The victory of opposition candidates not only in the megalopolis of Istanbul and the capital, Ankara, but also in the third city, İzmir, as well as huge swathes of the rest of the country dominated headlines.

The message was clear: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had received a huge rebuke from his electorate only ten months after his decisive victory in the national elections. Then, he convincingly retained the presidency, fending off a concerted challenge from a broad opposition coalition named the Nation Alliance. 

You can read the above narrative pretty much anywhere. What is more useful to an interested observer is to consider what has practically changed due to these elections and what this might tell us about the Turkish political landscape going forward. 

The incumbents won

In fact, the election results were not as seismic as the international press would have the idle, skim-reading observer believe. That’s not to say they weren’t significant. But we should place these results in context. 

First and foremost, let us examine the victory of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidates in the mayoral elections in both Istanbul and Ankara. 

This was not a victory over Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), but rather the reelection of the incumbent mayors. Both Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu and Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş first won in the 2019 local elections. Those results were seismic. Imamoğlu took Istanbul for the opposition after 25 years of AKP rule.

Imamoğlu’s victory, especially, had real resonance in 2019. Istanbul is Erdoğan’s home turf. The Turkish leader made his name nationally as the mayor of the city from 1994 to 1998 before he became prime minister and then president. The loss of Turkey and indeed Europe’s biggest city felt symbolic. Erdoğan reacted by annulling the election result, which led to a rerun. Imamoğlu won the rerun with an increased majority. 

Things took a darker turn a year later. In December 2020, the Court of Cassation handed Imamoğlu two-year, seven-month and 15-day prison sentences and a ban from politics. Note that the ban has not been implemented to date and echoes the courts’ treatment of Erdoğan’s in 1999.

While Imamoğlu was convicted of insulting public officials, Erdoğan was not only convicted but also imprisoned. At the time, the CHP was in power and its secular political system found Erdoğan guilty of reciting an Islamist poem at a political rally. In Turkey, history seems to revolve in circles. Many see Imamoğlu as a new leader in the Erdoğan mold.

Not only did the opposition impressively retain Istanbul and Ankara, but it also retained the mayoralty of İzmir. However, anyone who knows Turkey knows fully well that this is a non-story. İzmir has always been a CHP stronghold. 

Victory for incumbents is a tendency in many parts of the world. Furthermore, candidates of the ruling national party tend to do badly in local elections worldwide. In a nutshell, the results of the Turkish elections are not exceptional and certainly not historic as the BBC and others claim. 

Opposition revival?

The latest results might not be exceptional, but it is impressive that the opposition has bounced back after its humbling defeat in the 2023 national elections.

Coming on the centenary of the Turkish Republic, those elections had been billed by the coalition opposition Nation Alliance as a make-or-break moment. The opposition’s narrative was simple: If they couldn’t unseat Erdoğan, Turkish democracy would be lost forever. The coalition duly nominated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, a longtime CHP leader, as its presidential candidate. This uncharismatic leader had already lost elections to Erdoğan earlier and was a poor choice. 

Despite an attempt to portray Kılıçdaroğlu as a humble man of the people, a mere civil servant who had come out of nowhere to attempt to unseat the “sultan,” the opposition’s campaign failed to ignite. Erdoğan won again, and the results were much the same as in many previous elections. 

Such a lackluster performance could understandably have plunged the opposition into the doldrums of introspection and made it ineffective for years to come. Certainly, that would have been Erdoğan’s keen hope. The opposition’s strong performance in the local elections dashes Erdoğan’s hopes and is a significant achievement.

The CHP has fared like many opposition parties in midterm local elections in functioning democracies. Yet the key lesson for the opposition is simple: Personalities matter.

As many in the international media were also saying this week, both Imamoğlu and Yavaş are now seen as viable presidential candidates for 2028. For many political observers in Turkey, the reaction to that notion might understandably be: At last!

It was clear in the buildup to the 2023 presidential elections that other candidates were far more of a threat to Erdoğan than Kılıçdaroğlu. In particular, the charismatic Imamoğlu had a backstory that made him the perfect heir apparent to the Erdoğan throne. His campaign could have had the ring of a timeless fairy tale.

Thankfully for Erdoğan and the AKP, Imamoğlu was not the opposition candidate. In the last national election, the opposition did not understand what the AKP realized long ago: Personalities win elections. Erdoğan understands the power of personality. That is why he has maintained such a stranglehold over the AKP for so long and has pushed out many other major figures, such as former president Abdullah Gül and former prime minister Ahmet Davutoğlu — not only from office but also from the party.

Erdoğan has demonstrated that he is a serial winner. What the opposition needed in 2023, and will need in 2028, is someone who is also a winner — or at the very least, someone who is not seen as a loser. The local election results have offered them even more evidence of who might fit that role.

The biggest success of these local elections is that they reveal Turkish politics to be still competitive. Ironically, that is good for both incumbent and opposition parties. This might seem counter-intuitive in the zero-sum majoritarianism of Turkish democracy today, but ultimately, total consolidation of power is never good for the effective functioning of any state. 

The opposition CHP has a long history of over-consolidation of power. The party could tell the ruling AKP a thing or two about where that road leads. It would be an error to imagine, as many in the international press do, that Turkish politics is simply divided between an oppressive regime and a liberal and democratic opposition. Everyone in Turkish politics has dirt on their hands. And yet democracy is still functioning if not thriving. That is good news for Turkey.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Latest Elections Show Turkish Democracy Is Alive and Kicking appeared first on Fair Observer.

European diplomats are now routine in their assessment that Erdoğan’s Turkey is not the kind of place — considering the state of human rights, freedoms in public life, freedom of the press, separation of the institutions of state — that can seriously expect to return to accession negotiations. Yet there is considerable shortsightedness in this “moral high ground” approach to Turkey’s long-stalled EU accession.

Certainly, to take just one example, the treatment of the country’s Kurdish minority since at least the failed coup attempt of 2016 has been repressive in the extreme.

Many supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are keen to point out that the only reason the opposition lost the recent elections in May 2023 is because they pandered to terrorists, in the form of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a political party aligned with Kurdish interests, and connected with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) separatist insurgency.

However, this narrative is a false one. If engaging with Kurdish political groups were so electorally suicidal, how is it that the same Recep Tayyip Erdoğan led a thawing in the cultural and political climate for Kurds in the late 2000s, including peace talks with jailed leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, and yet continued to win elections? This fact reveals Erdoğan as a far more opportunistic, and less dogmatic, leader than is often supposed. And why did he support this engagement with Kurdish political figures? A key driver was the reform agenda of the EU accession negotiations.

FO° Live: Making Sense of the Turkish Elections

The trouble with the EU

The truth is that the EU itself swung Turkish politics decisively in a nationalist and repressive direction. The reason lies in the fact that many in the EU — most conspicuously France and Austria — were never genuine in their promise of accession to the bloc. The strain of Islamophobia in both states, and to a lesser extent in Germany and elsewhere, made even a squeaky clean Turkey unpalatable within what many still see as an essentially Christian club. 

Brexit was, ironically, a further blow to Turkey. The year 2016 stands as the moment the EU slipped irrevocably from Turkey’s grasp. With the departure of the UK, a key supporter of Turkish accession, and the attempted coup d’etat in Turkey, the fate of the nation was sealed. It is a singular irony that, in the run-up to the Brexit vote in the UK, the Leave campaign distributed leaflets warning Britons that Turkey would soon join the bloc, sending millions of poor Turks to British shores. Nothing could have been further from the truth. 

As a result of European disingenuousness, the goal of EU accession has lost its appeal. With it, the incentive to reform dissipated. The incentive provided by EU accession is an invaluable asset of the European project, as is being observed in Ukraine today. In Turkey, it was a powerful force, with membership being hugely popular not only among elites but among ordinary Turks as well. With no prospect of membership, Erdoğan’s ruling AKP turned to hardline nationalists to shore up its parliamentary majority. The result is a Turkey that looks far less palatable to the bloc than the one it quietly rejected in the late 2000s. 

This moral high ground approach to foreign policy is still counterproductive for the EU, even at this late, late stage. When Turkey set out on its quest for EU membership in the 1950s, it was far from a model democratic nation. Indeed, it went through several coups and repressive military juntas, and the treatment of vulnerable groups such as the Kurds was easily equal to the treatment administered by the current government. Accession talks were not based on what Turkey was, but what it might become. The same could easily be applied today.

Ukrainian exceptionalism

It is striking that Ukraine, which is now seeking EU membership in earnest, is in many respects a more unpalatable prospect than Turkey would be. And yet it appears less of a stretch for the European imagination. In much the same way that Greece and Cyprus received membership despite serious shortcomings in terms of economic and political governance, Ukraine appears to find itself in a different passport lane from Turkey. The worry is that this double standard may be rooted in cultural perceptions that do not ultimately serve Europe’s best strategic interests. 

One cannot turn back the clock. And yet, if the EU at least observed where its strength actually lay and where its best interests lay, it might start to approach even the Turkey of Erdoğan with a little more of the long-term strategic vision necessary to avoid the inevitable repercussions of lost influence. For many decades, the carrot of EU accession served as a powerful tool in EU relations with Turkey and many other states. Without it, the ultimate result is likely to be long-term EU decline, while its borders become ever more insecure, its internal population more paranoid and introspective and its ability to project power abroad weaker.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post This Is Why Turkey Won’t Make It Into the EU appeared first on Fair Observer.

Nevertheless, the turnout for the Turkish elections was high, higher than turnouts are in most Western democratic states. Turnouts in dictatorships across the region are pitifully low, caused no doubt by apathy due to the lack of any real choice—unless, of course, they are the fanciful “99.9% support” type of turnout.

Despite this, coverage of these elections has portrayed them as a contest between a dictator (as Erdogan has been described time and again) against a democrat. Opposition presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu was painted as a humble civil servant who had risen to take on the strongman in a David versus Goliath political moment.

A working-class hero

It matters that Kilicdaroglu was not an emergent democratic grassroots candidate, but the predictable consensus candidate of a broad six-party opposition alliance. He has been the leader of the main opposition Peoples’ Republican Party (CHP) for 13 years. In that time, he has consistently lost at the ballot box to Erdogan. 

The now casual and commonplace description of Erdogan as a dictator in Western media also misses another key point. Unlike most real dictators, who tend to be opportunist ex-military figures, or career politicians who are often scions of influential families, Erdogan is the real deal, and his supporters know it. He rose from humble origins in Istanbul’s Kasimpasa neighborhood. He is in many ways unpolished. He is also sincere in his religious faith. His working-class roots and his understanding of how this constituency thinks—because he thinks like them—provide Erdogan an authenticity that you cannot simply manufacture.

All the onions and kitchen sinks in Turkey cannot obscure the fact that Erdogan is the figurehead for a constituency that was systemically disenfranchised for much of the modern Republic’s history. This is at the root of his enduring appeal. It is a populist appeal, but it is no less real for that.

Erdogan has made his life’s work the restoration of the dignity of a class of Turkish society that has felt marginalized and scorned by elites since at least the foundation of the modern republic, and arguably since the rise of westernizing reformist governments in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. 

In the pre-Erdogan era (and for a long time after it had begun), women who chose to wear a headscarf could not get an education or work for the public sector. Consider that fact for a moment. Women can wear headscarves to school or work in most secular Western states, and yet a state often viewed as Islamic by outsiders outlawed it.

Is a New Islamic Conservatism on the Horizon?

For his constituency, Erdogan’s tenure has been a very real revolution in their life circumstances. These core changes are important. The average voter sets them against the more recent economic pain. They weigh the two. Basic goods have become painfully expensive, but recently gained political freedoms are also precious. These are fundamental political considerations.

A popular, but not invincible, leader

Erdogan has made big mistakes. The economy is reeling from ill-judged policies and nepotism. The swing to nationalist policies and hardline confrontation with Kurds in the wake of the coup attempt of 2016 has brought with it intractable problems internally and externally for Turkey. The president’s post-coup paranoia of real or invisible enemies has made many old friends in his Justice and Development Party (AKP) lose faith with him, and his authoritarian style has alienated key Islamist figures who would make his government stronger.

When you consider all this, it is testament to the well of goodwill he is able to draw from that he still won fairly comfortably. However, it is easy to ascribe too much of the credit for Erdogan’s success to his own charisma and political know-how. Much of the cause of the result of this election was also of the opposition’s own making.

If the opposition alliance had really committed to challenging Erdogan, they should have found someone who didn’t require Erdogan’s core constituency to betray the legacy of what Erdogan has built. The leader of the CHP was never going to be that figure.

A clear majority in Turkish society does not want a return to a Western-backed secular nationalist elite, as exists in much of the Arab world and did exist for most of the history of the Turkish republic. Erdogan has made another path possible. His tenure is far from fully successful, but for him to be usurped, he needs to be beaten on his own terms.

The person to do so has not appeared, or, at any rate, not been chosen to run as a candidate against him. As has been repeated by much of the media, even a CHP candidate such as Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu would have been a much more serious challenge, given his significant appeal with voters.

But to be genuinely successful at cutting into the AKP vote, an opposition candidate would have to reflect more of the conservative opposition to Erdogan, which did exist in the six-party alliance. This alliance included Meral Aksener’s Iyi Party, Ali Babacan’s Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) and Ahmet Davutoglu’s Future Party (GP).

In Babacan and Davutoglu, the alliance had two party leaders who were former members of the ruling AKP and former cabinet ministers. If they had led the opposition platform, that would have asked much more uncomfortable questions of the Erdogan campaign. As it was, the old lines of political and social loyalty were relatively undisrupted.

What will Erdogan leave to history?

The opposition must now reflect on the reality Erdogan has created and the need to realign their approach in the hope of denting Erdogan’s appeal. The president himself, however, has an opportunity. He is in his final term as president and has the chance to cement a legacy.

In appointing Mehmet Simsek as his new finance minister, he is making one clear signal in that direction. He knows that economic stability built AKP success in the 2000s. It nearly undid them in the 2020s. He needs to stabilize the currency to continue the prosperity that he has offered his constituency.

The other element is perhaps harder, but carries an even greater prize. It is the Kurdish question, Turkey’s eternal question.

Ironically, Erdogan’s revolution, for all its significance, has followed many of the trends long established by secular elites in Turkey. When his back was to the wall in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt, Erdogan turned to the hardline nationalists of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) for support. In so doing, he undid any attempt to solve the Kurdish question through political dialogue. The resulting mess has festered within Turkey and has had high costs for the nation’s position in the region, leading to policy choices in Syria and Iraq that do not necessarily benefit Turkey in the long term.

