intent, and the chairman is, onhu:r aligning the political with what we're trying to do. >> mr. secretary, what are we doing to influence it? ixzw just to drill down to a specific. what are we doing specifically to counter iranian political tjz the ground in iraq today? >> well we are -- made it clear to prime minister abadi and all the parties there and they have supported the point of view that we are -- that we are not going to support the militias or shia forces supported by iran or otherwise constituted that are not under the control of the iraqi government. so the support and the ones that we're going to enable and, therefore, the ones we intend to be successful as part of our strategy will be under the control of the government of iraq. and they'll be the successful forces. >> are they responding to that leverage? i spoke with the iraqi ambassador last week. the difference between america's support and ooh raniran is they have

a house on fire. america comes with these conditions and iran just shows up with a fire extinguisher. they are being much more effective at leveraging iraqi politics today. >> we've spoken to prime minister abadi. he's asking for our help. does he speak for everybody in baghdad? no. but he is asking for our help. he prefers our support. >> thank you both. mr. chairman? >> thank you. general, mr. secretary, thank you for being here. they've been asking about isis pretty hot and heavy. you're familiar with about two years ooh i asked secretary hagel to institute a hostage policy review. i asked him to appoint a hostage point person for dod and it ended up being mike luncan.

and secretary hagel did that. appointed mike lungen. the white house instituted a hostage policy review. all of this came about because things were brought to my attention by a lieutenant colonel amarie, special forces soldier, fought in afghanistan. was working on hostage policy and hostage recovery for dod. he's now being investigated. he's basically being drummed ot of the army. you'd not have a hostage policy unless secretary hagel started it on his own. i wourld notld not have requested it you wouldn't have a hostage point person if it wouldn't for lieutenant amarie. senator johnson wrote you a letter a few days ago asking you to look into secretary mchugh his investigatory policies within the army. possible abuse by cid within the army and the case of lieutenant

colonel amarie in particular. i'd like your commitment that you'd look into this because none of this would have happened if it weren't for ó4phamarie who has now had to claim whistleblower status because he helped the united states fix its botched hostage recovery policy. of which we had none. you had fbi state, dod and other intelligence communities all in their own lanes doing theiroin things for hostages. that's going to change now. you'll have your own hostage policy now that that refew is under way and it had -- the parameters for your -- for the administration's new hostage recovery policy set up in it. that's going to pass the senate. you'll have that now. that would not have come about without the guy under investigation for making it all possible, right? >> congressman, i am familiar

with the case. you have my commitment. it's under investigation now by the inspector general. so i am familiar with the case. i can't comment on it because it's under investigation but you have my commitment that i will keep in touch with that investigation as appropriate. and you also have -- i can't speak for the history, of course, but you have my commitment with respect to a reasonable conclusion of the hostage policy review. and since the chairman may have been present at the creation of that review if you'd like to comment chairman? >> obviously, congressman, we can't comment on the investigation. we're both aware of it, and we're certainly enthusiastic to move ahead with the hostage rescue issue and make it more coherent across government. >> one of the reasons the army

puts things under investigation is so you can't comment on itan i understand that. that's happened to me in the past. i'd just ask that this is bigger than one particular service. when you look at this case in particular and jason ?óamarie and what highs done. he was in service to the entire country and to the constitution and doing his duty. if you don't conduct some oversight on the investigation itself, the investigation of the investigation, i think we're not going to have the outcome that we should have, which is amarie being cleared and not excoriated anymore but being praised as someone who got something done within the system. even though they had to go outside of the system to us. i would hope that every single one of those gentlemenyeáq sitting behind you in uniform knows if they can't work within the system, they can come to congress. that's what we're here for. when you are in the box you can't always fix yourself.

i yield back, mr. chairman. thank you. >> thank you. ms. cabot. >> thank you, mr. chairman. thank you both for your service and for being here today. >> you know, we've heard a lot of discussion about this first line of effort that you outlined to address the political and sectarian situation in iraq. it's important as we look at this question of what is our strategy to defeat isis? it's important we operate in the world that actually exists not the one we hope or wished could exist or would exist in the future. it's important to recognize while these ideals are good to have, we're operating in the world that exists today. so even as we look at this administration's policy, the previous administration's policy, the billions of dollars and thousands of lives that have been spent in holding on to this unified central government policy, even as we hear rhetoric from prime minister a gbadi

experts who wear the uniform and those who have studied the middle east for a very long time all save for practical purposes you have three regions in ooh rack. it's a fractured9d country. with the kurds and shia territories largely to the west. so when you look at this question and you look at mr. secretary, your answer to mr. o'rourke's question with regards to, give us an example of how there has been a plan or there is a plan in place to allow for this and support governance and the ability for example the sunni tribes to secure themselves and you talked about how this would happen in the footer. help the iraqi government put a plan in place for govances, territories recovered. but my question goes to tikrit. this is an offensive that took

place not that long ago. i questioned before this occurred two members of the administration. what was the plan? and there was no plan at that time. we saw as a result. once&) families were terrorized by shia militia. homes were burned down. businesses were looted. as a result you continue to see why these sunni people have no motivation to go and fight for this so-called iraqi security force, this iraqi government that shuts down bridges when they are trying to run away from isis. it's essential sunni fighters are brought into the fold. we recognize the sunni people need to be empowered. this is why there's no faith by many in congress and the sunni tribes that there is a plan to place to empower them. >> i very much respect your expertise and your perspective on this. and one of my favorite sayings is hope is not a strategy.

and this is a strategy -- the strategy, the particular part of the strategy which has to do with the integrity of the iraqi state is a challenging one. no question about it for all the reasons you describe. it is -- if it can be achieved better than sectarianism for the iraqi people and for what we want, which is isil's lasting defeat. is it difficult to achieve? yes. does it evolve as an essential ingredient empowering the sunnis and giving them the will to participate? absolutely. is tikrit a good example of what we're trying to achieve? no it wasn't. that's the whole point. that was not an ordered operation under the exclusive control of the iraqi government. and it did -- it had the kind of

aftermath that exactly incentivizes us to be trying to get sunnis into the fight. if you put shias into the sunni fight you know how that ends. that is not lasting defeat. that's why we're trying to get the sunnis into the fight. i think you are asking$jç exactly the right question. i think it's more than hope. i think there's some recent prospect. we're determined to do it. mr. are plenty of iraqis who say they'll support that strategy. and that we can make it succeed. >> thank you, mr. secretary. i continue to urge the administration to consider changing its policy on spts supporting this policy in baghdad. you mentioned sectarian is the public. i'd argue this government in baghdad is further adding fuel to the fire of sectarianism by allowing shia militia and

sectarian persecution and oppression to continue which only allows further oxygen for isis to continue to exist and to continue to grow in sunni territories. thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you mr. chairman. i'd like to thank the secretary and the chairman for coming and testifying today. i think i'd like to follow up on the line of questioning we were just going down. you mentioned earlier, general dempsey, about general mcchrystal and you have to defeat a network with a network and his commitment to that. certainly he was also very committed to the counterinsurgency strategy deployed in afghanistan. you were the deputy commander of centcom when we employed counterinsurgency in iraq. i think you eventually became the acting commander of centcom

under the counterinsurgency policy. we employ that kind of strategy so that we can come to the diplomatic and political solutions that she was just talking about. the idea is we have some space to maneuver so parties can come together and we can come to a governing solution that's reasonable for all involved. can you share with us your time there? why was it successful? why was the counterinsurgency strategy in iraq successful? >> well you know i think that the counterinsergeant enceurgency is effective when the lines outlined in the beginning are applied. not just a military. we invested enormous resources into that effort. i don't think you are suggesting -- i guess i should

ask if you are suggesting whether we should make that kind of commitment again. rather it seems to me we're trying accomplish the objectives of a counterinsurgency but adapting bqçcp( on what we've learned to ensure most of that lifting is done by regional partners and by the government of iraq itself. vrgets so i'm not suggesting that we return to counterinsurgency in iraq. what does concern me is we heard over and over again from this administration that we had to end the gains of the counterinsurgency because we didn't have a status of forces agreement. and the reason we didn't have the status of forces agreement, according to the administration is they couldn't get it ratified by the iraqi parliament. now somehow even though we had to leave because we didn't have a status of forces, now we're putting thousands of troops back. can you tell me today do we have a status of forces

