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Moscow (AFP) - The Kremlin on Monday said the leaders of Russia, Iran and Turkey would on Friday hold a tripartite summit in Iran seeking an end to the Syrian conflict.

In a statement confirming the date of September 7 that was reported earlier by Turkish media, the Kremlin said Putin would "make a working visit to Iran" for the talks.

He and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will consider "further joint efforts to ensure long-term normalisation of the situation in Syria," the Kremlin said.

Putin also plans bilateral talks with each of the leaders, it added.

The Kremlin said they would discuss further measures "aimed at finally liquidating the hotbed of international terrorism" in Syria, where the conflict has killed more than 350,000 people since 2011.

Discussions will look at "promoting the process of a political settlement, including creating the conditions for the return of refugees and the internally displaced," the Kremlin said.

The statement did not say where in Iran the talks would be held, but Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said last week they would be in Tehran.

Putin, Rouhani and Erdogan have backed Syria peace talks based in the Kazakh capital of Astana which they insist are aimed at reinforcing, rather than undermining, a parallel UN peace process in Geneva.

The three leaders last met for similar tripartite talks in Ankara in April and before that in November last year in the Russian resort of Sochi.

Iran and Russia are the main allies of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and their military interventions in Syria are widely seen as tipping the balance of the seven-year civil war in the regime's favour.

Turkey has backed rebels seeking to oust Assad but since late 2016 has been working increasingly closely with Iran and Russia to bring peace to Syria.

Preparations for the talks are going on as a Syrian regime offensive is expected imminently in the country's last rebel stronghold, northwestern Idlib province, which Assad wants to recapture to crown a string of military successes.

Turkey has warned that a military operation to take Idlib risks provoking a humanitarian "catastrophe" with 3.5 million people crammed into the region.

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Putin, Erdogan, Rohani to hold Syria talks Friday: Kremlin

ISTANBUL (Reuters) - President Tayyip Erdogan appealed to Turks religious and patriotic feelings ahead of a major Muslim holiday on Monday, promising they would not be brought to their knees by an economic crisis that has battered the lira currency.

FILE PHOTO - Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan attends a news conference in Ankara, Turkey, August 14, 2018. REUTERS/Umit Bektas

The lira TRYTOM=D3 has tumbled some 40 percent this year, hit by worries about Erdogan's influence over monetary policy and a worsening diplomatic rift with the United States. The sell-off has spread to other emerging market currencies and global stocks in recent weeks.

Highlighting the increased tensions, the U.S. embassy in the Turkish capital Ankara came under brief gunfire early on Monday by unknown assailants in an attack condemned by Erdogans spokesman as a bid to create chaos. Nobody was hurt. A person was later detained, Anadolu news agency said.

In a pre-recorded address to mark the four-day Eid al-Adha festival, which starts on Tuesday, Erdogan, a pious Muslim, sounded a characteristically defiant note as he lashed out at those selling the lira.

The attack on our economy has absolutely no difference from attacks on our call to prayer and our flag. The goal is the same. The goal is to bring Turkey and the Turkish people to their knees - to take it prisoner, Erdogan said in the televised address.

Those who think they can make Turkey give in with the exchange rate will soon see that they are mistaken.

Erdogan stopped short of directly naming any countries or institutions, but he has, in the past, blamed a shadowy interest rate lobby, Western ratings agencies and financiers.

Much of the recent tension has centered around a U.S. evangelical Christian pastor, Andrew Brunson, who has been detained in Turkey on terrorism charges, which he denies.

Brunson, originally from North Carolina, has lived in Turkey for two decades and has become an unwitting flashpoint for the diplomatic rift.

On Friday, a Turkish court rejected Brunsons appeal for release, drawing a stiff rebuke from President Donald Trump, who said the United States would not take the detention of the pastor sitting down.

In response to Brunsons case, Trump - who counts evangelical Christians among his core supporters - has said he would double previously announced tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum imports.