What Is Erdogan’s Real Plan for Kurds?

In the wake of another victory, could this be the moment that an Erdogan now beyond the need for reelection takes on the role of a Father of the Nation, in much the way that Ataturk once did, and offers the ultimate magnanimous gesture? Could he find a political settlement to the Kurdish question that he might force through with his political capital?

If he did so, he could change the geopolitical dynamics of the region fundamentally, offering Turkey a vision of a foreign and domestic policy based not on anxiety and defense, but on economic and social opportunity. That might be the catalyst for an even more successful future than anyone could have imagined today.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Bottom Line: Kemalism Just Won’t Win appeared first on Fair Observer.

Birth or Merit?

Royalty is generally regarded as anathema to the meritocratic, democratic age. How can we possibly accept people being born to rule? It flies in the face of all we are taught to believe.

If that’s true, then the only way the queen can have been so great in her role as a born ruler is by dint of her being a truly wonderful person, on an individual, human level, in spite of the unsavory task of hereditary rule.

There are two other choices: our rulers either rule us due to corruption or merit. Depending on whether we live in an autocracy, a weak democracy or a strong one, the sliding scale between corruption and merit will be different.

Queen Elizabeth’s United Kingdom is generally regarded as more meritocratic than corrupt. By that rationale, our politicians rule us because they are better than us through merit.

The trouble is, meritocracy is hard to swallow. When you ask an individual: do you think a political leader is ruling you because they are better than anyone else, you soon hear arguments about the innate corruption of the system.

The Queen’s (or King’s) Magic

Hereditary rule removes the notion of someone having more merit than someone else, so problematic to our tastes. In doing so, it ironically allows monarchy a backdoor into the meritocratic, democratic age.

Queen Elizaebth II was not the queen through merit. She was just born to it. That makes her no better than anyone else at being a queen – if you were born to it. This notion puts people at their ease.

Sure, the whole edifice of royalty is deeply unedifying to the modern mind. But if in our hearts we don’t truly believe the utopia of meritocracy can exist, then monarchy becomes a fallback against worse corruption.

And so most people become happy with the queen, or indeed, the king.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Royalty Still Works in the UK and Elsewhere appeared first on Fair Observer.

Erdoğan represents the ruling political party in Turkey, known as the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The AKP is infamous for its unorthodox economic policies, which have resulted in skyrocketing inflation rates and crippling increases in the cost of living for Turkish citizens.The AKP’s dysfunction is further exacerbated by nepotism and widespread corruption.  During the decades-long reign of Erdoğan and the AKP, many of Turkey’s foreign relations have deteriorated, leaving the country isolated. At the same time, the administration is struggling to manage the huge influx of Syrian and Afghan refugees seeking asylum in Turkey.

To make matters worse, Turkey was hit with two high magnitude earthquakes in February 2023. The devastation wrought in southeast Turkey afflicted an already poor and neglected region of the country. The inadequate response from government agencies quickly piled pressure onto the shoulders of the embattled president. Turkish citizens took to social media to criticize Erdoğan and his administration’s response to the disaster. Erdoğan countered by placing a temporary ban on Twitter and allegedly arresting citizens accused of making “provocative posts” concerning the earthquakes.

The Turkish media has also criticized Erdoğan for his aloof response to the devastation. While surveying the aftermath in Pazarcık, the president stated that, “What happens, happens, this is part of fate’s plan.” His focus on God’s hand and destiny was hardly surprising. Erdoğan is a devout Muslim, and his connection to a religiously conservative base has been key to his success.

International media has deemed the recent earthquakes the final straw that will break the back of Erdoğan’s long grip on power. However, regardless of the ineptitude of disaster response and the degree to which the president is responsible, the earthquakes will not be the deciding factor of the presidential election. A focus on this as an election decider neglects the wider context in which Turkish elections take place. It is the wider context that will determine the outcome.

Winner Takes All

A long-running complaint against Erdoğan is that he is a majoritarian politician – meaning that when he wins, he governs not for the whole electorate, but for the constituency that voted for him alone. While there is much truth in this analysis, it is only half the story. It fails to acknowledge that Erdoğan is a majoritarian politician in an essentially majoritarian system.

It is easy for Western media to complain about the majoritarian instincts of faith-based politicians such as Erdoğan, yet it is striking how silent the same media outlets become when secular forces operate with the same majoritarian instincts. Majoritarian rule has existed as long as the Turkish Republic itself. The founding father of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and his ruling party, the Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP), maintained majoritarian control even after single party rule ended in the mid-1940s.

Either elections returned a secular nationalist party to power, which served a secular nationalist agenda, or the military stepped in to dictate a secular nationalist agenda. For decades, these were the only two choices, until the rise of the AKP in the 21^st century.

The undeniable electoral success of the AKP has transformed the political landscape in Turkey, after retaining two decades of concentrated power. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in many power struggles within the conservative establishment itself.

One such power struggle concerns the exiled religious leader, Fethullah Gulen, who Erdoğan openly blames for the orchestration of a failed coup in 2016. In the wake of the coup, Erdoğan’s politics turned sharply and decisively towards Turkish nationalism, and away from any accommodation of the country’s largest ethnic minority, the Kurds. This shift not only alienated the European Union and many of Erdoğan’s supporters in Turkey, but also angered some within the Islamist establishment.  

Former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu, former minister of foreign affairs Ali Babacan, and AKP founder and former president Abdullah Gul have all left the AKP, forming rival, smaller conservative political movements. Unease about the direction of the AKP is not reserved for liberals and secularists alone.

A Weak Opposition

Erdoğan has always benefitted from a weak and divided opposition. No matter how irascible a politician the president has been, he has managed to stay in power simply by remaining the most popular choice.

As that popularity has diminished, Erdoğan has turned to uglier tactics.One example is the continued harassment and imprisonment of Kurdish politicians connected to the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). However, the main opposition has remained the Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP), the traditional secularist party.

The trouble is, the CHP has a finite appeal. The party consistently returns from elections with about a 25% share of the vote. This number fluctuates only slightly from year to year. This could be because the CHP is the old establishment party, and often seems devoid of new ideas. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, long-term leader of the CHP, has now held the position for 13 years. Regardless, Kılıçdaroğlu is not known for his charisma. On the campaign trail, he is consistently outshined by Erdoğan. When the opposition bloc, known as the Nation Alliance, was trying to agree on a leader, the name of Ekrem Imamoglu was mentioned before that of Kılıçdaroğlu.

Imamoglu holds the position Erdoğan once held: Mayor of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city. He is a CHP politician, but younger and hungrier. However, in December 2022, a Turkish Court banned Imamoglu from politics and sentenced him to three years in prison for insulting election officials. The Nation Alliance – a disparate group of six parties – has instead turned to the CHP leader, Kılıçdaroğlu, as their presidential candidate. While Kılıçdaroğlu may be the obvious compromise candidate, he is not an obvious winner.

Regardless of who the opposition chose, the same majoritarian dynamic will persist in Turkish politics. Erdoğan knows that for the socially conservative electoral majority, the risks of not voting for him are too high. Even if many in his traditional constituency are unhappy with the economy, the arrival of Syrian refugees, or the direction of Erdoğan’s nationalist coalition, they are more unhappy with the thought of a CHP-led government.

In the majoritarian world of Turkish politics, there are only two sides, and whoever wins takes all. It is a pattern of democracy that is becoming increasingly familiar across much of the democratic world, and it will play a key role in the Turkish election on the centenary of the nation’s birth.
[Hannah Gage edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Bottom Line: Erdoğan’s Reign Is Not Over appeared first on Fair Observer.

It was on this day that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) was founded. One of its founding members was a man named Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was the latest in a long list of parties catering to a religiously devout and socially conservative constituency in Turkey. All the previous ones had been banned.

360˚ Context: How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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What makes August 14, 2001, so significant is the simple fact that the AKP was never banned. Despite the party’s daring to tread on secularist principles that few others had dared, this time, the country, with strong European Union support, had no appetite for military-backed bans.

Turkey Says No

Just as September 11 didn’t really come out of a clear blue sky for anyone observing the tide of Islamist militancy, so too the success of the AKP in Turkey did not come unannounced. It was a long time in the making, but its assumption of power, so soon after 9/11, has been defining for the country.

By 2003, when George W. Bush’s war on terror was swinging into action in Iraq, the AKP took control of Turkey‘s government. Despite repeated attempts to shutter the party and even a failed 2016 coup, the AKP remains in power. As perhaps the most successful Islamist party in the Middle East, its relationship to both the events of 9/11 and the ensuing war on terror has always been a strained one. The Turkey of the 20^th century would have been an unquestioning supporter of US policy. The new Turkey was not.

I was in Turkey on 9/11 and I saw the immediate reaction of ordinary people to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the hours after the towers fell, there were wild, yet in retrospect on-the-mark rumors that the US was about to bomb Afghanistan. The mood among ordinary Turks was not one of support.

Visceral anger and anti-American sentiment were clearly palpable. While not outright cheering al-Qaeda, it was obvious that most people wouldn’t take the US side in a fight. This mood was reflected when Washington eventually went to war with Iraq and hoped to use the airbase at Incirlik in southeastern Turkey.

The parliamentary vote that vetoed the use of the base for flights into Iraq was a pivotal one. It was the first strong sign of demonstrable national action in reflection of a national mood. In the post-Cold War world, Turkey’s Islamist government was ready to plow its own furrow.

Who Defines Terrorism?

The years that have followed have seen an ambiguous and often highly contorted relationship with the war on terror. Sometimes, Turkey has used the anti-terrorism concept to its own ends, as have many other US allies. At other times, it has turned a blind eye to activity that surely fell under the banner of terrorism.

The Arab Spring of 2010 offered Islamists across the Middle East their big moment. Secular autocrats, long propped up by the West, tottered. Turkey’s Islamist government was one of the most vocal and active in attempting to ride this wave that they hoped would bring Islamist governments to a swathe of countries.

Initially, the signs were good. The Muslim Brotherhood won the first free and fair elections in Egypt. Meanwhile, in neighboring Syria, the long-suppressed Islamist movement threatened to overwhelm the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. For a time, Turkey became a beacon of hope and a model for how the rest of the Middle East might evolve.

Turkish flags were being waved by demonstrators in Syria, and President Erdogan became the most popular leader in the region, loved by people far beyond his own nation. Then the Egyptian coup destroyed the Brotherhood, and Russia and Iran stepped in to save Assad’s regime in Syria. The mood soured for Turkey.

In an attempt to rescue something in the Syrian conflict and in response to the collapse of domestic peace talks between the government and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, Turkey’s border became a very porous route for jihadists entering into Syria. In time, these jihadists named themselves the Islamic State and declared a caliphate. This audacious move severely upped the stakes on al-Qaeda’s attempts of 2001, with an even more brutal brand of terrorism. Turkey’s ambiguous attitude to these developments was hardly a war on terror.

Yet by this stage, the concept behind the war on terror had become so nebulous and the AKP’s relations to the US so strained by Washington’s support for the Kurds in Syria, that it was a case of realpolitik all the way. To any accusation of soft-handedness toward terrorists, Turkey pointed to US attitudes vis-à-vis Kurdish militants.

President Erdogan has, over time, began to carve a space for himself as an anti-Western champion, a leader of some kind of latter-day non-aligned movement, a spokesman for Muslim rights worldwide. This political and cultural position has made Turkey’s place in a liberal, democratic world order highly questionable.

What seems clear in retrospect is that both 9/11 and the subsequent war on terror were never Turkey’s fights. Due to the longstanding Turkish alliance with the US and NATO, these have been constantly recurring themes in Turkish politics. But the events that have been so central to US policymaking for the past two decades have generally been used to advance Ankara’s own strategic goals in light of the assumption of power and entrenched hegemony of the Islamist movement in Turkey’s contemporary politics.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The War on Terror Was Never Turkey’s Fight appeared first on Fair Observer.

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Many readers would see Turkey’s condemnation as a simple case of an Islamist regime railing against Western suppression of Islam. Indeed, the government’s statement was full of accusations of Islamophobia in Europe. Yet such statements, coming out of Turkey, are not as simple as that.

Those same readers might be surprised to discover that Turkey itself had banned headscarves in state institutions until very recently. This might make a governmental condemnation of a ban in Europe seem nonsensical. The reality helps to give context to the Turkish reaction.

Wear Western Hats

Condemnations of headscarf bans might ordinarily be expected to emanate from regimes such as the Iranian theocracy or the Saudi conservative monarchy. Coming out of the secular republic of Turkey, they might appear more curious, if it wasn’t for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s global image as a religious conservative.

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His government’s sensitivity to headscarf bans is very personal indeed. In 2006, his own and other politicians’ wives were not invited to an official event by the then-Turkish president, Ahmet Necdet Sezer, due to their wearing of headscarves. In 2007, there was an attempt by the military — a traditional guardian of Turkey’s ruling secular elite — to deny the presidency to Abdullah Gul of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) because his wife wore a headscarf.

Such attitudes, which might appear highly intolerant in countries such as the United Kingdom, make more sense in places like France where the separation of church and state is a foundation of the republic. When modern Turkey was created in 1920, France became the model for how to build a modern state. A key element in the imitation of the French was the desire of Turkey’s first military rulers to suppress Islam.

The Ottoman Empire, of which Turkey was the successor state, was an Islamic empire. Indeed, it was ruled by a caliph, the Islamic equivalent of the pope in Rome. The caliph was the leader of the Muslim world. Turning Turkey into a modern secular republic was akin to removing the pope from the Vatican and banning the wearing of the Christian cross in Catholic Europe. Needless to say, it has created cultural fault lines in Turkey that persist to this day.

To drive home his cultural revolution in the 1920s and 1930s, modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, instituted a ban on the fez — that most famously Turkish of hats — and the turban. He insisted on men wearing the Western brimmed hat, traditionally rejected since it doesn’t allow the wearer to bow their head to the floor in Muslim prayer whilst wearing it.

The veil and headscarf were also discouraged, though the state’s ability to enforce changes in female clothing was slower to be realized than with men’s. The persistence of female cultural clothing as opposed to male could be the subject of an entire essay of its own.

