Erdogan announces that presidential and parliamentary elections scheduled for November 2019 will be held in 66 days. Bear with me as I will explain why he is rushing. turkey.theglobepost.com/erdogan-bahcel…
Erdogan's biggest strength was to rally nationalist votes few months before each elections. It happened right before 2011 and his party won in landslide. He started Kurdish peace process and hence lost the election in June 2015.
His party refused to form a coalition government, ended the Kurdish peace process and won in snap elections in November that year.
Nationalist votes are kingmaker in Erdogan's electoral calculations. Erdogan has always been successful in stealing nationalist votes because nationalist party has a weak leader -- Devlet Bahceli.
In 2016, Devlet Bahceli (usually acrid Erdogan opponent) was challenged by a charismatic woman named @meral_aksener, who fared much better than the incumbent party leader in every poll and posed a great challenge to Erdogan's political future.
Erdogan had deployed every trick in the book to undermine Merak Aksener's rise, engineering legal battles, refusing venues for meetings and defaming her in the media. It worked. And Bahceli became Erdogan's pawn since then. A co-opted "opposition" leader.
Meral Aksener then founded the @iyiparti, which could have potentially challenge Erdogan in November 2019 elections. Here is how Erdogan prevented that too.
Erdogan's single most important achievement in his 15-year-rule is building a robust economy and weathering global economic crises. This has started to fall apart in the past 2 years.
With elections in his mind, Erdogan pressured the Central Bank to keep interest rates low (to spur economic growth) and employment high (the most effective voting factor).
He started a massively popular military campaign in Afrin, a great way to rally nationalist votes. Everything is ready to go. But how to blunt Meral Aksener's party in elections?
Today, Erdogan decided to hold snap elections on June 24.
Legally, Aksener's party can't run in elections until June 28.
As almost every political Islamist leader, the primary source of legitimacy for Erdogan is elections. He keeps pointing to popular vote when challenged. Barring his challenger from elections may hurt his legitimacy.
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Study shows that a simple act of asking yourself whether you will remember something significantly improves the odds that you will remember, in some cases by as much as 50 percent. pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/21443325/
8 experiments revealed that pronouncing words aloud, instead of reading them silently, improves explicit memory.
Another study shows rehearsing content of events, like replaying an event in your mind, going over what someone said in a meeting, or mentally mapping out a series of steps, dramatically boosts memory consolidation. jneurosci.org/content/35/43/…
Erdogan is arguably one of the history’s most cunning politicians. He is such a magician that Turkish opposition falls for his tricks every single time.
Nearly a decade ago, Erdogan tried to limit alcohol sale late at night, introducing restrictions that were not necessarily harsher than the ones in US. Instead of justifying it with reasonable arguments, he insulted Ataturk & said laws “created by two drunks” aren’t respectable.
The opposition was furious. Now they started defending being “drunk” in a Muslim-majority nation, granting Erdogan unparalleled political fodder in his quest to trap the opposition. He buried the opposition with just two incendiary words.
Just like the militaries of Egypt, Pakistan, Thailand, Burma etc., Turkish military had been the fundamental tenet of the establishment that wanted to create a society that were Sunni (No Alawites/Shia), secular (No conservatives) and Turk (no Kurds or other nationalities).
Every time there was a threat to the Turkish state, either through communism or Islamism, the military acted. It is in the army’s DNA to “protect” the nation as a Sunni, secular and Turkish entity. Those genes still exist in the military.
Every time things “went wrong”, the military contemplated the possibility of overthrowing the government. In the mid-1990s (against Islamist govt), in 2003 (to protest Annan’s Cyprus plan), in 2007 (against Erdogan) and in 2016 (against Erdogan).
Azerbaijani Presidents signs a deal that ensures the surrender of Armenian forces and the end of the war in Karabakh. Azerbaijani president says it is a 'historic day' and 'very happy' over the agreement.
Armenia agrees to surrender the province of Aghdam to Azerbaijan by November 20.
Russian peacekeepers will be deployed to Lachin corridor that will ensure the link between Karabakh Armenians and Armenia for 5 years.
A lot of people have been asking me about the latest flare-up between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Here is what happened and why:
Let me start with a little background. Throughout the history, Armenians were scattered around the region in the Middle East and South Caucasus, including eastern Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and some lands in South Caucasus.
Ironically, today's Armenia, including its current capital Yerevan were predominantly populated by Muslim Turks, or Azerbaijanis. After twin Iran-Russia wars in the early 1800s, the demographic landscape in the South Caucasus had been changed significantly.
Many people keep asking me what is going on regarding Trump-Erdogan meeting and why Trump seems like taking a step back in imposing sanctions on Turkey over its purchase of Russian S400 systems. Here is what's happening:
Almost ten years ago, Turkey started negotiations with U.S. and European defense contractors to buy air defense systems to bolster its three-tiered Mediterranean air defense system and integrate into NATO's existing ones.
Around this time, several pro-Iranian groups in Turkey organized a humanitarian aid flotilla to confront Israel's blockade of Gaza. The bloody brawl on Mavi Marmara ship pitted Turkey and Israel against each other for many years to come.