Turkey said on Monday it had initiated a dispute complaint with the World Trade Organisation over the additional tariffs.

The lira weakened to 6.1290 to the dollar by 1546 GMT on Monday, from a close of 6.0100 on Friday.

On Friday two ratings agencies, Moodys and Standard & Poors, further cut Turkeys sovereign rating into junk territory.

The downgrades confirmed prevailing concerns that Turkey is unlikely to avoid a significant slowdown in economic activity and that the liras fall poses a risk to financial stability, said Piotr Matys, an emerging markets strategist at Rabobank.

In addition to the lira, Turkeys sovereign dollar bonds fell and the cost of insuring its debt rose.

The German finance minister said on Monday the Turkish currency crisis posed an additional risk to Germanys economy.

However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told her Christian Democrats at a meeting that she saw no urgent need to offer financial aid to Turkey to ease the crisis, the partys general secretary said.

Qatar and Turkeys central banks last week signed a $3 billion currency swap agreement, a move designed to provide liquidity and financial stability.

That came days after Qatars emir approved a $15 billion package of economic projects, investments and deposits for Turkey.

Reporting by Daren Butler; Editing by David Dolan and Gareth Jones

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Erdogan invokes patriotism, Islam as lira remains under ...

In the past few weeks, a conflict between Ankara and Baghdad over Turkeys role in the liberation of Mosul has precipitated an alarming burst of Turkish irredentism. On two separate occasions, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan criticized the Treaty of Lausanne, which created the borders of modern Turkey, for leaving the country too small. He spoke of the countrys interest in the fate of Turkish minorities living beyond these borders, as well as its historic claims to the Iraqi city of Mosul, near which Turkey has a small military base. And, alongside news of Turkish jets bombing Kurdish forces in Syria and engaging in mock dogfights with Greek planes over the Aegean Sea, Turkeys pro-government media have shown a newfound interest in a series of imprecise, even crudely drawn, maps of Turkey with new and improved borders.

Turkey wont be annexing part of Iraq anytime soon, but this combination of irredentist cartography and rhetoric nonetheless offers some insight into Turkeys current foreign and domestic policies and Ankaras self-image. The maps, in particular, reveal the continued relevance of Turkish nationalism, a long-standing element of the countrys statecraft, now reinvigorated with some revised history and an added dose of religion. But if the past is any indication, the military interventions and confrontational rhetoric this nationalism inspires may worsen Turkeys security and regional standing.

At first glance, the maps of Turkey appearing on Turkish TV recently resemble similar irredentist maps put out by proponents of greater Greece, greater Macedonia, greater Bulgaria, greater Armenia, greater Azerbaijan, and greater Syria. That is to say, they arent maps of the Ottoman Empire, which was substantially larger, or the entire Muslim world or the Turkic world. They are maps of Turkey, just a little bigger.

But the specific history behind the borders they envision provides the first indication of whats new and what isnt about Erdogans brand of nationalism. These maps purport to show the borders laid out in Turkeys National Pact, a document Erdogan recently suggested the prime minister of Iraq should read to understand his countrys interest in Mosul. Signed in 1920, after the Ottoman Empires defeat in World War I, the National Pact identified those parts of the empire that the government was prepared to fight for. Specifically, it claimed those territories that were still held by the Ottoman army in October 1918 when Constantinople signed an armistice with the allied powers. On Turkeys southern border, this line ran from north of Aleppo in what is now Syria to Kirkuk in what is now Iraq.

When the allies made it clear they planned to leave the empire with a lot less than it held in 1918, it led to renewed fighting in which troops under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk defeated European forces to establish Turkey as it exists today. For the better part of the past century, Turkeys official history lauded Ataturk for essentially realizing the borders envisioned by the National Pact (minus Mosul, of course), as recognized with the Treaty of Lausanne. It was an exaggerated claim, given the parts of the pact that were left out, but also an eminently practical one, intended to prevent a new and precarious Turkish republic from losing what it had achieved in pursuit of unrealistic territorial ambitions. Indeed, while countries like Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, and Hungary brought disaster on themselves by trying to forcibly rewrite their postwar borders, Turkey under Ataturk and his successor wisely resisted this urge.

