Hard times for strong “of politics”

The figures of strong leaders appear to be declining. The market has not dropped at all, but autocrats have little reason to feel powerful.

Let's see China. China's Communist Party's internal political Games (CPC) are known for hiding, and political strife rarely reaches the level that cannot be covered. And again, there can be murmuring. This month, as President Xi Jinping and his senior advisers ceased at the Beidai marine resort, words circulated that criticisms were on the rise for Xi's cult of personality in the ranks of CPC.

Judging by words, Xi has to ask himself whether she would be smart to return to Deng Xiaoping reforms and ignore precedents set by former CPC elites such as Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. He may do well to take into account his triumphal rhetoric, giving the sense of American nationalist calls Donald Trump and his protestist ridicule. Recently, he may do well to reevaluate his main policy, the Belt and Road Initiative, which is constantly being criticised as a China mechanism to export debts to other indebted countries, often through investments in white cartels and other suspicious projects.

Meanwhile, Xi's new best friend, Russian President Vladimir Putin, remains politically invincible. But, as a reporter for Fox Nea suggested, this may be because many of his critics “end up dead”. Russia's government still depends on gas and oil for 40 percent of its income and the economy, deprived of entrepreneurial dynamism and foreign investments, remains in agony. Look around your house and ask you not to find anything from Russia except vodka, energy or Tolstoy's works.

But Putin's tough troubles and Xi fade in front of those of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Trump, who has now been implicated by his early lawyer and “finisher” in a federal offense commission.

Fifteen years after coming to power from a foreign currency exchange crisis, Erdogan now appears to be aiming to produce a new crisis. Turkish lira has lost 38 per cent of its value to the dollar this year, mainly from Erdogan's economic ignorance and blindness before different views.

Unlike his predecessor as president, Adullah Gul, Erdogan has never tried to be a leader for the entire country. His compelling behavior and selfish policies have deepened the divisions between the rich seculars and the poorest rural Muslims who form its base.

Turkey's latest crisis is even more tragic, as it is unnecessary. The country is an important regional centre, home to 81 million people and bridge between the West, Middle East and Central Asia. It's potentially an economic dynamo. But Erdogan's policies are drawing Turkey's economy into a hole.

Although the lira is in free decline and inflation is increasing, Erdogan has pressured the central bank not to raise interest rates, fearing that a slowdown in growth would undermine his party's prospects in next year's local elections, especially in Turkish cities. But over the next 12 months, he will have to face a deepening deficit and a lot of dollar-dominated debts.

To make things worse, Erdogan recently appointed his unqualified son-in-law, Berat Albayrak Jaryd Kouchner of Ankara as finance and treasury minister, most worrying about markets. And he is engaged in an ongoing diplomatic and trade dispute with the US over the arrest of an American pastor, accused of taking part in the 2016 coup against Erdogan. Trump, for his part, has made the pastor's release a personal goal, most likely as a target to attract believers' votes at its base during the medium-term US elections this November. In this respect, he recently announced that he would double American taxes on Turkish aluminum and steel.

Trump's despair of proving that no one can mock (particularly Putin) is well known. In the dispute with Truqia, he did not hesitate to blow up fees as if they were sweets, despite the possible anger of American businesses and clients. Not to mention that Turkey is an important NATO ally. Trump seems to be aiming to pull it out of the alliance and throw it into the arms of Russia and China.

Despite its growing legal problems and increasing suspicion of its legitimacy, Trump has continued to destroy the international post-war order that America helped create. Even worse, its brand of selfishness is spreading to Asia and Europe, promoting disturbing policies in Italy, Hungary, Poland, and even the United Kingdom.

In Britain, the new foreign secretary, Jeremy Hunt, has argued that the movement behind the Brex campaign is different from populist nationalism in other countries. It's not like that. Brex's fanatics are clearly driven by hostility toward immigrants and foreigners. If Hunt has any doubts about this, let him not look further than his predecessor Boris Johnson, who recently went an article that ridiculed Muslim women who wore dirty clothes.

Unlike some of the strong who circulate into politics today, a truly powerful leader would stand for international co-operation and seek to convince voters why it matters. Let us hope that French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will do just that in the coming months.

Meanwhile, we should pray that those who want to be strong like Trump and Erdogan will not do much harm in their respective countries and the rest of the population. It's time to do the cooperation again magnificent. /Project Syndicate/ BIRN/