Tense days in Syria

TURKEY - In Brief 13 Feb 2017 by Atilla Yesilada

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First, let me give you what you need to know: Turkey’s High Election Board officially announced the referendum date as 16th of April. We have a few new polls, two of which show YES votes ahead, one the other way around. Once again, the loud agonizing streaming from the AKP and MHP camps suggests the parties are not yet happy with the level of support the constitutional reform bill is drawing. Mr. Erdogan started his campaign (unofficially) by painting the rejectionists as supporters of the 15th of July (2016) coup attempt, which means AKP will base its platform on polarizing the nation. I’ll update the odds for the outcome by the end of February. Currently, I assign 60% to a YES outcome. I guess markets more or less anticipate AKP to win and won’t react to polls until mid-March or so in case these indicate otherwise. In the meantime the biggest political risk remains Syria, which could occupy headlines in several different ways. First, according to reliable but anti-AKP journalist Mrs. Amberin Zaman, reporting on statements by an anonymous Trump administration source, the safe zones in Syria will be located along the Jordanian border, which is likely to frustrate Ankara. Other experts living outside Turkey also opine that for various reasons it would be unreasonable to expect the White House to cooperate with Turkey in Syria at the expense of PYD-YPG (Syrian Kurds). If these claims are true, Ankara could be expected to react emotionally, to appease the nationalist voters, which could become a market issue. Secondly, Turkish Forces and allied brigades from Free Syrian Army are about to liberate the DEASH held city of al Bab. Erdogan pronounced that Operation Euphrates S...