Turley reaps the whirlwind

Turkey has always been a country that forms a bridge. Between continents, religions, regions, cultures.

For Turkey, it is somehow necessary to hold contradicting positions at the same time. Turkey shows different faces to the different parts of the world it borders as a matter of course.

But somehow, Turkey is in trouble.

President Erdogan is nominally an Islamist. In many ways, political Islam's greatest success.

For this reason he supported the rebellion in Syria. This was in contradiction with a previous statement on foreign policy. 'Zero problems with neighbours'.

The Syria policy may have been designed to remake Turkey as the leader of the Sunni Muslim world. But it created problems not only with Syria, but also with Russia, Iran, Iraq and Lebanon.

Quite a few more problems than zero.

Worse than that, Turkey has a weakspot. In the South East a restive Kurdish population. The alliance backing Syria's president Assad becamse quite friendly with Kurds fighting against IS. These Kurds were closely linked to Turkish Kurds firghting the Turkish state.

Then came the kicker. a pretty serious attempt at a military coup. This coup attempt originated in the Gulenist movement. Gulen is in the USA, and the USA refuses to extradite him.

Turkish conspiracy theorists believe the Gulenist movement was founded by the CIA. Gulen himself may have had some links with US intelligence at some point in his life, but I do not believe this was an attempt by the US to overthrow the Turkish government.

Nevertheless, the words of support for the elected Turkish government from the West did seem rather lukewarm. Their condemnation of the coup somewhat equivocal.

The rumour is, Erdogan was given a warning of what was coming. That warning came not from the West, but from Russia.

So now Turkey realigns, not with NATO and the gulf monarchies, but with Russia and Iran.

A Russo-Turkish alliance looks to have great potential. And Turkey, being a member of NATO, and of huge strategic importance really is a prize.

But Turkey has stoked the flames of Islamism in Syria for too long. Now that Turkey switches sides, there will be blowback. There will be a price to pay. Erdogan has sown the wind. Erdogan's Turkey will reap the whirlwind.

Doubtless Mr Putin will be keen to explain, there is nothing so useful as a common enemy for uniting the people behind a leader.

Putin has all but pulled Turkey into his gang. Which way Trump?

Brexit Fantasy Island

The UK has voted for Brexit. To leave the EU.

In a campaign powered by disillusionment with the political, business & journalistic elite, UK voters rejected warnings of impending doom and decided to leave the biggest trading bloc on earth.

We are left with a minister for Brexit, Mr David Davis, MP for Haltemprice and Howden who appears totally out of his depth.

He has said the UK might establish trading relationships which amount to a free trade area ten times the size of the EU. Seemingly unaware that the EU makes up more than 10% of the world economy, meaning this would require our free trade area to extend beyond planet earth.

He also seems to lack basic awareness of what a trading bloc is. Having implied the UK might negotiate separate deals with different EU member states. This is particularly strange, as one of the criticisms of UK membership of the EU was that it prevented us from negotiating separate deals with non EU member states.

No matter, the rank incompetence of Mr Davis hardly registers when compared to the wilfully destructive act of appointing Mr Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary. At first sight a totally bizarre move, for while Mr Johnson is undoubtedly intelligent richly talented, he is no diplomat. It's a bit like Barcelona playing Lionel Messi in goal. Ridiculous. Even professional diplomats like the US state department spokesman could hardly keep a straight face at the news.

Then there is Liam Fox. Disgraced former Cabinet minister, with a unique approach to charity (meaning he seems to think it is something that flows inwards, rather than outwards). Again, so far out of his depth it hardly bears comment.

Much has been made of how the Trump phenomenon in the US mirrors the UK Brexit vote. And it does.

Yet there is another parallel, so far unremarked. Trump may be the scourge of the Republican party establishment, but he is also the inevitable result of the politics they have been pursuing since the time of Reagan. Persuading blue collar ageing white males to vote against their economic interests for reasons of 'identity'. Stoking up fear on immigration, and terrorism. Thriving on barely concealed 'othering' of vast segments of the population. In truth Reagan may embody much of what led to Trump, but it can also be argued this sort of theing began with Barry Goldwater, or Richard Nixon's 'Southern Strategy'.