Alongside many other measures, such as the banning of the Sufi Muslim brotherhoods, the closure of mosques, a ban on the call to prayer in Arabic and the removal of the Arabic script, the Turkish authorities attempted to forcibly Westernize Turks.

The Illiberal 1980s

Yet it was not until the military coup d’état of 1980 that Turkey finally outlawed the headscarf officially. It was then that it was banned across all state institutions, including schools, universities, the judiciary, the police and the military. In effect, this meant that girls from religious backgrounds had to choose either to remove their headscarves or not get an education. Only with the rise of the AKP to power in the 2000s did official attitudes begin to shift.

In 2010, Turkish universities finally admitted women who wore headscarves. This was followed a few years later by state bureaucratic institutions, except the judiciary, military and police. In 2016, policewomen were allowed to wear headscarves beneath their caps, and finally in 2017, the military was the last institution to lift the ban.

This is the backdrop against which the Turkish government condemns a headscarf ban — in certain circumstances — decreed by the ECJ. It is a backdrop in which the religiously conservative in Turkey read a narrative of European coercion running back to the founding of the modern state and even earlier.

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The ideas that inspired the military officers who won the Turkish War of Independence — the war with Allied powers that followed the conclusion of the First World War — were imported from Western Europe. Having carved out an almost entirely religiously homogenous Muslim state, they set out to utterly secularize it.

The banning of the headscarf is therefore seen by religiously conservative Turks as an idea imported from Europe and, in some sense, an idea dictated to Muslims by secularized Christian nations. Given the last century of experience in Turkey, it is clear how this view is generated.

Ultimately, the question is one of whether people who like the use of headscarves should tolerate those who don’t wear them, and whether those who dislike the use of headscarves should tolerate those who do wear them. Examples of intolerance abound on either side. A lack of understanding will bring no peace to Turkey or to countries across Europe and the world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Headscarves Matter So Much to Turkey appeared first on Fair Observer.

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Yet with the waning of such architecture and the changing internal dynamics of Turkish politics, Turkey has engaged in a number of foreign military interventions in recent years — in Iraq, Syria, Libya and, most recently, in Azerbaijan’s conflict with Armenia over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region.

The prevailing assumption is that Turkey won a strategic battle in this war that has shifted the balance of power in the region. But this ignores a deeper malaise in Turkey’s foreign policy direction. It may be winning hot fights today, but the wider cold war it is entering with a ring of neighboring states will damage Turkey’s ability to project power in the longer term.

Unfriendly Neighbors

Only a decade ago, under the guidance of then-Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s “zero problems with neighbors” doctrine, Ankara was on historically good terms with Armenia. At the time, there was a sense that Turkey was leaving behind the traditional republican mindset of being beset on all sides by threats.

This mindset, rooted in the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire and the war of independence that thwarted Great Power designs on the partition of Anatolia among the victors in World War I, persisted throughout much of the 20^th century. However, by 2014, Ankara had signed bilateral High-Level Strategic Cooperation Council agreements with Iran (2014), Iraq (2009), Lebanon (2010) and even, strange though it may now seem, Syria (2010).

Even Greece and Armenia, traditionally viewed as the most ardent foes due to the religious divide, had become amicable neighbors. In April 2014, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan even offered condolences to the grandchildren of Armenians killed in 1915, in a major shift in official Turkish rhetoric. This was perhaps the zenith of Turkish soft power in its neighborhood. All that has changed since Erdogan moved his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) decisively in a nationalist direction.

It is often observed that Erdogan is a leader in the mold of Russian President Vladimir Putin. His increasing use of opportunistic hard power to meet strategic foreign policy objectives is seen as part of the classic Putin playbook. Yet this analysis overlooks some important facts.

At the most fundamental level, Turkey is not Russia. The two states have some striking similarities — such as an imperial legacy on the periphery of Europe that has tended to reinforce a sense of ethnic and cultural isolation and exceptionalism. However, they are simultaneously very different.

Russia only lost its empire in 1991, while Turkey’s vanished 70 years earlier. Despite the loss of empire, Russia maintains considerable de facto power in the ex-Soviet space. Not only that, but Russia can be said to still be a significant empire, given that Moscow controls what are effectively non-Russian republics within the Russian Federation.    

The same is not true of Turkey. For half a century, the Turkish republic largely ignored the Ottoman Empire’s former imperial possessions. In the 20^th century, ethnic outreach toward Turkic or co-religious communities in the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East and North Africa has increased, but never with the same level of hard power control Russia wields in its former imperial space. Further, the only significant non-Turkish population under Ankara’s direct control is the Kurds of southeastern Turkey.

The result is that the projection of purely hard power can have useful results for Russia in its former imperial space in a way that is more complicated for Turkey. The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict can be said to occur in both Russian and Turkish former imperial space, but this is much more immediately true of Russia. Armenia is dependent on Russia as a client state in a way that Azerbaijan is not dependent on Turkey.

What’s more, for Turkey, conflict with the states encircling it leads to far greater problems. Russia is difficult to encircle. It is geographically too extensive. There is always room to maneuver. Turkey currently has very difficult relations with Armenia, Iraq, Syria, Cyprus and Greece. This leaves precious little goodwill to help project soft power. Everything must be won by hard power.

A High Price on Everything

There is no question that in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, Turkey’s backing of Azerbaijan was pivotal, leading to a strategic success akin to that achieved shortly beforehand in Libya. Turkish hard power had been decisive and influence dramatically increased in Baku, as it was in Tripoli.

Yet it came at the price of establishing Armenia as an even more implacable enemy than it already was, just as the success in Libya established Egypt, Greece and the United Arab Emirates as even more implacable enemies than they already were. In the context of the eastern Mediterranean, it could be argued that the action in Libya was non-negotiable for Turkey. It had to act. But in Azerbaijan, it was much more nuanced.

The Turkey of the Davutoglu era might well have acted as a go-between, defusing tensions between Armenia and Azerbaijan, all the while quietly increasing Turkish influence across the entire region. Instead, the result is hostile battle lines. Turkey may have the upper hand today, but newly embittered enemies will await any opportunity to inflict harm. This does not build a sustainable, peaceful, long-term strategic vision for Turkey within its neighborhood.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Turkey Doubles Down on Hard Power appeared first on Fair Observer.

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Of course, it says more about the moral fault lines at the heart of US politics than it does about US-Turkish relations. These fault lines are being given the scorched earth treatment once more as the election season draws to a close. But what does the future hold for US-Turkish relations, once so unshakable and now so fractious, despite President Trump’s personal warmth toward Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Will it make any difference if the old man at the helm is Joe Biden instead?

Let the Old Men Talk

As the above quote reveals, much about US-Turkish relations today is being driven by personalities. Individuals always matter in international relations, but their importance is accentuated by the rise of figures who command strong populist appeal, who are firmly embedded in positions of power and who espouse an essentially patriarchal and conservative vision of the exercise of that power. It means relations are not the smooth ride they were during the Cold War era. Today, these populist figures thrive on being bullish and awkward leaders.

In Donald Trump, Turkey’s leader, like many others, has found a man with whom they can engage. Indeed, President Erdogan is said to have a regular hotline to the White House. The US president is openly admiring of strong and often autocratic leadership. It’s a style he clearly feels he epitomized in the business world and which he has brought to his presidency. That his tenure as the president of the United States may be briefer than that of many of the populist and autocratic leaders he admires is the one spoiler.

It may also be a spoiler for the US more broadly. In the past few years, such world leaders have grown self-confident in the global order lead by Donald Trump. A Biden administration that chastises them for their faults on human rights, conflict resolution or democratic norms might well receive a hostile response. This poses a conundrum for the United States. A president who set out specifically to put America first may have made it far harder for a successor who wants to begin collaborating again.

What Would Biden Do?

The signs are that as president, Joe Biden would not have as easy a relationship with Erdogan as Trump has had. Given that getting on with Turkey has increasingly come to mean getting on with its president, this matters a great deal. Almost a year ago, Biden said in an interview with The New York Times that he regarded Erdogan as an “autocrat.” He also expressed misgivings about Turkey’s actions in Syria, confrontations in the eastern Mediterranean about energy resources, and the stationing of NATO nuclear weapons on Turkish soil.

Though these comments went unacknowledged at the time, the Turkish government has since raised heated objections as Biden’s presidential bid has gathered steam. There will also be real concerns in Ankara about Biden’s longstanding support for Kurdish rights, including his belief that President Trump has dealt shoddily with his nation’s Kurdish allies in Syria after they helped to subdue the Islamic State group. Such a position would bring back some of the tensions of the Obama presidency.

Clearly, upon gaining the presidency, one would expect a measure of realignment from the Biden White House. The former vice president’s strong stance against Erdogan would have to become more nuanced as occurs for all those who gain actual power. President Erdogan is not an autocrat. He may have authoritarian instincts, but autocrats do not allow elections with credible results, nor do they allow their opponents to win the mayoralty in their largest cities. 

The complex and competing tensions of the region in which Turkey lies will necessitate the US working with Turkey to a large degree. That requires finding common ground and mutual interest. But necessity can only get you so far. To generate any real warmth to his relationship with President Erdogan, Joe Biden will have to reveal some dissatisfaction with the global status quo or at least some sympathy with those, such as the Turkish president, who are driven by this belief.  That such concern genuinely motivates Biden might be a hard sell.  

No Smooth Rides

Nothing about the past few years of US-Turkish relations has been smooth, from the furor over the jailing of American pastor Andrew Brunson to the simmering Turkish anger at US refusal to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the head of the movement held responsible in Turkey for the failed 2016 coup attempt. That incident, which has defined the trajectory of the country over the past five years, was a pivotal one not only internally but also externally.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was quick and decisive in backing Erdogan at a point when the success of the coup was still unclear. The US, on the other hand, was less wholehearted, and there was the sense that it hesitated and that US personnel might even have been complicit at the Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey. In moments of crisis, you learn whom you can really trust. In the personality politics of today, President Erdogan learned much from that episode. It fed into his already established worldview in which the West was inherently predatory and untrustworthy.

None of this means that Turkey or its president are wedded to deep friendships with US opponents such as Russia, Iran or China. Indeed, Turkey’s relations with Russia over the past five years have been exceptionally turbulent. But it does mean that Turkey has, in President Erdogan, a pugnaciously nationalist leader who is unafraid of picking fights. It means he has picked several with the US itself, and yet, with President Trump at the helm, you always feel that, however unsavory things get, the Turkish president is always half-admired for his obstinate aggression.

If there is a new president in the Oval Office come 2021, it will pose many more challenges for both sides. The relationship will not be easy, and without the bromance that occasionally surfaces between the current leaders, it could be a more dangerous one. US-Turkish strategic goals have been diverging for years. This causes systemic strain to the relationship. The Trump presidency may, inadvertently, have eased some of that strain, but it will not go away. A president less in tune with the current administration in Ankara could tear it further apart. For bilateral relations, for NATO and for the whole Middle East and Mediterranean region that could be a very destabilizing prospect.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What Would a Biden Victory Spell for US-Turkish Relations? appeared first on Fair Observer.

That island is Kastellorizo. It is Greek. It is far from being the only Greek island that sits close to the Turkish mainland, but it’s perhaps the most striking, since it is 78 miles from its nearest Greek neighbor, the island of Rhodes, and fully 354 miles from the capital, Athens. Indeed, landlocked Ankara, the Turkish capital in the center of Anatolia, is nearer.

Who Owns the Sea?

Nation-states are the oddity of the modern age. To people in the era of empires, today’s borders would seem extraordinarily restrictive. For centuries, Kastellorizo interacted freely with the mainland, which lies one mile away. Now it exists as a surreal outpost adrift in the Mediterranean. This tiny, quiet island is central to the latest crisis between Greece and Turkey — an argument over gas exploration rights and who owns where on the seafloor in the eastern Mediterranean. It has led to collisions between Greek and Turkish vessels, and even a confrontation in Libyan waters between Turkish and French frigates in June.

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The clash with France is part of a wider confrontation in which France has become a vocal ally of forces in the eastern Mediterranean seen as broadly anti-Islamist. This includes European Union members Greece and Cyprus, as well as Israel, Egypt and the forces of renegade General Khalifa Haftar in Libya, a figure from the Gaddafi regime. All these alliances put France at odds with Turkey, which has emerged as the most vocal and perhaps the most powerful force for political Islam in the region. The alliance with Greece has helped to reignite much older hostilities between Greece and Turkey, feeding into dangerous older narratives.

The argument surrounding territorial waters is as artificial as the nation states that have given rise to it. The intricacies of maritime law hang around the question of whether the far-flung isles of Greece can claim exclusive economic zones (EEZs) on the seabed around them — in effect, that they have a continental shelf that Greece can claim, a mile off the Turkish coast.

Such claims create a collision course with Turkey, given the unusual situation of the two geographic territories. The result of the 1919-23 Turkish War of Independence was the establishment of a Turkish state on the landmass of Asia Minor, but to the exclusion of almost every island in the Aegean and Mediterranean seas lying off its shore. The peculiarity of this scenario is evident to anyone who has visited the popular tourist regions of the Turkish coast and the eastern Greek isles. The two are intimate neighbors, far more alike than they are to their respective hinterlands, let alone their distant national capitals.

Arrival of Nationalism

Nationalism — since its arrival from Western Europe — has been calamitous for the wider region in which Greece and Turkey lie. It has brought chaos to the Arab world, to the Balkans and to Cyprus. Even today, it still informs the aspirations of the Kurdish people to add yet another state to a region of instability and ethnic tension.

On the face of it, Greece and Turkey appear to be two comparative success stories of the era of nation states in this region. They have been relatively stable, centralized states for much of the 20^th century, despite the recurrence of military intervention in politics. Yet Greece and Turkey are also examples of the failure of the nation-state model in their very nature. Both espouse a virulent ethnic nationalism. Both are rooted in an ancient tribal exceptionalism, layered with later religious identities.

Like the wider region, this nationalism has required that what was a patchwork of ethnicities, indeed a form of multiculturalism — or, at least, co-habitation — was systematically uprooted, most brutally in the state-sanctioned ethnic cleansing of the early 20^th century. State-sanctioned ethnic violence is nothing new to the region. It happened to the Sephardic Jews of Greece in the 1940s (themselves previously cleansed from Christian Spain after the retreat of the Moors), it has happened in the Balkans in the past few decades, and it happened in Greece and Turkey in 1923.