Erdogan, by contrast, has given voice to an alternative narrative in which Ataturks willingness in the Treaty of Lausanne to abandon territories such as Mosul and the now-Greek islands in the Aegean was not an act of eminent pragmatism but rather a betrayal. The suggestion, against all evidence, is that better statesmen, or perhaps a more patriotic one, could have gotten more.

Among other things, Erdogans reinterpretation of history shows the ironies behind the widespread talk in the United States of his supposed neo-Ottomanism. A decade ago, Erdogans enthusiasm for all things Ottoman appeared to be part of an effective strategy for improving relations with the Muslim Middle East, a policy that some U.S. critics saw as a challenge to their countrys role in the region. But refashioning the National Pact as a justification for irredentism rather than a rebuke of it has not been popular among Turkeys neighbors. Criticism of Erdogans neo-Ottoman foreign policy is now as likely to come from the Arab world as anywhere else.

Erdogans use of the National Pact also demonstrates how successfully Turkeys Islamists have reappropriated, rather than rejected, elements of the countrys secular nationalist historical narrative. Government rhetoric has been quick to invoke the heroism of Turkeys war of independence in describing the popular resistance to the countrys July 15 coup attempt. And alongside the Ottomans, Erdogan routinely references the Seljuks, a Turkic group that preceded the Ottomans in the Middle East by several centuries, and even found a place for more obscure pre-Islamic Turkic peoples like the Gokturks, Avars, and Karakhanids that first gained fame in Ataturks 1930s propaganda.

Similarly, in Syria and Iraq, Erdogan is aiming to achieve a long-standing national goal, the defeat of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), by building on the traditional nationalist tools of Turkish foreign policy namely, the leveraging of Turkish minorities in neighboring countries. The Sultan Murad Brigade, comprising predominantly ethnic Turkmens, has been one of Ankaras military assets inside Syria against both Bashar al-Assads regime and the PKK. Meanwhile, the Turkmen population living aroundMosul and its surrounding area has been a concern and an asset for Ankara in Iraq. Turkish special forces have worked with the Iraqi Turkmen Front since at least 2003 in order to expand Turkish influence and counter the PKK in northern Iraq.

Over the past century, the Turkish minorities in northern Greece and Cyprus have played a similar role. That is, their well-being has been a subject of genuine concern for Turkish nationalists but also a potential point of leverage with Athens to be used as needed. (Greece, of course, has behaved similarly with regard to the Greek minority in Turkey. Not surprisingly, both populations have often suffered reciprocally as a result.) In the case of Cyprus, for example, Turkeys 1974 invasion was as much about defending its strategic position as it was about protecting the islands Turkish community. Following his statements about Lausanne, Erdogan further upset Greece by stating, Turkey cannot disregard its kinsmen in Western Thrace, Cyprus, Crimea, and anywhere else. Yet Athens might take comfort from the case of the Crimean Tatars, which reveals the extent to whichgeopolitics can lead Turkey to do just this: Although Ankara raised concerns over the status of the Crimean Tatars after Russia seized the peninsula, it seems to have subsequently concluded that improved relations with Moscow take precedence over ethnic affinities.