agreement? >> no, we do not but diplomatic notes that guarantee the immunities and protections. we've got 3,500 servicemen and women on the ground. it's a much different order of magnitude. >> so originally then when we did the counterinsergeanturgency, we didn't have it or that was just a status agreement? >> you're talking back in 2011? >> my point is if we can have an exchange of diplomatic notes and sustain the gains from the counterinsurgency, i think mr. molten talked about the blood-bought gains. this is very difficult for us as a nation. if we can do that with an exchange of diplomatic letters why wouldn't we do that with an exchange of diplomatic letters than saying the iraqi parliament won't ratify it. therefore, we have to leave immediately and suddenly everything we fought to achieve,

including me including you it seems to all be for naught. this is a lesson. we can't go back and unwind what's already happened but we have to be cognizant as we go forward because these kinds of conflicts are going to happen again. the commander in chief needs to make a decision. he doesn't get to change the policy that came before him. we inherit the policy frommor predecessor and have to make decisions in the best interest of our cannot whetherountry, whether it was his war to begin with. >> judo to7concede we have a much different partner in prime minister abadi than in prime min stir maliki. >> that's true. prime minister maliki would have wanted us to be there had we had the toontopportunity to do it with an exchange of diplomatic letters, which he wanted us to do. we chose to reject that. with that mr. chairg7 yield back.

>> thank you, mr. chairman secretary carter and general dempsey. you certainly have tremendous challenges on your shoulders. i thank you for your service. i -- this question that i'm going to ask both of you may have comment oz. as we've announced, additional deployments of service members back to the middle east to inhance the train and equip mission i've concerned about the effects it will have on the readiness of our total force. instead of sending complete units we're deploying piecemeal components and senior personnel. i'm certained that the portion of the unit that remains at home station or in training will be relegated to preparing only for small unit operations instead of being able to train for full operations. now how will we mitigate this

and insure our reconstituting units will get the training they need to recover their readiness? that's the first part of the question. secondly, will we consider changing the model for how we generate forces for small-scale operations? >> excellent questions congresswoman. thank you. i'll start and ask the chairman. you're absol =v right when we send in enabling force we continued to take certain elements including the command element out of a!@r a brigade or!?g a division even headquarters. and deploy it forward because that's the only part of the28a force that we need. and the rest stays behind. that is a readinesse in this case, the army, and i know the army works very hard on

that. but it is, as you say, and so the second part of your question is are we thinking of ways of =1qt but system tiesing and6'4 dealing with the readiness issues. absolutely we are. secretary mchugh and sernl ogeneral odierno are. chairman was also the chief of staff for the army and perhaps he'd comment as well. >> yes, congresswoman. we are adapting our global force management process to account for the fact that as i mentioned earlier, for the first time in a long time we have the issue of dealing with potential threats from state actors and nonstate pñ4 actors. though it's always our instinct to apply coherent units, that is to say units that have been organized, trained and equipped and had a long relationship with each other we're going to have

to find ways to account for our global challenges with a hybrid solution to global force management. frankly we are a much different army, i'll use. in 2015, than we were in 2003 when this all began. we can figure it out. we'd be happy to describe how we intend to approach that. >> thank you very much. mr. chairman, i yield back. >> dr. winstrom. >> thank you mr. chairman and gentlemen for both being here. as i sit here and we go through all of this i can't help but reflect as one of the couple hundred thousand who served inu rack and saw=a us go on to victory to have my stomach turn when iwñ.í÷/ócá think of my friends killed in certain areas that are now under control of isil. and it's very difficult to sit and watch what's taking place today. today we have also possibility of a resolution being brought forward that asks for the

removal of all u.s. troops from iraq or syria. what do you think the middle east would look like if we did that? and what effect would it have on >> that would be a mistake u congressman, for obvious e reasons. we have united states national security interests within iraq andç.owe also have united states national security interests in maintaining credible saft3?ñi1'm and reliable allies in the region. our withdrawal from this issue would challenge and put us at greater risk over time no question about it. >> i would agree with you-bñh on that note. i think those are key components to whatever military operation we're engaged in. is it helping with t28!tñ recruitment on the local level?

for our allies in this fight?#7 >> i -- at the honest truth is that at the moment our countermessaging is the truth. we don't have particular+++g

answered aqft÷ couple of"iá÷çg6times, but when i was in iraq with! [ congressman molten and he asked the question he asked today and it's a compelling question.

when one of the -- there was quite a bit of optimism when we were there in february. it was -- had to doyb primarily with the fact in june there would be an operation in mosul and so forth and so on. one of the factors, but much has changed since>á@ then obviously and you've addressed that. one of the -- for me)rwm2g1çád+d and what i reported back to nebraskans was that i saw the emergence of,yq to some degree leaders in the arab,osgz countries who were ready tow^ñ stand up and try toçj unify these groups in a less sectarian manner. and congressking abdullah of jordan was one of those. and it was very, to me at least, someone who is new to this very optimistic kind of a report. he talked about his idea+ztí of bringing sunni leaders together. i think in that time in april or

so. andd>mx to -- sentenceince that time the jordanians have been challenged by significant challenges, not the least of which are the refugees and some of the al qaeda issuesy9r; for them. number one i guess my question would be, how are things going with jordan and doq, youh@8 i that sort of exceptionalist kind of approach he was taking being able to move forward? and i apologize if this has been asked before. but -- >> x17çno it's a key question. it was alluded to before but you're hitting the nail on the head which is where are the other particularly sunni aligned powers in the region? in this fight which is essentially for a big swath of sunni territory by a group

who -- where religion is the center of their political ideology? and in the case of jordan there's no question about that. the level of insight and commitment by the king and the tremendous support he has in jordan, in part because of the tragic burning, he's all in. and very committed partner and we're doing everything we can to work with him. the refugees are a challenge to a small cannot like jordan. so definitely a worry. when here, in washington, about a month ago, and they were raising issues in their region including iran, which they are very concern eded about. we were also saying it's not

just iran. there's isil as well. and you are uniquely positioned to play a greater role in this campaign. and they undicated some willingness to do so. i think at the moment, we're trying to help them build the capacity to do so because most of them don't have the ground forces that could participate in principle in the campaign in iraq and may be more acceptable than outsiders. >> and, obviously at that time we're talking about the training mission which is being undertaken. you've talked about that, and you're doing more of that. to me, it seemed then and does now as well listening that you can, obviously, there's a military objective and that has to be followed through with. but it isn't -- maybe i'm wrong but it isn't so much that we have to wait until the military objective is absolutely done. that there's also a parallel

course of bringing these other leaders together to try to find more political solution. i -- it seemed to me when i left that's what i wasu&1[hearing. it has to be parallel. you can't just go from one to the other. has to be a parallel thing. only a few seconds but -- >> i completely agree with that. all the lines of the strategy have to be synchronized and the political and the military in particular need to be synchronized. >> thank you, mr. chairman and thank you gentlemen for sustaining for the long haul here today. i have serious concerns about what appears to be an incoherence in our regional strategy related to iran specifically where we're marching toward a nuclear agreement with them. yet sulemani is --

no wonder why our sunni partners are concerned about the incoherence there. a lot of that is your participants, you're not responsible for, but i want to say it's an incoherent strategy that's impacting some of the lack of commitment of our allies in a political nature specifically in iraq. i want to focus on the targeting in the arab campaign in iraq. just met with the air component commander and jtf leadership. they felt isis was on the defensive. i have been involved in the targeting process from the com level down to the pilot. we're hitting all the targets except when collateral damage is a factor. i want to quote -- the fastest

way to end the inhumanity of war is to eliminate its source, which is the islamic state. gradual#nr-ñism gradualism rolling thunder campaign. it's increasing the loss of innocent life. while unintended casualties of war are regrettable, they pale in compare srn to the savage acts being carried out by the iranian state. it allows the certainty of islamic state crimes against humanity. i think it's a valid line of argument? if we're trying to avoid one0÷ civilian casualty yet in not hitting a legitimate target aliuingaliu ing allowing the islamic state to continue to commit atrocities on the ground. how do we balance that? you may need to answer that in a classified manner.