That was the year of the Treaty of Lausanne, which stipulated the transfer of populations between the two states based upon religious affiliation: Greek Orthodox to Greece, Muslims to Turkey. In many cases, this papered over cultural and ethnic complexities that were far from the clear-cut distinctions that Greek and Turkish nationalists believed inherent in their respective nation-state projects. This history, and the very human and very personal tragedy of it, has embedded an antipathy towards the “other” in the body politic of both states to the present day.

It is this reality that makes questions surrounding continental shelves, exclusive economic zones and rights to resources that lie under the sea so intractable. It was hard enough and bloody enough to divide the land of this region between the warring parties, often leading to strange and unnatural results like the sad fate of the little isle of Kastellorizo — severed from the mainland it gazes upon with every sunrise. To attempt the division of the waters as well is likely to lead to yet another hard and bloody outcome.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Tangled Maps of Greece and Turkey appeared first on Fair Observer.

First, let’s consider the defense for President Erdogan’s position. The Turkish Foreign Ministry has suggested that history will not forget or forgive the UAE’s action. Inasmuch as the UAE has sold out the Palestinian cause for its own interests, the Turks have a point.

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On the face of it, the Palestinians get little from the deal. All the UAE has wrung out of Israel is a promise to suspend its attempt to annex large swathes of the West Bank where illegal settlements exist. This merely prevents an inroad rather than offering any real concessions.

But then the UAE was negotiating for its own ends, not for the Palestinians. In the regional battle against Qatar and Turkey — and more broadly against political Islam — the UAE merely wished to cement its position as the West’s true friend and ally in the region. It should also be noted that the UAE has done so as something of a shock troop to the real power of the counterrevolutionary alliance in the region, Saudi Arabia. The kingdom that is the custodian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina has been silent on the deal with Israel.

Turkey Stays on Script

The Turkish response is one calculated entirely within the framework of the regional battle with the UAE-Saudi-Egypt axis. In this context, Turkey has a clear opportunity to position itself as a vital ally of the Palestinian cause: not as extremist as Iran, yet not as silent as Saudi Arabia. This is vital to Turkey, since the UAE has been a big investor in the West Bank and Gaza in recent years. At the same time, the UAE has become Turkey’s key adversary in the region. The new deal gives Ankara an opportunity to fully usurp the UAE as the Palestinians’ most important ally.

Turkey, being a Sunni Muslim power, also has a natural lead on Iran in the Palestinian cause. Although Iran has supported Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon in their conflicts with Israel, as a Shia power it has always been one step removed from the Palestinian cause.

Which brings us to Israel, the other key element in the equation. It is easy to see Erdogan’s latest move as simply an Islamist attack on Israel propelled by a revisionist instinct that wants to harm Israel in whatever way possible. But unlike Iran, Turkey’s relationship with Israel is complex. Turkey and Israel have long and deep ties that are rooted in their shared experience as non-Arab and democratic states in a region where both characteristics are unusual. Diplomatic links are strong, if strained, under the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Turkey’s position has little to do with harming Israel and everything to do with Ankara’s position in respect to the Arab world. President Erdogan wishes to be a key regional player in the Middle East and in the Sunni Muslim world. Turkey is also the major Islamist force in the region.

The UAE-Israel deal and the Turkish response have occurred in a context in which Ankara is at loggerheads with both countries in the eastern Mediterranean. The UAE is supporting renegade General Khalifa Haftar in Libya, while Turkey supports the more Islamist Government of National Accord in Tripoli. At the same time, Israel and the UAE’s ally Egypt have signed a maritime agreement with Greece and Cyprus aimed at freezing Turkey out of gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean. In these circumstances, both can expect to be snubbed. Their decision to shift the diplomatic landscape of the Palestinian issue was equally expected to be used by Turkey as an opportunity to gain leverage in this conflict.

The Power of Belief

Alongside all the geopolitical considerations, there is one that is rather more obvious. It is that President Erdogan might actually believe in the cause he is backing. The current political climate is often assumed to be one of purely Machiavellian intrigue and design, but Erdogan has built a career as a conviction politician. Behind the soundbites and the posturing, much about the long reign of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, first as prime minister and then president leading the AKP, has been about long-term historical issues and the restitution of perceived past wrongs.

This is as much an internal Turkish legacy as an external one, but given the nature of Turkey as the chief successor state of the disintegrated Ottoman Empire, many of the issues close to the president’s heart have a wider regional implication. This can be seen in antagonisms everywhere from Greece and Cyprus to the Gulf states and North Africa.

The centrality of Islamic faith is as important to President Erdogan as it was to the rulers of the Ottoman Empire throughout much of its history. It informs his ties to countries across the Islamic world. It is evidenced in Turkish engagement in Somalia, Sudan and Libya, where Turkey is supporting the more Islamist faction in the civil war.

All this means that Palestine, the central Islamic cause in the Middle East since the First World War, is of central and very personal importance to him. At this moment of conflict with other powerful nations of the Sunni Muslim world, when Palestine’s chief allies appear to be Shia powers such as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, President Erdogan and his party may feel it beholden on Turkey to seize the mantle as the predominant Sunni ally of the cause.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Turkey Takes on the UAE in Palestine appeared first on Fair Observer.

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The fact that this building — with one of the largest freestanding domes in the world — has stood the test of time and conflict at all is a miracle. Yet since 1934, it has stood silent, but for the passing voices and feet of tourists, as a museum.

Given its stature as a place of spirituality, this is an astonishing fact. Imagine the Notre Dame in Paris or St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome — or indeed the myriad religious sites built upon older religious sites — spending close to a century as museums.

Western Hypocrisy

Despite this, the media in the West have been almost uniform in their condemnation. UNESCO, which designates the building as a World Heritage Site, has criticized the move. Western media have noted the reaction of liberals in Turkey, lamenting the undermining of the secular state.

The condemnation is, of course, based on a key distinction between Hagia Sophia and the likes of Notre Dame and St. Peter’s Basilica. The distinction — emphasized in almost every media report — is that Hagia Sophia was built in 537 by Justinian as the seat of the Eastern Orthodox Church and the spiritual center of the Byzantine Empire. It only became a mosque in 1453 with the conquest of Constantinople by Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II.

Given this history of conquest, it’s a wonder that Hagia Sophia is here at all. Consider the religious sites desecrated by conquerors with new faiths, from the Temple of Solomon to the Bamiyan Buddhas. Yet Mehmed II’s first act was to hold the Islamic Friday prayers in Hagia Sophia. He may have been a Muslim, but he recognized the sheer spiritual power and majesty of this building and honored it. 

The Ottomans removed icon frescoes and mosaics and replaced them with Arabic calligraphy, but the spiritual life of this amazing building continued under new owners. That is a testament to the building and the comparative moderation of the conquerors.

The Mezquita of Cordoba

The idea that Hagia Sophia is a museum, and that this is a balanced compromise between faiths, has become received wisdom. Yet the truth is that turning Hagia Sophia into a museum was hardly an act of religious tolerance. Far from it, the move was a culminating act in a decade of cultural revolution in Turkey, in which the regime of republican leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk pulled up the Ottoman inheritance by its roots.

It was not a generous gesture to the Greek Orthodox Church, but a symbolic attack on the power of Islam in Turkey. It remains that to this day. Unspoken in today’s debate is the fact that Hagia Sophia became a museum in an era when the Sufi brotherhoods of Turkey were outlawed, the adhan (call to prayer) could no longer be called in Arabic and religious dress was prohibited. Into recent times, Sufism has remained persecuted and the whirling dervishes perform for tourists — rites that the secular establishment had largely destroyed in any real sense. 

Given this backdrop, the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a museum takes on a different complexion, as if spirituality itself were a museum, which is after all what Ataturk intended by such a move. Turning the building back into a place of worship can then be seen as one more step in the reemergence of an older Turkish cultural inheritance. 

The fact that Hagia Sophia was once a cathedral is no barrier to it now being a mosque. Consider the Mezquita in Cordoba, one of the finest architectural monuments in the Iberian Peninsula (and itself built on the site of an earlier Visigoth church). It was perhaps the greatest mosque in Muslim Spain, before being converted into a cathedral in 1236 by King Ferdinand of Castile.

Today, a cathedral stands in its center and it remains illegal for a Muslim to kneel there in prayer. Yet few Spaniards would countenance it being converted into a museum as an act of magnanimity toward Islam, nor are there calls from global institutions for Spain to do so. Requests by the Islamic Council of Spain to allow Muslim prayer have been opposed by the Vatican and Spanish ecclesiastical authorities.

The Loss of Greek Anatolia

Converting Hagia Sophia back into a mosque reflects the present reality of modern-day Turkey, which is that of a Muslim-majority population. Just as you expect Westminster Abbey in London to be a Christian place of worship, it’s natural that Hagia Sophia should be a Muslim place of worship, with due interfaith dialogue and public access.

This contemporary reality doesn’t negate the very real tragedy of the loss of Greek Anatolia. That loss is far more recent than 1453. The same regime that turned Hagia Sophia into a museum was also responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Anatolia of Greek Orthodox communities. Over 1 million Greeks were forcibly removed from their ancestral homelands and sent as refugees to modern-day Athens and Thessaloniki.

Today, you can wander through their empty churches in Cappadocia, in central Anatolia, or at sites like Karmylassos (Karakoy) in southwest Turkey, where an entire ghost town is left sprawled on the hillside as a brutal reminder of the wholesale removal of a people and culture. 

What was done in the name of creating an ethnically Turkish republican state was barbaric, just as what was done to create an ethnically Greek republican state. Ethnic nationalism accepts no gray areas, and ordinary people are its victims, on both sides of the dividing line.

In Support of Islam

Yet the violent forces that produced that ethnic cleansing also produced the zealous ideology of Westernization that uprooted the Ottoman legacy in the land of modern Turkey. It means a seam of bitterness and division runs through the very heart of the modern state. 

It is disingenuous of Western observers to say that Hagia Sophia should remain a museum for the sake of religious tolerance. If tolerance and moderation are our goals, then we should welcome the return of the call to prayer to Hagia Sophia, just as we would welcome the return of church bells at Notre Dame, had it been turned into a museum by secular revolutionaries.

To welcome it is to support moderate Islam. To not do so is to leave moderate Muslims in a curious bind, not wishing to create conflict, yet expected to disapprove of seeing the spiritual centerpiece of Turkey’s largest city being devoted once more to worship. It also turns the building into a focal point for the more extremist.

The remarks of Pope Francis are astonishing for a religious leader. That he is “pained” by the idea of such a site of spirituality being turned from a museum back into a place of worship smacks of the worst kind of bigotry. Must it only be “my god” who is worshipped, both here and in former mosques elsewhere?

Equally, secular outrage is disingenuous. This is a religious building. The secularists are right to resist attempts to constrain their lifestyle, such as the prohibition of alcohol or sexual freedoms, just as Muslims in Turkey have chafed at secular restrictions on their own lifestyles. But Hagia Sophia is a religious space, first and foremost.

The historic mistake was turning Hagia Sophia into a museum in 1934, in a cultural revolution that has impoverished Turkish society ever since. Whether the pious nationalists of the ruling party will usher in a moderate or yet more divisive era for this unique building, only time will reveal.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Making Hagia Sophia a Mosque Again Is Good News appeared first on Fair Observer.

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Most obviously, this is not a victory in the Libyan Civil War but a reprieve. Any map of the current conflict reveals that General Haftar’s forces control most of the country, most of the vital oilfields and until recently were in an apparent final push for the capital, Tripoli, and final victory. Turkey has reversed this, but only to the extent that Tripoli is now secure, and Haftar’s control of the northwest coast and the Tunisian border has been lost. This is a retreat but not a defeat.

What Has Turkey Gained?

What Turkey has gained is undeniable leverage within the Libyan conflict. It’s not the only player by a long chalk, but it is now a principal player. That was underlined when Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj visited Ankara last week, while Deputy Prime Minister Ahmed Maetig visited Moscow. It affirmed that Turkey is now one of the main guarantors in this conflict, alongside Russia. 

But the lineup of proxies on either side is motley and myriad. On the side of the UN-recognized GNA are not only Turkey, but also Qatar and Italy. In the rebel corner are Russia, UAE, Egypt and France. The US has tended to vacillate between both camps. All this means is that there is much confusion and distrust, with everyone watching their backs and suspicious of enemies and, notionally, allies alike. 

Even though Turkey is aligned with Italy in support of the GNA, the EU has been critical of Turkish involvement, and it is far from clear that Italy would remain aligned with Turkey if France were to be removed from the equation. Italy, like Turkey, harbors historical ties to Libya, a feeling that this is a geopolitical backyard they have precedent in. Such an overlap has the potential to lead to friction. 

The other gain for Turkey is economic. In November 2019, Ankara signed a deal with the GNA to explore gas and oilfields in the eastern Mediterranean. The deal is deemed illegal by Greece, Cyprus and Egypt. The fact that, barring a more guarded approach by Israel, Turkey is isolated in the eastern Mediterranean makes its foothold in Libya of huge importance.

Turkey has suggested its companies could begin exploration of fields — including those within Libyan territorial waters — within months. It’s one reason why Turkey is especially keen to translate its military advance into a concrete political settlement in Libya as fast as possible. If General Haftar can be forced into an accommodation, Turkey will have a freer hand to make the kind of economic gains its victory promises.

What About Russia?

Russia has turned frozen conflicts into something of a specialty. From the Russian-recognized breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia to eastern Ukraine and Syria, Russia has developed a pattern of using disruption for maximum gain without the responsibilities and ramifications of all-out victory. 

As in Syria, Russia and Turkey appear to be at odds in Libya, supporting opposing sides. But perhaps the two states are more symbiotic in their relationship than they appear at first glance? If the other were to throw in the towel and retreat, leaving the path clear for the opposing side, what would that mean? In either Syria or Libya, it might well mean far greater responsibility — politically, militarily and economically — than is otherwise the case.

How much does either side want to have sole responsibility for nation building, given that in Libya, this building would have to happen from the ground up. For both sides, frozen conflict, in which they can carve out privileges for themselves without anything like the same responsibility, is a much more comfortable and achievable aim. What’s more, they can do so whilst playing a public diplomatic role of guarantors in a civil war, simply trying to achieve a peaceful settlement.