But Erdogan has also emphasized a new element to Turkeys communitarian foreign-policy agenda: Sunni sectarianism. In speaking about Mosul, he recently declared that Turkey would not betray its Turkmen brothers or its Sunni Arab brothers. Like secular Turkish nationalism, this strain of Sunni sectarianism has an undeniable domestic appeal, and Erdogan has shown it can also be invoked selectively in keeping with Turkeys foreign-policy needs. Erdogans new sectarianism is evident in Mosul, where Turkey has warned of the risks to Sunnis should Shiite militias take control of the city. But the policys influence is clearest in Syria, where Turkey has been supporting Sunni rebels aiming to topple the Assad regime (including those now struggling to hold the city of Aleppo). In both Iraq and Syria, however, Turkeys sectarianism has not been allowed to trump pragmatism. Ankara has been keen to maintain a mutually beneficial economic relationship with Iran despite backing opposite sides in Syria and in the past year has also expressed its willingness to make peace with Assad if circumstances require it.

More broadly, Turkeys current interventionism in Syria and Iraq fits within an established pattern. Not only do countries regularly find themselves sucked into civil wars on their doorstep, but the points at which Turkey has proved susceptible to irredentism in the past have all come at moments of change and uncertainty similar to what the Middle East is experiencing today. In 1939, Ankara annexed the province of Hatay, then under French control, by taking advantage of the crisis in Europe on the eve of World War II. Then, after that war, Syrias newfound independence prompted some in the Turkish media to cast a glance at Aleppo, and the transfer of the Dodecanese Islands from Italy to Greece also piqued some interest in acquiring them for Turkey. Similarly, Ankara paid little attention to Cyprus when it was firmly under British control, but when talk of the islands independence began, Turkey started to show its concern. Subsequently, it was only when it appeared Greece might annex the island that Turkey invaded to prevent this change in the status quo. In this light, Turkeys recent rhetoric is perhaps less surprising following several years in which events and commentators have repeatedly suggested that the entire political order of the modern Middle East is crumbling.

More specifically, though, Turkish policy in the Middle East is driven by an urgent concern stemming from its conflict with the PKK, which has been exacerbated by the groups gains in northern Syria. The PKK has long shaped Turkeys relations with its southeastern neighbors. Most notably, Turkey nearly invaded Syria in 1998 in an ultimately successful effort to force Damascus to stop sheltering the groups leader. Similarly, Turkey has kept military forces in the area of Mosul for the better part of two decades, in order to conduct operations against the PKK. Ankara has always portrayed this intervention, with little controversy in Turkey, as a matter of national security and self-defense. Today, self-defense remains Turkeys main justification for its activities in Iraq, with Erdogan repeatedly emphasizing that the presence of Turkish forces there acts as insurance against terrorist attacks targeting Turkey. As long as the PKK maintains an open presence in Iraq, this is also the most compelling justification, domestically and internationally, for military involvement beyond its borders.

Indeed, to all the specific ethnic, sectarian, and historical rationales he has offered for Turkeys interest in Mosul, Erdogan has been quick to attach one additional argument: The United States and Russia continue to play an outsized role in the region despite lacking any of these connections to it. Erdogan noted that some countries were telling Turkey, which shares a 220-mile border with Iraq, to stay out. Yet, despite not having history in the region or connection to it, these same countries were coming and going. Did Saddam [Hussein] tell the United States to come to Iraq 14 years ago? he added.

Behind the history, in other words, Ankara is all too aware of the fact that the power to do so remains the only rationale for foreign intervention that matters. In this regard, the legitimacy of Turkeys plans for Mosul remains to be seen.

Photo credit: Hurrem Atayer, published by Bakis Kutuphanesi (1956)

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Turkeys New Maps Are Reclaiming the Ottoman Empire ...

He paces back and forth on stage, listing his achievements for Turkey: New roads, better hospitals, more public transportation, more airports. At every rally, he hammers home the same message -- he has transformed Turkey into a new modern nation.

In almost every speech, 64-year-old Erdogan disparages what he calls "old Turkey," a place where garbage piled up on the streets, public hospitals were overrun, and roads were dimly-lit, single-lane death traps.

That message of transformation has delivered Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) 12 electoral victories over the last 16 years, making Erdogan the Turkish Republic's longest-serving leader since it was founded in 1923.

