Global News Journal

Does Prime Minister Erdogan want to be President Erdogan?

Submitted by Ibon Villelabeitia

Recent comments by Turkey’s Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan expressing support for moving to a presidential system of government have renewed speculation the country’s most charismatic politician covets the presidency — an assault some believe he might launch after general elections due in 2011.

Critics say such calculations, although never made public, ultimately betray authoritarian tendencies of Erdogan, who has fought his way through Turkey’s rough and tumble politics from his days as an Istanbul mayor to the premier’s office.

But few expect Erdogan, a former Islamist whose AK Party ended the secularists’ decades-old grip on power in 2002, would try to claim his ultimate prize without first tailoring the president’s largely symbolic job to meet his ambitions by drafting a new constitution along U.S. or French lines.

Erdogan suggested in an interview earlier this month he would interpret success in the next general elections as a mandate for sweeping constitutional change. “After 2011 … a presidential system may again come to Turkey’s agenda … If the people give us their blessing, this can be discussed in the framework of a brand new constitution,” Erdogan said in words that opened up a debate on whether such a system would bring totalitarianism or more democracy to Turkey.

Whether Turkey ultimately moves from a parliamentarian to a presidential system would depend on the outcome of the elections.

Erdogan’s presidential ambitions may be squashed if his AK Party does poorly, and some polls suggest the AK Party will struggle to win a third term as a majority government.

from MacroScope:

Greeks on the grill

When Greece's former economy ministers took to the stage to face a partisan crowd at a public panel discussion in London this week, they were held to answer for the financial profligacy that has put Greece at the centre of the euro zone's sovereign debt crisis.

Yannos Papantoniou and George Alogoskoufis, who were at the helm of the Greek economy between 1996-2003 and 2004-2009, respectively, came in for a rough ride when questioned on the country's financial reporting. You can hear a podcast here.

"I don't think that any Greek government ever on purpose tried to mislead ,"  said Alogoskoufis, before being interrupted by sarcastic clapping and hoots of derision from many in the  audience of  students, financial professionals and  Greek citizens.

Tension was turned up a notch by a question containing reference to the execution of Greek generals in 1922 which prompted one woman to loudly call for a similar fate to befall Alogoskoufis, before the discussion's chair, Kevin Featherstone, stepped in to calm the situation: "We cannot, in an academic debate, have suggestions like that," he said.

Papantoniou did not get off lightly either, although he took an active approach to defending his role in Greece's financial past after fellow panel member Wim Koesters said there had been a lot of 'creative book keeping' at the start of the monetary union.

"I ask everybody to be extremely... careful when using words which have an offensive character and falsify the truth," Papantoniou said, winning furthers jeers and ironic laughter from the crowd.

The animosity towards Germany, which has been perceived to be reluctant to commit aid to bail out Greece from its current debt problems, was clear to see with Papantoniou referring to 'forces in Germany' who did not want to see Greece in the euro zone.

from Pakistan: Now or Never?:

India and Pakistan agree to hold more talks: now comes the hard part

As predicted, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan agreed during a meeting in Bhutan that their countries should hold further talks to try to repair relations strained since the 2008 Mumbai attacks.  Foreign secretary Nirupama Rao told reporters at a regional summit in Thimphu that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani had decided their foreign ministers and foreign secretaries (the top diplomats) should meet as soon as possible.

In agreeing to hold more talks, India and Pakistan have overcome the first major obstacle in the way of better ties - the question of what form their dialogue should take. Pakistan had been insisting on a resumption of the formal peace process, or Composite Dialogue, broken off by India after the attack on Mumbai which it blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba militant group. India had been seeking a way back into talks which stopped short of a full resumption of the Composite Dialogue.

The prime ministers, who last met in Egypt last July, appear to have sidestepped that problem by agreeing to hold dialogue on all issues, without specifically labelling this as the Composite Dialogue (which incidentally is meant to cover all issues.)

Having dealt with the form of their talks, the hard part - issues of substance - now lie ahead.

Any easing of tension between the two countries is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the U.S.-led war in Afghanistan, where India and Pakistan have been rivals for influence for decades.  Pakistan had already moved significant numbers of troops last year from its Indian border in the east to fight Pakistani Taliban militants on its western border with Afghanistan during a brief thaw between the two nuclear-armed countries last summer. According to a Pentagon report released this week, it may have redeployed as many as 100,000 troops from east to west. But that means it is unlikely to redeploy any more right now, particularly given its concerns at what it sees as an Indian military build-up on its eastern border.

But the talks between India and Pakistan could ultimately pave the way for a scaling down of the proxy war which the two countries' intelligence services have been accused of waging in Afghanistan. Over time, that will have a major impact on Pakistan's willingness to tackle the Afghan Taliban and force them to the negotiating table. (Pakistan's fight against militants so far has been concentrated on tackling the Pakistani Taliban on its border with Afghanistan rather than those fighting U.S.-led forces in Afghanistan.) 