All this makes if far from clear how real — in the sense of truly contested — Turkey’s military victories in Libya have been. Are they a blow to Russia, or did the Kremlin calculate that it was expedient to see General Haftar fail in his bid to take the capital? Is it perhaps in Russia’s interests to see their man cut down to size, made a little more dependent on Russia for help, and avoid a victory that would then require far greater Russian intervention in order to secure a controlling role for itself in the resulting dictatorship?

Turkey in the New Regional Order

Libya is just one example of the new breed of highly fluid, multi-dimensional conflicts emerging, particularly in the Arab world, since America retreated from its role as a global security guarantor. These conflicts are characterized by a mix of local militias and warlords, none strong enough on their own to control the entire state. As a result, different sides have been easy prey for regional and international actors with an interest in leveraging their geopolitical position through holding a stake in the conflict.

Libya, like all these new conflicts, is a far cry from the total-war, winner-takes-all concept of traditional nation-state conflicts. These wars are not even following the usual trajectory of a traditional civil war. They are becoming more piecemeal than that, without conclusive victories, final consolidations of power and full stops. They are increasingly frozen conflicts.

Libya’s conflict may still be very hot, but it’s likely to remain fundamentally unresolved, and in the eyes of both sides in the conflict “unwon” for many years to come. That is because it is now being fought not simply for Libyan aims, but for multiple, conflicting aims in capitals around the world. 

Be that as it may, Turkey may well reap rewards from its foray into Libya, and with the crucial buffer of the Mediterranean Sea — something Turkey lacks in the case of Syria — there is the potential for more payback with less blowback in Turkey’s emerging relationship with the government in Tripoli.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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A regular on this list of autocratic strongmen riding a wave of neo-nationalist illiberalism is Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. On the face of things, it’s easy to lump him in with the others — and most media portrayals do — but much like the country he leads, he is, on closer inspection, something of an oddity in international politics.

Turkish Exceptionalism

Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising. After all, Turkey is one of those nation-states linked to an imperial past that encourages a good dose of exceptionalism. In its region, perhaps only Iran holds a resemblance. Turkey is not of the Arab world, nor is it truly European. Neither is it in the Russian orbit. It is a place apart, much like Iran.

And when we turn to its foreign policy under the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which equates to its policy under the guidance of President Erdogan, we find a contrary type of strongman politics. Erdogan is far from a regular member of the dictators’ club. In fact, he shuns strongmen, from Egypt’s al-Sisi and Saudi Arabia’s bin Salman to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and would-be Libyan strongman, General Khalifa Haftar.

Perhaps President Erdogan’s most comfortable – if still uneasy – strongman relationship is with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. Yet in foreign policy, Turkey does not emulate Russia. The overt Russian nationalism that has allowed President Putin to project power beyond Russia’s borders under the guise of protecting ethnic Russians abroad is not the central feature of Turkish policy.

Clearly, Turkey expresses an interest in the affairs of Turkish minorities in countries such as Bulgaria, but as a wider policy, ethnic nationalism is not a feature of the Turkish administrations of the 21^st century. From Xinjiang to Myanmar, Somalia to Libya, if there is a constant, it is a pan-Islamic fraternity that is emphasized.

During the formative era of republican Turkey, under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a strand of Eurasianism was highly influential in Turkey that saw the wider Turkic world as a natural focus for foreign policy. Turkish political thinkers were keen to engage Turkic kin in an expressly ethnic nationalist discourse. In contrast, recent Turkish governments have focused on a cultural and religious fraternity over a purely racial one.

Who Directs Turkey?

Given that President Erdogan is often regarded as a populist, nationalist figure, how is this lack of ethnic nationalist focus explained in Turkish foreign policy? It could be argued that President Erdogan is not the sole source of Turkish policy. Other forces can influence the direction of Turkish external relations.

Yet, if Turkish foreign policy is based in a sense of pan-Islamic unity, is that not closer to the thinking of those leading the Islamic Republic of Iran? Again, many divides exist. Most obviously, the two regimes are on opposite sides of Islam’s schism between the Sunni and the Shia. Also, President Erdogan may be a devout man, but he is no theologian.

Indeed, Turkey and Iran are on opposite sides in the most acute conflict facing Turkey right now, that of the Syrian Civil War. So then, who is on Turkey’s side? Well, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamid al-Thani, the Emir of Qatar, with whom Turkey is also aligned in Libya’s Civil War. This relationship points to the wider Turkish support for political Islam in the form of the Muslim Brotherhood, but does that make Qatar and Turkey true bedfellows? President Erdogan may not be a mullah, but he is also not a hereditary monarch.

Perhaps what Turkey opposes and supports externally is best understood by looking inside Turkey? Until you appreciate the inner workings of the Turkish state, its external positions can appear opaque.

Over the past decade, the Turkish AKP governments have been seen to restrict the civic space inside the country, suppressing opposition, particularly from parties with a Kurdish political platform. In the wake of the failed coup of 2016, there has been a systematic attempt to suppress and exclude supporters of the Gulenist movement of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Revolutionary Break

Yet despite these illiberal moves, Turkey is at loggerheads with illiberal leaders across its region. It must be remembered that President Erdogan is not an autocrat in the way others are. He is a populist, certainly, but he is a popularly elected president. The extent to which opposition to tyranny — whether in Egypt, Syria, Libya or elsewhere — is tied up with the popular legitimacy of the ruling AKP in Turkey should not be underestimated.

Turkey has a long history of illiberalism. To many, that makes the era of President Erdogan one of continuity rather than change. Yet that history of illiberalism has been one of secular-military, not Islamic, oppression. Turkey’s history is that of forcible Kemalist Westernization and military coups to prop up secular elites.

In that context, Erdogan and his party still represent a radical, almost revolutionary break in the history of their neighborhood. They aren’t an Islamic theocracy, nor are they a secular autocracy. Instead, they are a popularly elected Islamic movement that thrives on being seen to be in tune with the ordinary people on the street — something in stark contrast to many regimes in Turkey’s immediate neighborhood.

All this makes Turkey hard to call. Many have speculated that the current pandemic is a boon to autocracies keen to control their populations and restrict their movements. It is assumed by many that Turkey and its president fall nicely under that umbrella. Yet Turkey is still a democracy, and the drivers of Turkish foreign policy are complex, and Turkey’s position and history unique.

What will work for other strongmen might well not work for Turkey’s president. It’s easy to try dividing the world into liberal and illiberal camps, but ultimately, each political entity is at the mercy of its own forces, both internal and external. In the case of Turkey, those forces are particularly unusual, and its position particularly acute. The next few years will be a testing time for this extraordinary nation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The Turkish Republic born in the aftermath of the First World War was an avowedly insular state. Its founding father, Kemal Ataturk, liked the mantra “peace at home, peace in the world” — the idea that the territorial integrity of the modern nation-state was sacred, that Turkification was to be consolidated within those borders, and foreign adventures left in the past.

Who Are Turkey’s Long-Term Allies?

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This was in part born of an ideological rejection of the neighborhood in which Turkey lies. The hinterland that had once been Ottoman imperial lands administered from Istanbul was seen as backward, ethnically distinct and alien to the Turkish nation. Fast forward to today, and Turkish troops are now treading in the footsteps of Ottoman forebears in Libya, Syria, Iraq and even Qatar.

Facts on the Ground

This new military assertiveness is part of a broad strategy to make Turkey a relevant player in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean in the wake of a US drawback from the region and a resurgent Russian presence in both this region and the Black Sea, to Turkey’s north.

In January, the Turkish parliament approved the deployment of troops to Libya to aid the UN-recognized Government of National Accord (GNA) in its civil war with the Libyan National Army under the leadership of renegade general Khalifa Haftar. It was the first time troops from Anatolia had entered Libya since the Ottoman withdrawal from the region in 1912.

The latest surge of Turkish troops into Syria’s Idlib province, leading to clashes with the forces of President Bashar al-Assad, is merely the latest in a number of offensives in northern Syria. The difference is that this one pits Turkey directly against the Syrian state rather than against Kurdish militias.

The arrival of Turkish troops in Iraq and Qatar followed the pattern just seen in Libya, in that the government — or, in the Iraqi case, the Kurdish Regional Government in Erbil — invited the Turkish troops. The invitations were, of course, illustrative of specific agendas in each state’s case.

In Libya, the GNA is increasingly short of friends, but Qatar and Turkey both offer assistance as part of broader support for political Islam against the forces of authoritarian counter-revolution in the Middle East led by Saudi Arabia and the UAE. This clash, which has also led to Qatar’s boycott by the states of the Gulf Cooperation Council, is also behind the invitation to Turkey to set up a base in Qatar.

Inviting Turkish troops to the Bashiqa base in Iraq in 2016 was in part the result of power struggles within the Iraqi state, whereby Kurdish regional leader Masoud Barzani was looking to leverage his alliance with the Turks to gain an advantage against the Shia-dominated, Iran-influenced government in Baghdad.

Whatever the various reasons, the results have one thing in common: Turkish soldiers and hardware are moving abroad, and they are on the ground, not in the air. This is significant, and it points to the reasons behind these moves.

Don’t Hesitate

The government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has calculated, in part due to the success and impunity of Russian moves into Ukraine and Syria, that establishing facts on the ground make you relevant in geopolitical terms — and that few deterrents currently exist.

In the past, Turkey was very cautious about foreign adventures, since it risked conflict with a sovereign state. In the fractured Middle East of today, several states are either failed or failing. In Libya, Syria and Iraq, authority is contested, and incursions can have very limited goals yet still be effective.

In none of Turkey’s moves is there any ambition to control a state, never mind bombastic statements such as talk of taking Damascus by Devlet Bahceli, leader of Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP). Turkish aims in all its incursions have been strictly limited. They are to establish beachheads within the territory and to make themselves players in the wider conflict.

France — which has given its support to General Haftar in Libya — has been quick to criticize Turkish involvement in Tripoli. Such criticism is meaningless in the Middle East of today. Without a superpower guarantor of peace, any state with the means can contest power. To hesitate is to lose a strategic opening and be diminished.

Turkey’s enemies may appear to be multiplying beyond its borders, but in the new reality, enemies don’t mean what they once did. States are weak, all power is contested, even to the highest levels of global geopolitics, and the type of spoiler incursions Turkey is now making are a new type of hard diplomacy first road-tested by the regime of Russian President Vladimir Putin.  

Its enemies might wish to disparage Turkish actions in the region, but the unspoken facts are that everyone is now playing by the new rules. If you want to be at the table in any given region, theater of conflict or node of energy and resource distribution, you need to get your firepower in and make your presence felt. Then you are ready to be offered a chair.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Yet the creation of a “safe zone” in a swathe of Syrian territory looks in practice like the creation of a Turkish-controlled zone in northern Syria. What’s more, the proposed movement of a million of Turkey’s Syrian refugee population — the largest of any country — into that zone has some awkward historical echoes.

Whatever individual communities of Kurds in northern Syria may think of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance led by the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD) — a political party seen as closely allied to the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — they may see Turkish designs as essentially anti-Kurdish.

That is because, in moving Syrian refugees into a border zone traditionally inhabited by Kurds, the Turkish government will be moving in a predominately Sunni Arab population into lands that have a history of Arabization projects throughout Syria’s republican era.

Uncomfortable Echoes of History

The refugees in question are innocent victims of circumstances: increasingly unwanted in Turkey, yet likely to be equally rejected in Kurdish lands within Syria. This lack of welcome will be intensified by their arrival behind Turkish tanks, rather than, say, the blue helmets of UN peacekeepers.

The northeastern borderland region of Syria that is the focus of Turkey’s efforts, an area known in Syria as the Jazira, has always been restive. As a part of Rojava, or western Kurdistan, it has never been fully integrated into the Arab nationalist Syrian state.

One solution was the attempt was a cordon sanitaire, named the Arab Belt, around the Turkish and Iraqi borders, to ethnically cleanse Kurds seen as susceptible to wider Kurdish nationalism and replace them with Arabs perceived as loyal. This 1970s program under Hafez al-Assad, father of the current Syrian dictator, Bashar al-Assad, was a continuation of discriminatory policies stretching back to the 1930s and the origins of the modern state. It included cultural cleansing like the changing of Kurdish place names, such as Kobani.

Kobani has become famous during the ongoing Syrian Civil War as one of the Kurds’ most decisive victories against the Islamic State group, but it is officially known within Syria as Ayn al-Arab, or the Eye of the Arab — a name change that also connotes the state’s watchful vigilance upon its border.

The latest offensive occurs against this historical backdrop. It is a backdrop that is largely unknown in the West, and may well be unknown to US President Donald Trump. Even if he knows about it, he could well regard it as irrelevant history book stuff.

After all, this is a president determined to tidy up America’s commitments and let the locals sort out their own mess. His decision to withdraw US troops from positions on the Turkish border earlier in the week is what precipitated the Turkish offensive.

It is something the Turks have long pressed for. Having their traditional ally, the US, essentially guarding a Kurdish militia on the Turkish border that is seen as a terrorist organization by Ankara was always an awkward dance for all parties. By apparently ditching the Kurds, Trump has made it easy for Turkey.

Trump’s Simplistic Worldview

Whether he has actually ditched the Kurds remains to be seen. President Trump likes clear cuts and clean decisions, but any student of the Middle East knows that those who go in don’t tend to come out on their own terms. The chances of the US being able to simply ignore Syria and let the regional rivals slug it out are slim.

His combative tweet, shortly after the troop withdrawal announcement, telling Turkey that any move that goes “off limits” would lead him to “destroy and obliterate” the Turkish economy, gave a flavor of how the ties of Syria might bind the US.

Donald Trump’s America is, as we all know, only on America’s side. But of course, beyond political rhetoric, foreign policy requires states to choose where they stand. The US has played the Turks and the Kurds off for some time. If Trump’s latest decision does lead to an all-out war between Turkey and the YPG militia in Syria, it may be difficult to stand on the sidelines.

What About the Turks and the Kurds?

As for the Turks and the Kurds, those at the heart of this new conflict growing out of the Syrian War, their fate is still caught up, like so much of the Middle East, with the limitations of a political map set a century ago.

President Erdogan is fond of alluding to historical treaties — from Lausanne to Sevres — in his quest for Turkish power projection. In pushing Turkish troops beyond the border once more in a bid to carve out a zone of Syrian territory which they will control, he is once again revealing how messy the Middle East’s borders are.