Erdogan's grandiose rallies have become an expected part of any Turkish election, but they appear to have been eclipsed Wednesday, as main opposition candidate Muharrem Ince drew what looked like the largest crowd in the elections period yet.

In the town of Izmir, hundreds of thousands of Ince supporters in a sea of red Turkish flags stretched for kilometers down a promenade on the Aegean coast, as the charismatic former high school physics teacher promised to end the nepotism of the Erdogan government.

"Erdogan is tired, he has no joy and he is arrogant," he said.

"On the one hand you have a tired man, and on the other you have fresh blood."

Erdogan has consolidated power at every step of his career. He has crushed anti-government protests, and in 2013 he evaded a corruption investigation into his inner circle. After a failed military coup to remove his government from power in 2016, he eliminated his opponents by firing tens of thousands of government workers, gutting public institutions, jailing critical voices, and clamping down on the media. He narrowly won a referendum last year that will change Turkey's parliamentary system to an executive presidency, giving whoever wins Sunday's vote sweeping new powers.

But Erdogan's mantra of development and growth has lost some of its luster recently as Turkish people feel the pinch of a faltering economy.

The lira has lost some 20% of its value since the year began, inflation is at 12% and interest rates are around a painful 18%. Some voters are tiring of what they see as Erdogan's power-grabbing.

"It's a situation where Erdogan can't blame anyone else. It's not like the government is run by someone else so he can turn around and say 'elect me so I can improve the economy.' That's his weak spot and he knows it," said Asli Aydintasbas, a Senior Fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations.

But at the Istanbul rally, diehard Erdogan supporter Gulbahar Turan is sure Erdogan's AKP can continue to deliver. She says foreign intervention -- not government mismanagement -- is what's driving the economic woes.

"These are games by foreign powers, but they should know even a dead Erdogan would get votes," Turan said.

Erdogan's biggest threat

Polls in Turkey are typically partisan and unreliable, but Erdogan appears to be in front. Some polls suggest he will fail to win 50% of the vote, and that will mean a run-off round on July 8. This could be a particularly dangerous position for Erdogan to find himself in, as most opposition parties have vowed to galvanize their supporters to whoever challenges the incumbent leader.

Opposition candidates and parties are trying to steal support from Erdogan on all fronts. Conservative nationalist Meral Aksener threatens him from the center right, while Temel Karamollaoglu from the Islamist Felicity Party could also drive pious conservatives away from the AKP.

But Erdogan's biggest threat is the formidable Ince, who has galvanized the center-left around the CHP.

In the past, the CHP fielded fairly drab candidates. This election is the first in which the party has chosen someone charismatic, Aydintasbas said.

"We are already seeing the results in the sense that this is a race between Muharrem Ince and Erdogan. And that's never happened before. Erdogan had it too easy and he basically ran against himself," Aydintasbas said.

Ince is a not an obscure name in Turkey; the 54-year-old has served as a member of parliament for the last 16 years. He has managed to broaden his party's appeal beyond its usual base of secular upper-middle-class voters to include pious Muslims and Kurds.

"Former leaders of the party were bureaucrats or statesmen," said Behlul Ozkan, a political scientist from Marmara University. "Ince, with his rural family roots, his truck driver father and headscarf-wearing mother and sister is different from his predecessors."

During the holy month of Ramadan, when Ince made appearances with his sister who wears a headscarf, he made clear he would continue to guarantee women's right to wear the Islamic headdress in public spaces, including universities.

The Islamic headscarf was prohibited in public life in the aftermath of a soft coup in 1997. Women who wore it were barred from going to university, practicing medicine and law, and serving as members of parliament, until Erdogan started lifting those restrictions in 2013.

Ince has been reaching out to the Kurds, Turkey's largest ethnic minority, whose vote is usually split between Erdogan's AKP and the pro-Kurdish leftist Peoples' Democracy Party (HDP).