what amount of strike sorties are coming back with it on board? we have a valid target but haven't struck them because of the collateral damage or because of the approval process taking so long? what is that number? how many are we not. hitting of legitimate targets because of the risk of collateral damage. >> i couldn't disagree more with the retired general. secondly, the targeting that we do is based on intelligence and we fuse as you know, we fuse -- >> some say we have7e+fñ the pid but you we don't strike because of the cd. >> and that decision is made by

the commander on the eñsñground. >> do we have a number? it's 80% or 20% don't get hit because of cd. >> i want to answer in -- >> it gets to whether this is allowing us to really not -- >> in my judgment this is not the limiting factor. >> fair enough. the question question i wanted to follow up. we have over 1600 pilots flying every day. could have an engine issue and a potential pilot being captured.; as i was visiting the theater, visited search and combat forces there. they remain outside iraq because of limitations of boots on the ground. responsiveness is very important for search and rescue to be able to scoop them up. we're allowing 450 more advisers about not combat search and

rescue forces to go into oohiraq. have you advised the administration to move them there or are$)uc> that this point that are operating from locations outside of iraq and they can and they can loiter and we're not taking any more risk at that point. if we go into the point where we're going to accompany the iraqi security forces -- that's why it's important to understand. this is not just about putting three jtacs forward. it's about putting a medevac capability and combat search and rescue. so 15 people might require 150. >> one f-16 pilot deep into syria needs that same responsiveness. >> we have pr in hand right now. if we expand thusis at some point we'll have to address that. >> very good questions. mr. norcross. >> thank you mr. chairman. somebody has to be last and certainly appreciate your service.

i just want to follow up right where you're sitting we had king abdullah here probably here actually the day after they released the video of this pilot being burned to death. you can imagine his attitude. he made a couple of points thate[-/ resonated with me through today. one is that this is our fight. indicating that it's not going to be a christian or muslim that they had to fight. certainly they want our help and we're doing that. but something that really stuck with me to this day is, i've been fighting this fight for 1400 years. 1400 years. so it's sort of reminds me what we're following the steps here is if anybody has been to an arcade. it's whack a mole. you hit them here they come up over here. this is the question i'm going to. what is considered a win? much of the discussion today has

been around iraq. but those lines are simply lines on a map. this is about the middle east. what do you see as a win? is it geographically based? and is it short term? where are we in five to ten years? what is a win when we're discussing the middle east and in particular, with isil? >> well, i think that this gets back to the previous question about how complex and varied are the problems of the middle east. the way we ground ourselves and our strategy÷ ÷ is an american national interest. and so in these different circumstances, we're trying to pursue our interests. our interests in the particular fight against isil are to stop this movement from becoming something that endangers friends

and allies and our friends in the region or is capable of striking the homeland. success in the campaign would be eliminating, not every mole as you -- to use your metaphor but every mole hole and make it such that there is no safe haven for the kind of savagery that isil represents and from which it can continue to destabilize places like jordan or even further afield. that's what we're trying to accomplish. and it's difficult. it will take some time. but that's8#tfñ what the strategy is about. in that particular region for that particular problem. but this is a varied region and there are other problems as well. we've talked about iran as a challenge. so this is one, but not the only one. >> general, just to follow up on that from a strategic planning perspective, we can take out the hole as you mentioned.

but don't we have to look at this long term and make sure you have the tools that are needed. but this is long term, ongoing because if we defeat them in one area, they're going to regather and come up in another area. thus the 1400-year fight the king was reflecting on. do you see this as ongoing? >> i absolutely do and have said so at every opportunity. we need to put ourselves on a sustainable footing across this challenge from afghanistan and we can argue over to nigeria. a sustainable footing that!$: allows us to keep pressure on this network to build partners to keep pressure on the network and to make regional stakeholders who have a lot more to gain or lose than we do in the lead of it. and that's the path we're on. >> so predetectctpreductability from$ >> friends are going to be there and continue to be there not --

>> i don't want to turn it into a budget hearing but predictability in the budget would help us pleasure that. >> at the uae, that's what we were hearing. they are seeing that america potentially could walk away from their commitment or friends in the area and that's the last thing we want to see. predictability is the single most stable useilizeing force? >> dictability and perseverance. >> thank you. i yield back. >> mr. secretary the thing i wrote down that i kept thinking about is hope is not a l:zstrategy. and so i hope we have thousands of sunnis who flood into the training that we're going to do that get energized to go fight isil. but we've got -- i have -- there are concerns about whether they are going to do that and trust the central government. we have a provision in our bill

that says unless you can certify that iraq is an inclusive government, then we can directly arm the sunni tribes and the kurdush peshmerga. a again, hope is not a strategy, and hoping for an inclusive iraq with sunnis joining the fight. i hope it happens but if it doesn't happen pretty quick we can't have isis continue to grow. on a similar note, i'd hope we'd have defense budgets grow at a pro detectictable 5 to 7% so that they can plan on that and that it would be a much better more efficient system. on the other hand, we're not in that world right now. and if the president chooses to veto two defense bills, an authorization and appropriation bill that provide exactly as much money as he asked for because he doesn't like the

label on some of the á ñ money or because he wants to put more money or leverage it for more money for the irs or epa, that's going to have serious consequences for our military. that will mean we're at a cr for the rest of the year. and so i hope that not only you two who have to deal with the real world but the president as well can deal -- can use hope not as a strategy but look at the real world consequences of some of these decisions because as we've affirmed several times today, this is a very complex long historical problems in this part of the world. we've got to deal with it as we find it not as we hope it would be. y'all are welcome to comment. you don't need to but that's justice just my parting thoughts after having been here -- >> i'd only say, chairman, because it is my favorite phrase

that i think thus as in every other part of the world, we need to be practical. and where practical, turn hope into reality. but practical. that's the meaning of that slogan. i'm just echoing what you just -- >> it's a great point. how do you get from hope to reality? it's a strategy. that's why we had this hearing to talk about what we hope it will be from where we are today. and it looks like% a long woond winding, very difficult road in the middle east. let me ask all of our guests to remain seated so the secretary and the chairman and his party can make their way out. we've held you longer than intended. if everyone will stay seated forí#&i just a moment while our witnesses depart.

again, thank you all for being here. we'll look forward to other engagements./zt >> the hearing stands adjourned.

>> our hope is the purpose of this. we've heard that over and over

again, but not a logic of this is going to achieve it. it's what we're trying to. but so we're opening a new facility in a different part of iraq to train and we hope they come flooding in. they will be trained and effective and then we'll see if we can support them. doesn't give me a lot of confidence this is on the right path. >> what do you want to hear? you want to hear them saying we're putting ingting ground troops in? >> not necessarily. you heard some excellent questions from our combat veterans about the way we're tying our own3s( hands in the air, on advisers being able to go into the field. as i mentioned, we've got this -- if inclusive government then we've got the provision in the bill to directly arm other groups.

i think a lot of members, as you may have heard are pretty much there. they're not at all convinced iranians will let the iraqi government -- >> secretary carterñ that arming krds in$hx iraq could push the central government closer to iran. >> you'll have people say, can they get closer? >> i don't mean to disparage the intentions of -- what seem to be the intentions of prime minister abadi. he's not maliki. yet iran seems very much inhvc the drivera seat here. and that's part of the reason i insisted and my question to ask about iran's activities in the region. you can't just separate out iraq. as hard as that is to solve and they admit syria is hardern2,)p' that. you have to look at what iran is doing and their influences throughout this region.

