The following are the expected crises that will affect the global economy in the winter of 2021-2022— these are mainly related to the resources crisis and climate change.

1. A Bitterly Cold Winter

Climate change has a significant impact on people’s lives and countries’ economies. For example, there is a correlation between the decrease in temperature and the rise in the cost of daily life; the high demand for heating resources (oil, gas, and coal) necessarily increases their prices, which is also reflected in other goods and services costs.

The U.S. National Snow Center, NASA, and many meteorological centers predict a cold winter and lower temperatures than usual. According to weather agencies, the Polar Vortex, a large region of cold, rotating air that encircles the Earth’s polar regions, is the most important factor in predicting the weather. Although the Arctic air is well contained, the belt may become weak, causing the air to flow, which will lead to a rapid and extreme drop in temperature. As expected, the continents most affected by the polar vortex’s disruption are Asia, Europe, and North America.

Moreover, NASA has predicted cold weather in several regions of the world, especially in the northern hemisphere. After an expedition to the North Pole, The NASA mission confirmed that a major disturbance in the polar vortex is almost inevitable this winter.

2. A Rise in the Energy Resources’ Prices

The decline in oil and gas prices during the outbreak of the Corona pandemic prompted the major oil-producing countries, the OPEC+ alliance, led by Saudi Arabia and Russia, to hold a monthly meeting at the level of oil ministers to discuss measures to maintain the stability of the global oil market. Those measures included the reduction of production in proportion to the global economic recession to maintain the oil barrel prices from collapsing.

With the majority of world countries lifting the preventive measures and the OPEC+ alliance maintaining the policy of reducing production and the gradual increase in it, the prices of a barrel of oil rose in the fourth quarter of 2021, reaching 80 dollars per barrel, after it was stable between 60-65 dollars.

In a related context, the natural gas prices recorded $34 per million British thermal units at the beginning of the outbreak of the Corona pandemic. Now, however, gas prices have risen nearly 500% due to the following main reasons: 

• The predictions of cold winter that will affect consumers who use it for heating, factories, companies, and electricity production
• The low storage levels in European countries resulted from a decrease in Russian supplies and the interruption of one of the pipelines from Algeria through Moroccan territory
• The recovery of global economies from the Corona pandemic that led to increased gas demand
• The dependence of many countries on natural gas as an environmentally friendly fuel because it emits less carbon dioxide than oil and coal
• The increased demand for electricity

3. High Sea Freight Costs 

There are many factors that contribute to the high prices for international shipping, such as piracy, security tensions, and political conflicts between countries that can affect the operation of ships.

During the Corona pandemic, shipping costs have increased worldwide due to the container crisis, the decreased movement of global supply chains, and the strikes that affected international ports, especially in China and America. To illustrate, the majority of the Chinese shipping containers remained in the U.S during the pandemic. With the global demand recovery, a crisis emerged as those containers were not available in China when needed, which added more expense to the shipping prices.  

Conclusion

The points discussed above portend an increase in prices of all commodities and living costs in many countries.

Obviously, the leading nations of the OPEC+ alliance (Saudi Arabia, Russia, and Qatar) will get huge financial revenues from the energy resources they produce.

In response to the rising demand for natural gas, many countries, especially Europeans, may reconsider producing coal to operate their power plants to cover gas shortages.

On Twitter, Asiltürk claimed that the current Party’s administration had diverted it from its main course and objectives, so the meeting aimed to change those in charge. 

Moreover, Asiltürk’s tweets criticized the Saadet Party administration in multiple aspects, some of which stated that the Party neither caters to the needs of the next generation nor has an effect on them— highlighting the fact that the Party must follow Necmettin Erbakan’s directions.

The Saadet Party between the Nation Alliance and the People’s Alliance: 

Temel karamollaoğlu, the president of the Saadet Party, initiated the conflict due to his decision of joining the “Nation Alliance” in the parliamentary election in 2018, indicating that the Islamist Saadet Party would be an ally to the opposing secular CHP against the conservative parties (AK Party and Nationalist Movement Party).

