Turkey’s Erdogan Clears Path to Dictatorship – by Dr. Alon Ben-Meir

Dr. Alon Ben-Meir is a professor of international relations at the Center for Global Affairs at NYU. He teaches courses on international negotiation and Middle Eastern studies filed the following report on Turkey:

"The forced resignation of Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggests only one thing — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is totally absorbed by his lust for power, will tolerate no one in his government to deviate from any of his political positions. Prime Minister Davutoglu was no exception.

Although the Turkish constitution grants the Prime Minister executive powers while leaving the role of the president largely ceremonial, this is not what Erdogan had in mind when he asked then-Foreign Minister Davutoglu to form a new government following the last election.

Erdogan’s ambition and aggressive drive to spread his Islamic agenda are what has determined every political move he made. Seeking to constitutionally transfer the executive authority of the country to the Presidency is the final step to legally consolidate his power, albeit he was already exercising such power throughout his tenure as Prime Minister for 11 years.

For more than 15 years, Davutoglu served Erdogan with the utmost loyalty — first as his top foreign policy adviser, then his Foreign Minister, and for the past two years as his hand-picked Prime Minister. Erdogan chose Davutoglu for this post precisely because he expected him to continue to be his “Yes man.”

Being that as Prime Minister, Davutoglu would assume leadership of the AK Party, Erdogan expected him to push for the transformation of the largely ceremonial Presidency into the most powerful executive position in Turkey, which Davutoglu pursued in a lukewarm manner as this would constitutionally diminish his own powers considerably.

Not surprisingly, once Erdogan assumed the Presidency, he continued to chair cabinet meetings and even established a shadow cabinet with a handful of trusted advisers. He pointedly sidelined Davutoglu, who quietly resented Erdogan’s usurpation of the role and responsibility of the prime minister as if nothing had changed.

The premiership became a ceremonial post and the ceremonial presidency became the all-powerful office without a formal constitutional amendment to legally grant him the absolute authority he is now exercising.

I have known Davutoglu from the time he was the chief adviser to Erdogan and I found him to be a man of integrity and vision, always a moderating force, and committed to making Turkey a stabilizing regional power and a significant player on the international scene.

I had many opportunities to talk to Davutoglu face-to-face about Israeli-Turkish relations, as I was actively involved behind the scenes to mitigate their conflict in the wake of the Mavi Marmara incident.

On another occasion, I arranged for Israeli-Syrian peace negotiations to take place with Turkish mediation, not only because of its proximity and (at that time) good relations with both Syria and Israel, but also because I felt that Davutoglu would be the ideal interlocutor.

Moreover, by playing such a role, Davutoglu was also very consistent with his commitment to realize his political philosophy of having “zero problems with neighbors,” which initially led to Turkey’s friendly and cooperative relations with most of its neighbors.

Erdogan’s ambition to become the kingpin of the region through his brazen political approach, however, did nothing but create problems with every neighboring country. A former top Turkish official told me that had

]Davutoglu been given the flexibility to carry out his foreign policy vision, Turkey’s regional standing would be completely different today.

During the past two years, however, several conflicts between the two began to surface. Whereas Davutoglu sought to renew the peace negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the search for a solution, Erdogan not only refused but vowed to wage war until the last PKK rebel is killed. In addition, although Davutoglu said nothing publicly about Erdogan’s systematic attack on the free press, the jailing of journalists, and human rights violations, he disagreed with these unlawful measures and failed in his efforts to quietly persuade his boss to ease the pressure on the press.

Erdogan’s insistence on silencing any criticism and the constant chipping away of what is left of Turkey’s democracy has basically sealed off (contrary to what is being said publicly) any prospect for Turkey to become an European Union member, which Davutoglu sought to realize with zeal.

On top of all that, Erdogan is now seeking to strip Kurdish lawmakers of their political immunity to make it possible to charge them with being aligned with the PKK who are fighting for semi-autonomous rule, to which Davutoglu surreptitiously objected. It is now being left to the next prime minister to engineer this unlawful scheme to meet Erdogan’s draconian will.