Likewise in the UK, the Conservative party establishment has spend a generation or more demonising the EU. Along with various other groups, including migrants.

Then they got bitten by the beast they created.

It has been amusing to watch Tories, only too eager to benefit from smears on their left wing opponents in the right wing press howling in outrage under the same treatment.

And then you realise, it is the future of our country these people play with.

You might well ask how a new prime minister managed to appoint so poorly. The answer is clear. If your desire is to cling to power in Number 10 Downing Street, as opposed to make sure the country is as well represented as it can be, these are superb appointments. In her first outing at Prime Minister's Questions Theresa May accused Jeremy Corbyn of putting personal ambition before the good of his party. This is an accusation that does not stick. Many of Mr Corbyn's detractors claim the opposite, he is simply not ambitious enough for a would be Prime Minister.

Mrs May's accusation is Trump like projection. She is the one driven not by principle or some great goal, but pure, unbridled personal ambition. Cameron believed in nothing but his God given right to rule. May believes whe has worked hard enough to 'earn' her time in Number 10. That she deserves it.

To be clear, the EU was and is a flawed organisation. The case for remaining was no slam dunk. But we did not have any sort of debate on the merits of membership versus leaving. We had a rabble rousing fest.

Our forbears fought and died for privileges we now call 'rights'. Democracy foremost among them. Neither the populace nor the elite are worthy inheritors.

Trump the nominee

So he has done it. Or at least got half way there.

Mr Trump has all but won the Republican nomination to run for the Whitehouse.

Much as I, personally, like Bernie Sanders, Mrs Clinton will be his opponent, barring some sort of miracle or natural disaster.

Whatever the American establishment may think, a country can survive being lead by an individual that it is difficult to take seriously. Just think about Italy and Silvio Berlusconi.

That doesn't mean he will be President.

I don't much like Mrs Clinton, but I would think him a much worse choice than her.

The conventional wisdom is he cannot win. He will be slaughtered in a general election.

After all, Mr Trump has insulted not only Muslims and immigrants, but also Mexicans and women.

Women alone make up more than half of the electorate. His tally must be at least 60% of voters insulted.

Surely he can't win?

Thing is, only people abnormally interested in politics have really been paying attention.

Mr Trump has strong appeal amongst poorer white people. People who would have had solid union jobs in past generations. There is no doubt in my mind he will be able to portray himself very differently indeed when it comes to the general election.

The transformation will be shameless. Mrs Clinton may find it difficult to cope with that. To take him seriously.

And Mrs Clinton herself is rather unpopular. Very unpopular with republicans. Could be she is just the person to motivate republicans to get up and out and vote for Trump.

I am aware that people who know far more about US politics than I do give him no chance. But those people also gave him no chance at the primaries.

Mr Trump will be able to portray himself as the insurgent against the Clinton establishment. And however Mrs Clinton chooses to play it, there will be a whole raft of people saying vote Clinton just because she is a woman. That could backfire. It wouldn't sound very good coming from a man.

Janet Yellen was given the Federal Reserve job when an outsider should really have been picked. Christine Lagarde became head of the IMF when Europe should really have backed away.

Were I inclined to conspiracy theories I would believe that elites hand leadership roles to women as a last resort to stop power dissipating further.

Mrs Clinton comes across as calculated. Devoid of principles, I have heard her Democratic party described as a brokerage for interest groups. That's an unkind way of putting their point that demography is on their side.

If I were to pick a candidate to neutralise Mr Trump's appeal, Bernie Sanders would be a much better bet than Hilary Clinton.

For years, we on the left have been told we must accept establishment candidates, because a true leftist has no chance of winning. How ironic it would be were Mrs Clinton to lose precisely because she was so establishment.