Pakistani officials complain that India is using its presence in Afghanistan - which grew substantially after the fall of the Pakistan-backed Taliban government in 2001 - to destabilise Pakistan.  They say India's Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW) is giving money and weapons to Baluch separatists in Pakistan's Baluchistan province. They also argue that R&AW agents are indirectly destabilising Pakistan's tribal areas on the Afghan border by providing funding to militants via Afghan's NDS intelligence service. India denies the accusations and has so far refused Pakistani demands that it close down its consulates in the Afghan cities of Kandahar and Jalalabad near the Pakistan border.

Rating agencies warned to watch their step

Credit rating agencies cannot win.

They were blamed for carelessness before the crisis, handing out over-generous ratings on the packets of mortgage-backed securities that subsequently unravelled, sending the global economy into a spin and leading to Lehman Brothers collapse. Now they are being criticised again, this time for being too cautious, by dishing out rating downgrades to countries in Europe being sucked into Greece’s debt crisis.

Standard & Poor’s recently downgraded Spain’s rating one notch to AA, warning that the outlook was bleak for the euro zone’s fourth biggest economy. Struggling Greece has also been marked down — to junk status — and now hovers close to Pakistan and Venezuela in the credit stakes. Portugal is another country to be singled out for downgrades from the leading ratings companies.

It’s all little too much for the European Union, which worries about the downgrades creating a vicious spiral that exacerbates the crisis rather than helping to stall it.

Yesterday, the European Commission warned the rating agencies to watch their step.

“We of course expect that credit rating agencies … in particular during this difficult and sensitive period, act in a responsible and rigorous way,” a spokeswoman said. The Commission, which makes the laws governing rating agencies in Europe, added somewhat ominously: “We will continue to observe very closely what’s going on.”

Tempers in the Commission are rising, with officials angry with what they see as hasty decisions.

Searching for silver in Greece’s storm clouds

Greece and the euro zone are still very much in the midst of a debt and deficit storm, with not just Athens but possibly Portugal and Spain at risk of being swept up in the maelstrom.

But that hasn’t stopped economists and political analysts looking for a silver lining in this unprecedented meltdown.

One positive is the impact the uncertainty is having on the euro, which has weakened sharply against the dollar and the British pound this year. That may not be very good for those in the United States or Britain holding euro-denominated assets, but it’s good for European exporters, whose goods become relatively less expensive for importers.

As Jennifer McKeown, a senior economist with Capital Economics, pointed out in a research note on Thursday, euro zone export orders are sharply up (by some counts they are now the highest in 10 years), while in April, euro zone manufacturing expanded at its fastest rate since November 2006, according to Markit.

That’s clearly a positive for the euro zone. The EU is the world’s largest trading bloc by value and exports are a key component of growth, particularly for the major economies such as Germany, France and Italy. Accountancy firm Ernst & Young said in a recent report that it expected net trade to contribute 0.7 percentage points to euro zone growth in 2010 — thereby accounting for three-quarters of the rise in overall GDP.

It is therefore perhaps not so surprising that economic and business sentiment in the euro zone rose strongly in April, despite the chaos in Greece and the volatility in financial markets across the region. 

But there is also a broader positive shakeout that could ensue from this crisis. It may take several years — at best — but economists and political analysts think it will force profound structural adjustments in several EU economies, including Greece, Portugal, Spain and possibly Italy.

from Emily Flitter:

A spiral for Europe?

Quelling the European debt crisis will take more than just a bailout package for Greece, says one expert in financial contagion. Other countries with shaky fiscal profiles need to get their finances in order--and fast. 

 Lasse Pedersen, a professor of finance at New York University's Stern School of Business, has made a close study of liquidity spirals in financial markets, and he sees parallels between his work and the European crisis. 

"Here the spiral is that the more concerned people will be about whether Greece can pay back its debts the higher the interest rate they will demand, and the higher the interest rate they demand the harder it will be. For instance, if the interest rate payments increase two or three times or more, it can become difficult to meet these payments even with a sound economic policy,"  Pedersen said in an interview. 

The danger that the feedback between investor anxiety and higher rates could appear in other European countries is real and needs some proactive attention, he added. 

"I do think that the contagion risk is very real and perhaps the way to stop it is for the International Monetary Fund or the European Union to already now think about making a deal with other countries like Portugal that aren't in immediate trouble now." 

 The other countries where high debt-to-GDP ratios have already attracted concern also need to move more quickly with reforms, Pedersen said. 

 "These countries have to realize that the main party that has to save them is themselves--they have to have a responsible fiscal policy that means they can pay back whatever debt they have." 

Volcano chaos: A pointer to potential Iran/Gulf smoke disruption?

As if they didn’t have enough to think about, planners trying to pin down the unintended consequences of a strike on Iran may be required to reorder their lengthy worry list.

The concern? Iceland’s volcano, or rather, the vivid reminder the exploding mountain provided to governments of the importance of civil emergency planning.

The ash clouds and the flight chaos it produced may be a foretaste, writ large, of the disruption to daily life in the Gulf that could temporarily result from military conflict and its aftermath in the area, some analysts say.