By joining the alliance, Saadet Party received two votes in the Turkish Parliament for the first time in 20 years. Consequently, it began to function according to this alliance in dissenting the government. Moreover, its rhetorics pledged to be about Islamic concerns and foreign policy took another turn in mostly discussing the country’s economic matters and freedom issues. 

Temel Karamollaoğlu believes that the Party needs novel “open-minded” members who can maintain relationships with the secular parties during that alliance, causing a tremendous dispute within the Party whose members claimed that it started to lose its identity.

Islamist conservatives in the Party, along with Oğuzhan Asiltürk as their chairman, had a conviction that the Party’s path was diverted dangerously into two parallel directions:

• The Saadet Party limited its rhetoric to criticize the government’s economic and social aspects and diverted from the pure Islamic discourse.

• The Saadat Party replaced its leading members and its Central Committee with new leaders who are less engaged with the Party’s conservative ideology.

This replacement campaign went beyond the Party administration in Ankara as Karamollaoğlu worked diligently to change the leaders in different cities. For example, he attempted to disqualify Istanbul’s provincial chairman, Abdullah Sevim, who claimed that Oğuzhan Asiltürk nominated him for his current position. In fact, Sevim resisted the change and refused to resign until Oğuzhan Asiltürk intervened and demanded Sevim’s retirement to avoid sedition. 

The policy that the Saadet Party carried out was met with adverse reactions. The Anatolian Youth Association, the Party’s youth wing, acted in contrast to the Party’s decisions, following Oğuzhan Asiltürk’s lead and exacerbating the dispute. 

The most striking example of the conflict in the wings of the party was that of Boğaziçi University. Students who were against the appointment of the new dean used an abusive image of the Kaaba that was deemed an insult towards Islam by the Turkish people. During that period, the Anatolian Youth Association organized a protest that condemned the disrespect against Kaaba. 

Despite the Turkish people’s consensus against this disrespect, Ali Aktaş, Saadet Party’s youth wing provincial chairman, stated that the poster was a matter of freedom of speech and was not offensive!

These statements made Oğuzhan Asiltürk intervene to dismiss Ali Aktaş from the party, in a clear message of objection to the new cadres of the Saadet Party.

A Historic Opportunity for Erdoğan and the Ak Party in 2023 

Erdoğan did not give much significance to Saadet Party’s joining the Nation Alliance (opposing wing) in the parliamentary election in 2018. On the contrary, in 2018’s election and the previous one, under MHP’s influence, he refused to alliance with the Saadet party. However, in 2019, Ak Party lost the local election of Istanbul for the first time. When Ak Party realized that the meager amount of votes that the Saadet Party has is adequate for it to acquire Istanbul back, it started to reconstruct its relationship. 

Binali Yıldırım, the AK Party nominee for Mayor of Istanbul, initiated this conciliation when he visited The National Vision Movement’s (Milli Görüş) newspaper, Millî Gazete. During his visit, Yıldırım delivered this message: “brothers/sisters in faith stand by each other, not the opposite.” 

These efforts were not sufficient for AK Party’s second ballot for Istanbul’s election. CHP’s nominee for Mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, won the election. This way, the Ak Party has learned a hard lesson: the damaging effect of losing any fraction’s votes. 

After the 2019’s elections, according to some sources from the Party, several undisclosed meetings have been organized between the Saadet and AK Party until 2021 Ramadan’s second day when President Erdoğan had Iftar with Asiltürk. 

By the look of things, President Erdoğan desires to trust Traditional Islamic figures. This is to undermine the Nationalists’ power in governmental institutions and improve the image of the People’s Alliance that has been damaged due to the discrepancy in the economic issues between nationalist wings.

Future Scenarios

The Turkish Islamic Movement is at crossroads currently, with an inner conflict in its relation with the AK Party, manifested in two different trends: 

• Temel Karamollaoğlu’s Trend: it believes that the AK Party and Erdoğan deeply harmed Turkey. It justifies supporting extremely secular parties to take Erdoğan down and prevent him from winning the 2023 elections. 