Finally, while Davutoglu was busy in his effort to achieve an agreement with the E.U. to take back illegal migrants in exchange for visa-free entry for Turkish nationals to the Schengen region, Erdogan publicly belittled Davutoglu’s efforts to deprive him of any political gains that he could derive from his success.

The leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, condemned the way Davutoglu was forced out, stating that “Davutoglu’s resignation should not be perceived as an integral party issue. All democracy supporters must resist this palace coup.”

Interestingly enough, in what was seen as a farewell speech to the parliament, Davutoglu stated that “No one has ever heard a word against our president from my mouth, my tongue, my mind — and no one will.”

To me and many other observers, Davutoglu’s words expressed the precise opposite of what he appeared to be saying: that Erdogan is beyond criticism. There was no better diplomatic way of putting it lest he be accused by Erdogan of treason, as customarily befalls anyone who opposes his political positions on any issue.

Due to the turmoil throughout the Middle East, the influx of millions of Syrian refugees and the battle against ISIS, Turkey’s role has become increasingly important. Although the United States and the E.U. have grown weary of Erdogan’s absurd conduct, they feel compelled to deal with him, however distasteful that might be.

Leave it, of course, to Erdogan to drain every ounce of blood from Western powers to serve his personal agenda.

When the constitution is used as a tool for power grabbing, when conspiracy theories justify a cruel witch-hunt, when people are terrified to speak publicly about politics, when journalists are detained without trial, when the academic community is regularly attacked, when human rights are grossly violated, and when democratic principles are trampled upon, this is not a mere travesty for Turkey, it is a tragedy.

With the departure of Davuto?lu, and a rubber-stamp AK Party, Turkey has become a de facto dictatorship, and there is now no one to stand in Erdogan’s way. It is a sad day for the Turkish people, as the country is now governed by a ruthless dictator with no checks and balances, no accountability, and with no prospect of any change for the better as long as Erdogan remains in power.

The Turkish people should once again take to the streets but this time they should remain persistent until Erdogan relents or resigns. Otherwise, Turkey will continue to rapidly race toward an ever bleaker future where freedom will be a thing of the past and an authoritarian regime led by a ruthless leader sets in."

EU-Digest

European Refugee Crises: European Parliament Will Not Let Turkey Use Refugee Deal for Blackmail - by Ilyas Akengin

On Tuesday, the European Parliament issued a statement saying that most of its members disagreed with the European Commission for proposing to ease visa requirements for Turkey even though the country has not yet fulfilled all the benchmarks necessary for visa regime liberalization.

"Now, it is up to the Turkish government to continue working on fulfilling all the set benchmarks. We should once again state that the European Parliament is not going to be blackmailed by the Turkish president on the EU-Turkey agreement on migrants," Iliana Iotova said.

LIBE held a meeting on May 9, at which it declared that Turkey should not be discriminated against but neither should it receive preferential treatment.

"Last but not least, the Parliament does not agree in general with the EC approach, where the European Union is trying to outsource its problems to any third country," Iotova added.

In mid-March, the European Union and Ankara agreed on a deal under which Turkey pledged to take back all undocumented migrants who arrive in the European Union through its territory in exchange for legal Syrian refugees currently residing in Turkey, on a one-for-one basis. In return, the 28-member bloc pledged to accelerate Turkey’s EU accession bid and introduce a visa-free regime between Turkey and the Schengen area.

Turkey is yet to meet five out of the 72 total requirements, notably those related to data protection and anti-terrorism laws, among other issues.

Shipping - Special Report: North Europe ports tapped as best gateways for Asia cargo - by Bruce Barnard

The Port of Rotterdam

Europe’s northern gateway ports will remain a better option than their Mediterranean rivals for shippers transporting containers to and from Asia as environmental factors come more into play, according to a report.

Transporting containers across most of Europe from northern ports is currently cheaper and more sustainable than via southern ports such as Koper, Genoa and Constanta despite their shorter transit times to Asia, Panteia, a consultancy said.

The northern ports will become even more competitive as Europe seeks to reduce the environmental impact of supply chains, according to the report commissioned by the Rotterdam Port Authority and Deltalinqs, a Dutch industry association.