And what a shame if the first serious female candidate were to lose because she was too establishment.

The Donald. And Women

Reports of Mr Trump's political demise have been much exaggerated. Particularly at the beginning of his campaign, comments directed at various women were pretty unsavoury. But nothing seemed to really have much of an impact.

He took a leaf from Karl Rove's book and disrespected a genuine US war hero. John McCain.

He picked a fight with the pope.

He insulted a Fox News Anchor (Megyn Kelly), and boycotted their debate.

If a candidate can insult war heroes. Disrespect religious leaders and walk all over Fox News, how can they also convincingly lead the race for the Republican nomination?

Whatever the reasons for Trump's success, I would suggest that anyone who who is familiar with traditional blue collar/working class communities anywhere in the Western World is somewhat less surprised than the political/journalistic elite.

Not surprised at all, in fact.

This is a demographic whose interests the traditional parties of the left have triangulated to extinction. Protest and identity are what remain.

Strange how triangulation disenfranchises people at the bottom more than those at the top.

Yet Mr Trump now seems to have pushed a little too far. After having a deeply ambiguous stance on abortion, from being very pro-choice to staunchly against, he managed to touch something of a raw nerve. Mr Trump advocated criminal sanction against women who had an abortion.

At last Mr Trump has shown that while his bombast and populism can demonstrate real appeal, he doesn't really understand the people he purports to represent. He is just another member of the elite. He thought that the touchstone right wing issue of abortion was a stick with which to beat women. A mistake he holds in common with many feminists.

While women, particularly poor women, might be amongst those who most suffer when access to abortion is restricted, that is not the objective of the policy.

There are also many women, often married women, who are coerced into abortion. Mr Trumps voter's are only too happy to blame the doctors who perform abortions. They are also a little too ready to deny the women that seek abortion agency. They are viewed as victims, not perpetrators.

People who are liable to vote for Mr Trump don't like abortion because they don't like the people who do like it. Because they associate it with the breakdown of family and community that has afflicted them. And because they have a cultural affinity, they share an identity with, those who oppose abortion on moral/religious grounds.

Mr Trump revealed something of himself, he really is a misogynist. His polling numbers amongst women who identify as Republicans are extremely poor.

His traditional male, working class/blue collar voters may not like feminism, but they absolutely hate wife beaters. Or men who abuse women in any way at all.

Chivalry is a form of sexism. I would contend misogyny is a very different beast. Many people who describe themselves as feminists may disagree. Mr Trump also cannot see the difference.

The divergence of East and West

Today there two big news stories.

Firstly, the US Supreme Court has upheld a fundamental right to marriage for all citizens, including those that wish to marry others of the same gender.

Secondly there have been  a spate of attacks claimed by IS, in Syria, in Kuwait, Tunisia and France. In Yemen. A ring of blood around the Mediterranean.

While the West (right wing social conservatives not withstanding) drifts to ever more liberal stances, the East sinks further into fundamentalism.

There are minorities on both sides, but the polarisation is clear. IS watching openly gay people in the US celebrate a victory will be yet more convinced they are right, and their enemies are evil.

Devout waverers who disapprove of the more extreme IS violence may well look at the decadence of the Western alternative and decide IS to be the lesser of two evils.

All around the world, ordinary people will be aware that while the Arab world drowns in blood, the west immerses itself in a philosophical argument about the nature of marriage.

Outside our bubble this looks like self indulgence.

The horrors visited on the Middle East, in part having grown out of Western interventions, are old news even before they are yesterday's news.

I have no strong feelings on this supreme court judgement, other than its irrelevance to real life.

If the biggest problem you have is the state's refusal to issue a certificate recognising your relationship, you don't have a problem.

On the other hand, if your biggest problem is the state does issue certificates recognising relationships you don't like, you really don't have a problem.

We collectively do have a problem in engaging with a region which we cannot  begin to comprehend. Russia is authoritarian and increasingly homophobic.

