Posted on 07/16/2016 9:13:28 AM PDT by Mrs. Don-o
The outcome of tonights apparent coup attempt in Turkey remains unclear, but the motivation for regime change in Turkey has been building under the surface for years. Turkey faces a perfect storm of economic, political and foreign policy problems.
First, Turkeys much-heralded economic growth spurt of the 2000s has come to a grinding stop. The Erdogan boom, which inspired predictions that Turkey might emerge as another China, resembled the Asian experience less than it did the Latin American credidt bubbles of the 1980s or the American subprime bubble of the 2000s. I wrote last April 25:
Turkeys economy appears to defy gravity: with annualized GDP growth of 5.7%, it is the emerging market that has held up best under stressed global economic conditions. That is entirely due to the growth of domestic consumption; Turkish exports are flat despite the sharp devaluation of the countrys currency. And domestic consumption depends on a flood of high-interest consumer loans.
According to the Turkish central bank, consumer debt is now almost equal to total personal income in Turkey, vs. a bit over 20% in the United States. The average interest rate on consumer debt, the central bank reports, is just under 17%.
Consumer debt and personal income: U.S. vs Turkey
That means Turks pay about 14% of their personal income as debt service, compared to about 5% a decade ago (in America, by contrast, debt service is just 10% of disposable income, which is less than personal income vs. 14% in 2007 just before the crash).
The collapse of the oil price has reduced the cost of Turkeys imports, which have fallen by 8% year on year. That should have led to a decline in the countrys external borrowing. Instead, external borrowing according to the BIS data jumped by more than 20% during the past year. It is hard to reproduce the BIS numbers (which are likely to be very accurate) from the foreign borrowing data provided by the Turkey central bank.
Turkish banks finance their balance sheet on global capital markets, which the rating service Moodys thinks risky. In an April 9 report, Moodys warned, The Turkish banking sectors dependency on external wholesale markets could contribute to higher funding costs in light of a weaker international investor confidence. Banks also face challenges from a slower economic growth, increasing dollarization of liabilities and volatile sentiment towards emerging markets, all of which keeps the banking system on a negative outlook.
Moodys may be looking at the wrong problem: too many countries have a stake in Turkeys stability to allow a banking crisis to develop. The Gulf states appear to have financed Turkey during 2013-2014, when the country ran an enormous current account deficit. The Europeans will continue to finance Turkey for the time being. Bank balance sheets are fragile, but there is a political motivation to keep the banks funded. Turkish consumers have a different kind of problem: debt service consumes so much of their income that they cannot continue their present level of purchases much longer.
Turkeys financial bubble will pop eventually, despite the best efforts of its funders to postpone the problem. In the meantime, enabling Ankara ensures continued instability in the region, more humanitarian crises and more refugees.
Secondly, Turkeys internal cohesion is at risk due to the rapid increase of its Kurdish-speaking minority and the relative decline of the ethnic Turkish population. In a May 31 review of Turkeys latest demographic reports, I argued that Turkey could not hope to maintain its present borders for very long:
A review of the recently-released 2015 population data shows that the demographic scissors between Kurds and Turks continues to widen. Despite Erdogans exhortations on behalf of Turkish fertility, the baby bust in Turkish-majority provinces continues while Kurds sustain one of the worlds highest birth rates. Even worse, the marriage rate outside of the Kurdish Southeast of the country has collapsed, portending even lower fertility in the future.
According to Turkstat, the official statistics agencies, the Turkish provinces with the lowest fertility rates all cluster in the north and northwest of the country, where women on average have only 1.5 children. The southeastern provinces show fertility rates ranging between 3.2 and 4.2 children per female.
Turkish Fertility, Highest and Lowest Provinces
Even more alarming are Turkeys marriage statistics as reported by Turkstat. Between 2001 and 2015, the number of marriages in Istanbul, the countrys largest city, fell by more than 30%, and by more than 40% in the capital Ankara. Most of the northern and northwestern provinces report a decline of more than half in the number of marriages. Not only are Turkish women refusing to have children; they are refusing to get married. The plunge in the marriage rate among ethnic Turks makes a further sharp decline in fertility inevitable.
Marriages by Province (% Change 2001-2015)
As I reported in my 2011 book Why Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too), Muslim countries that achieve a high rate of adult literacy jump from infancy to senescence without passing through adulthood. Like their Iranian, Algerian and Tunisian counterparts, Turkish women reject the constraints of Muslim family life as soon as they obtain a high school education. The shock of sudden passage from traditional society into the modern world has produced the fastest-ever fall in fertility rates in the Muslim world.