“The Northern European ports perform well because many large container vessels call here and much of the hinterland transport is done by inland shipping and rail. This provides for a relatively small ecological footprint” said Allard Castelein, chief executive officer of the Rotterdam Port Authority.

“The report also shows that further improvement is possible, especially by using LNG (liquefied natural gas) as a transport fuel and making logistics more efficient through IT. These are two important challenges for the coming years.”

Mega-ships with capacities of up to 20,000 twenty-foot-equivalent units, which have much lower carbon dioxide emissions per container than 10,000 TEU ships, call more frequently at northern hubs than at the smaller southern European ports “because more goods are shipped to and from this densely populated region.”

The report concludes that imposing a Sulphur Emission Control Area, currently restricted to the North Sea, the English Channel and the Baltic Sea, to the Mediterranean will not impact the market share of European ports.

The major shippers and logistics firms interviewed by Panteia said price was the most important factor in choosing ports followed by service and reliability, with sustainability not seen as an important criterion.

“Sustainability is a deal maker, but not a deal breaker, yet,” the Rotterdam Port Authority said.

The Panteia report contrasts with the findings of a recent study by Drewry Supply Chain Advisors that said the traditional gateway ports in Northwest Europe no longer hold all of the trump cards on the Asian container trades.  

The cheapest option to ship a container from China to southern Germany was via Rotterdam and Hamburg, but only by a margin of $150 and $100, respectively, against Koper in Slovenia, which has a three-day transit time advantage.

“As such we believe Shanghai-to-Munich via Koper is a true Best-Route contender for shippers with time sensitive cargoes,” Drewry said.

Southern European ports will also become more attractive as freight rates to the Mediterranean, which have traditionally been higher than those to northern Europe, have recently become cheaper than those on the longer haul.

South European intermodal operators are also developing “exciting and competitive” concepts that will be boosted when the trans-Alpine Gotthard rail tunnel opens in June.

“More shippers will look to route via southern gateway ports as the maritime price differential equalizes and intermodal connectivity improves,” Drewry said.

While Rotterdam, Europe’s top container hub, is bullish about its ability to see off the challenge from upcoming southern European ports, other northern gateways are less confident of maintaining their market share.

Antwerp recently urged Rotterdam, its closest rival, to join forces to meet the challenge of China’s growing investment in the southern European waterfront that could lure container traffic from the Le Havre-Hamburg range.

The two ports could build joint storage facilities for Asian cargo bound for central and Eastern Europe, the Belgian port’s CEO Eddy Bruyninckx suggested. “We each play our part, but it would be wise to join forces to ship goods to Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary,” he told Dutch newspaper Financieelle Dagblad.

“China wants to lessen its dependence on northern European ports,” Frans Paul van der Pullen, an analyst at the Clingendeal Institute, told the paper.

“China will eventually be able to ship products to central Europe more quickly via southern ports than through Rotterdam or Antwerp.”

Almere-Digest

British Racists Use Brexit: Singing Donald Trump to Bash Muslim Refugees and the EU - by Nico Hines

The campaign for Britain to leave the European Union has descended to the level of grotesque racial stereotyping with one of the main campaign groups promoting a disturbing video featuring the voice of Donald Trump.

Leave.EU, one of the big “Brexit” groups, posted the video on its official Facebook and Twitter channels. It includes footage of what purports to be violent refugees intercut with idyllic scenes of Western life. The soundtrack is Trump narrating lyrics from a song about a poisonous snake that bites and kills a woman who was foolish enough to take him into her home.

Trump has read the words to “The Snake,” and equated the deadly creature to refugees from war zones, at several rallies but he is thought to have nothing to do with the violent video, a longer version of which was published on YouTube in January with the words:”Do not allow the Islamification currently happening in Europe to reach America. Act now before its too late.”

It’s unclear where most of the footage comes from but at least one scene shows a blond couple being attacked by a gang of black men in Missouri—the assailants are not believed to have been refugees seeking shelter in the Midwest despite the video’s insinuation that this is what asylum seekers look like.