and, by the way, i did not think that i got any sort of answer to what's your plan to dealing with iran other than the nuclear issue. and it's hard. these guys are trying to do their best within the constraints the white house lets them. but i don't have a lot of great confidence. >> where are we with this resolution about removing all these troops from iraq and syria. i don't get this. >> it was filed. it's coming to the floor today. there is a privileged statusl"sñ under the war powers resolution which is what he filed it under. we could get into a parliamentary debate about whether it's truly privileged. they decided to vote on it, bring it up or down. >> why is it august 14th? there's a provision in there -- >> is that -- he just has a time

frame to get out, i think. >> magic -- >> has a time limit of 60 days or something like that. >> all of this is filed under the war powers act. if you file you -- if something is not authorized, as i understand it you can file this under the war powers act for a vote that would then force withdrawal within 60 days. >> so this isn't -- >> i don't think it will pass. i continue to have the opinion, we'll have the debat and vote on authorizing the use of military force. so there's discussions. but this is just a straight up or down, have to withdrawal or not. >> do you think it's a real debate like some people are saying it is. >> not sure i understand your question. >> no, i do not think so. i think we ought to have a real

debate. this is not it. this is withdraw now, regardless of the consequences. so regardless of one's opinion on an aumf or whether you think they have a strategy or not, i think a lot of people would not be prepared to react. >> where are we with that? larger debate on -- >> lots of discussions. you know, so as i say, my opinion is we should have that debate. but the concern -- two concerns here are, one, we don't have a strategy. you're expecting me authorize the use of military force and they dont have a strategy to be successful? that's a hard question. what if we try to bring this up and vote and it fails. what does that say to our troops and allies? that's a hard question to answer, too. on the other hand part of my answer is that's what the constitution says. even if it's difficult and so,

you know, that's some of the back and forth among committees and leadership. >> what happens if the nda -- what happens then to the region? >> i'm hoping the senate will pass it tomorrow. i'm hoping we'll have a conference report quick and i'm hoping the president will sign it, not veto it. and if any of those things don't work out the way i hope then we'll just take that but -- but -- just to emphasize. he's going to veto a defense bill that provides him exactly as much money as he asks for? in the world that we just described today? how does any of that make sense? >> will they have heavy equipment going to the middle east and baltics? is that appropriate at all? it's being considered?

>> it would be operation and mapt nens that would move it. my understanding is it's moving it from one location to the east. there would be some cost in rail or truck or driving -- you know, transportation costs. that would be out of o&m costs. if that's local o & m or the base. >> do you have any thoughts about -- >> well, it is part of the the con tin gen contingencies of a dangerous world. as you saw, a lot of what we have in the overseas contingency contingencies account is o&m accounts. not just for the middle east but also what's happening in the far east and in eastern europe as well. >> on syria carter said there weren't enough people entering the program to send to fight isil. is that news for you?

is there any hope left for that program? >> hope is not a strategy, isn't that the theme of the day? i don't know. he is not the first person who has said iraq is easy compared to syria. and i -- you know, i see little prospect of having a ground force that we train that can push back against isil in the near term. what's happened recently is it's the kurds who have made some23ñ gain in the north. i appreciate there's somebody there, you know, willing to fight. thank you you all. have a good rest of your day. >> you, too.

the federal reserve wraps up its two-day policy meeting today. fed chair janet yellen will talk to reporters following that meeting. it will happen at 2:30 eastern. we'll have live coverage. this weekend the c-span's cities tour has partnered with comcast to learn about the history and literary life of key west, florida. earnest hemingway wrote several of his novels at this home in key west. >> they found this house for sale. they bought it for $8,000 in 1931. and pauline actually converted this hay loft into his first formal writing studio. here he fell in love with fishing, he fell in love with the clarity of his writing, how fast he was producing the work. in fact, he knocked out the

first rough draft of a farewell to arms in just two weeks when arriving in key west. he once had a line that said, if you really want to write, start with one true sentence. >> a true writer each book should be a new beginning where he tries again for something that is beyond -- he should try for something that has never been done or that others have tried and failed. >> key west is also where president harry truman sought refuge from washington. >> president truman regarded the big white house as the great white jail. he felt he was constantly under everyone's eye, and so by coming to key west, he could come with his closest staff let down his hair. sometimes some of the staff would let their beards grow for a couple days. they certainly at times used off-color stories and they certainly could have a glass of bourbon and, you know, visit back and forth without any scrutiny from the press.

a sportswear company sent a case of hawaiian shirts to the president with the thought that if the president's wearing our shirt, we're going to sell a lot of shirts. and so president truman wore those free shirts that first year, and then organized what they called the loud shirt contest. and that was the official uniform of key west. >> watch all of our events from key west saturday at 5:00 p.m. eastern on c-span2's book tv and sunday afternoon at 2:00 on american history tv on c-span3.

good afternoon, everyone. my name is jonathan schanzer, vice president of research here at defense for democracies. i want to welcome you here to our events on the aftermath of turkey's elections. this should be a very exciting discussion today. i'm very pleased to have with us today john hanna, fdc counselor motd rating this discussion and we're particularly pleased to have our two panelists, aykan erdemir a nonresident fellow based in turk y here with us this week. aykan just finished a term as a member of parliament in turkey. of course, to his right ambassador eric edelman who has

been an adviser to fdc's -- served as america's ambassador. today's panel comes on the heels of somewhat of a surprising election that took place last sunday in turkey. we want to try to dissect what it all means. the only thing i would like to tell you now f you have your cell phones on, please set them to stun and we will have a formal discussion followed by your questions and we'll be try to get as many of those in as possible. for now i turn it over to john and i thank you very much for being here. >> thank you, jonathan. good afternoon. as john said my name is john hanna, senior counselor at defense of democracies. i've got the real pleasure moderating the panels. for those of you here in the

audience or watching on c-span who are not familiar with fdd, we are a washington think tank focused on array of threats and challenges facing united states and allies in the middle east and globally and developing the policies and programs necessary to defend against those threats and secure america's vital national interests. if you would like to learn more abou43[ut fdd's research and our scholars, i would invite people to visit us on the web at www.defenddemocracy.org and to follow us on twitter at at #followfdd. jonathan said today we're talking turkey. specifically the june 7th parliamentary elections and their implications for turkey and the united states. in a word i think these elections were big. after 13 years of an ever-expanding domination of turkey's political life by the

akp party and its founder right eye reaccept take yepper ed began. it was a referendum on erdogan with himself the repository of most, if not all state power and elected sultan and anatolian version of putin, if you will. and the turkish people appear to have responded to erdgogan's with a resounding no and the akf, for the first time a ruling party in the majority but giving almost 60% of their votes to parties openly dedicated to stopping erdogan's desire for

sole power, including the hdp, a kurdish dominated secular progressive party that has empowered turkey's large and historically problematic kurdish minority to play an oppress ares ive role in the country's future of legitimately democratic policies. although there are lots of questions and -- that remain to be answered and, no doubt, lots of difficulties that lie ahead for turkey june the 7th was, to my mind an enormously inspiring performance, a much needed triumph for the spirit of liberal democracy in a middle east landscape currently inundated by way too much bad news. for those of us who have watched over the past decade with grade dismay the slow drip, drip drip of turkey's democracy being drained away by erdogan's

creeping authorizecreep ing authoritarianism we weren't sure the turkey people had this kind of election in them. erdogan had been so successful in grinding it down, demagoguing, deemenizing others, instilling such a high degree of fear and intimidation in the system, that it was unclear that any group or institution still had the courage or the wherewithal to stand up to him. i think to a lot of people's pleasant surprise, we got our answer a week ago last sunday. turkish people did indeed stand up to erdogan and mustered no small amount of courage to send a loud and fairly unambiguous message that the erosion of turkish democracy must stop here. that is worth noting and celebrating, but now comes the hard part. how does the result on election

day now get translated into meaningful change and governance? what comes next for turkey? that's the subject of our panel today. jonathan noted a great panel, if i don't say so myself. jonathan said, aykan erdemir, making his debut as a nonrespect fellow in fdd's new and ever-expanding turkey program which jonathan schanzer oversees, with a big assess from fd ljñresearcher, who incident people should know as one of the best and brightest young scholars working on turkey today in washington. we're also joined by my great friend and colleague, ambassador eric edelman, who doesn't require an introduction but i want to say a frvñ things because

