English – Yetkin Report

[caption id="attachment_51201" align="aligncenter" width="788"] The US is failing to get what it wants from Russia over Ukraine. In Europe, which is steadily losing its political influence over Russia, the far right is on the rise. The Alternative for Germany (AfD), led by Alice Weidel, has won the latest state election in Germany.[/caption] US President Donald Trump’s Special Envoy Steve Witkoff left Moscow empty-handed after receiving a lecture from Russian President Vladimir Putin during his September 5 visit to discuss the war in Ukraine. On September 6, the day he was due to deliver the bad news to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) won a major state election. The fact that the two events happened on the same day is a coincidence, but there is symbolic significance in their occurring in the same period. Although the AfD won nearly 44 percent of the vote—the highest share won by the far right in Germany since World War II—and secured 39 seats in the state parliament, it fell short of the 42 seats needed for an absolute majority. Before the election, no party had said it would form a coalition with the AfD. But, first, this is politics, and the balance of power can change; second, fragile coalitions can easily collapse in the face of a strong opposition. Alice Weidel, leader of the Alternative party, which emerged as the largest party in the Saxony-Anhalt state election with nearly 44 percent of the vote, said in one of her first statements that she aimed to have good relations with “neighboring” Russia as well as “ally” the United States. Berlin once again between Washington and Moscow A day earlier, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had described the political steps taken by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz against Russia as “the beginning of a real war.” Germany had accused Russia over a drone found unexploded near a cargo plane at Leipzig Airport that was due to carry military supplies to Ukraine, and had closed the Russian Consulate General in Bonn and the Russian Cultural Center. Russia, in turn, had closed the Goethe Institutes, Germany’s cultural centers in the country. In parallel with this process, Trump had sent CIA Director John Ratcliffe to Moscow on August 25. Following that intelligence contact, which focused on the war in Ukraine, Trump sent Witkoff to Moscow. Witkoff, who also wears the hat of Special Envoy for the Middle East and therefore conducts US-Iran talks, was accompanied by Trump’s unmistakably pro-Israel son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Just as Trump wants to get out of the war with Iran, into which he was drawn through Israel, as quickly as possible, he also wants the war in Ukraine to end as soon as possible. Putin, meanwhile, is prepared to regard NATO’s provision of weapons to Ukraine capable of striking deep inside Russia as a “casus belli”—a cause for war. Berlin is once again between Washington and Moscow, as it was after World War II. Failing to learn Russian lesson Quite apart from the political deadlock, the United States’ massive military-industrial complex is struggling to supply both Israel and Ukraine with weapons and ammunition at the same time. And on November 3, Trump faces crucial midterm elections. The Iranians, who invented the game of chess, understood this and have kept the United States tied down in the Strait of Hormuz until the November 3 election. In Israel, meanwhile, Benjamin Netanyahu is escalating his aggressive provocations ahead of the October 27 elections, a week before the US election, including efforts to drag Türkiye into the equation. Europe, centered on France and Germany, meanwhile appears to have learned nothing from the Russian debacles of either Napoleon’s 1812 campaign or Hitler’s 1945 campaign. Merz in Germany and Emmanuel Macron in France, together with a comfortably insulated Britain, are pursuing an open-ended policy at the expense of the suffering of the Ukrainian people. They refuse to see that the United States does not want an escalation with Russia that could ultimately lead to nuclear war. The rise of AfD leader Weidel is partly attributable to her pursuit of a Trump-like “Germany First” policy. The wars in Ukraine and Iran and Türkiye Putin, whom Witkoff visited carrying Trump’s greetings, told him, with a grave, stone-faced expression, that he would not withdraw from the Ukrainian territories he has occupied, but that NATO must withdraw from Ukraine. NATO support for Ukraine, meanwhile, was at the top of the decisions adopted at the Ankara Summit on July 7-8. Before Witkoff returned empty-handed from Moscow, Putin met on September 1 in Bishkek, on the sidelines of the Shanghai Summit, with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who had hosted the NATO Summit. It was hardly convincing to suggest that they had discussed only Russian tourists in Turkey and the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant. Türkiye is a neighbor to both Russia’s war in Ukraine and the war against Iran being waged by the United States and Israel. Trump wants Erdoğan to persuade Putin to meet with Zelenskyy, but he has been unable to persuade Zelenskyy to meet with Putin. Trump, meanwhile, wants Erdoğan to maintain his policy of not taking an active position against Israel and in favor of Iran in response to all of Netanyahu’s provocations, but he has been unable to stop Israel from provoking Türkiye, including by bringing Greece into the equation. As the US weakens the EU… Türkiye, meanwhile, is seeking on the one hand to find a solution to the Kurdish issue that takes weapons out of the equation through the “Terror-Free Türkiye” formula, and on the other to establish a new balance with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan against both Israel and Iran through the “Mecca Pact.” The government puts the burden of the wars in Ukraine and Iran on Türkiye’s chronic inflation problem at seven percentage points. Ankara has political, economic and social interests in seeing both wars end as soon as possible. It also has a vested interest in the recovery of the European Union, despite the EU’s continued exclusion of Türkiye, because Europe remains Türkiye’s main export market. The Trump administration’s efforts to humiliate the EU at every opportunity are also strengthening Russia’s resolve. The EU’s political leverage has weakened since Russia’s war against Ukraine, while its economic leverage has weakened with China’s unstoppable rise. This is how a fertile environment is being created for the rise of far-right parties in Germany and across Europe. It would come as no surprise if the AfD also wins in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the former East German state, in the local elections to be held in Germany on September 20. In Berlin, meanwhile, both the AfD and Die Linke, the Left Party, appear poised to double their vote shares.

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