Brexit: British Racists Use Singing Donald Trump to Bash Muslim Refugees and the EU - The Daily Beast

Medical Industry: 3rd Top Cause of Death: Medical Errors - by Aby Haglage

A new study published in BMJ Tuesday suggests that if experts classified medical error as a disease, it would be the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Helmed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, the paper estimates that medical errors cause 250,000 deaths a year, surpassing chronic lower respiratory diseases—the third leading cause of death—by more than 100,000. The authors blame limitations in death certificates for the lack of accurate data on the topic, and suggest the way fatalities are reported be revised.

Medical error is loosely defined as a “preventable adverse effect of care, whether or not it is evident or harmful to the patient.” The authors of the BMJ study cite specific types of error, which include “the use of a wrong plan,” “the failure of a planned action to be completed as intended,” and “an unintended act.”

It’s a phenomenon that’s virtually invisible in death statistics due to the United States reliance on what’s called the International Classification of Disease (ICD). Approved by the World Health Organization (WHO), it is used by 117 countries worldwide as a standard diagnostic tool for measuring mortality and morbidity statistics.

The system provides specific codes that correspond to causes of death, but leaves no room for physicians or others to denote a cause that resulted from a medical shortcoming. As a result of this limitation, there is no way to track how much medical error plays into the death rate worldwide.

Studies on the amount of deaths caused by medical error in the U.S., as a result, have been scant. The “seminal” study on the topic, as far as science is concerned, is a 1999 paper from the Institute of Medicine (IOM), which the authors call “limited and outdated.” The report estimates anywhere from 44,000 to 98,000 deaths per year from medical error.

Since 1999, several more studies on the topic have been released; one in 2008 suggested that as many as 400,000 people die a year from this cause. To update the current number, the researchers combined all of the studies since 1999 and performed a weighted analysis. The result: a mean rate of 251,454 deaths per year from medical error.

Martin A. Makary, the leader of the study and an oncologist at Johns Hopkins, attributes the lack of knowledge surrounding the issue to the CDC’s failure to create a system in which deaths due to medical care could be catalogued.

“Currently, deaths caused by errors are unmeasured and discussions about prevention occur in limited and confidential forums, such as a hospital’s internal root cause analysis committee or a department’s morbidity and mortality conference,” writes Makary. “These forums review only a fraction of detected adverse events and the lessons learnt are not disseminated beyond the institution or department.”

The researchers give one example case of a death caused by medical error, that of a “young woman” who had successfully recovered from a transplant surgery. A few days after going home, she came back to the hospital with “non-specific symptoms.” At that point, doctors performed “extensive tests,” some of which the authors deem “unnecessary.”

When she returned days later, she was suffering from intra-abdominal hemorrhage and cardiopulmonary arrest. “An autopsy revealed that the needle inserted during the

pericardiocentesis grazed the liver causing a pseudoaneurysm that resulted in subsequent rupture and death,” the authors write. “The death certificate listed the cause of death as cardiovascular.”

Stories like these, says Makary, perfectly capture the problem with death statistics, and highlight the need for both the U.S. and the World Health Organization to pursue a better system.

Read more: 3rd Top Cause of Death: Medical Errors - The Daily Beast

Almere-Digest

Kleptocracy Rules: The Panama Papers & Capitalism-Today:Neo-liberalism’s World of Corruption

TTIP: legalizing Kleptocracy

Of course corruption has always existed in capitalism. But neo-liberalism, the ‘free market’ system that started in the 1980s, promoted it on a vast scale for two reasons:

1. Neo-liberal deregulation and privatisation promoted the dominance of financial capital and the expense of industry and the state. Financialisation and low capital gains taxes have turned big companies and utilities into cash cows, virtual banks with huge wealth, looking to maximise the interest on their money and minimise their tax. Finance capital is, after all, basically about swindling. In the middle ages they called it usury.

2. The shift to the right crashed ‘socialist’ command economies and undermined nationalist governments in the third world, replacing both with corrupt and usually highly authoritarian neoliberal regimes. Getting hold of the state apparatus has become a royal road to mega-wealth for dozens of dictators and their cronies through simple theft.

