I have to say, Türkiye President Erdogan has been stealing the show recently.
Last Tuesday, on the eve of the NATO summit, Erdogan and NATOSecretary-General Stoltenberg,FinlandPresidentNiinisto,SwedenPrime MinisterAndersson The four-party talks and the signing of a tripartite memorandum after the meeting suddenly gave Finland and Sweden the "green light" to join NATO.
As for the conditions, it is naturally the so-called "strengthening counter-terrorism cooperation", which is actually in exchange for Finland, Sweden and NATO to support the Turkish government in its fight against the Kurdistan Workers' Party and other forces.
And Turkey is indeed acting vigorously and resolutely. Its intelligence department announced with a high profile on July 4 that it had eliminated a female high-ranking member of the PKK, codenamed "Berfin Nurha", in the northern Guara region of Iraq. "Kyrgyzstan," which has orchestrated numerous operations against Turkey's security services since the 1990s.
has been fighting openly and secretly for decades, and the Turkish security department finally got its revenge. It is difficult not to attribute it to Erdogan's strategizing. Don’t forget, this strongman in the Middle East, known as the “Little Prince of Micromanage”, dreams of restoring the glory of the Ottoman Empire. Erdogan is also called the “Princess of the New Era” sudan " .
"There are only wrong names, but no wrong nicknames." Since taking office as the President of Turkey in 2014, the Turkish government under the leadership of Erdogan has indeed made many "hard-core operations" .
For example, the Turkish army shot down a Russian Su-24 fighter jet on November 24, 2015, and shot down a Russian Mi-8 helicopter the next day. It was not until half a year later that Erdogan wrote a letter of apology to Putin, and the matter was "peacefully resolved".
For another example, the Erdogan government arrested a businessman named Kavala on the grounds that he participated in the attempted coup in 2016, but the United States, Canada, France, Germany and other ten European and American countries, on October 18 last year Japan issued a joint statement calling on Turkey to "urgently release Kavanagh".
Erdogan's counterattack was swift and ruthless. immediately announced that the ambassadors of these ten countries would be classified as "persona non grata" and asked the Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs to expel them . Faced with this situation, the United States had to compromise. The U.S. Embassy in Turkey issued a statement saying that the United States had an obligation not to interfere in Turkey's internal affairs. For example, Erdogan appealed to the United Nations more than once, demanding that the "one-vote veto power" of the five permanent members of the Security Council be abolished, which immediately offended the five countries of China, the United States, Russia, Britain and France. However, although the "Five Permanent Members" did not agree with Erdogan's proposal, they also agreed that the United Nations Security Council needed to be reformed, which in turn allowed Erdogan to gain international prestige.
However, it must be pointed out that readers who understand Turkey's political and social situation should know that although Erdogan is ambitious, his "mysterious operations" are also numerous. The most intuitive example of
is Türkiye's economic .
Last year, that is, in 2021, the " interest rate hike wave" occurred one after another around the world. The United States, Russia, Japan, South Korea and other countries were faced with the dilemma of "high inflation", many countries chose to use interest rate hikes to curb inflation . However, Turkey "took another approach". Regardless of the country's economic status quo and the threat of inflation, it actually lowered the interest rate by 100 basis points to 15%.
Erdogan highly praised this move, claiming that Turkey was fighting an "independent economic war" . However, the market did not buy it. The exchange rate of Turkish lira against the US dollar depreciated by nearly 30% that month, and had depreciated by about 47% by the end of the year. undoubtedly hit a record low.
It is not difficult to see that Erdogan, who is usually "handy" on the international geopolitical stage, is not a good 4 at least in terms of economics.Especially after the United States started "money printing mode" and exported inflationary to the world, Turkey did not have the ability to withstand the "dollar flood", and Erdogan did not have a magic trick to defeat the "dollar hegemony".
In the final analysis, it is still Türkiye’s economic problem.
On the one hand, Turkey does not actually have complete "monetary sovereignty" . Its currency issuance is mainly based on foreign exchange reserves, but the control of cross-border trade is in the hands of foreign capital and compradors.
On the other hand, although Turkey is one of the G20 countries and ranked 19th in the world in GDP last year, it can only be regarded as a moderately industrialized country. The industrial system is far from perfect, and it still lacks outstanding industrial advantages .
But when luck comes, it really can’t be stopped.
On July 4, local time, according to the "Turkish Daily" report, a large amount of rare earth resources were discovered in Eskisehir Province in northwestern Turkey. The deposit contains approximately 694 million tons of rare earths, which can at least Bringing billions of dollars in revenue to Turkey.
In this regard, some Turkish professionals emphasized that these rare earth reserves can meet the world's needs for 1,000 years.
This is not alarmist. According to the latest data from the US Geological Survey , as of 2021, global rare earth reserves will be approximately 120 million tons.
As for this mine in Turkey, the reserves of are five times that of other countries in the world combined. According to the current international demand, it can indeed be mined for hundreds or thousands of years.
In this case, why is the economic benefit this industry can bring to Turkey only a few billion dollars?
As a result, the global output of rare earth smelting and separation in 2021 will be approximately 280,000 tons, and the original global reserves will be enough to meet the world's needs for 500 years. In other words, if the "cake" of is not getting bigger, the increase in global rare earth reserves will only increase the length, not the width.
Secondly, rare earth minerals are just a general term. In fact, they can be divided into light rare earths and medium and heavy rare earths . Although the former has large reserves and wide application range, the latter is expensive and has little substitutability because it can be is used in high-precision industries such as aerospace and military industry, and is a truly scarce resource.
So, what kind of rare earth minerals discovered in Türkiye belong to it, and what proportion of them are medium and heavy rare earths?
For the past three years, the global rare earth industry chain has produced the "leading" - China, which is in a leading position in the world. Not only does its reserves account for 37% of the world's original reserves, but its mining output accounts for 58% of the world's smelting and separation production capacity. accounts for 390% of the world's html. It ranks first in the world in three aspects and is absolutely dominant.
This means that my country's rare earth industry chain has complete upstream and downstream supporting facilities, and the international market can enjoy "one-stop service" with high quality and low price. At the same time, my country's rare earth application technology is unique in the world, and the number of patent applications in related technical fields is no less than 20,000 more than that of the United States.
It is no exaggeration to say that Turkey currently has no technology, no capital, and no market for . It would be naive to want to "seize food from the tiger's mouth."
Of course, the over-concentration of the rare earth industry chain has made the United States hamstrung and anxious. Therefore, since last year, it has vigorously supported local rare earth companies and tried to establish a broader strategic reserve of rare earths.
Now it seems that this may be an opportunity for Turkey, but it may not be an opportunity for China, which has always advocated "win-win cooperation".
