May’s Dictatorship Tourism Smacks of Post-Brexit Panic

Left Unity Comment on Theresa May’s desperate search for political deals with dictators

Stomach churning. That’s the only way to describe Theresa May’s love-ins on successive days with aspirant dictator Donald Trump and Turkey’s fully fledged version, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Both visits were brilliant endorsements and photo-ops for these extreme right wing politicians, but will yield little in terms of economic benefit for British capitalism.

Holding hands with Trump and being dragged to pay homage to Pasha Erdogan in his grotesque $1bn dollar palace in the Beytepe neighbourhood of Ankara (1) will be seen worldwide as grovelling for a little bit more trade in the light of the likely collapse of trade with the EU post-Brexit.

To do this May refused to condemn Trump’s new racist immigration bans against some Muslim countries, and gave only a formal nod in the direction of human rights in Turkey – while stressing Britain’s military and security links with Erdogan’s dictatorial regime. (Apparently Number 10 has now finally made a midnight statement saying May ‘does not agree’ with the bans). The Tory leader cannot have been best pleased that Trump issued his banning order the very day after their talks – landing her in a diplomatic pickle.

And now just two days after the Trump meeting May is facing a crescendo of demands to cancel Trump’s planned state visit in the summer, unless his travel bans are withdrawn. Jeremy Corbyn’s call for the visit to be cancelled if the bans are not withdrawn was quickly endorsed by Liberal leader Tim Farron. Even right-wing Tory MP Nadhim Zadhawi, who was born in Baghdad and is now therefore banned, has emotionally condemned Trump’s actions.

May held out the carrot of a state visit to Trump to allow her the dubious privilege of being the first major political leader to pay him a visit (he wants to play a round of golf at the Queen’s private Balmoral golf course). But this international grovelling will be of little avail economically.

The United States is Britain’s largest single trading partner, with around 16.5% of Britain’s export trade – just a little bit more than Britain’s exports to Germany. But exports to the EU as a whole are around 45% of the total. Tariffs with the US are already low and it’s difficult to see how trade with the US can be boosted. Exports of manufactured goods to the EU countries are much higher than to the US and will suffer even more in a post-Brexit arrangement.

Trade with Turkey – about 1.5% of the total – is unlikely to increase significantly because of that country’s economic slowdown. The £100m deal to help supply bespoke jets is peanuts – the Eurofighter Typhoon has a list price of £140m per aircraft, so £100m is going to buy a little engineering expertise from BAE systems (2).

“The human rights situation in Turkey has only got worse since [President] Erdogan came to power,” said Andrew Smith of Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT). “The crackdown has intensified, and so has the war on journalism, yet Theresa May has shown she is willing to turn a blind eye to these abuses in order to secure arms company profits.”

But there is potentially something even more sinister happening here. What will new jets be used for? Turkey is intervening in Syria and has clashed with ISIS fighters, but its main enemy is the Kurdish fighters of the Peoples Protection Units (YPG), fighting to secure the Kurdish liberated areas that they collectively call Rojava.

Turkey is desperate to avoid a Kurdish liberated area on its southern border and has launched dozens of bombing raids against the YPG fighters. Britain is amongst  the Turkish states strongest political supporters and during a later press conference with Turkey’s prime minister Binali Yildirim,  May also revealed she had agreed a new ‘security partnership’ with him. May dubbed the UK’s links with Turkey as “vital”, adding “Turkey sits on the frontline of some of the most serious challenges we face”.

This can only mean British supports for Turkey’s war against the Kurds. A fitting end to the three-day dictatorship tour.

notes

• 1] Carpets for the Erdogan palace extravaganza cost £7 million. The Palace compound is said to contain a top secret special operations command and control centre housed in a secure bunker with all the latest high tech surveillance and communications equipment. Which all proved useless during the attempted coup last July because Erdogan was on holiday in Marmaris.

 

• 2] A subsidiary problem is that because of the post-coup purge of the airforce there are not enough pilots to fly the country’s fighter jets.