i really love singing eric's 0 praises. eric had an extraordinary distinguished career in u.s. government, completed as under-secretary of defense at pentagon after serving for two years as ambassador to turkey. must be said for the historical record that eric had erdogan's number long before anyone else in washington had a clue of what was really happening in turkey. he still has the battle scars to prove it. no one was more perceptive or right about & and challenges. i still remember eric walking into the oval office i think -- i can't remember if it was late 2003 or early 2004 to participate in aqi5 prebrief with president bush in advance of for the

rest of the middle east to follow. well, that day eric walked into the oval office took me aside shook my hand and said, in a low voice, john, we've got a serious problem here but no one in washington seems to realize it. how right he was. unfortunately, it would take the greater part of another decade before the rest of washington began catching up to eric, not to mention a good part of the people of turkey. eric today wears many hats, a distinguished scholar at center for strategic andal budgetary, professor at john hopkins international studies, served as

member of congress alley mandated defense policy panel, but as jonathan noted most important for our purposes now a senior adviser to fdd's turkey program and its great to have him as part of that team and welcome him here today. the way the discussion will work is that i'm going to pose my own questions to aykan and eric for about the first 35 to 0 minutes, then we'll turn it over to you in the audience for your questions and comments. we'll cover as much ground as we can and conclude as close to 1:1 as possible. with that, let's get started. let me get this going byu&xv simply asking both of you now, after i've given kind of the optimistic -- or partially optimistic assessment of what might have happened on june the 7th to just spend a few minutes for each of you telling us what you think the main headlines were, fromp>9tá$rp(pened in thez elections, what exactly were the main takeaways for you. aykan, why don't we start with you.npáñs6r÷

>> in general in turkey at> when we have the elections, we think of the whole turkish electorate as a single individual and then we always come up with the conclusion the)!r turkishy z elector rat said no the presidential system. the turkish said no to authoritarianism the development of a party state. the electorate said yes $h! kurdish representative and the party, so on and sorws9 forth. it we take it at that level, it's quite an optimistic message. polls, i think webb[ ight see a more -- mo2í;fy shades of gray. and i think this is going5k8s to be my role today here, just to warn you that picture.kñ where to begin? maybe we can say that first of

all, we had two consolidated parties in the election. chp and akp shared one?hor thing in common. 90% of the grass roots were decided. their followers were decided to vote for these parties two weeks in advance of the elections. here we see two solid support basis for chp and akp. then we had mhp turkey's nationalist party, and hdp, turkey's kurdish party. two parties which received quite a lot of strategic votes, swing votes, in the last week.mçy so these are the parties where almost one od,j# five voters came within the last week.a5qñ to be frank the assumption is the votes that came to mhp happened to be erdogan skeptics and the votes!ñ that came to akp

happened to be skeptics that would like to see kurdish representation in the parliament. on dpil difficult to argargue. these two arguments are doyle prove. what we see is a lot of the kurdish conservatives swings to hdp within the last week. and in the exit polls we see these people still see erdogan as the most successful leader of the campaign. 13% of the hdp voters think erdogan was the most successful leader of the campaign although he wasn't a party to the elections. so as some scholars warn us, we should not overemphasize the overall progressive nature of the hdp vote. this is a big coalition. maybe 10% to 20% of progressive secular kurdish leadership at the top and then a vast base --

follower base, which shares a lot in common with akp's values and politics. we have seen that base actually got stronger this time because more conservative kurdish vote came to hdp. similarly, and i'll end here, we see -- what we see with the mhp vote is they received quite a lot of swing votes from akp within the last week. but these are again people who share quite a lot with the akp values and policies%8pañ and probably overstepping his mandate and his position. but in the exit polls -- once -- sorry. a week after the elections, when they were asked now that you know the election results, would you have voted otherwise? we see almost 5% of mhp voters saying,fy knew the results would have been this way, i would have

voted for akp. so, they're now regretting their mhp vote and they might swing back to akp. we are also see the same with hdp voters. maybe we should not -- my take-home message would be, we should not read too much of a progressive liberal democratic interpretation into these elections. but we should not underemphasize, we should not kind of belittle the importance of the elections, because ultimately turkish elections of june 7th proved that there could be a returnei]t from competitive authoritarianism where an incumbent with huge advantages can nevertheless, nevertheless suffer a relative defeat at the ballot box. i think this is an important message for the region, nevertheless. >> eric? >> thank you john.1!=ñ thank you for that really generous introduction.

i found it a little intimidating and inhibiting because now no matter what i say it's going to be downhill from there. first, i -- i6r agree both john, with you and what aykan has just said, in that there are positive elements here in the election results, but i share aykan's concern that the overall picture is more cloudy and maybe has some dark clouds within the silver lining, if you will. so first the election result clearly puts in place a -- at least a speed bump in thes the former prime minister, now president's efforts, to create an executive presidency. and i think that's a positive thing for kurdish democracy. secondly, the fact of the hdp's successful campaign and its ability to get over the 10%

threshold, which after all was designed to keep them out of parliament, is both a mark of the maturation of turkish democracy and also a positive sign for the country's ability to finally you know, resolve the issues of the -- of the kurdish minority. but having said all that, the election result, i think, also reveals that turkey remains a very very deeply divided society. aykan talked a little about that, but if you -- you know if you look at the map of the geographical distribution of votes, there's a shriller along the agean coast where chp has most of its vote. this are some places in the center of the country and along the mediterranean coast where mhp is strong. hdp obviously strong in the southeast and then all the rest

of the heartland of the country and the black sea coast is all akp country. and it looks a little like some of the maps that are drawn of the united states the red/blue maps of republican domination, of rural and exurban areas of the united states and democratic domination of urban areas. you see this big swath of red surrounded by little enclaves of blue. turkey is a very deeply polarized society. and the bad news there is the akp is the only party that is competitive across the nation. the others are not competitive everywhere in the country. akp and this deeply divided society remains the only national party. secondly secondly, we face a very uncertain future. the president was

uncharacteristically quiet for the first three or four days after the election. but he is now clearly back in action. one thing i think he's trying to demonstrate by his actions is that he's not going to see this vote as in any way inhibiting him in his effort to create this executive presidency. he has already taken a number of steps that clearly are.y5.ñ not within the ambit of the constitution announcing he's going to be calling party leaders together to meet with them individually before it turns it over to prime minister ,á davutoglu to create a country. he makes it clear there's the prospect there won't be a government and the country will have to go back to elections. that is despite the fact the prime minister has indicated that perhaps a grand coalition with the chp something mr. mr. kilicdaroglu has also indicated would be in the best

interest of the country would be possible. my thought is the president doesn't want to see a government formed within the 45-day time line set by the constitution and would like to see theaxfñ country go back to elections, in part, because he the same way aykan does. he thinks if turkey applyies the eu standard, which is i'm going to make you keep voting until i get the answer, there is a chance that, in fact -- that he will do better in a second election, that he will getj; least a governing majority, if not the super majority he thinks he needs to putgr in place amendments to the cohiú(uq%=9 to enshrine his executive presidency. so, i foresee a period of

>> aykan can you run us through the tkal process -- what's the way forward now in terms of how the effort to form a government will be made. what are the necessary steps technically and constitutionally that have to be followed? >> yes. the turkish -- the newly elected turkish deputies are still to be sworn in. once the ceremony takes place at the turkish parliament within the next week, there will be the elections for the speaker ofvu parliament. and those elections will provide us some hint as to what might happen with th9maq coalition government because right now no party has the majority to elect the speaker of the parliament. and if the opposition parties decide to do so if they decide to unite their votes, they can actually for the first time in 13 years elect a speaker of the parliament who is not from the akp.

