TURKEY’S ONE STEP FORWARD AND TWO STEPS BACK
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan seemed to be on an incredible roll at the beginning of the month with the prospect of an historic end to the decades old conflict with the PKK. This prospect arose in response to the February 27 call by the group’s imprisoned leader, Abdullah Öcalan, for the laying down of arms and a cessation of hostilities after decades of a brutal, armed struggle for greater Kurdish autonomy. If successful, this move would be a game changer not only for Turkey and its leader but for the region, as well, and especially in neighboring Syria where a PKK clone has established a working government in much of the country’s western and northwestern region.
But from this one very large step forward was followed on March 11 by the arrest and jailing of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu. The popular mayor is the president’s leading opponent who is admired by millions as efficient, with a broad grass-roots appeal across both the secular and religious communities across the country. Consequently, his arrest led to the largest protests in a decade and increased stock market volatility.
First, the good (sic) news: Abdullah Öcalan, jailed since 1999 on treason charges, is the revered leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). On February 27, he issued an historic order calling on the group he founded to disband and disarm. This is a massive development. The PKK has been fighting for what it’s variously described as more Kurdish autonomy for half a century. Turkey and several of its allies (including the US) have long listed the PKK as a terrorist organization. But while Öcalan has pushed for truces before, this is the first time he has explicitly called for the PKK and its international affiliates (such as the ones in Syria) to dissolve themselves completely.
Now for the bad news: Turkey has seen its largest protests in a decade and the stock market dropped 17 percent after the jailing of Istanbul Mayor İmamoğlu. Prosecutors have accused him of participating in an alleged corruption scheme and supporting a terrorist organization (the PKK). He denied the allegations, calling them “unimaginable accusations and slanders,” while Erdoğan on March 22 said that Turkey is a democracy with rule of law. Nevertheless, İmamoğlu supporters have protested across the country every day since his arrest, despite bans on demonstrations in major cities and the detention of more than 1100 people and a worrying clampdown on respected news media.
Global reaction has been surprisingly tepid. French, German, and European Union (EU) officials issued statements of concern. Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, stated additionally that Turkey “must uphold the democratic values, especially the rights of elected officials.” A U.S. State Department spokesperson said that “…we would encourage Turkey to respect human rights” but “…we’re not going to comment on…the internal decision-making of another country.”
Comment: A highly placed SocoSIX source in Ankara tells us that the events underscore both the widespread public support for İmamoğlu and the hurdles to his holding higher office. In the March 23 primary for İmamoğlu’s Republican People’s Party (CHP), he invited even non-party members to vote “…to declare their struggle for democracy.” More than thirteen million people, who were not party members, expressed their backing for İmamoğlu, the vote’s organizers said. Meanwhile, Istanbul University last week stripped İmamoğlu of his degree, a requirement for running for president. On March 23, Turkey’s interior ministry announced he was temporarily suspended from his mayoral role.
Our source noted that Erdoğan is taking an enormous risk by imprisoning his main opposition leader for two principal reasons. First, he will galvanize the opposition and make Mr. İmamoğlu a more potent opponent as a martyr. Second, this event is going to continue to have a serious impact on the Turkish economy which has recently shown signs of recovery.
A European observer reacted further. He remarked that Erdoğan is willing to risk his standing only because he does not expect much pushback from his erstwhile NATO allies and because he is confident that the security forces will continue to back his repressive moves against a vocally angry public. Whereas, in the past, U.S. Republican or Democratic administrations would have taken a very dim view of this type of repression and arrest, the Trump administration has made it clear that it does not really care what strongmen do in their own countries. More problematic is the loyalty of the security forces who find themselves facing in street protests fellow citizens from every walk of life and religious persuasion. The observer concluded if the protests can be sustained, Turkey may be on the cusp of truly significant political change. End Comment.
O Canada!
