his relations with the EU, because economically the EU is in a very dominant leverage position. Politically, which is the only cards that Erdogan has to play, his only leverage back is to try and play Russia off against the EU and the US and to attempt to build relations with Putin and with Russia that will provide him at least some level of alternative, some threat of a plan B in dealing with the EU. Otherwise, he has no leverage at all. We had an Israeli on the show years ago that he left me with these words to never forget that Turkey is the capstone of the Middle East. It is a large part of Western countries sitting there at the top of the Middle East. And, you know, this point about the economy, Tim, makes me feel that it cannot continue to be the capstone of the Middle East. It must have less influence all the time, and that means influence to make peace, influence to do trade, to, you know, avoid the incursion of its own borders. There's a certain amount of chaos going on because Turkey is not the capstone anymore of the Middle East. And, you know, and let me tell you a short story and see if that fits in any way. When I first arrived in Hawaii, I was in the Coast Guard, and one of the issues across my desk was a Turkish naval ship that had permission to tie up on Battleship Row and Pearl Harbor, and they did. But shortly after they arrived here, the captain of the Turkish ship contacted the Navy and asked if he could hang a man who had violated Turkish law. And he wanted to know if it was okay to do that on Battleship Row and Pearl Harbor. And we collaborated in that decision, and the decision was no, no, you can't hang a man from the yard arm on Battleship Row and Pearl Harbor. So the Turkish captain said, okay, thank you very much. And in the morning, without hesitation, the ship steamed out three miles outside of, you know, territorial waters, and they hung the man and came back all by nine o'clock in the morning. Now, it tells you something. It tells you something about their willingness to adhere to our morality, to our conventions. It tells you something about Turkey. And don't forget, Tim, don't forget Midnight... Midnight Express? Midnight Express. What happened in that case? I mean, the kind of problem with human rights and civil rights and some of this is going to devolve into atrocities, I think, if it hasn't already. Where does it go from here? Well, let me just comment on, you know, what does every strong man have in common? What does every dictator have in common? How do they rise to power? It's usually over unchecked, uncontrolled immigration. That the people are, you know, the people that live in that country, it's too much. We didn't ask for this. And now, either our culture is being usurped or economically, we're being thrown into an adverse situation. That's how every autocrat gets his toehold, foothold into the office of prime minister or president. In the case of Erdogan, I don't think he's any different. And his hatred for the Kurds, and he's been able to, you know, scapegoat them and castigate them as evil. That has a certain influence with human nature. I don't care if it's in Pol Pot's regime or Stalin's regime or in Rwanda, wherever there's hatred. If you can get the people to get on board with that hatred and that emotion, that puts you in power for quite some time, just under that issue alone. So where does, where do we go from here with Erdogan? Well, my hope is that, you know, he tries to become a better partner of the EU and NATO. And I don't know if that's too late for him to change at this point in time. Maybe the close election makes him see things in a different light. I don't know. But he is a member of both the EU and NATO. And it's my hope that he comes a committed partner for that. You know, back years ago, Chuck, when he wanted to get into NATO for the reasons that he had at the time, I guess it was him, he had trouble. He had to prove up to them that he was a worthy candidate. And, you know, it was such a goal as to whether he could be a member of NATO. So here we are now. NATO has its own issues and the EU has its issues. And, you know, this discussion of all these points and problems that we're having today, they probably have in Germany and in other countries in the EU. And I wonder, A, what you think of their reaction to him. He's kind of, he's a renegade is what he is. He hasn't been worthy of their confidence in making him a member. And he's been stopping new memberships for bad reasons or no reasons. And he's an obvious autograph, which is not what they want in the EU. And I think, what's his name? Schultz in Germany. And the leader of the EU and NATO, those guys are probably pulling their hair out about Erdogan. So my question, we don't know for sure, but my question is, what do you think they think about Erdogan? And my second question is, what should they do about him? He's a problem. That's a great, very compound question. But if we break it down into who, where is the base and source of Erdogan's power within Turkey internally? Primarily, it's a very autocratic supportive reactionary faction that he has been able to get enough support from that he's got a comfortable coalition majority in Parliament. Let's see where that goes over his five years as to whether he's able to establish and maintain control or not. Externally, internationally, probably his most important relationship is going to have to be with the EU, not just economically but geopolitically as well. So those two, I think, are going to tell us a lot about whether Erdogan has any staying power and who's going to maneuver to take over after him and when that happens. What do they do about him? He's a troublemaker. But he's internally dependent on those factions. And so there are other groups that outsiders could go