In a rare occurrence for a CHP politician, the turnout at an Ince rally in the predominantly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir was high.

The Kurdish vote is pivotal in the outcome of the parliamentary election. If the HDP crosses a 10% threshold, it will win seats and could deprive the AKP of its parliamentary majority. If it fails to get into parliament, the AKP will sweep up those seats.

'People are sick and tired': Ince

"Erdogan, people are cooking stones instead of food. People are cooking their worries instead of food. Look at the prices of potatoes, of onions. There is no bread!" Ince shouted out over the crowd at a recent campaign rally in the southern city of Antalya.

"Come, let's have a debate. Let's talk about the struggle of getting by, of paying the rent, of sending the kids to school."

In an interview with CNN's Christiane Amanpour, Ince said it was time for change.

"I believe in the power of the street. I believe in our people's wish for change. People are sick and tired. Turkey is sick and tired. Institutions have been taken over. Turkey's democracy has been destroyed. A single man rules over Turkey. Turkey has to find a way out of this," he said.

He is reaching out to Turkey's youth as well. A group of students hanging out at an Istanbul cafe say they don't know much about the old Turkey Erdogan talks about -- to them the old Turkey was the one of several years ago, when there were greater civil liberties. They refuse to give their names, lamenting the loss of freedom of speech.

"I don't want to give you my name because I need to think about my future," said a 22-year-old physiology student. "That is a worry I just don't want to have anymore."

Another student said that providing services and development should be expected from a government, not something for Erdogan to brag about. "Roads, roads, roads. I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about more," he said.

But development is a message that has worked for Erdogan for 16 years. Back at his rally in Istanbul, as his opera house presentation draws to a close, he asks, "How do you like that?" to the crowd, which roars back with approval.

He calls out to the control room again for his next presentation, new building plans for an island development and then another for a park.

CNN's Isil Sariyuce contributed to this report.

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Erdogan's gamble on snap elections in Turkey could backfire - CNN

Ankara (AFP) - Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared Saturday that his country would not be cowed by the United States, his latest broadside in the bitter feud between Ankara and Washington.

The two NATO members are at odds over Turkey's detention of an American pastor, which has triggered a trade row and sent the local currency the lira into a tailspin.

"We will not surrender to those who present themselves as a strategic partner while at the same time trying to make us a strategic target," Erdogan said at a congress of his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

"Some people threaten us with economy, sanctions, foreign currency exchange rates, interest rates and inflation. We know your shenanigans and we will defy you."

At the end of congress, delegates unanimously re-elected Erdogan as head of the AKP, the state news agency Anadolu reported.

Last week, US President Donald Trump said he had doubled the tariffs on aluminium and steel tariffs from Turkey, prompting Ankara to sharply hike tariffs on several US products.

And Turkey on Friday threatened to respond in kind if Washington imposed further sanctions, while a court rejected another appeal to free pastor Andrew Brunson, who has been held for almost two years on terror charges.

The lira has nosedived against the dollar, dropping as much as 20 percent on one day last week. It sunk to a low of well over seven to the dollar earlier this week but was trading at just over six to the dollar on Friday -- a loss of 40 percent since the start of the year.

The collapse of the currency has been blamed both on the tensions with the United States and Erdogan's increasing hold on Turkey's economy and his refusal to allow the central bank to raise interest rates.

Meanwhile, Erdogan told the AKP congress that Turkey would press on with and expand its cross-border military operations.

Turkey sent troops into northern Syria two years ago to fight against the Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG).

The YPG forms the backbone of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the Kurdish-Arab alliance that has received extensive backing from the US-led coalition in the battle agains the Islamic State group.

But Turkey accuses the YPG of being the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), a rebel group blacklisted by Ankara and its Western allies.

The Turkish army has also increased its strikes against PKK rear bases in the north of Iraq in the past few months.

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Erdogan vows Turkey will not be cowed by US - yahoo.com