• Oğuzhan Asiltürk Trend: it believes that President Erdoğan has convictions, opening Hagia Sophia Holy Grand Mosque and the movements against the West and America, that are acceptable in the National Vision Movement. It concludes that Erdoğan should be supported because of the complicated issues Turkey is currently dealing with nationally and globally. This was an unprecedented step between both Parties that the President approves of as well. 

According to the developments above, the Saadet Party’s future can be outlined in two scenarios: 

The first scenario: Oğuzhan Asiltürk will succeed in taking down Saadet Party’s current administration. Furthermore, changing the functions and the Party’s policies will change its position on the Turkish political map. However, if this scenario becomes true, we will witness the Saadet Party’s attaching itself to the People’s Alliance instead of the Nation Alliance.

This change is possible after the Party’s General Conference reconvening and the loss of Tamil Karamulla Oglu at the next Congress.

The second scenario: Temel Karamollaoğlu will become a general president in the coming congress, which will cause a massive division in the Saadet Party. This division can trigger the Party under Karamollaoğlu’s influence to evade traditional Islamic provisions and consequently diverting 1,5 percent of the votes in the election to another party that Oğuzhan Asiltürk’s allies can found. 

The unalterable factor in these two scenarios is that the problems between the two movements have reached a point of no return.

Since December 2019, protests in Iraq have challenged both Iraqi traditional political parties and the influence of Iran. The forces demanding the parliamentary election to be organized in May 2022 might have involved in the assassination of al-Wazni and the withdrawal of some candidates of the Bayariq Al-Khair parliamentary bloc from the upcoming elections. However, Kataib Hezbollah militia, one of Iran-linked armed groups, accused the UK embassies in Baghdad and Beirut of provoking the angry protests that engulfed several cities in the aftermath of al-Wazni’s assassination. While the Iraqi parliamentary election, initially planned in May 2021, is postponed in October 2021, the election process increases the tension between protests and Iraqi traditional political parties and Iran-linked groups. Protesters, with implicit support of significant Iraqi clerics, have called for profound domestic political and economic reform, and a rejection of Iran’s ideological and political influence in Iraq. Thus, the senior Iraqi Shia cleric Ali al-Sistani, who holds significant religious power in the country, echoed the demand of the protesters that Iran should get out of Iraq: “No person or group, no side with a particular view, no regional or international actor may seize the will of the Iraqi people and impose its will on them.” It is useful to state which reason fuels popular disdain for Iran in Iraq. It is the fact that protests have been exposed to the regular violence committed by the Iran-linked militia forces. For the United Nations, hundreds of protesters have been killed, others have been kidnapped and disappeared since October 2019. The Iraqi governments did not throw its weight about the Iran-linked militia forces.

Another demand of the protesters was the adaption of a new election law that reduce the monopoly of traditional political parties in the parliament and enable independents and small and newly established parties to enter in the parliament. Al-Sistani, also, helped accelerate the law’s adoption. Thus, a new electoral law was approved by the parliament. Whereas past election laws allowed large and medium-sized parties and coalitions to win at the expense of independent candidates and small-sized parties, the new electoral law designated each of Iraq’s governorates as a single district. The new law divides Iraq into 83 districts. Dividing Iraq into more electoral districts, in principle, should create more competition and allow for the adoption of individual nominations for candidates. Thus, it should allow for small political parties to compete in the elections. However, the new electoral law will maintain the influence of several well-established political forces and ensure their victory in upcoming elections.

Although the new electoral law allows independent candidates and smaller actors to compete in a normal political and security situation through grass-roots bases, the existing parties with strong local presence and ability to influence, such as the Sadrist Movement led by Muqtada al-Sadr, benefits the most in practice. The traditional political parties might focus on selecting candidates with tribal and even religious backgrounds because they hold social capital within their regions. These social groups are strong allies of the ruling political forces and have in the past been instrumental in the victory of party candidates in return for privileges. Therefore, the new electoral law will not bring about any substantial change in the political reality of the country because it will lead to replace some existing party candidates by their local tribal or religious backers.