Iran, whose fertility rate fell from 7 children per female in 1979 to less than 1.8 today, has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world. Turkey has an average total fertility rate of 2.18, or just at replacement, but the split between ethnic Turks and ethnic Kurds will make Turkeys present geographic configuration untenable.
The Kurdish demographic problem has led Erdogan into a political swamp from which he may not emerge. He won last years presidential election by stirring up national ardor against the Kurdish minority, and has kept the Kurdish southeast of the country in a low-level civil war since then. The leader of the Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party warned last March that Erdogan had brought Turkey to the brink of an ethnic war.
Erdogan
To prevent the Syrian Kurds from controlling the northern border of their country and linking up with their Iraqi compatriots, Erdogan covertly supported Sunni terrorists, including ISIS, as Michael Rubin explained last March in Newsweek. Erdogans back channel to ISIS blew up in Turkeys faceliterallywhen ISIS suicide bombers killed 42 people and injured hundreds at the Istanbul Airport June 29.
Since the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after World War I and the foundation of the modern state, Turkeys army acted as the guarantor of the countrys secular state. The Islamist Erdogan attempted to reverse that, jailing hundreds of military officers on a spurious charge of plotting a coup in 2012. Most were released in 2014. Erdogan could not do without the military, however; his failed foreign policy made him dependent on the Turkish army, which reasserted its influence this year. Erdogan proudly called himself a black Turk, that is, a devout Muslim from the Anatolian hinterland, in contrast to the White Turks, the Europeanized secular party who came to power under Kemal Ataturk and ruled the country until the 2000s.
Turkeys political crisis stems from profound economic weaknesses, demographic imbalances and confessional, social and ethnic fractures. Whatever emerges from the coup attempt, it will take a great deal more than a change at the top to cure the sick man of Europe.
It's possible the decline in marriage is related to population age and to emigration. A low number of new marriages does indeed portend fewer children, as he said. However, I would be interested in knowing the number of women who marry vs. the total women available who could marry.
That’s in the big cities, but I suspect in the countryside, there is a much higher birth rate, and those are the folks who support Erdogan.
This article does not show comparative figures for the total population of each ethnicity, unless it's in the charts that didn't appear.
This is all about credit bubbles and demographics, and David P. Goldman (”Spengler”) is an expert in both. Plus he is an observant Orthodox Jew and strongly leans toward a Judeo-Christian view of individual and societal ethics -— which means I can at least comprehend where he’s coming from.
A very pertinent question.
But why would population age and emigration skew upward in the demographically failing northwest (roughly, the Hellenic provinces) and skew downward in the demographically robust southwest (roughly Kurdish provinces)?
Or do they?
More info needed.
A very pertinent question.
But why would population age and emigration skew upward in the demographically failing northwest (roughly, the Hellenic provinces) and skew downward in the demographically robust southwest (roughly Kurdish provinces)?
Or do they?
More info needed.
Yes (or no), it’s not at all clear. Spengler associates the drop in birthrate with education of women, which would be higher in cities, in Turkish areas, and among the more secular. Kurds are more rural, have much less access to education (for either sex), and were typically more Islaminized.
Things like age distribution of the population and emigration are relevant, but we don’t have those numbers here. Maybe women aren’t getting married because the young men have emigrated. That’s certainly an issue in some countries, such as Guatemala and El Salvador.
Natural Family unit is the conduit to the past and future. It is the ONLY MEANS of transmission of CULTURE/REALITY/TRUTH (Natural Law Theory/Age of Reason/US Constitution).
The biological family unit (one man/one woman) gives meaning, and dignity to all, and strength to individuals, understanding of Reality (truth/God’s Design of human beings) and embeds Free Will (thinking outside the box) and is the ONLY BASIC UNIT which embeds independence in children from “group-think” Prussian system of mass indoctrination (publik skooling). Government control of “education” creates slaves for the State ONLY. Skools run by government/States will only indoctrinate into their satanic religion of slavery/vice. (Socrates)
Destroying the Natural Family Unit is the design of Cultural Marxism (PC) established in the World and in America by 1930—John Dewey, the humanist, communist (Father of Modern “education” which became mass programming of irrationality (removal from Natural Law/ the natural family so irrationality could be embedded in young children (flipping worldview).
