POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek August 20, 201834
○ Restrictions on insurance premiums and local intransigence increase California’s fire riskBuilding Like There’sNo TomorrowTo understand what drives America’s increasingly
severewildire problem, watch what happens after
a blaze—and what doesn’t.
In the wake of last year’s widespread ires in
California, the state found$300 million to pay for
helicopters, increased staing at its emergency
command centers, and established a task force
on forest management. What the state didn’t donormal, healthy relations with it.” That likely
includes keeping the country in NATO, but as an
angry, disafected member. “Of course we’ll play up
the diferences between Erdogan and the U.S.,” says
Vladimir Frolov, a foreign policy analyst in Moscow
and a former Russian diplomat. “It serves our inter-
ests better to have an ofended Turkey inside NATO
to undermine the alliance’s capabilities.”
And then there’s China. Turkey is a major com-
ponent of President Xi Jinping’s “Belt and Road”
initiative. In July, China’s largest bank announced a
$3.6 billion loan package for the Turkish energy and
transportation sectors. “Turkey has clearly decided
that it wants to court China,” says Rafaello Pantucci,
director of international security studies at the Royal
United Services Institute in London. “The question is
whether China can really make a diference here and
invest enough to solve Turkey’s problems.”
Despite the growing tension, the general consen-
sus remains that the U.S. and Turkey simply depend
too much on each other to allow a permanent rift.
Turkey’s economy is too deeply connected to the
West, while its strategic location between Europe
and Asia is too valuable for NATO to lose. “I don’t
think we’re marching toward a military rupture
or Turkey leaving NATO,” says Soner Cagaptay,
director of the Turkish Research Program at the
Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “We’ve
moved one more step to where Turkey remains a
really angry ally. We’ve been moving toward that
for a while.” The country has always assumed thatenough of, ire safety experts warn, is push through
the sort of change that matters most: fewer ill-
protected homes at the edge of the forest.
Nobody disputes the need for new ideas.
In California, wildfire records are falling at an
ever-quickening pace. The 1932 Matilija Fire held
the title of the state’s largest for 71 years, toppled
only by the 2003 Cedar Fire, which remained thethe West wouldn’t risk losing what amounts to the
second-largest military in NATO. And yet, given
Trump’s inclination to question the very utility of
the alliance, it’s not clear whether those past cal-
culations are still valid.
In the end, Erdogan’s strategy may hinge less on
the actions of world leaders and more on how will-
ing his own people are to weather economic pain.
There’s evidence their patience is wearing thin, par-
ticularly given the president’s repeated calls for citi-
zens to convert their foreign exchange deposits into
lira. Anyone who did so has lost money. For a leader
who prides himself on having made Turks more
prosperous, his failure to back his lira demands with
any policy action comes as a surprise—and betrayal.
“I’ve lost about 1 million liras,” says Cahit Bas, a
jeweler in Istanbul, referring to a igure that’s worth
about $155,000 now, compared with $340,000 in
mid-2016. “I think we’re heading for a crisis even
worse than the previous one.” The economy was
already bad, Bas says, then came the pastor. “They
should give up the priest immediately. They should
have put him on the plane with the last delegation
to the U.S. ‘Here, take him!’ ” Even if the pastor does
come back, relations between the U.S. and Turkey
may be damaged beyond repair. —Nick Wadhams,
Ilya Arkhipov, and Peter Martin, with Dandan Li,
Jennifer Jacobs, and Justin SinkTHE BOTTOM LINE Turkish President Erdogan has built his
political career on taking advantage of crises. How willing are the
Turkish people to put up with this one?“I don’t
think we’re
marching
toward a
military
rupture
or Turkey
leaving
NATO”