The core of it is the banking system. European and American banks receive (read: launder) billions of dollars every year from international mafias, and in particular from drug dealers. Sometimes by accident some of this comes to light. In 2006 Mexican soldiers intercepted a drug shipment in Ciudad del Carmen and found a cache of documents showing the Sinaloa drugs cartel had made payments of $378 billion to the American bank Wachovia, a subsidiary of the financial giant Welles Fargo.

Roberto Saviano, the author of the best-selling Gamorrah which exposed the workings of the Neapolitan crime organisation Camorra, claims that London is the centre of money laundering for Latin American drug money. Even the British National Crime Agency says:

“We assess that hundreds of billions of US dollars of criminal money almost certainly continue to be laundered through UK banks, including their subsidiaries, each year.”

Saviano says that Mexico is the ‘heart’ of the drugs trade and London its ‘head’. Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Crime and Drugs Agency, says drug dealers invested $352 billion in Western banks in 2008, and this was key in keeping some major banks from collapse.

So corruption – receiving money from crime and drug cartels – is deeply ingrained in the culture of US and European banks. And this is not going to stop, given the vast profits involved.

The klepocratic state is an old story. It’s reckoned that no Mexican president leaves offices with less than $100m. Key Western allies from the 60s and 70s, like Mobutu, president of Zaire (DRC) from 1965-97 and Suharto, president of Indonesia from 1967-98, both established murderous regimes and systematically looted their respective peoples of billions of dollars.

Direct corruption by the state is one thing, influence is something else. In western democracies influence is stacked in favour of the rich and powerful. In the United States and increasingly in Britain it is professional lobbyists who fight their corner. The Atlantic magazine in the US points out:

“Corporations now spend about $2.6 billion a year on reported lobbying expenditures—more than the $2 billion we spend to fund the House ($1.18 billion) and Senate ($860 million). It’s a gap that has been widening since corporate lobbying began to regularly exceed the combined House-Senate budget in the early 2000s.

“Today, the biggest companies have upwards of 100 lobbyists representing them, allowing them to be everywhere, all the time. For every dollar spent on lobbying by labour unions and public-interest groups together, large corporations and their associations now spend $34. Of the 100 organizations that spend the most on lobbying, 95 consistently represent business.”

The above account doesn’t include the direct payments and other gifts given to members of Congress by big companies, not least the health insurance and healthcare companies who have fought so long and so successfully against a universal US healthcare system.

Britain is going in the same direction. As in the United States, business and politics are often revolving doors with former minister joining the boards of companies they dealt with when in power. Seumas Milne says:
“…lobbying doesn’t begin to cover the extent of corporate influence. More than ever the Tory party is in thrall to the City, with over half its income from bankers and hedge fund and private equity financiers. Peers who have made six-figure donations have been rewarded with government jobs.

“But the real corruption that has eaten into the heart of British public life is the tightening corporate grip on government and public institutions – not just by lobbyists, but by the politicians, civil servants, bankers and corporate advisers who increasingly swap jobs, favors and insider information, and inevitably come to see their interests as mutual and interchangeable. The doors are no longer just revolving but spinning, and the people charged with protecting the public interest are bought and sold with barely a fig leaf of regulation.”

Corruption everywhere has the effect of transferring huge amounts of wealth from the poor to the rich. If poor individuals are not directly robbed, then their economic situation, their public services, their health service, their transport, their education – all these are robbed when taxes are avoided and government revenues robbed.

You can’t analyse corruption today by looking for illegal activity alone. Many of the practices that happen in rich and poor countries are legal or in a grey area where it’s difficult to tell criminal from the lawful.

For example, property dealing in Britain is profoundly corrupt. House prices in London (and thus in the whole country indirectly) are pressured by the huge amount of hot money from corrupt Russian oligarchs and assorted gangsters of various nationalities invested in the expensive end of the market. But nothing here is illegal, as far as the house purchases in Britain are concerned. It’s just that they are bought with corrupt money and force up the living costs of millions of ordinary British people.