It appears they understand the Middle East a bit better than we do.

Can the oppressed become the oppressor?

There has been much talk lately about racism, and what it is.

There are two views of racism, that it is the manifestation of prejudice held within the heart of an individual, or that it is a societal thing, embedded in our institutions. Examples of the first is an individual who shouts offensive comments at a minority person from a car window. The judgement passed on London's Metropolitan police by the infamous McPherson report give ample demonstration of the second.

It is possible to believe think that both forms exist.

There is, though, the opinion that people from an oppressed minority cannot be racist. In fact, the word minority there is redundant. Who could argue that Black South Africans although a majority, were not oppressed?

So, it is argued, that the oppressed cannot be racist.

Women cannot be sexist.

People argue this from both sides. I think any reasonable person would agree that it is white racism that poses the biggest problem for societies across the world, that macro, institutional racism is white

Does that really mean a black person cannot be racist?

I believe that the human race is one big family. And that those who try to divide on lines of race are racist. Tribalism is a basic human instinct. It can be channelled for good, in which case we call it loyalty, or bad, and be called prejudice.

To claim that a person cannot be subject to these basic instincts is to deny an aspect of our common humanity. It is, itself, racism.

In some ways oppression arises from oppression. It is not just that oppressed can become oppressor, so much as oppression begets oppression. As violence begets violence. Hutus and Tutsis oppress each other in a repeating cycle of revenge.

Perhaps anyone who thinks the oppressed can never become the oppressor should study the fate of Palestine.

This is not to say there is no such thing as institutional racism. But I do say institutions, and society, do not exist in and of themselves. They are in some way a collective formed from the individuals past and present. A society will not continue to be institutionally racist unless at least some members of the more powerful group are individually racist.

Furthermore, I believe the idea that society is institutionally organised to favour all white people over all people who are not white is to misunderstand how power is organised in our society. For sure white males predominant in the power structure. This does not mean the power structure exists to the benefit of all white males. Or to white people only. Winston Churchill could be defined as an ethnic minority. As could Ian Duncan Smith. Both were leaders of the British Conservative Party.

By many measures, in the UK, poor white males are the group with the worst life chances.

The power structures of the UK are not based around race any more than they are around gender, or around some combination of both. That would be to the advantage of far too large a group.

We are ruled by a much smaller elite. A new aristocracy.

There are white males who think they are on the 'inside'. They fool themselves. They are divided from potential comrades with whom their interests are shared. There are many people who vote against their own economic self interest.

The same goes when privately educated feminists implore poor women to support the agenda of elite females. Doctors and lawyers will benefit far more from free childcare than any cleaner.

This talk of society being a power structure built in favour of all whites, against blacks also divides the oppressed is racist because it divides along lines of race.

The people who promote this thinking are just like white males, they fall into two groups. The elite, and the bitches of the elite.

Bye bye austerity

In case you hadn't noticed, the UK has an election going on.

Paul Krugman delights that this could mean the end of the Austerians. Noting in yesterday's Guardian (30/04/2015), the UK government is about the last in the world where the myth of expansionary austerity is still celebrated.

He notes that a lot of people who have pushed austerity have done so for political, rather than economic, reasons.

The way he voices it is somewhat less cynical than it could have been.

Because while the UK government uses austerity as a political club with which to bludgeon the opposition, it doesn't actually practice it.

The current UK government has comprehensively missed its deficit reduction targets.

After two years of trying austerity, Cameron and Osbourne eventually accepted their policy had failed. They moved to stimulate the housing market as the most ideologically acceptable climbdown for a pair of Conservative right wingers.

Again they promise us lots of pain in the first two ears of the next parliament, followed by an easing up, creating growth in time for the subsequent election.

But now we know even if they did once believe in the silly mantras of Thatcherite economics, experience has taught them how wrong it all is.

Now we know that any cut to social benefits is not for economic, but ideological reasons.

If we vote for them, we will deserve the outcome.

Pity those who will suffer the most for such folly.