The security situation dilutes the protests’ challenge to the influence of Iran in Iraq. The death of Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the de facto commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), created a vacuum that militia leaders struggle to fill. Abu Fadak al-Mohammedawi, Muhandis’s successor, has failed to fill the void by enabling characters such as Khazali to take on a leading role among Iran-backed militias. In addition, Sadr’s Alliance toward Reforms and the Fatah Alliance’s ownership of weapons violates the law on political parties that prohibits the formation of armed factions. These parties might use them to influence election outcomes. Finally, the ethno-sectarian apportionment (Muhasasa Ta’ifia) in designating government positions remove a normal political situation in accordance with Iran’s overall strategy for Iraq that keeps it in a constant state of uncertainty, with weak state institutions and control. Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi has promised to return former militias of PMF to service in a meeting with MPs representing the Fatah Alliance. Whereas al-Kadhimi government involve budget allocations for the return of former PMF members in the budget law, the parliament eliminated those allocations to reduce expenditure. Consequently, the political and security situation will prevent the protesters from challenging to Iraqi traditional political parties and the influence of Iran.

• On February 15, Erbil Airport was struck by  fourteen 107mm rockets. The attack killed a  contractor with the American-led military coalition  and wounded five others, including a U.S. service  member as well as three civilians. 

• The rockets were fired from a car hidden outside  an agricultural market five miles southwest of Erbil. 

• Rockets were smuggled into the territory by fruit  and vegetable trucks. 

• The attack marks Erbil’s second recent strike, after  an earlier one on September 30, 2020, with a  rocket fired from the militia-controlled village of  Bartala, east of Mosul.

Significance

• Despite the insecurity following Saddam Hussein’s  regime’s fall in 2003, the Kurdish territory enjoyed  long-term stability.  

• Erbil (the capital of Kurdish territory) is a red line in  terms of security. All forces and militias in Iraq  have been committed not to target the Kurdish  territory in northern Iraq for the past years. – This attack has significant implications for the  territory’s investments and development as it  raises uncertainty regarding the region’s security.

Responsibility

• Observers say that at least three groups  participated in the attack. The first group brought  the weapons. The second group smuggled and  delivered the weapons into the territory’s borders. The third group─ from within the  territory─ launched, supervised, and chose the  operation timing.
  
• According to news agencies, shortly after the  attack, a group known as Saraya Awliya al-Dam  claimed responsibility for the attack. This group  is remarkably a “page” on social media with a  logo, a Telegram account, and some tweets.
  

• Earlier in the same day, “Ashab al-Kahf”  front, affiliated with Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq group,  claimed that a rocket had been fired against  a Turkish base in northern Iraq. This incident  reflected recent criticism by Iraqi militias of  Turkish military operations aimed at restricting the movement of “PKK” in the Kurdistan and Sinjar regions. 

• Some observers, however, are trying to link the so-called “Ashab al-Kahf” front, affiliated with  Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq group, to Saraya Awliya al Dam that adopted the airport attack, with the  coincidence of striking the Turkish base in  northern Iraq by one of the factions on the same day.

Implications

• It can be assumed that the party behind the  attack deliberately violated the Kurdish red line  as a form of pressure on international actors  supporting the stability of the territory, such as  the United States of America. 

• The attack reflects a situation of security  balances and red lines to which armed factions  active in Iraq are implicitly committed. It also  demonstrates their commitment to external  international agendas and their movements in  deliberate political contexts following the external interests. 

• The assumption that Iran moved one of its  affiliated factions to carry out the attack and thus  press for better terms of negotiating a nuclear  agreement with the United States may be highly  valid and closer to interpreting the backgrounds  of what happened. 

• The United States will have to prove that Iran or  its affiliated factions were involved in the attack  to invest it against Iran and turn it into a  negotiated negative asset on the Iranian nuclear dossier.