right after that starts the clock, the 45 days, for the coalition talks. i also agree with ambassador edelman that erdogan would probably like to run the clock. he can do this in a couple of ways.[ he has shown he will try to be part of the coalition talks and deals. he also has quite a number of loyalists and followers within the new group of deputies who can make the coalition efforts building difficult. more importantly, reading the exit polls president erdogan now knows there is now a group of voters both among the hdp voters and mhp voters who said they would have voted for akp had they known the election results.

this swings back to akp, will probably not push hdp below the 10% threshold, although it's still likely. but i think mhp will suffer even more. if within the next 45 days there isn't a viable coalition we can have re-elections, not elections, which erdogan is hoping will bring again a single party, akp rule. when voters were asked what's your preferred coalition akp/mhp coalition, seems to be the most favorite coalition in turkey followed by a coalition of the three opposition parties. in my opinion the first one is?? quite like lily because two parties share quite a lot in common, akp

and mhp. this, of course, would imply a return to probably hard line national policies, vis-a-vis, the kurdish question in the region. what is also desired the three opposition parties forming a coalition, feels good for the majority of turks but seems to be quite difficult to manage because of the difficult commensurating akp's and mhp's respectively kurdish nationalist policies. we wiløzmz see whether turkish politicians still have in them consensus-building skills to)b overcome the hurdle. you should keep in mind that right after the elections, one of the most searched terms on google was coalition, because turkey now has a generation of people who have never lived with a coalition who have never seen

coalition talks and most of the deputies in the turkish parliament have never, ever served in a parliament where coalition tushgs and negotiation and consensus building were part of the political game. so this will indeed be a challenge. >> just to clarify, the parliament gets seated and then it's erdogan's role as president to actually tap someone to form the -- to form the government? >> the constitution does give the president the authority but the turkish tradition is that the leader of the majority party should receive this opportunity. now, when we talk about tradition, of course we should also realize erdogan is the great defier of tradition. so we never know what cards he has up his sleeves. >> we presume he will tap d a. vutoglu and then can he run out the that days or does he have a

specific time limit within those 45 days that he can try and form a parliament and then the president has to offer it to somebody -- another party?j >> he can run the clock but if he had -- if he had a president who had an interest in forming a coalition government he could have nudged gently for davutoglu to give up the r(.n&sibility. but that probably is not likely. >> okay. in theory óbrdavutoglu could spin in chp would never get a chance to be the one to try to form a coalition. eric, let me put on your )(páor's hat, what do you think the most likely scenario is here? do you think we're going to run out the clock and go to a new election or is there a chance for a coalition or a minority government even? if so what kind of government? >> it's a little hard for me to

imagine an actual coalition emerging from this. as aykan said and as most observers would likely imagine would be an occupy coalition because there is some commonality there to -- in the world views of the party and what the voters believe, respective voters believe. however, i would note that the head of the mhp has been quoted as saying, yes, fine we'll be happy to have a coalition but the conditions of that will be that the ministers will be accused of corruption and the corruption scandal that broke in december 2013 have to be brought before the bar of justice. oh, by the way that includes your son bilal. give us bilal and we can have a government. also the president would have to abide by the understood constitutional norms of the turkish republic, which is to

stop chairing cabinet meetings, stop inserting himself into the process of forming a coalition government. it's extremely difficult for me to imagine the president and the akp agreeing to those conditions. the idea you'll get an akp/mhp government, you know, i think is hard to imagine. i think both mr. kilicdaroglu and the prime minister have suggested in their public comments that they're open to a kind of grand coalition. you know that would represent 60% to 65% of the voters which would in some sense overcome this, you know, deep sense of division that i mentioned in my opening remarks. but i find it hard to believe that that coalition will be formed either. because it's -- two parties are so far apart. and were the chp to agree to a coalition that didn't impose some of these same conditions that mhp has talked about, that

is to say holding the government accountable for corruption and the president accountable for behaving within the constitution, i think actually it would damage them in the future. i mean, it might give them a chance to hold ministerial portfolios, or a few of them, for a while, but i don't think it would enhance the party's process electorally in the future. on the contrary i think it would diminish them. so, it's a little bit -- and they said coalition is out of the question for hdp. i can't imagine them entering into a coalition. whether he'd be willing to silently support an achltd kp minority government, i think that's a more minority question. i wouldn't rule that out. the reality is even if we get a coalition government, the history of coalition governments in turkey is of weak governments that don't last very long. so, i think, you know one way or another, we'll be back, you

know, turkish political parties will be back in an election campaign going to the voters, you know sooner rather than later. >> and just -- i mean on the akp and erdogan's position in particular we've heard a lot over the years of rumors and disagreements and tension within the party. those appear to have been exacerbated by the results of the election. i think there's a new book out by an adviser to former president that highlights a lot of the disagreements between the former president and president erdogan, particularly over things like the protests in gezi park, the corruption scandals that eric mentioned at the end of 2013 and how those should have been handled. can anything come of that over the next several weeks or

months? is erdogan going to suffer any price within the akp? is there any chance that former president ghoul will try to make a comeback or is erdogan very much the man in control dominating this party and he will get his way? aykan? >> the way in which this book was launched is very inindicative of his style in politics. it was written by his chief adviser of the last 12 years and the book was really actually a month and a half ago. but like you today him, wait until after the elections so that we don't hurt -- so the implication is so we don't hurt the akp's campaign. so, gool has so far been the very timd, timid careful politician who doesn't like taking risks too much. he's doing it again in a very

gentle manner. he will probably not be too proactive in having a takeover attempt of the akp. we might see davutoglu declaring his independence by trying to take greater control of the party. he has already indicated a few times that the president should stay in his role and the coalition talks should be among the leaders and not the president. we might see him slowly trying to assert his leadership, but of course he knows his limits and the extent to which erdogan has loyalists in the deputy group. >> eric let me -- you can can comment on this if you want to but i did want to ask you about the variable of the turkish economy and how it might play

into these scenarios. i mean, even before these elections there were serious signs of trouble, particularly the drop in the lira being a good indicator, which was exacerbated by the results of the election. how nervous do you think the markets r foreign investors are, and does this kind of potential growing uncertainty about turkish politics help or hurt erdogan and the akpn your view, going forward? >> i do want to come back to the question of the recent book. tha47y÷j÷ details these disagreements between former president gulen and incumbent president and also to aykan's comments, which i agree with. look, the economy -- we haven't mentioned it yet, but it was the other big factor, i think, in the election besides the resistance to erdogan's

pretensions to a stronger presidency. the economy has been slowing down for some time. turkish voters, i think, this is pretty well established by the social science or not that different from voters in the united states in the sense they are retrospective voters. they are frequently voting on the economic record of the previous government and that is one thing that has been a major source of strength for akp since 2002, but the slowing economy is -- it clearly hurt. i think you're right to point to the decline in the lyra. i think the lyra is down 30% against the dollar since the beginning of the year. i think that the current account deficit, which has been extraordinarily high for a number of years, the fact that a lot of the foreign direct investment that's gone into turkey has been portfolio investment and is hot money

that's moving in and out of the country. i think ail prolonged period of political instability, particularly if it ends up being accompanied by violence in the southeast, for instance, which you already see some signs of that over the last week since the election could combine to exacerbate some structural problems in the turkish economy and lead to a real crisis. turkey's post-world war ii economic history is a history of boom/bust. one of my predecessors used to call a sign wave economy. and i thinkxg[mo you could see that re-emerge now and become a factor in future elections. it's actually one reason why erdogan may want to have a movement sooner rather than later before the economic bill for all of this comes due. let me say one thing about president gul, i agree with

aykan, although he has had no shortage of public and private criticisms of president erdogan and the course he's set for the akp over the last decade, he has never really shown the stomach for a political fight that many people had hoped he would have because, i think, let's face it, the -- the logical conclusion from what i said at the outset of my remarks is that akp is the only effective national party, that the other parties don't really -- cannot compete across the q#rnation and that really one of the things that has undermined turkish democracy over the last decade and a half has been the weakness of the opposition and turkish voters to conceive of them as alternative parties of governance actually see them running the country. has been one of the great

advantages akp has had. the only way that's going to change is if akp fractures and fragments and there's a new constellation that emerges of turkish political parties that's capable of creating a governing majority that can move the country forward. >> okay. thank you. let me ask quickly about a very important topic which can is more important the kurdish issue, and how these elections are going to affect the peace process. at one point in time it seemed that perhaps a majorxe the president to be engaged in this peace process is he thoughts the kurds would be the constituency to push him over the top in order to get the majority he needed to create the executive presidency. now we appear to have the opposite result. in fact, the elections and the peace process and the kurdish issue has actually strengthened,

alternative kurdish party weakened the akp and empowered another party, the mhp, that seems quite opposed to the entire process. so i -- can we say anything about how the elections are likely to affect this peace process that seems quite fragile, bogged down? are they likely to help, hurt or is it all depend on what eventually emerges in terms of any gind of governing coalition? >> i think erdogan's magic has always been his ability toi attract both turkish nationalists and kurdish nationalist votes. and with this election he puzzled once again but this time by losing both the turkish nationalist and kurdish nationalist vote. in the last two weeks of the campaign, he did appeal to turkish nationalism, at the expense of the kurdish votes.