Amidst these borders, the Kurds continue to languish. Stateless, many yearn for a Kurdish nationalism not unlike the Turkish, Arab and Iranian ones that surround them. If these states could develop social contracts beyond narrow ethnic nationalisms, they might offer Kurds a better future and less recourse to nationalist discourse that has led to so much conflict.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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It came with the news that Turkey’s new Russian S-400 missile defense system is expected to be operational by 2020. Such news might appear on the surface to place Turkey thoroughly in the Russian orbit, but Turkish foreign policy is far more complex these days.

If Turkey were now a Russian satrap, it would be assumed that it would mirror Moscow’s foreign policy. But it most certainly does not. Turkey and Russia are on opposing sides in pretty much every Middle Eastern dispute, despite the Kremlin’s favored line that it is a neutral player in the region.

In Syria, Turkey has fought for the rebel opposition against the Russian-backed regime. While Russian President Vladimir Putin has been keen to foster ties with Egyptian strongman Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Turkey’s President Erdoğan is a vocal foe of the military leader who ousted the democratically-elected Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohammed Morsi, in 2013. In Libya, where the dynamics of Egyptian and wider Middle Eastern politics are playing out, Russia backs rebel General Khalifa Haftar, while Turkey supports and arms the UN-recognized Government of National Accord in the capital, Tripoli.

Only in terms of their relations with the Saudis and the Iranians do Russia and Turkey appear to both play similar roles. They are friendly where it is advantageous to be, especially in areas where the US is perceived to have vacated space and created a potential power vacuum.

No More Mr. Nice Guy

It has been several years now since President Erdoğan began dismantling the foreign policy of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which had promoted cordial relations with near neighbors and major powers, such as the US and the European Union.

In that time, the spats with the US have been unceasing if often rather petty. They have involved the sanctioning of diplomats on both sides, the arrest of a US pastor and the latest threat to find arms dealers outside America. It has been mirrored in Europe by the freezing of Turkey’s long-running accession process to the EU, along with a similar series of spats with European nations over Turkey’s treatment of its Kurdish minority, the question of Syrian refugees and issues around Erdoğan’s attempts to woo Turkish voters in Europe.

President Erdoğan’s position is nearly always combative and appears to stem from a deep antipathy to Western powers, and yet there is now an irony at work here, too. US President Donald Trump is a leader with many of the same characteristics as Erdoğan. The same could be said of the UK, with Prime Minister Boris Johnson at the helm.

As a result, Erdoğan is often railing against states, the leader of which he can often relate to far more than previous, more liberal incumbents. If the goal — like the one most media suggest that Vladimir Putin of Russia and Xi Jinping of China are pursuing — is a more illiberal and autocratic world order, then things may appear on track.

But to return to our original question, where does that leave Turkish foreign policy? Who are Turkey’s long-term allies? A more illiberal and autocratic world order is one thing, but a state still needs friends.

Turkey’s relationship with Russia has oscillated wildly during Erdoğan’s tenure. Moreover, there is little indication from the Russian side that it is a relationship Turkey can rely upon for the long term. Turkey is convenient to Russia, particularly due to its role in NATO, which Moscow hopes to destabilize. Yet any long-term reading of geopolitics in the region will conclude that Russia and Turkey are ultimately rivals, and Ankara is decidedly the junior partner in any partnership.

Widening the Net

President Erdoğan has also flirted with alignment to the rising Chinese state, such as when he suggested Turkey would like to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Turkey currently has dialogue partner status and was granted the chairmanship of the SCO energy club in 2016. Yet a Chinese clampdown on the Uighur community in Xinjiang province — an ethnically Turkic people — has put Beijing on a collision course with Turkey, which harbors many exiled dissidents from the region. It is clear it will be hard for China and Turkey to become enduring allies beyond economic pragmatism.

In South America, Erdoğan has been friendly to the revolutionary Venezuelan state, chiefly due to its enmity to the US. Yet the fragile nature of Venezuela makes any long-term alliance weak. There have also been large Turkish inroads into Africa — particularly East African states such as Somalia and Sudan. Turkish investment would certainly suggest it aims to consolidate long-term alliances in the region. However, these are alliances where Turkey is the benefactor, providing it with much leverage within these states. But these are weak, poor states that do not provide much geopolitical cover on a global stage.

Perhaps the most conspicuous of Turkey’s alliances has been that with the Gulf state of Qatar, which has been embargoed by surrounding Arab countries since 2017. Turkey has been the chief ally providing vital economic and military assistance to Qatar, founded upon a shared vision of a role for political Islam in the Middle East. Here, Turkey has formed an alliance that appears strong and enduring, though it is an alliance with a small state that is currently encircled by hostile neighbors intent on fundamental policy change, if not regime change.

The broad picture of Turkish foreign policy under President Erdoğan is conflicting and seemingly bereft of strong, long-term allies. Of course, a change of leadership in Turkey might change all that.

The world is certainly becoming less ordered and less secure. That may well mean that old alliances break down. But it is a brave middleweight country indeed that would attempt to go it alone in such a volatile region as Turkey’s without the support of states and systems larger and stronger than its own.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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What came to pass in the June 23 re-run was predictable. Ekrem Imamoglu, the candidate for the National Alliance led by the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), who had his mayoralty rescinded after 18 days in office, not only got his votes again, but also a huge landslide of moral support from those who felt he had been the rightful winner in the first place.

Erdogan’s Debacle

Turkish commentators have been quick to describe this result as a debacle for both the president and his party, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Imamoglu ended by beating Yildirim by over 800,000 votes. That’s a major haul in comparison to the wafer-thin lead he got first time around. The question is: Does this result represent something bigger for President Erdogan?

It’s true that many in the media look for any telltale sign of Erdogan’s demise. He is an irascible leader who is not shy of rubbing his opponents up the wrong way. What’s more, some of their ammunition is his own, turned around on him. After all, the president himself has previously invoked the old notion that he who controls Istanbul, controls Turkey.

President Erdogan himself came to national power after first taking Istanbul as mayor in the late 1990s. The metropolis is the key to Turkey in many ways, and trends that begin there have a habit of spreading. So, is losing Istanbul a prelude to the ruling AKP and its president losing Turkey? It might be a little soon to go that far.

Strength in Depth

The ruling party’s conduct of the Istanbul mayoral election has indeed been a fiasco. Their candidate lost the original poll by very little. The AKP vote was still strong in the city, despite economic turmoil that you would expect to rock the financial and economic heart of the country. The apparent decision to push the electoral commission to call a re-run was always going to backfire.

The poor political judgment, coupled with some poor economic judgment, including widespread accusations of cronyism in government contracts and such nepotistic moves as installing the president’s son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, as finance minister, do not suggest an administration in rude health. One wonders if it is a sign that the president is losing his ability to feel the pulse of the people.

What the mounting picture does reveal is the decisive influence of economics. The more you squeeze an electorate, the more they will seek salvation and scapegoats. The rising tide of dissatisfaction over the presence of Syrian refugees points to that, but the cooling on the ruling party is another sign.

Yet despite these woes, Erdogan and the AKP remain hugely popular for a government that has ruled since 2002. The hinterland remains firmly in their grip. In the March local elections, despite losing many of the major urban centers, the AKP remained the largest party by vote share nationally. If a general election was held tomorrow, it’s not yet clear that the AKP would lose.

Strong Leaders and Splinter Groups

Another threat comes from within. Many commentators — including the BBC’s Mark Lowen — have once again brought up the possibility of a split within the AKP in the aftermath of the Istanbul re-run. This is old and recurring news. The usual suspects — former President Abdullah Gul, former Finance Minister Ali Babacan and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu — are all mooted to be contemplating forming new parties.

However, until now they have always shied away from actually coming out and challenging the AKP’s charismatic leader at the ballot box. If they wait until they believe Erdogan is weak enough, they might wait too long and end up becoming an irrelevance. What’s more, they are not a united front. Davutoglu and Babacan do not see eye to eye. It’s quite possible that some new political force, such as the new Istanbul mayor, might eclipse any threat from within the AKP itself.

Yet despite the threat that Imamoglu’s victory represents, he remains untested. Is he more a prisoner of circumstance than a real political heavyweight? Is he being invested with qualities beyond what he really holds? Certainly, his focus on bipartisan engagement has been effective, yet it must be remembered that the majoritarian instinct in Turkish politics was not invented by President Erdogan. It has a long history.

The history of the modern republic is a history of majoritarian rule. The notion that those who gain the balance of power will dictate the terms to those who lost is hardwired. The founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, dictated the terms of his revolution, using force where necessary. President Erdogan is often viewed as the most powerful politician since Ataturk. Yet by his standards, Erdogan has been subtle.

He has not initiated the sort of comprehensive social revolution that Ataturk did, coercing the population into certain forms of dress, a certain language and a way of life. He has not done away with multi-party politics, as demonstrated in Istanbul. And his base of support will still worry that should he lose, the winners may freeze them out of all decision-making just as has been the norm in Turkish political history.

This sense of distrust and partisanship preserves President Erdogan’s chances even as the economy continues to deteriorate. Unless someone — perhaps an Imamoglu or someone similar — can persuade enough people that their administration would not alienate and punish conservative, provincial and pious voters, they will remain loath to desert their man.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Just when you thought the ship was steadying, last weekend brought another tumultuous moment in Turkish politics. Local and mayoral elections that once again pitted a government-led conservative alliance against a more secular opposition have produced ballot box drama.

The headline is that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) saw its candidate lose in all three of Turkey’s largest cities: Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. It looks like a political earthquake, and that’s certainly how the opposition is portraying it. But look a little closer, and it’s not so straightforward.

Turkish democracy is alive

Firstly, it is worth emphasizing the fact that these election results have occurred at all. The Turkish opposition, and much foreign media, has long painted the AKP and President Erdogan as an authoritarian dictatorship destroying Turkish democracy. While the president’s populist tendencies, his alliance with far-right nationalists and the suppression of opposing voices — namely those of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) — are undeniable, this election is proof that what is happening in Turkey cannot be painted as another Middle Eastern dictatorship.

Erdogan is an energetic campaigner. He works for his votes, and he continues to claim legitimacy from the ballot box. As Yasin Aktay, a columnist in the pro-government Yeni Safak newspaper, wrote in the prelude to the poll, “You know what kinds of elections are held [in most Arab countries] … the number of votes they desire are ordered and dictators get over 90 percent.” Not only have the Turkish local and mayoral elections not been rigged, but they have seen a reported turnout of some 85%. That’s very good by any democratic standard.

More importantly for the government, the election results are not as bad as they might appear from the headlines. First, take the big news: The AKP loses Turkey’s three biggest cities. The AKP never has a hope in Izmir, Turkey’s third city, since it is a west-coast bastion of opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) support. In that sense, it wasn’t lost, since the party never held it in the first place.

In the case of the mayoral race for Istanbul and Ankara, the two biggest cities, these are genuine defeats. Istanbul is particularly painful psychologically, since the AKP has held the city since Erdogan’s own election as mayor in 1994. The party fielded former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim as its candidate, and he lost by a wafer-thin margin. Plus, there is a dark old saying: He who controls Istanbul, controls Turkey.

Yet despite these foreboding signs, both Istanbul and Ankara were very tight races. Neither CHP candidate won by much, and there is still significant support for the AKP. What’s more, nationwide the AKP has taken the largest share of the vote once again. All this means that while it was a sobering night for the ruling party, it was not a total disaster.

The other key element in these election results is the context. The AKP came into these elections after 16 years in power. It is overseeing the first recession in a decade, a sliding lira and growing unemployment. It has been through a devastating regional conflict in Syria that has hugely affected Turkish internal politics.

Given the context, most observers would expect far worse for a ruling party. It could be argued that AKP support has held up remarkably well. However, that support has slipped in the all-important major urban and business areas, and that might not be a bad thing. Opposition has been building for a long time, and it has become increasingly vocal and extreme.

In a democracy, there is ultimately no better antidote to opposition anger and frustration than power. For the Turkish body politic as a whole, an opportunity for the opposition to exercise power in the major cities, and also confront the very real problems Turkey faces there, will only contribute to a nuancing of debate within Turkish politics.

An opportunity for the party

This moment of electoral turbulence is also, very possibly, an opportunity for the AKP to rejuvenate itself after so long in power. Not only does the result demonstrate to the world that — despite frequent portrayals to the contrary — Turkey is no China, Saudi Arabia or Egypt. In Turkey, the opposition can win if it can persuade. It also gives the AKP room to maneuver and perhaps change course.

The economic and political direction has brought a contraction of growth, a sliding currency and polarization — all things the AKP originally swept to power by reversing. As a historically pro-business party, it could take this as an opportunity to reform in the name of listening to business. President Erdogan has already said, “If there are any shortcomings, it is our duty to correct them.”

Not only do I predict that the AKP will come back stronger in the next elections than would be the case had it simply rigged the result, but it will come back stronger than it would have had the party won all three of Turkey’s biggest cities comfortably. Easy wins breed complacency. There will be no complacency now.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Election Losses Are Good News for Turkey’s Ruling AKP appeared first on Fair Observer.

There’s one thing Turkey and the US can definitely agree on these days: Unreliability is now the bedrock of their relationship. It’s perhaps not surprising when the two powers are led by notably unpredictable men — US President Donald Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In the latest antagonism, Erdogan’s close adviser, Yasin Aktay, has spoken of the US as a “highly unreliable partner” due to its efforts to safeguard the Syrian Kurdish forces who have partnered with the US in defeating the Islamic State (IS) in Syria.

The criticism is a further illustration of the echo chambers in which diplomacy is being conducted at the moment. Far from seeking to reduce friction (the usual role of diplomacy), such statements are part of the new prickly nationalism that is everywhere in the ascendant.

The most glaring dimension of Aktay’s statement is its subjectivity. Trump’s announcement in December 2018 of the US troop withdrawal from Syria really did put America’s Syrian Kurdish allies in potential harm’s way, at the hands of the Turkish army. The recent move to safeguard that ally could be viewed, in fact, as reliability.

But of course, Atkay is speaking from within the echo chamber of Turkish politics. Within that chamber, the US has deserted its NATO ally in favor of a Syrian Kurdish militia with strong ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) — a movement within Turkey designated a terrorist organization.

His assessment discounts the fact that the threat from IS was very real. The US needed local allies on the ground in order to counter it. Indeed, it was a long time before the Turkish government decided to give the fight against the Islamic State the same priority that it gave the fight against Kurdish groups.