Political earthquakes have been occurring with astonishing rapidity in North America since last November – and not just in the United States but in Mexico and especially in Canada. For the past 11 years, Canada has been ruled by Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party in alliance with the left-wing populists of the National Democratic Party. A markedly flawed immigration policy, increasing government red tape, higher taxes, including a highly unpopular carbon tax, increased inflation and housing costs unaffordable for most Canadians caused Trudeau’s popularity to tumble to record low. Combined with several notable personnel scandals and a newly energized Conservative Party under a new, articulate and personable leader, Pierre Poilievre looked almost certain to take power at the next general election expected before October of this year. Facing a no confidence vote in parliament which he seemed certain to lose, Trudeau finally threw in his hat and announced that he would resign his position as both Liberal Party head and government first minister, pending the election of a successor.
Then enter Donald Trump. According to an heretofore pro-American Toronto editor, President Trump resurrected comments he had made during the long U.S. electoral campaign demeaning both Canada and Prime Minister Trudeau in a manner which can only be described as humiliating for an enemy, let alone for a country which historically has been our closest neighbor and friend. Calling on Canada to become our 51st state and referring to Trudeau as “Governor” was stated not only in private conversations with Canadian official but in public by Trump both as candidate and, after January 20, as president.
But these catcalls roused Trudeau in the last weeks in power. Delivering what most observers declared were the strongest and best speeches of his political career, Trudeau put backbone into the Canadian electorate while fostering a wave of anti-Americanism not seen in Canada since the days of Diefenbaker’s rule in the 1950s. On March 9, the Liberals elected Mark Carney – a banker and economist by training – to become Canada’s new prime minister. Assuming his new office on March 14, he hit the road running – and not to Washington, the usual first stop for Canadian Prime Ministers – but to Paris and London where he secured agreement to fast-track free trade accords with both trading nations as the first of many steps Carney intends to take to limit Canada’s overdependence on the U.S. as its critical trading partner.
Carney also called a snap election for April 28. And like a Phoenix rising, the huge 20-point gap between the two leading parties was erased, and the Liberals are once again neck and neck with the Conservatives. Our Toronto editor – no friend of the Liberals – indicated that it appears more than likely that the currently popular Carney will bring the Liberals back into power. He has already scrubbed Trudeau’s unpopular carbon tax which had been the lodestone weighing down the Liberal’s economic platform. He termed Trump’s 25% levy on Canadian built automobile imports as an attack on Canada which will not go unanswered.
Comment: To many observers, the Trump Administration’s actions look like effortless undertakings to shoot ourselves in the foot. Self-induced tariff wars (with apparent scant regard to the history of the disastrous Smoot-Hawley Tariff), questionable personnel bloodletting from government programs which need more, not less, considered support (whether in the VA, national parks, overseas consular services, etc.), deliberately creating enemies with no discernable, happy endings in sight with heretofore closely allied countries (like Mexico, Denmark, Germany, and Ukraine) make a mockery of traditional policymaking. Turning on Canada in this fashion is a non-policy for which there is no upside that is conceivable.
Our editor friend suggests that a grand coalition of all of Canada’s political parties may be one way for his country to signal the nearly unanimous strong disapproval of Canadians towards its massive neighbor following the April 28 election. Prime Minister Carney has already banged in the death knell to our previously close relations by stating that that era is over. Our Toronto editor concluded that, despite Mar- a-Logo commentary to the contrary, the U.S. needs a friendly and supportive Canada. At one point – sooner rather than later – cooler thoughts will prevail, and we can try to rebuild Humpty Dumpty again with glue Made in the USA and Canada together as it should be. End Comment.
SYRIAN VIOLENCE INTENSIFIES AMID INTERIM PRESIDENT’S EFFORTS TO CARVE OUT AN ISLAMIC STATE
Syria has historically been a country with a majority Sunni Muslim population but with significant minorities going back for over a thousand years drawn from Alawites, Shi’a Muslims, Druse, Kurds, and various Christian communities, including those which still speak Aramaic, believed to be the spoken language of Jesus. So, it was with some trepidation when radical Islamic factions, the largest of which is an offshoot of al-Qa’ida – the so-called Hayat Tahrir al-Sham or HTS – seized control of Damascus and forced the downfall of the Asad dictatorship in early December 2024, in a move which SocoSIX has learned on good authority was successful due to critical Turkish backing and Qatari financial support.