Gramsci/Adorno/Lukacs’ methodology was to hyper-sexualize (corrupt) the moral formation of children, embed irrational emotions (sexualize/fixate in Latency/Limbic area of the brain) by lies/misinforamtion to kill virtue formation. They remain weak and controlled by base emotions (vice) their entire lives (easily controlled). Without virtue formation, families dissolve—will not exist, children will be literally killed or given to the State to “educate”, and the civilization (culture) will collapse, and freedom of the individual will be non-existent. (That is where US is NOW). Turkey there 30 years ago.
The Natural Family is being attacked around the world-—concepts of male and female obliterated by control of Art/Culture, to destroy the Christian worldview and embed irrationality (inability to understand Reality). Turkey used to be the bastion of Christianity until muslim hordes created a tyranny to destroy all of Christian worldview—wipe it OFF of earth for the elite globalists who fund all the chaos and wars and make billions doing it.
USA is the only country which created a true “Justice” System (true freedom), which is equal for all with NO denial of Reality (roles of male/female—Natural Laws.) Natural Law is logic and Common Sense-—the “...Laws of Nature and nature’s God”—and is the foundation of American Jurisprudence.
USA WAS based on the only RATIONAL religion = Christianity, which created a true Justice system based on individual Natural Rights from God. All other religions/systems are collective/socialistic (unconstitutional) where there is always majority tyranny (democracy) with NO individual Natural Rights from God. Period. Without Christianity (Republic/Individualism), only tyrannies and socialism can exist, which is slavery of all individuals (Mind Control). State will control all information (what you think, the desires you have, etc., your perceptions of Reality where Slavery is Freedom and Vice is Virtue, because vice is just slavery/addiction creating slaves for the State system.)
Without virtue (Christian Ethics), there is no ability to be free. (Virtue is Wisdom of the Ages, Knowledge of History and REALITY-—not irrational Marxist utopias/trust in man———only Trust in God—and the Individual Natural Rights which only come from God and predate government.
With no children (no Christian Worldview of the Natural Family/male/female/child)—there is no future, no connection to the past Traditions/worldview. It is a culture of Death/tyranny of the State. With no transmission of the Wisdom of Western Civilization (Christianity, which created the minds of Newton/Tesla/Founders), there is NO possibility of Unity, cohesion, RATIONAL THOUGHT/REALITY, and Rule of Law (Higher Laws/God’s). Marxism is total irrationality (removal from Natural Law. So is islam where good and evil is whatever the State or High Priests (judges) say.
Culture of Death: nihilism—no children and sodomizing others is a Virtue—along with baby-sacrifice. Muslims embrace sodomy and pedophilia.. Just Satanism/Paganism and the promoting of irrational religions to the masses in a “Just” “Law” (LOL—totally unconstitutional) which will result in total debauchery and immoral masses, using others in diabolical, evil ways, which will lead to the Fall of Western Civ. Just like it did to Rome. Cheating, theft, no ability for trust and in economic enterprise, and only rule of barbarians, cartels, jackboots, until true Justice is established again: Christian Ethics only.
bmfl
Here is a google search for “turkey coup staged”.http://bit.ly/29YekWQ The articles about how the coup was staged —are now proliferating from both the left and the right.
Iran, whose fertility rate fell from 7 children per female in 1979 to less than 1.8 today, has the fastest-aging population of any country in the world. Turkey has an average total fertility rate of 2.18, or just at replacement, but the split between ethnic Turks and ethnic Kurds will make Turkeys present geographic configuration untenable.
I have to confess I was unaware that Iran's demographics have imploded like that, but it does explain some rather interesting behaviors on the part of the grey-bearded, paleolithic religious leadership. A combination of the obscene expense of exporting revolution and a dwindling productive middle class is going to put that country in a real bind in a decade, assuming they don't blow up the world by then.
Turkey has a particularly blemished record on the topic of dealing with sizable minorities - ask the Armenians - and so an ascendant Kurdish population must seem remarkably threatening, coupled with renewed demands for a separate Kurdistan and a military to back them up. Erdogan may have pretensions to being a new Sultan with the real risk of turning into the last one, and his country back into the Sick Man Of Europe to which Spengler alludes. History, as Twain is claimed to have said, doesn't repeat itself, but it often rhymes.
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The key to overcoming the demographic islamic threat. To combat islamic garbage, educate the women.
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