Yet the Turkish displeasure with its NATO ally is not all paranoia and blinkered Turkish nationalism. President Trump has been cavalier in his diplomacy within the international body. He has also been transparently shortsighted in his engagement with the Middle East.

In line with his “America First” policies, Trump was quick to single out IS as a grave threat to be addressed, largely because it had the capacity to impact America itself and American lives. Trump and his predecessor, Barack Obama, have been far less eager to address Syria’s civil war.

From the Turkish viewpoint, this looks a lot like abandonment. The war on its southern frontier has been highly porous. It has deeply impacted Turkey in terms of terrorist atrocities, refugee flows, political destabilization, economic impact and the very real threat of escalation from the Assad regime’s allies, Russia and Iran. None of this seems to have moved the US greatly.

Every man for himself

The result is a zero-sum environment in which all the key actors have gradually amassed leaders who see the best strategy as entrenchment and national defense. This may have been led by Russian President Vladimir Putin — the past master of such tactics — but it has been a domino effect.

President Erdogan has veered sharply in the same direction ever since the start of the Syrian conflict in 2011. With the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency in November 2016, the world’s key superpower has followed suit. In the current dispute, the only real losers are likely to be the Kurds.

The Turkish government position has ossified. It cannot easily roll back on its war with the Syrian Kurdish militia now. The US position is more fluid. As President Trump as demonstrated, Washington is quite capable of dropping the Syrian Kurdish militia.

The reason the US government has so far stepped back from leaving the Syrian Kurds at the full mercy of other powers in Syria is not altruism. The Syrian Kurds merely offered the right guns for hire at the right time. But to drop them would hand valuable power to US adversaries.

In the cases of Russia and Iran, that would stick in the craw of the US administration. The irony is, as things stand, the other “adversary” who would clearly benefit is a country — Turkey — that is supposed to be an erstwhile NATO ally and a bulwark in the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why the US Is Still Losing Turkey appeared first on Fair Observer.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey is once again back, center stage. The question this time is what he is doing there. The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi has all the hallmarks of the dark side of the modern security state. But the affair was largely a story about Saudi Arabia and, to a lesser extent, its eternal ally and superpower benefactor, the United States.

The mix was that the whole affair played out on Turkish soil (if we exclude the soil beneath the Saudi Consulate). Until October 23, Erdogan remained tight-lipped. This is not surprising. Political elites are usually cautious when such intelligence and security activities spill into the public domain.

But this was an earthquake everyone knew was coming. You could hear the clock ticking. Why? Because — drip, drip drip — the leaks kept coming. Daily, the pro-government Turkish press was teasing out a story that the Saudis were clearly desperate to brush under the carpet. It was plain that more was going on here than met the eye.

There was speculation that such leaks were a warning from President Erdogan to the Saudi regime that Turkey could blow the story, but could also refrain with the right incentives. If so, were the incentives not forthcoming? Or was the plan all along to bleed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s regime dry?

Do nothing and be damned

Let’s look at this from the Turkish government’s perspective. It mostly likely bugged the Saudi consulate. It had ample CCTV footage. It knew what had occurred, who had been involved and how. It could have said nothing, just like the Saudis. Just like what usually happens in such cases — especially in the open-ended case of a journalist who went missing.

But then, how likely was this story to stay hidden? Khashoggi didn’t go missing in Saudi Arabia or even in some non-descript hotel or apartment. He went missing — as his Turkish fiancée made clear — inside the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. Given such circumstances, Ankara may well have calculated two things: Either the story would surface, or even if it didn’t, it would look so dirty as to leave a bad stain on anyone vaguely connected with it — including the Turkish authorities.

It’s reasonable to question at this point why the Saudis even executed such a brazen and thinly disguised plot. Fifteen intelligence and security men flown in overnight — several with close ties to the crown prince — and whisked away again just after Khashoggi’s disappearance. It’s like they were asking to be held to ransom by Turkey. Was this an inept operation or simply the action of a regime that didn’t expect to be closely scrutinized?

Whatever it was, for the Turkish government, the calculation seems to have been clear. This was an opportunity to be on the right side of the story. Not even President Erdogan’s enemies could outmaneuver him here. To the charge of playing politics with a journalist’s murder, the answer is simple: What would you have me do — conceal a crime when we have the evidence? To do so would simply put the Turkish president on par with the despots of the Middle East, and he knows it.

This was — at last — an opportunity not to be missed. Events have not been kind to Erdogan of late, but here was a gift. This is a situation in which the Turkish president perhaps feels vindicated after all the moral outrage that has been thrown at him from outside powers. It is a situation that plays out in two spheres: the Middle Eastern and Muslim world on one side, and the Western world on the other. In both, it plays well for Turkey.

Since the days of Turkey’s soft power outreach in the Middle East, prior to the Arab uprisings of 2010-11, the Turkish government has vied with Saudi Arabia for the mantle of leader of the Sunni world, if not the wider Muslim world. Such rivalry appeared to have been somewhat eclipsed by the Syrian Civil War, which turned Saudi Arabia and Turkey into potential allies against the Iranian backing of Shia regimes in Syria and Iraq.

But look more closely and this was never the case. Erdogan, with his close affinity to the Muslim Brotherhood, was never in the Saudi camp. The apparent triumph of political Islam during the early days of the Arab uprisings was a triumph for Turkey and Iran, not for Saudi Arabia. It was the Saudis who gave the nod to the 2013 coup d’état in Egypt, removing the Muslim Brotherhood from power after then-Prime Minister Erdogan’s high-profile visit and endorsement of the Brotherhood.

For all the ambiguities of the Turkish-Iranian relationship, the Saudi-led assault on Iranian interests, the blockade of Qatar in 2017, and the drive toward an American-Israeli-Saudi understanding over Palestine and the future Middle East order is an attack on political Islam and a threat to Turkey. In all these Saudi actions, Ankara has been a robust critic and supporter of the opposing side. President Erdogan has also been a steadfast champion of the Palestinian cause, in particular that of the beleaguered Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

A boost to Turkey’s moral standing

Given the erratic nature of the Saudi regime under Mohammed bin Salman’s guidance and its apparent willingness to raise stakes and tensions across the region, it seems somewhat surprising that they were not expecting some mudslinging. Yet in the grand scheme of things, that may not have seemed so bad. After all, the Khashoggi affair appears to have had negligible impact of the popularity of the crown prince at home. In fact, his agenda of social liberties for the middle classes is having the converse effect. It is dampening dissent.

What’s more, in the regional power struggle that has been laid bare by the Arab uprisings, power matters more than popularity to the Saudi regime. Saudi Arabia is an autocratic monarchy. The Saudis are also the key US ally, and that is their ace. Erdogan is a political figure of a very different type. He is a populist, elected to his office. He is instinctively against the US system of autocratic alliances in the Middle East, and he knows he has popular support in that.

The Khashoggi affair will not bring the Saudis to heel. That’s because, as Ankara well knows, its Western backers and arms suppliers will very soon find ways to circumnavigate the awkward moral questions surrounding the murder, as they have so many other moral questions in relation to Saudi Arabia. That is not what motivates President Erdogan. What motivates him is the opportunity to lead in the region, to take the moral high ground that lies so vacant, and in doing so to expose the Saudis and their Western backers to the popular verdict.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Erdogan Had to Act on Khashoggi Killing appeared first on Fair Observer.

This was always how it was going to end. US Pastor Andrew Brunson is released, despite being sentenced to a three-year jail term in Turkey, based on time served in detention. He flies home to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland and heads to the White House to meet the president. Meanwhile, in the Twittersphere, Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan are still talking their bullish talk, only now it’s about the great strategic relationship that can be built between two allies, as long as they respect each other.

For those seeking a victory for liberal values, it’s an odd one. Pictures beamed around the world showed Pastor Brunson head bent in prayer with President Trump, the firebrand Republican who vowed to get him out. President Erdogan simply tweeted, with sanguine self-evidence, that this was simply a matter of judicial procedure. What could he add? Did he have to repeat that this was a criminal case, one he could not influence?

If we assume a level of political involvement in the judicial process, then why now? Perhaps simply because the point had been made. Turkey held the keys, and due to its mounting displeasure with the Americans, it made them wait.

It has also been argued that the pressure of US sanctions and the crippling downturn of the Turkish lira could have made further delay unbearable. Possibly, but the political point was more important than economic side-effects.

It is also worth noting where Brunson sat within the Turkish context, which has been generally ignored in the emphasis on Turkish angst about US intransigence over the extradition of Fethullah Gulen — an exiled Turkish Muslim cleric— and his support for Syrian Kurds.

Pastor Andrew Brunson Is Symbolic

Andrew Brunson was the pastor of the Izmir Resurrection Church and had been working in Turkey for more than 20 years. Let’s think about that. An American evangelical pastor working in the anti-Erdogan bastion of Izmir. This is Turkey’s third city and it sits halfway down the Aegean coast in prime holidaymaker territory. Izmir has a highly secular character and is the one major urban stronghold of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Pastor Brunson’s church may have only claimed around two dozen members, but as a symbol of everything the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is not, he’s hard to beat — a proselytizing Christian American living in Izmir. It should also be remembered that he has become as much a symbol in the US as in Turkey. Trump not only prayed with him for the cameras, but claimed that he galvanized America with his strength and faith.

Despite the profile, it wouldn’t normally explain his arrest and detention, but then Turkey post-coup in 2016 was not a normal place. It was a place on edge. It made someone like Pastor Brunson highly suspect. His profile would have made him unwelcome anyway, but given the very ambivalent US reaction to the attempted coup, his position was more precarious still.

The AKP leadership, in many cases quite literally, fought for their lives. They believed the plot to be perpetrated by followers of Fethullah Gulen, the exiled cleric living in Pennsylvania. The US not only sent mixed signals during the coup attempt, they also refused to extradite Gulen. In the circumstances, Turkey had little leverage, but one simple trick might well have been to lock up a local Christian pastor.

The charges of supporting, though not belonging to, terrorist organizations like the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the Hizmet movement of Gulen are the standard charges of the post-coup era. Do they fit with Pastor Brunson? Not particularly. A Marxist separatist guerrilla movement and a global Islamist movement are not natural bedfellows with a US pastor. Look more to the circles in which he mixed for the answers.

Now that Brunson has departed, the interaction between Trump and Erdogan will continue in their usual posturing manner. As I wrote in Fair Observer in August, this is not a reset in Turkish-American relations, but more of the same.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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“Protection comes firstly from God, and after that it’s up to the Turks,” Mohammad al-Youssef, a 33-year-old resident of the village of al-Surman, southeast of Idlib city, Syria, was quoted as saying by Reuters in August.

Turkish troops are in his village as part of an observation post set up through the Astana process by Turkey, Russia and Iran. The deal established de-escalation zones — particularly around Idlib province, where there are 12 Turkish observation posts — in which the parties would act essentially as peacekeepers.

Given the dynamics of a civil war in which Russia, Iran and the Syrian regime are very much on the offensive, this means that in practice, the only side really offering peacekeeping protection is Turkey. That is because Turkey is keen to protect what is left of a rebellion that Ankara has long supported.

More than the US, more than any other outside power, Turkey finds itself in the unusual position of being viewed as the protector by a foreign people: Syrian Arabs. The Turkish flag is flying in these villages, in the hope that it might deter the Syrian regime.

Russian realpolitik

When Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan met Russian President Vladimir Putin in Sochi on September 17, it was their second summit this month — yet tellingly, the Iranians were absent for this second meeting. The result — an agreement on a buffer zone in Idlib, a postponement of a planned offensive in the province, and a commitment from Turkey to deal with jihadist elements in the region — reveals Russia’s deeper regional calculations.

Step back from the heat of battle, and what is revealed? If the Syrian regime led by Bashar al-Assad regains control of Idlib, it essentially regains control over most of the state. That leaves Assad less beholden to Russia for military support, and potentially less malleable. With a large chunk of territory out of his hands, it’s different.

By getting an agreement from President Erdogan to eliminate jihadist factions in the province, President Putin achieves a war aim without the dirty work, keeps the Assad regime guessing, and cements the Russian working relationship with Turkey, thus disrupting the NATO alliance. For all these reasons, Putin will have felt inclined to offer this agreement to Turkey, despite having rejected a ceasefire in a Tehran summit with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani just over a week ago.

An Idlib offensive would be the most sensitive and serious in Turkish policy terms since the fall of eastern Aleppo. The Syrian regime has since concentrated its energies elsewhere, and in that time Turkey’s presence has grown. Turkish troops and allied Syrian rebel forces now actively control a swathe of territory north and east of Idlib province, as well as moving into Idlib under the de-escalation agreement.

Beyond the usefulness of holding Syrian territory as a “facts-on-the-ground” bargaining chip in the civil war and as a buffer against incursions into Turkish territory, what are some of the other motivators behind Turkish interests in Idlib?

Protecting fellow Turks

In a familiar echo of a favorite foreign policy tactic of Putin, Turkey’s interest in the Idlib region is not simply about containing Syria and holding it at arms length. There is also an ethnic dimension. Just as Putin has invoked the protection of ethnic Russians as a reason to involve Russian forces in Ukraine and Georgia, so too has Erdogan invoked the protection of ethnic Turkmen in northern Syria as a need to militarily involve Turkey in the province.

This war is far closer to home for Turkey than it is for either Russia or Iran. Syria borders Turkey, and in the case of the Syrian Turkmen, Turks have ethnic kin within Syria who have a long history of persecution at the hands of the Syrian regime. With the onset of the Syrian uprising in 2011, Turkmen took up arms in support of the opposition. They formed the Syrian Turkmen Brigades to defend the ethnic Turkmen villages of north Syria, which have come under sustained attack from Assad’s ground forces and the Russian air force.

When a Russian jet was shot down in 2015 — prompting a diplomatic row between Turkey and Russia — it was attacking Turkmen positions, and it was ethnic Turkmen who shot and killed the pilot as he parachuted down.

Up to 300,000 Turkmen have already been displaced from their villages in northern Latakia province by the Syrian regime, and Turkey can reasonably argue that without Turkish support, they are at the mercy of a central government intent on exacting revenge against the population at large.

China and the Uighurs

Another complication is ethnic Uighurs from China’s Xinjiang province. The Uighur are a Turkic people who are the majority in the vast western province of China, where they are currently experiencing mass repression by the Chinese.