Since that date, HTS has moved to create the fiction that has moderated its past, extreme Islamic roots and has dispatched envoys to the Gulf and Europe in an effort to gain foreign backing. This has been partially successful. Now, several Arab and European countries have established or re-established a diplomatic presence in Damascus including the EU, UN, France, Spain, Italy, Germany, Qatar, the UAE, Oman, and Turkey. A pledging conference in France, hosted by President Macron on February 13, came short of the tens of billions needed to rebuild the country, but the EU did commit over $6 billion to help the interim government move towards a peaceful outcome.
Domestically, Ahmad al-Sharaa, the head of the HST has been named interim president and has gone out of his way to declare to one and all that he is a changed man. Not so fast. His Minister of Justice was seen in a 2016 video overseeing the street execution of a woman for adultery in Idlib Province where HST has ruled as a quasi-Islamic rump state since 2016. And most of the other key members of his government are likewise drawn from the HST administration in Idlib.
Earlier this month, the death toll from violent clashes and attacks rose to over 1000 persons in fighting which occurred in Latakia and in other coastal areas where the majority of the population are Alawites, a minority group viewed as an offshoot of Shi’a Islam, which totals about 10 percent of the population. The Asad Family was from this grouping, and although there is no love lost between most Alawites and the Asad, many members of his former security forces make their home in this part of the country and have become the target of revenge killings. Al-Sharaa has voiced his opposition to these actions and called for the perpetrators to be brought to justice. Most observers see little chance of this happening.
Comment: To be sure, al-Sharaa has his hands full; even if he can contain the activities of the core al-Qa’ida elements of the HST, he will have greater difficulties with militia members drawn from Chechnya and other groups of foreign fighters who have no special ties to Syria and its people.
When Asad’s extensive gulag of prisons was identified, all prisoners were released – including thousands who were nothing but common criminals. These lowlifes are now preying on ordinary, often already impoverished civilians. Robbery, looting, and kidnapping are now very common in Damascus and in other communities. The situation is anything but normal.
The safest region is in the northwest in areas secured by the Kurds with American backing. Here too, there is a potential disaster waiting to happen. If and when Trump withdraws the 2000 or so American air force and special forces personnel protecting this area, the Kurds will cease to be the overseers of some 10,000 still recalcitrant former ISIS prisoners. Most of them remain committed Jihadis. Then, there is the much larger facility housing 20,000 radicalized family members of these ISIS foot soldiers or their widows and children. Of multiple nationalities and now considered by many governments as “stateless,” these women and children promise to become the ‘perpetual thorn’ in the side of any Damascus government which seeks to take charge. End Comment.
CHINESE CHIP COMPROMISED
A Science Attaché at a friendly European Embassy in Madrid reported to us that the ubiquitous ESP32 microchip made by Chinese manufacturer Espressif has been found to contain undocumented commands that could be leveraged for attacks. He said that the undocumented commands allow for (a) the spoofing of trusted devices, (b) unauthorized data access, (c) pivoting to other devices on the network, and (d) potentially establishing long-term persistence in the networks attacked. Asked for the source of his information, the Attaché disclosed that this failing had been discovered by two by Spanish researchers from Tarlogic Security. They had presented their findings recently at a technical conference called RootedCON in Madrid.
Comment: The backdoor detected by Tarlogic Security is in the ESP32, a microcontroller that enables Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections and is present in millions of mass-market devices. Exploitation of this backdoor could allow hostile actors to conduct impersonation attacks and permanently infect sensitive devices such as mobile phones, computers, smart locks, or medical equipment by bypassing code audit controls. This chip is reportedly widely used for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity in IoT (Internet of Things) devices. End Comment.
UKRAINE MESS CONTINUES
Our Behind the Headlines Report for March 2025 began with the extraordinarily public spectacle of Ukrainian President Zelensky being asked to leave the White House following an angry exchange in the Oval Office after President Trump accused his guest of having “no interest” in a ceasefire but wanting to use American support to keep on fighting. Critical U.S. military and intelligence support for Ukraine was promptly suspended. Our April report begins with President Trump reportedly angry with Putin for disparaging Zelensky’s authority to negotiate for Ukraine and mixed reports about what “partial cease-fire deal” might have been worked out among the parties.