but ultimately he emerged losing both ends of his support base. today i think what happens is from my point of view, the kurdish vote seems to be gone. i think it's a one-way swing vote. it will be very difficult for erdogan to reattract the kurdish vote kurdish conservative vote back to akp. there's a new sense of ethnic solidarity. there are different dynamics within the region. there is, i think, a new kurdish consciousness rising in the region. 23 you compare this to turkish nationalist vote, i think that vote can come back to akp.wúpj which means again, if we also think makp coalition, turkey might go back to the denialist policies and akp/mhp coalition

could be a hard linish coalition. i've heard comments on both sides highlighteding the military/security option. one thing which both akp and mhp deputies and leaders are missing is turkey is no longer the turkey of 1990s. kurds are no longer the kurds of 1990s. and turkish security presence in turkish kurdish majority regions are nowhere near the 1990s. turkish state and military and the police no longer have the same options on the table, no longer havev and i also used to serve as a volunteer/shadow mp in the kurdish majority region. to be frank people who know -- who know the region, who know the everyday life in the region can point out to you the vast difference between what we have today as opposed to 1990s.

today the pkk seems to have full control of the region. and any attempt by an akp/mhp coalition to impose, let's say, a security-centered approach more of turkish islamic approach on the region will backfire and will probably feel a lot of unrest, like we have seen with the kobani uprightings. >> eric, can i just ask you again, if you want to commend on the overall impact on the peace process, please do but does it mean -- is it significant at all that the kurds have now gone to the ballot box and elected this party that may be made up of pkk sympathizers but is not necessarily fully convergent with the pkk? does this introduce anything interesting, do you think, in kurdish politics in turkey or

is, as aykan just suggested, probably too strong to say the akp is a puppet of the pkk but it is still very much the pkk that has the major voice and is going to call the shots on whether turkey goes towards peace or towards another outbreak of conflict. >> as i said john, i think it's very interesting and potentially a positive development that the akp has made it into parliament. however, i'm a little 9 that because of the uncertainty of where we're headed, that it could end up being, you know just all for naught if you will, that it won't make that much difference. first f we get an mhp/akp coalition, clearly the price for that will be an end to the peace process.

mhp has said that in so many words. so it's -- it's great, you know, that you've got these aiding kurdish parliamentarians who have arrived in the parliament. it's not just kurds. there are other minorities who they have brought to their rainbow coalition, if you will, introducing a level of diversity in the turkish parliament we haven't seen before, which is a good thing. but, i mean f you have a government committed to not pursuing the peace process, there's going to be a limit to what the akp can deliver to voters. and there will be almost inevitably a kind of competition set up between the hdp and the pkk. you may be seeing some of that play out already in southeast turkey with these disturbances and assassinations, et cetera. secondly, let's play out the other option which is the president succeeds in running out the clock and we go to new elections.

his calculus to some degree has to be that he's going to get, you know a majority and hopefully a super majority to carry out his own ambitions we've described earlier. some of that will come, perhaps, from the mhp vote going down as aykan speculated earlier based on the exit polls. the other has to be on hdp's vote going down as well and hopefully going down so low they don't actually make it into the parliament. you almost have to have that happen if you want to get to 330 votes in the parliament and get to the super majority that erdogan wants.&mlt you could see him being temperatured if the vote goes low enough. you could imagine in a second vote four five months from now, you won't have the same kind of intensity as in the previous election up. might not get the as high turnout. it was 10% higher than the last

presidential election in august. you might have a lower turnout up. might be able to drive that vote down to, say, 10.2%, at which point the temptation to manipulate the election returns to keep them below 10% could become extremely -- extremely high. if you were to end up result.l in which hatlr1 kurdish parliamentarians in the parliament for four, five months, you have an election and suddenly there are zero kurdish parliamentarians in the parliament -- can you spin this out in ways that potentially lead down the road to a lot of instability and potentially violence in turkey. >> i've got several more questions, particularly about the impact on turkish foreign policy, syrian questions and what the u.s. should be doing at this important but uncertain time in turkish history, but i do want to go over to the

audience and begin taking some questions. if you can really keep it to a question, maybe a very brief comment, identify yourself we'll try and take three in a row. if you just raise your hand, i'll try to catch you. in the front row, harold rhodes. >> harold rhodes. let's talk, if you don't mind, what you say is the long term. if you look at kurdish identity in turkey and throughout the region you just take -- when barzani sent troops across southern turkey to fight in kobani the remarkable response of the people. oh, my god, our guys our people, we're them. they're like us. we're the same. if you look at the rallies in turkish for -- what the kurds

are calling omnit and even on the turkish -- rather, on city hall, it says in turkish, and right below it is says in kurdish the city hall of ahmad. if you see the flags, they're all kurdish. the question is, do you see in the long term, if let's say, eric of the disaster because the kurds in a new election would get zero do you see the kurds of turkey moving in a different direction because they clearly feel a strong sense of identity with the people just south of them. >> thank you, harold. lady in the back row. wait for the mike, please. >> my question to dr. edelman. i know -- i know a lot of brotherhood fan of erdogan had

prayed and finished koran before the election praying for his success. do you see any change in the relationship between the muslim brotherhood and erdogan in the future and his relationship with the regime in egypt. >> why don't we let eric answer the first question on where this kurdish question is going. can the turkish republic stay on top of this, eric, and manage it or are we headed towards a much messier breakup? >> i think they can for a few years. harold asked us to focus on the longer term. in the longer term, i think we're dealing with a really volatile situation here. because just look at the president's -- that is to say president erdogan's response to the advance of kurdish forces in the northeast. it's clear he would rather see that area remain an

isil-dominated no man's land than to see the kurds successful there. it's the same logic he had for withholding support for kobani. perhaps because he was afraid of precisely what you described, harold, in terms of the reaction to the krg forces arriving in kobani. when you think about it in the long term and you think about the fragmentation we already see in syria and my own view is the idea that syria's going to get -- that the syrian humpty dumpty is going to get put back together again is pretty hard to credit after the amount of killing and movement of population that's gone on there.r a the fragmentation of iraq and the krg as a protostate a kurdish protostate, if you then add a layer on top of that, an inability of the turkish

political system to deal with this issue i think you have a very combustible mix. >> to answer your question about -- right from the very start, i have always argued erdogan's policies and politics cannot be interrupted within the nation state borders. erdogan's policies right from the start have been transnational. it has always been a muslim brotherhood-oriented policy, whether it's in syria, whether it's in jordan whether it's in egypt. he's also trying to build a network from malaysia to the balkans. he's a- politics politics, so vis-a-vis egypt, i would not expect much to change unless it's a grand coalition with chp. we know that chp is very interested in mending ties with

armenia, with israel, with syria, with egypt. we know that erdogan and bartolo are quite hard liners on that issue. it depends on the outcome of elections but we should never assume no matter what the results of older elections are, erdogan and his people will be deeply committed to muslim brotherhood majority in all the muslim brotherhood majority countries. >> why don't we go here first, in the third row and then this gentleman in the fourth row. >> i have two questions briefly -- >> no, just one question, please. >> what would be the reason for silence of israel after the election results? what do you think about israel's

reaction in general? >> the fourth row? >> thank you. >> i'm sorry. say your name again. >> i have a short question for eric. the anecdote you shared was very impressive. when you said we have a problem no one is listening to the situation in turkey. what was the thing -- the thing that forced to you think this way and how do you see -- and if you see that demonstration right now is there on the same page ten years ago -- [ inaudible ] >> let's take those two. first, does anybody want to take the israel question?

