While the tragic trail of terror and death left by ISIS ends on the heights of Baghouz after 5 years of harsh conflict, the Kurdish troops announce their final victory on the field and the terrorist cells scattered around the world remain without a guide. The Kurdish army can count on over 30 women who make up the Women's Protection Unit Fight. It is commanded by Rojda Felat, the heroine of the assault on Raqqa.
The flag of the Syrian Democratic Forces waves, reminding us that among the fallen in the last few days of battle there is also an Italian, Lorenzo Orsetti, who lost his life in an ISIS ambush. The intervention of American fighter jets was decisive, but spirits remain tense because turf wars leave behind millions of refugees and nearly half a million dead.
The Turks have crept into this conflict since last year, only to launch an offensive of opportunism against the Kurdish enclave in January. For two months the incursions blocked entire areas, preventing the arrival of humanitarian aid to a population already exhausted by a conflict which in these 8 years has seen the largest number of foreign powers since the post-war clash in Syrian territory.
Erdogan's goal is clear and lies in the ambition clearly expressed to the Russians during the tripartite summits with Iran, first in Astana and then in Sochi. The Turkish leader wants to control northern Syria to prevent the creation of a Kurdish state, but his aims then range from the gas trade to other economic interests in various sectors from defense.
The dream is to replicate the situation of Northern Cyprus, a thorn in Europe's side also in the Middle East, with a large security zone under the control of the Turkish army and which is part of the neo-Ottoman dream of "Sultan Erdogan". However, such a scenario would not make his allies happy. On the contrary, the recent proclamations of the Russians tend to redimension the Iranian and Turkish aims to keep Assad in power, defending hegemony in the Caspian and in the Caucasus without reaching a confrontation with the United States.
And so, a few days before the elections, clouds are gathering over Turkey: not only because of the risk that the dreams of annexation of the Syrian provinces will vanish or because the recent discoveries of deposits in Cypriot waters will see the positions of Greece, Southern Cyprus, Israel and Egypt strengthened in an anti-Muslim Brotherhood key and therefore opposed to Ankara, but above all because the markets do not support Erdogan.
For months, the outlooks on Emerging Countries have been chasing not very favorable comments on Turkey's recovery compared to other emerging countries which experienced a start to the year with clearly growing investment flows, after closing 2018 with the worst performance on the MSCI Emerging Markets since 2015, falling below the psychological threshold of 1000.
Since last July Erdogan took upon himself the power to directly appoint the Governor of the Central Bank, withdrew the Government's ratification by Parliament and appointed his son-in-law as Minister of Economy and Finance, there have been many foreign investors who have definitively distanced themselves from the country. And therefore the head-on collision with JP Morgan, guilty of inciting speculators against the Turkish lira, does not take into account that the Central Bank's suspension of financing operations for commercial banks has dealt the final blow to the currency, causing it to return to panic last August, after a few days earlier the GDP of the fourth quarter of 2018 had closed down by 3%, confirming a recession with no escape.
So in the next elections on March 31, to elect mayors throughout the country, even if Erdogan is not a candidate, the stability of the government alliance between Erdogan's AKP (Justice and Development Party) and the nationalists will be called into question. of the MHP who distanced themselves last autumn from an agreement that had seen them closely linked to the AKP in all the past elections. It will hardly be free elections open to international observers to confirm that the regime's turn towards ultra-conservative populism in the last three years, since the 2016 coup, and the emergency measures still in force will leave little room for verification, where there is no longer any freedom of expression and association.
Meanwhile, last week the European Parliament passed a resolution to suspend EU accession negotiations with Turkey based on worsening conditions for media freedom, corruption and a rule of law that continues to crack down on oppositions harshly. But the question of the more than three million Syrian refugees remains, even if postponed to a forthcoming European Parliament, when in May both from the point of view of the EU and of the new structure of Syria it will be clearer how much space Erdogan will still have to carry out the its territorial ambitions.