Look at the purchase of rare earth minerals from the Congo, essential for computers and mobile phones. Much of this mineral wealth is controlled by war lord armies, guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity. The companies who buy the mineral products they control – the moral equivalent of blood diamonds – have no contact with them at all. Dealers act as a buffer and through their transactions – perfectly legal – wealth based on rape and murder is miraculously washed clean.

Finance capital is by definition corrupt. The investment banks typically do not disclose their fees to investors in advance (they call their charges ‘consideration’) by deduct self-decided amounts as they go along. Free charging professionals like lawyers, and in many countries doctors and dentists, make up their own huge fees. Isn’t this corrupt? But there’s nothing illegal about it.

The tax dodges by major companies like Amazon, Facebook and Starbucks, are perfectly legal. They pay all the tax they are required by law – or by agreement –in countries like Ireland and Luxemburg where they are registered. Whether these practices are illegal in the UK for example is a very grey area. But corruption it certainly is.

All these examples have the same effect: robbing the poor to further enrich the wealthy.

 Read more: CADTM - The Panama Papers & Capitalism Today: Neo-liberalism’s World of Corruption

EU-USA: Cult of Personality: How Trump Uses the Playbook of Europe's Far Right - by Emily Cade

For months, pundits dismissed Trump’s candidacy, arguing that once voters started paying attention, his lack of substance would crater his support.

Now that he’s the Republicans’ presumptive nominee, it’s clear the early naysayers sorely miscalculated. The lesson from th

is race: A strong cult of personality can trump ideology. And that’s been proved by generations of demagogues. The support behind Italy’s Benito Mussolini was “more about the leader than...about the party or the ideology,” bypassing or even upending the traditional party structures, says Arfon Rees, a specialist in Soviet and Russian history at the U.K.’s University of Birmingham.

There are other parallels, says Joseph Sassoon, an associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. When Trump says he’s his own best adviser and has no speechwriters, “this is really a prototype of Saddam or Qaddafi or Nasser...the wanting to control the language of their speeches,” says Sassoon, referencing former leaders of Iraq, Libya and Egypt. “ An essential component of the cult of personality is it cannot be shared with anyone.”

German philosopher Max Weber coined the term charismatic authority to describe leaders whose power is built on their “exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character,” as opposed to the rule of law or simply brute force.

Many may not regard Trump the candidate in an admirable light, but to his followers, his business success and his personal wealth — which freed him from the unseemly campaign fundraising dance of his primary rivals — make him inviolable. American politicians are “all bought and paid for by somebody,” 62-year-old Trump supporter Nick Glaub said outside the suburban Cincinnati Trump rally.

“The only person that isn’t is that man right there,” said Glaub, gesturing to the community center where the real estate mogul had just spoken.

Trump’s charismatic authority stems from this belief that he is above politics-as-usual, says Roger Eatwell, a politics professor at Britain’s University of Bath. And it goes beyond his reality-TV fame. “Celebrity...tends to be a fairly passing phenomenon, and it doesn’t tend to be a very emotional phenomenon,” Eatwell explains. But Trump’s campaign offers something deeper: “a sense of identification.”

There is, however, one glaring difference between the Republican front-runner and Europe’s right-wing leaders in 2016: Trump’s conspicuous wealth. While he flaunts his billionaire lifestyle, Europe’s populists play up their everyman credentials. Nigel Farage, head of the right-wing U.K. Independence Party, “loves to be photographed in an English pub” having a beer, says Eatwell.

It’s a show of solidarity that’s important on a continent where class remains a salient divide and austerity’s bite is deep. Americans, in contrast, embrace capitalism far more openly and aren’t necessarily turned off by Trump’s gilded excess.

Note EU-Digest: It is interesting to see that many voters in the US and the EU have not learned from the past .....in politics and economics, nationalism has always turned into a disaster when it was applied by politicians in power as a national state policy

Instead, politicians seeking unity and cooperation among political parties and nations have usually succeeded in creating peace and prosperity at home and abroad.

The rise to the top of far-right politicians in Europe and the US  is a guaranteed recipe for political and economic turmoil.

 Cult of Personality: How Trump Uses the Playbook of Europe's Far Right