The Kuwait oil fires of the 1990-91 Gulf conflict provide an example of the confusion and damage that can result from smoke and pollution, quite apart from the popular anxiety caused by war itself, write Riad Kahwaji and Theodore Karasik of the Institute for Near East and Gulf Military Analysis. In January, 1991, Iraqi forces torched hundreds of Kuwaiti oil fields, creating clouds of heavy smoke across the northern Gulf in the last moments of the conflict. Saddam Hussein’s action was mainly political, not military: in what Kuwaitis perceived as a monumental act of spite, he was laying waste to an asset he was forced to relinquish.

But the impact was dramatic. Then the world’s worst oilfield disaster, the problem was worsened by winter weather, with oil-laden rain infesting engines in the air and on the ground, they recall.

The clouds did not significantly affect military operations, which by then were virtually finished. But they caused considerable costs, complications and anxieties in the aftermath, temporarily denting confidence among some in the resilience of Kuwait’s post-war recovery efforts.

The fires burned for nine months, blotting out the sun in places around the northern Gulf and causing record low temperatures.  Hundreds of tonnes of chemical compounds known as polyaromatic hydrocarbons and metal particles were propelled into the atmosphere in oilfire smoke or onto the desert floor in spilled crude oil that formed lakes.

from Afghan Journal:

Killing more efficiently: America’s violin-sized missiles

(An unmanned Predator being rolled out of a hangar. REUTERS/Chris Helgren)

The CIA is using smaller, advanced missiles - some of them no longer than a violin-case - to target militants in Pakistan's tribal belt, according to the Washington Post.

The idea is to limit civilian casualties, the newspaper said quoting defence officials, after months of deadly missile strikes by unmanned Predator aircraft that has so burned Pakistan both in terms of the actual collateral damage and its sense of loss of sovereignty.

With the new missiles you are talking of precision unsurpassed in the history of warfare, U.S.  officials say. Last month, a small CIA missile, weighing about 35 pounds, tore through the second floor of a house in Miram Shah, a town in South Waziristan.

The projectile exploded, killing a top al-Qaeda official and about nine other suspected terrorists, the newspaper said. The mud-brick house collapsed and the roof of a neighbouring house was damaged, but no one else in the town of 5,000 was hurt, according to U.S. officials who have reviewed after-action reports.

Discord in Thai kingdom

 Punchai is arranging strings of flowers under the imposing statue of King Rama VI at the entrance of Lumphini Park in Bangkok. The statue overlooks one end of the sprawling “red shirt” encampment that occupies a 3 square-km area of downtown Bangkok.

An altar has been set up at the base of the statue of a king who ruled from 1910 to 1925 and is generally credited with paving the way for democractic reforms in the kingdom. He is also the creator of Lumphini Park.

(Pro-government supporter raises a picture of Thai King bhumibol Adulyadej at a rally in Bangkok on April 27.  Reuters/Jerry Lampen)

“We put beautiful flowers here for the king, and the people,” says Punchai, a bicycle rickshaw driver in Bangkok.

It’s sundown and it’s fairly relaxed for a place where guys generally roam about with sharpened bamboo spears and which has a medieval-like barricades made of tyres and bamboo poles.

Children run about in the grass near the statue playing with spears. Women stir curries  simmering in big cooking pots for the evening meals. Yesterday, it was tense here. The men stood in rows in front of the barricade, wearing helmets. Women and children were not be seen. Monks wandered amongst the men receiving  “merit” from them, bits of food or spare change that can mean a more accommodating place in the afterlife should death suddenly intervene.

Police and army  troops are stationed all around the encampment, mostly hunkered down in alleyways or in underground walkways, away from the heat and public eye.  Bangkok has been expecting a crackdown on this sit-in for days. And it hasn’t happened. Not likely to, either.  Despite bombastic threats and rhetoric from the civilian government, the army has said repeatedly it won’t go in because it would be just too bloody.

The quality of MEPs is sometimes strained

I am not a Eurosceptic, but you do sometimes question whether the billions of euros European taxpayers’ dole out each year to the European Union — and specifically the European Parliament – is always money well spent.

Those doubts came freshly to mind on Tuesday during the presentation of the European Central Bank’s annual report to the parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs.

ECB Vice-President Lucas Papademos of Greece was speaking to the committee for the last time before he leaves the bank’s executive board in May and is replaced by Vitor Constancio, the governor of Portugal’s central bank.  Constancio’s appointment was confirmed in March.

Yet during a question-and-answer session at the end of Papademos’s presentation, one MEP — I will spare the deputy the embarrassment of being named, but she was from the United Kingdom — quizzed Papademos on who was going to replace him at the ECB.

The Greek seemed a little non-plussed, but didn’t respond. He looked straight ahead in silence.

It is not the first time a member of the 736-person parliament, the only directly elected body in the European Union, has shown a suprising ignorance of their own area of responsibility.

Perhaps accustomed to such slip-ups, the chairwoman of the committee, Britain’s Sharon Bowles, quickly papered over the error, stating that of course the committee had voted to approve Constancio’s appointment barely a month ago.