anybody got a good theory on what is israel doing or whether this is going to have any impact on the relations between the akp and erdogan and israel? >> well, i mean i haven't talked to anyone in israel, so all of this is you know, untainted by any actual knowledge. but my sense is that israelis have for a long time viewed the potential of the relationship between israel and turkey as kind of transcending erdogan. and they continue to hope almost against hope that somehow the kind of strategic partnership of the '90s can be resuscitated. and i suspect right now what you're seeing is a lot of caution in israel in the face of kind of imponderable of turkish politics, why say anything at this point, when almost anything you say can and will be used against you certainly by the akp

and its leadership. so, you know, i expect that they're just watching and waiting and trying to see, you know, what comes out of this and hope they can get the relationship back onto a -- onto a more stable footing. i don't know aykan, if you have a different view. >> in my dealings with israeli and american counterparts i've always recommended silence as the best way to deal with akp because no matter what they say, american officials or israel officials, no matter what they say, positive or negative it will be spun through the -- through the government mouthpiece propaganda machine. i've never seen -- i'm an expert on hate speech and hate crimes. i've never seen the extent to which hate and prejudice have been strategically deployed by leading government figures in turkey. sure turkey has always had some

level of prejudice and stereotyping and marginalization, but i think especially since 2009, we are at a stage where there is a constant pumping of hate and prejudice by leading government figures. so the best way to prevent that i think, would be silence. because no matter what you say it would be fueling the fires of anti-semitic hatred or prejudice or conspiracy theories. i think it's very prudent. >> i have to follow up on that because as you say since 2009 that's coincidentally president obama's presidency i don't think that he's been a president particularly forceful in speaking publicly about any concerns he might have regarding turkey until very recently. and yet we have seen this steady steady deterioration with erdogan. he doesn't seem to need necessarily, excuses to engage in this kind of behavior. but just quickly on what you

would say then what the president did the day after the elections in making his toughest statement yet about the lack of turkish action on that border with syria and shutting it down to foreign fighters and isis financing, your guess is that is probably unhelpful at this time and actually will help erdogan? or is he particularly vulnerable and now is the time if there ever was one for the americans to kind of press on behalf of our own national interests, vis-a-vis this government and turkey? do you want to try that? eric. >> i want to get back to tulga's question too. i agree up to a point. we deal with one government at a time. i can't tell you the number of times when i was ambassador to

turkey turks would come up to me and say your government, they didn't mean the u.s. government, they meant the turkish government that somehow we had put into power somehow. but we ought to let that process go on on its own. and play itself out without any comment from the united states. on the other hand i think it's not a bad thing at all that the president drew attention to the concerns we have about the border. this is serious, it's a real problem. i think particularly at this point in time it's not a bad thing for the president of the united states to be publicly articulating that frankly for whoever emerges in the turkish government to t50 into account. but i would be in favor of f9p":ñthat. just on tulga, on your question. you know the ravageséh of age make it hard for me to actually rw 5 exactly whatw4b i had in my mind when i had that; conversation with john more than a decade ago. or almost a decade ago.

but luckily you can read a lot of the reporting that came out thanksi to wikileaks. now, you can do that. i can't because i still hold clearances. and so be a security violation for me to download any of those telegrams because they're still technically classified. but i think what you would see if you look through the reporting that we did in that period that there was a general sense of@q;jboth the prime minister's personal growing ?pgg( author authoritarianism authoritarianism, in terms of his personality as well as some )t$enomena we saw in the party itself that were troublesome and worrisome to several of us. by the way i see in the back one of my distinguished successorsu$ what alas reporting hase been made 4q public by wikileaks. and i think during ambassador

jeffreys time you'll seeyd,s÷ some similar kinds of concernsurñ expressed about different elements. it was not unique to me, firstu%y of all, and i think you asked why didn't the u.s. government do something about it. i think john really put his finger on it because there's been a real wish on part of policymakers in washington to see the turkey they would like to see as opposed to the one that actually exists.ou well, i can't really speak for today, but i know you're shocked by this but the administration doesn't consult me very often on turkish policy. >> two gentlemen in the front, try to make it short if you can. >> american kurdish information network. two days before the election two bombs exploded in election rally, an isis member was arrested. given erdogan's sympathies for isis and given the hawk war

between -- isis in syria. is it going to be possible to stop the mayhem in syria and iraq? >> pass it to the gentleman in front of you >> i would like to get the comment of ambassador. we noted as you said foreign policy will perhaps goynqît beyond transition. but i would like to get your comments on turkish foreign policy. and perhaps emergence of the new policy in saudi arabia, thank "wkx you. >> thank you. >> sure. now, in the exit polls we saw 29% of voters said the bomb had influenced their votes. so the bombing had a major effect on the outcome of turkish

elections. and in the months to come i think the security situation in the region will have a major impact on the future of both the peace process in turkey and also on the nature of turkish-kurdish relations in the region. we should, i think be prepared not only for tensions between turkey's kurdish population and the turkish state, but also for what i call proxy wars within the kurdish community in turkey. we see aúwçés rise in tension between the kurdish hezbollah, you know, turkey's hezbollah which is predominantly kurdish and pkk. we see a few 11 intercommunal intentions. these of course have

transnational aspects. they can spill over to neighboring territories or the clashes in the neighboring territories can very easily spill back over into turkish territory. keep in mind we don't only have weapons and logistical support and money going both ways, but we also have funerals coming back from the fighting in iraq and syria. and every time a kurdish funeral comes back home it adds to the fuels of intercommunal tensions. and i think no matter what kind of a coalition arrangement comes out of the talks the bargaining, the kurdish peace process and handling of this delicate situation should be a key priority. >> eric can i just -- on turkish foreign policy but if you can focus a bit on syria are weúm'1e or is it possible

in light of these elections that we'll see any real improvements in turkish policy toward in support of the u.s.-led coalition in syria and iraq? >> you know it's an interesting question. i'm not sure i have a very good or helpful answer, john to be honest. one of the things that's striking about kind of the election and turkish syria policy is the fact that the president and prime wla[áminister's former foreign minister's policy towards sypyr has been for quite some time terribly unpopular. i've seen some speculation in the press. we've focused on erdogan's ambitions and the economy is causes of the election result. but there's some speculation in turkish press i think inside akp

that the syrian is responsible for some of what transpired in the election. i'm not really sure. and i think you could probably argue at round or flat what the impact of that is going to be on syria policy now. on the one hand i believe that turkey and the governing leadership is going to be primarily focused inlandly for the next few months while they sort out the politics of all this. and that on the one hand might argue against any activism in syria, et cetera. on the other hand you're going to have a kind of interim government in place until this sorts out. and you're going to have erdogan trying to continue to exert incrementally his presidential authority. and so -- and it's not unheard of in these kinds of situations for an external crisis to be tempting as a way of helping

resolve the internal political debate. so i think one can imagine it going either way. >> let me just ask is the two big institutions or movements that we haven't talked about. and traditionally seem to have been quite important in recent years or even longer in turkish politics politics. one of course is the military. and whether anything is happening in the military that's significant or meaningful or we ought to keep our eyes on in the coming weeks and months, particularly as the uncertainty of these coalition politics now and the second is what erdogan is calling the parallel state in particular the gulenist movement inside of turkey is that it's his offensive and campaign to crush all remnants of theat movement in turkey. is that li