to to establish relationships that could undercut his internal power. So they have choices to withhold economic trade privileges, which they control to a much greater extent than Erdogan and Turkey do. That's him. Yeah, thoughts about this. Yeah, I just thought there's a boundary line. I mean, if you're going to be a member of the EU, there's an expectation of the EU for you to stay within certain boundary lines. And we have a case where England said, no, we're not going to go remain in these boundary lines. We're going to Brexit. And I'm not saying that's going to happen with Turkey, but if he continues on a path of human right abuses and anti-democratic tactics, nuzzling up to a force and power known as Russia, these are not good things for continued membership in the EU. But juxtaposed to that, we have President Biden who's more than willing to sell them the F-16s that he wants. Of course, they'll leverage and Sweden will get in as a NATO member. But all boundary lines are just that. They're boundary lines. And we'll see how far he strays across them. Yeah, it's interesting that Joe Biden doesn't see this as black and white at all. Not at all. We talked the other day about his deal on the debt ceiling and how he continues to operate in a bilateral way, trying to find common ground, trying ultimately to make a deal. And I feel the echoes of that discussion here today that, yeah, there are outrageous things happening in Turkey. But Joe Biden feels that he needs Turkey and Turkey needs him. So he's trying to find some kind of common denominator bipartisan deal to deal with Turkey. The play of the odd couple comes to mind. So the other thing, Chuck, is we could have a Republican president next time. And certainly, we have a troubled Congress, may I say, will Congress support relations with Turkey? Where does it fall? Will they treat it as part of Europe? Will they treat it as a Russian ally? Where's Republicans? Have they ever made a policy statement about how they feel Turkey should be treated? Well, I think, again, you can look at the factions. And within the Republican Party, one of the things that's happened in the debt ceiling slash budget negotiations is that Biden and McCarthy reached agreement not only on those measures, but on establishing coalitions and alliances of votes in the House and the Senate that would be able to get their agreement passed. And that's in the process of happening. And the Mago Republicans have been powerless to stop that. In fact, some of the noisiest of them, Marjorie Taylor Greene and others, have supported the package because they're recognizing they can either come in and be part of the coalition, or they can be on the outside with their little 25% group. And the coalition will have a plan B, will have other choices about people to align with. And that may be bipartisan alignments that will get them more of what they want than they can get by exceeding to the MAGA GOP demands. That's a very interesting parallel to draw, Chuck. I mean, we could be having the same kind of experience, the same kind of consideration, as we discussed yesterday in connection with the debt ceiling. Wow. Very interesting. We seem to be developing an understanding of how Biden up. Chuck, can you go first and give us your thoughts? You've been so thoughtful, as always. What are your thoughts? What should people think about Turkey now, after all the things we've considered? How careful should we be in paying attention to them? I think the best thing we can do is exactly what you just suggested, pay attention, see what's happening, and not only internally with Turkey, with its economy, with its earthquake rebuilding and reconstruction, but externally, particularly with its EU relationship, with its US relationship, with the Russia relationship. Because all of those things are going to have to be orchestrated with a sufficient degree of harmony that they get major recovery infusion resources and opportunities. They are not able to be and stay on a plateau. They've got a very steep upward climb to go and they need people externally and internally to support that and go along with that. Is that going to happen? We'll just have to watch and see. How important, Tim, your final comments, but how important is Turkey in this whole global picture? Is it a player or maybe a lesser player? That's a tough question, but I guess I'll refer to your comment about the struggle for Turkey to become part of the EU and NATO. Remember, they didn't really want Turkey in back then, back in those days. I can see from a cultural aspect, it doesn't really resemble anything in Europe. Other than, once you get outside of Istanbul, the industrial city of Izmir, the capital city of Ankara, it really is quite different culturally. It acts differently than your EU nations. Maybe that's part of the problem. It's a different culture, completely different culture. Remember, we've had a long association with Turkey as far as military cooperation. If you recall during the Cuba missile crisis, it was the missile that we took out of Turkey in order to settle that negotiation so that we didn't have worldwide annihilation. Turkey's always allowed the flight air zones for our jets to address issues in the Middle East and save harbor. That relationship is critical and still very much needed. I think these differences will be patched up. I don't think Erdogan's going anywhere anytime soon, and we're just going to have to live with it. On that note, thank you very much, Tim Appachella, co-host and Chuck Grunton, esteemed guest. Thank you so much. If you like what we do, please like us and click the subscribe button on YouTube and the follow button on Vimeo. You can also follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn, and donate to us at thinktecawaii.com. Mahalo.