Week in Review: Outpacing Events, Bypassing Problems

Outpaced by Events

US President Joe Biden speaks with Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during a plenary session at a NATO summit in Brussels, Belgium, 14 June 2021. The 30-nation alliance hopes to reaffirm its unity and discuss increasingly tense relations with China and Russia, as the organization pulls its troops out after 18 years in Afghanistan. Photo: EPA-EFE/OLIVIER MATTHYS / POOL

Over the last week, the world has watched in shock the scenes of the Taliban's rapid takeover of Afghanistan and its capital, Kabul. Much attention has been centred on Kabul Airport, the setting of dramatic scenes of locals and internationals desperately trying to leave the country.

Yet until recently, as part of the planning for US and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had made an offer for his country to manage security at the airport in the future. As Aykan Erdemir writes in his opinion piece for BIRN, the plan seems to have been concocted in order to neutralise criticism of Ankara from the Biden Administration. By reminding the US of Turkey's - and by extension his own - usefulness, Erdogan hoped to achieve much the same effect as through his deals with the EU on controlling migrant flows. Alas, events on the ground seem to have made the plan redundant and shown that there is no quick fix for US-Turkey relations.

Read more: Turkey Turns to Taliban, But There is no More Airport Deal to Salvage (August 17, 2021)

New Strategy?

Destroyed and deserted hotels are seen in an area used by the Turkish military, in the Turkish occupied area, in the abandoned coastal city of Varosha in Famagusta, Cyprus, 12 May 2014. Photo: EPA/KATIA CHRISTODOULOU

What does the (re)opening of the...