Courcy’s Intelligence Brief

*** Turkey worried by demographics. On 29 January, Turkey’s Statistical Institute revealed that Turkey’s population had reached 75,627,384 at the end of 2012, indicating a 1.2% growth rate.  This is down from the 1.35% growth rate recorded in 2011 and almost half the growth rate of 30 years ago.  The average age is also increasing, to 30.1 years from 29.7 in 2011.

Professor Burak Arzova of Marmara University commented: “If the same trend continues, it [the growth rate] will go into the negative.  In other words, Turkey may experience a decrease in population as is the case in Europe.  Therefore the prime minister’s ‘three children’ exhortation is very important.”

The prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has a bee in his bonnet about population, and the day after the figures were revealed he instructed ministers to prepare an action plan.  Development Minister Cevdet Yilmaz then announced that the government was preparing to introduce child benefit for working mothers.

*** Some improvement in Mexico.  A surge in violence affecting the Michoacan-Jalisco border area of Mexico, that began in December and continued into January, belies an overall improving position on violence in Mexico.  By some reports, but not all, deaths due to the actions of organized crime (OCL) were reportedly down 21.2% in 2012.  However, another set of figures shows them as more or less the same as in 2011.  Deaths from all homicides, according to partial data from the Sistema Nacional de Seguridad Pública (SNSP), fell by 8.6% in 2012.  In January, OCL deaths were down just over 3% from December at 1,104.  These figures strengthen the view that the intensity of the violence in Mexico has reached a plateau and may even be declining.

*** Russia’s foreign minister bullish about influence in Mideast.  Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told Rossiya 2 TV on 10 February: “We contacted…members of the [Syrian] opposition…Every member of the opposition said he did not think of the future of their country and the whole region without Russia’s active involvement.”

On Libya, Lavrov said: “Libyan authorities are sending us direct signals that they are interested in restoring work on projects which we started under Gaddafi.”

And on Iraq, he said: “In 2003 we were totally against what the Americans were doing there…Now the Iraqi prime minister is coming to us, the Iraqi president is talking with us.  They want to develop economic cooperation and are creating conditions for our oil, energy, and other companies to work there.  Baghdad is interested in buying Russian military equipment…”