Erdogan's surveys

The president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, may have many reasons to undertake the flight forward he has practiced for too long. As the leaders usually do to distract attention from the serious internal problems their countries are experiencing due to bad economic, political and social management, they launch into external action to exacerbate national pride and fight together with the president against the alleged abominable enemies threatening. And if, furthermore, the aim of these foreign adventures is to gain control and exploit large oil and gas reserves in order to remedy as far as possible the economic disaster caused by his administration, the idea is even to send their own troops and hire mercenaries from various countries, mainly Syria.  

Erdogan's string of foreign interventions has been outstanding, from the invasion of northern Syria to fight against its Kurdish enemies; the attacks on northern Iraq, which also harbours malicious Kurds; the interference in the conflict in Libya; the military base in Qatar and Somalia; his ambitions in the Sahel and the Sahara; and now Nagorno-Karabakh, the enclave in permanent conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan for many years. A conflict that has been rekindled a few days ago by the attacks of the Azerbaijani troops on the Armenians.

These attacks have the military support of the now famous Turkish drones. Once again Erdogan is once again taking a stand against Russian President Vladimir Putin, who supports the interests of the Armenians in this enclave that is strategic for several reasons, most notably its key position for exporting the substantial energy resources of the Caspian Sea, which are managed for Russia's benefit.

The interests of the two presidents also clashed in Syria and Libya. We will see whether the third time is the charm or Putin's need to ensure the pipelines used to export the large quantity of Russian oil sold on the market and which pass through Turkish territory do not suffer any accidents or cuts.

In the middle of this aggressive strategy abroad, Erdogan continues to arrest Kurdish mayors and politicians which he justifies by unclear actions in 2014. Such detentions join the arrests of hundreds of people from all fields. Repression is justified, among other reasons, by the survey data of Avrasya company that points out that, if there are elections now, Erdogan would stay at 38% against 42% of possible CHP candidate Ekrem Imamoglu, mayor of Istanbul.

Serious economic crisis, bad polls and leakage of relevant personalities from his party, which means more problems for his possible 2023 re-election.