On March 11, American and Ukrainian delegations met in Jeddah, and the latter accepted the former’s proposition that there should be an ‘immediate, interim 30-day ceasefire that will be extendable by mutual agreement of both parties and is subject to acceptance and implementation by Russia.’ The Ukrainians had suggested a more partial ceasefire covering just the air and maritime domains, which the Russians had already rejected, but this proposal went further and covered the frontlines on the ground as well. U.S. military and intelligence support were resumed, and the ‘ceasefire ball’ was seemingly passed to the Russians.
American diplomats returned to Saudi Arabia in late March, where a US delegation held talks with Ukrainian officials on March 23rd and met with Russian officials on March 24 for a second round of talks. The objective was again to secure a 30-day ceasefire to temporarily halt Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with a longer-term peace agreement in view. An NSC source told SocoSIX that, ideally, Trump administration would like a truce by Easter Sunday, April 20. However, Russia played down hopes of quick progress following their day-long talks with the U.S. Talk about a Black Sea cease-fire is about all that has been mentioned publicly, but with few details.
Comment: An April 30 ceasefire deadline is unlikely. Maybe a one-day Easter Truce like the Christmas cease-fire along the Western Front in 1914 would be a better bet. The Riyadh talks took place following the separate telephone conversations held by President Trump with both of his Ukrainian and Russian counterparts. Both indicated that they agreed to a cease-fire on energy facilities, though Putin immediately listed further conditions for a full truce. Richard Haass, one of our premier foreign policy gurus (and President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations) wrote on Substack that “…. the Trump administration has done itself no favors by openly distancing itself from Ukraine, an action that removes Putin’s incentive to agree to a cease-fire. Or by agreeing to bilateral talks with Russia without insisting on a parallel Russia-Ukraine channel. Or by introducing and publicly discussing considerations favorable to Russia into immediate cease-fire talks that ought to be left for a second, final-status phase… The best chance for the peace that President Trump seeks is to keep it simple: a cease-fire in place backed by continued U.S. military and intelligence support for Ukraine, support that would incentivize Putin to sign and honor a cease-fire.” End Comment.
U.S. NEEDS MINERALS BUT CANNOT PROCESS THEM
In yet another indication of the ways in which U.S. manufacturing capacities have eroded since the Clinton Administration, our near obsession with seeking the minerals, chemicals, and rare earths needed for modern industrial and military applications faces the additional hurdle of our having outsourced most of our capacity to process these same critical materials. According to a knowledgeable contact at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the U.S. mines around 12% of the world’s supply of rare earths, putting it only behind China. Most of the lode comes from a large deposit in the Mountain Pass mine in California. However, our source adds that the U.S. exports about two-thirds of its rare earths to China — not because it wants to, but because it has little choice not to. This is because China is responsible for around 85% of the world’s rare-earth refining. Chinese companies then turn the ore into the final product — rare-earth magnets, for example — and then export them back to the U.S. and other largely western markets.
And this is not the only situation where this travesty is occurring. The U.S. sends a good chunk of its substantial supplies of copper to China for processing, as well. And even our lone nickel mine must send its nickel concentrate abroad to Canada for smelting. (Hopefully, this will not become a point of friction in our growing trade difficulties with Canada.) But it is China, this USGS official submitted, that has become the dominant smelter king of the globe and, given the pace of China’s continuing expansion in this area, it is hard to see this situation of dominance changing any time in the near future.
Comment: Until the 1990s, the U.S. was a major refiner of minerals and metals. But then China emerged as the dominant player, powered by its cheap labor force and looser environmental regulations of a sector that can be highly polluting. The seemingly endless appetite of Chinese manufacturers for raw materials during the decades of China’s explosive growth provided an extra bonus for Chinese refiners. Today, the sheer scale of China’s refining industry makes it difficult for others to compete, and China has become the dominant refiner of rare earths, cobalt, copper, and many other minerals. Our USGS source estimated that the cost of building a refinery plant in China is around one-third of the cost in the U.S. President Trump wants to secure the minerals the U.S. needs for everything from smartphones to jet fighters by striking deals in Ukraine, Greenland and even Russia, but finding someplace other than our chief geopolitical rival to process them into the needed products is a major stumbling block to the Administration’s effort to reindustrialize. End Comment.
