The collective West was dying to bury him – yet another strategic mistake that did not take into account the mood of Turkish voters in deep Anatolia.

Eventually, Recep Tayyip Erdogan succeeded – again. For all his flaws, like an aging neo-Ottoman Sinatra, he did it “my way,” comfortably retaining Turkey's presidency when opponents had all but buried him.

The first order of geopolitical priorities is who will be appointed foreign minister. The main candidate is Ibrahim Kalin, the current press secretary and senior adviser to Erdogan.

Compared to the incumbent Cavusoglu, Kalin can, in theory, be called more pro-Western. However, it is the Sultan who leads the dance. It will be fascinating to watch how Erdogan's Turkey 2.0 handles deepening ties with West Asia and accelerating the Eurasia integration process.

The first immediate priority, from Erdogan's point of view, is to get rid of the "terrorist corridor" in Syria. This means, in practice, ruling over the US-backed Kurdish YPG/PYD, which are effectively Syrian affiliates of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) – which is also the issue at the heart of a possible normalization of the relations with Damascus.

Now that Syria has been enthusiastically welcomed into the Arab League after a 12-year freeze, a Moscow-brokered deal between the Turkish and Syrian presidents, already underway, could represent the ultimate win-win for Erdogan: allowing controlling the Kurds in northern Syria while facilitating the repatriation of around 4 million refugees (tens of thousands will remain, as a source of cheap labour).

The Sultan is at his best when it comes to hedging his bets between East and West. He knows perfectly well how to take advantage of Turkey's status as a key member of NATO - with one of its largest armies, veto power and control over the entrance to the uber-strategic Black Sea. .

And all this while exercising real independence in foreign policy, from Western Asia to the Eastern Mediterranean.

So expect Erdogan 2.0 to remain an inextinguishable source of irritation for the neocons and neoliberals in charge of US foreign policy, as well as their EU vassals, who will never shy away from it. trying to subjugate Ankara to fight the Russia-China-Iran Eurasian integration deal. The sultan knows how to play this game perfectly.

read the article