Istanbul is the headquarters of the East Turkistan Education and Solidarity Association (ETESA), a Uighur organization with links to Uighur fighters in the Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU). Many of these fighters are based in Idlib province now, since it is the last major territory remaining to Islamist militants in Syria.

Turkey has — for geopolitical reasons — been as cautious as other Muslim states about criticizing Chinese policy in Xinjiang. And yet, ETESA has been very supportive of Turkish war aims in Syria, and an attack on Uighur fighters will only bring the issue further to the surface. Will the Uighur fighters retreat into Turkey, and if so, what will Turkey do with them, and how might China respond?

The threat of more refugees

The Uighur are not the biggest headache for Ankara in terms of migration into Turkey. These less headline-grabbing issues simply add extra pressure to the widely predicted danger of mass refugee flows. An Idlib offensive by the regime in Syria could lead to a wave of as many of 2.5 million displaced people entering Turkey. After all, with this as the last major rebel enclave, there is nowhere else to run.

Turkey already hosts 3.5 million Syrian refugees — the largest number of any country in the world. While Ankara has used the influx as an opportunity, doing both vital humanitarian work and more strategically useful re-education and assimilation work, there is a limit to how many people Turkey can support, especially with a deteriorating economic outlook.

Until now, the Astana trio of Turkey, Russia and Iran have managed to carve out an unlikely alliance to bring a certain stability to the situation in Syria. An offensive in Idlib would threaten that alliance. Turkey is already reinforcing its observation posts in the province. The danger now is that, as the other side pushes toward their logical and stated goal of total victory in the civil war, Turkey’s position within the Astana process becomes untenable.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Idlib Matters to Turkey appeared first on Fair Observer.

“We are for every kind of cooperation to eat the grapes. But we will never give the opportunity to those whose aim is to beat the grape grower.” So said Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in response to the latest spat with the US, in his paternal role as provider of low hanging fruit to the people of the world.

The president’s language is key to understanding what is at work here. While the world’s media pores over yet another crisis in Turkey-US relations and agonizes once more about what it will mean for the future of such ties, Erdogan is talking about grape growers in relation to a little known American pastor.

An American pastor? You can almost hear the response echoing around the world. Does one American pastor really matter enough to risk a key strategic relationship in the world’s most volatile region? Well of course the pastor matters, in so much as he is representative — for both presidents — of how the little man matters.

More tit-for-tat

The Pastor Andrew Brunson stand-off is the latest in a series of apparently minor issues that Erdogan and Donald Trump have allowed to blow up into big issues. In January, I wrote in Fair Observer about reciprocal travel bans, a summoned chargé d’affaires and the arrest of other individuals. It all looks very ominous, not least with the Turkish lira diving to new lows against the dollar in response to US sanctions against Turkish officials and the doubling of tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum.

Many analysts are raising the dark specter of Erdogan abandoning the US and, in his nationalist zeal, embracing other strongmen in Asia. It is all part of the recurring liberal Western fear of a pivot to the East. While Erdogan is evidently no deeply committed admirer of the US, such analysis doesn’t take enough account of the broader picture in which Turkey operates.

What we have here is posturing — and not merely from the Turkish side. This is not President Erdogan engaging Barack Obama in battle, but President Trump. The world has shifted. What both leaders are engaged in is a new kind of populist presidential politics, one that Vladimir Putin and others would recognize. It is a politics that enjoys and often aims to rile and whip up the media into frenzies of speculation.

Remember what these presidents think of the free (i.e. critical) press. Not much. Such media concern over the geopolitics of these spats serves to confirm everything they tell their supporters. That the media is waiting for Armageddon, for the big crash, for the implosion. They are willing it. But all the while, this new presidential politics is also reminding its supporters that “we” (the presidents) are the ones with the power. They have the people, and therefore the real power.

This modus operandi is all about being consciously deaf to the mainstream media. If we want to stand tough for things that matter to our supporters — the little people — we’ll stand tough. If we want to shake hands later and make a deal, we’ll do so. We don’t need to be consistent. For whose sake? The mainstream media’s?

This feeds into a larger narrative. The mainstream media and the broader “self-serving elites” of global institutions, including the United Nations, NATO, the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, want consistency. But we are real men. Real leaders. We don’t need to be consistent for anyone. We do things our own way. Our people respect that. They trust us.

Business as usual

Viewed from the perspective of this new populist presidential politics, the real threat becomes one of miscalculation. It involves the fear that, in their pursuit of point scoring at home, these leaders will overstep the mark abroad. But this fear also misses a wider reality. For all their grandstanding, these are lone leaders who cannot rule without their wider entourage and apparatus of government.

While both sides have their tub-thumpers who will continue to drum out the beat of their respective president’s themes, being tough on the outside and inside and making threats to the ordinary people, both sides also have a host of figures doing the less glamorous task of keeping the diplomatic show on the road. The noises from these people point to a far more measured and humdrum outcome.

Both Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu and new Finance Minister Berat Albayrak (son-in-law of the president) have downplayed the spat as simply the usual arguments you get in any “family.” US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, a far more pragmatic figure than Trump, has been in “constructive” talks with Cavusoglu that both sides want to work.

Expect more grandstanding over seemingly minor issues in the months ahead. For both sides — and this is increasingly the tenor of global politics more broadly — such grandstanding for a domestic audience is viewed as more valuable than the traditional cordial diplomacy between friends and allies that we have been used to throughout the second half of the 20th century. Welcome to the multipolar world.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: Alexandros Michailidis / Shutterstock.com

The post Welcome to the New World of Erdogan and Trump appeared first on Fair Observer.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s inauguration on July 9 was a little different. Not in terms of personnel, since he has been president of Turkey for four years already, but in terms of substance. This was a reset. His inauguration brought in a new constitutional era in Turkish politics, one in which he takes the reins of a powerful executive presidency very different from what came before.

Many, of course, have pointed out that little will change. Erdogan has long confirmed himself as the colossus of Turkish contemporary politics, assuming a power that has dwarfed not just the many and varied opposition groups in the country, but even his own party, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). But this is the moment that his power becomes further cemented in constitutional hardware. Both he and those who follow him will be a lot harder to budge.

This presidential term is a momentous one for wider historical reasons. It will run until the republican centenary year of 2023, marking 100 years since the founding of the modern Turkish state. That a newly empowered and emboldened President Erdogan will be at the helm come the centenary is telling, as he is now confirmed as the most powerful politician in the modern history of Turkey since its omnipotent founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Despite long being an opposition figure apparently opposed to Kemalism (indeed, he was jailed by the secular establishment in 1998), the irony is that Erdogan has come to embody the ghost of Ataturk more and more as he has grown in stature. In simply iconographic terms, the vast billboards that have covered Turkish towns and cities with his image have had more than a passing resemblance to the founding father. In terms of policy, he has also become decidedly more sympathetic to Kemalist principles.

Back to the future

The benevolent paternalism or benign dictatorship that characterized the Ataturk era has been fought over by scholars ever since. While many viewed it as a period of necessary repression in pursuit of a noble Westernizing and modernizing cause, from it can still be traced the legacy of religious and ethnic fault lines that scar the country to this day. Yet Kemalism’s unyielding blend of Turkish nationalism has remained a potent force in the state, one that has increasingly interwoven with Sunni Islam as it has matured.

As Erdogan finally vanquishes the vestiges of opposition to his rule, either real or imagined, his reset presidency may well take on shades of what can be termed “Ataturkism.” While not espousing pure Kemalist doctrine, he will increasingly employ the untouchable, paternalist image so embodied by Ataturk, who is still present in the portraits and busts that grace town squares, schoolyards and living room walls across the country.

While he — and others in his party — may see his role as part of a much older inheritance, one rooted in the Islamic character of the Ottoman era, there is no escaping 20th-century history or the importance of the narrowly ethnic Turkish nationalism on which Erdogan has increasingly played in order to consolidate his power. Where once the Islamist opposition in Turkey had much in common, and much sympathy for, the Kurdish cause, today’s ruling circle has not only turned its back on the Kurdish political movement, but actively embraced Turkish nationalists.

The embrace that Erdogan has offered nationalists — most particularly the new AKP allies, the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) — must be understood against the backdrop of the intra-Islamist power struggle between the AKP and the movement of exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen. Much of the first decade of the 21st century was spent with both movements working in concert to subdue and eliminate the traditional secular establishment in the judiciary, bureaucracy and military. Much of the second decade has been taken up with the power struggle that resulted from their defeat of that common enemy.

The purged state

The Gulen movement was always highly opaque, politically ambiguous and only a tentative supporter of the AKP. Yet as the political Islamist takeover of Turkish institutions gathered pace, the Gulenist demand for power increased. The failed coup — widely attributed to the movement — and the wholesale purging of institutions that followed have left Erdogan with one of the biggest question marks of his next term at the helm: What to do with what is left of the state?

The numbers are staggering. The latest round of purges brings the total to around 130,000 people removed from the civil service since the failed coup. This has also involved the closing of media outlets and educational organizations connected with the Gulen movement. There has even been a concerted effort to disrupt the network globally, requesting that states transfer control of Gulenist schools to the TURGEV (Turkish Youth and Education Service) foundation, which has close ties to the Erdogan family.

With few, if any, friends among Gulenists or secularists inside or outside Turkey, the president will use the next term to bolster not only foundations like TURGEV, but also the imam-hatip (religious school) system of educational establishments that will serve to produce a new generation loyal to his vision. He will also have to work to repair hollowed institutions of state that have seen some of the largest purges in modern history. The polarized and majoritarian nature of Turkish politics, and the vast numbers of disaffected, will make this task particularly difficult.

Erdogan has always been an adroit political mover. He has formed and folded alliances with sometimes dizzying speed as and when he has been required to do so. He has kept an unerring compass for his destination — the epicenter of power in the republic — at all times. Despite the many casualties, he has managed to retain vast support. Yet his latest alliance, that with the hard-right nationalists of the MHP, may determine the path he must tread going forward. The surprising electoral success of the MHP in June has made sure of that.

Security and introspection

President Erdogan’s alliance with the MHP plays into an older tradition in the country. A synthesis of Turkish nationalism and Sunni Islam — setting aside the usual Kemalist animosity toward the faith — was advocated by the junta that led the 1980 coup in Turkey, and elements of this thinking can also be found in the Milli Gorus movement, an Islamic community organization out of which the president’s own AKP sprung. This new alliance brings with it a much greater focus on traditional Turkish ideas of securitization.

During its first decade in power, the ruling AKP was a champion of the peace process with the Kurdish political movement, in particular the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). In this, they were a distinctive departure from the usual state position on the Kurdish question. The end of the alliance with the Gulen movement, and the shift toward more traditional and militarist Turkish nationalist elements, has naturally seen a collapse of that peace process. The MHP views the Kurdish question through a purely security lens.

The more nationalist trend of current policy has also put a strain on relations with the European Union. Again, the early years of AKP rule saw some of the biggest movements toward possible accession to the bloc. The MHP, and the wider Turkish nationalist political landscape, has always been highly suspicious of the EU and its influence. This has pushed Erdogan toward a more insular, less globally integrated policy. The economic implications of such a move, however, may give the president pause.

If one analyses the career of Erdogan to date, one notes his flexibility, his ability to react to the changing environment and to move beyond dogma. His latest success has clearly emboldened the Turkish nationalist constituency, in particular the MHP. His next test may be to find a way to tame them. While there are clear overlaps between the nationalist agenda and the authoritarian, personality-driven politics of the president, their vision is not his vision. At some point, they diverge.

The next question for President Erdogan is how far to loosen the reins on the MHP and the wider Turkish nationalist vision, before finding a counterbalance to restrain them once more.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. 

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When Turks go to the polls on June 24 — only a little over a year since the controversial referendum that paved the way for a new presidential system of government — the question of fear will be central to most narratives. The most dominant of these, certainly outside the country, is the one broadly attached to the opposition: the fear of another victory for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his consolidation of power.

This narrative is well worn in Western media. It has many advocates within Turkey and among Turks abroad, as well as much hard evidence to support it. There is also — particularly after the slim margin of victory in the 2017 referendum — the suspicion of potential electoral fraud. But against this backdrop is also another awkward, yet important, truth: President Erdogan still commands huge support.

Were Turkey a true dictatorship, as it is increasingly portrayed under Erdogan, he would have no electoral challengers, except perhaps for a few late entrants who suddenly and mysteriously realized a desire to run for president, despite being long-standing stalwart supporters of the incumbent. Instead, Turkey has a genuine field of candidates who are most definitely independent of President Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP).

Turkey is still a functioning, if dysfunctional, democracy. President Erdogan and the AKP could lose. But they probably won’t. This is due in large part — with all the intimidation, jailing of candidates and control of the national media excepted — to his enduring appeal for a large sector of Turkish society. While fear of Erdogan is well known and well documented, what about fear of life without Erdogan? What is it that AKP voters most fear?

Clear and present danger: the opposition fear

Fear of President Erdogan has become an almost all-pervasive narrative in opposition circles. Critics point to his majoritarian conception of democracy, his illiberal instincts, the muzzling of the media, jailing of journalists and opposition politicians, and the steady weakening of the rule of law as the judiciary and even financial institutions become more and more beholden to the president. What is less often cited is the increasing unease of many in his own party.

For many members of the ruling Justice and Development Party, the erosion of open borders, a soft power foreign policy and democratic foundations within the country are seen not as an erosion of traditional Turkish principles, but of principles championed by the AKP itself. Look to a major figure such as former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and we see a man who led policies of “zero problems with neighbors” and “strategic depth” that have been abandoned.

In another clear sign of the division in the ruling party, rumors swirled briefly in May of former President Abdullah Gul — a founder of the AKP — running for president against Erdogan. In the event, he didn’t risk the challenge, yet there is a sense of potential momentum in this election. “It will be the most unpredictable election ever,” suggested a political observer in Istanbul who wished to remain anonymous. “Not even expert public opinion pollsters know what is going to happen.”

“I personally believe that the chances of a surprise victory for the opposition have significantly increased,” said the observer. He cited the victimization of the Kurdish and left-wing party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), and the successful left-wing populist campaign of Muharrem Ince, candidate for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP). He also believed President Erdogan’s numerous public gaffes, such as acknowledging that the National Intelligence Organization (MIT) has been used to spy on the opposition campaign and threatening the death penalty for HDP candidate Selahattin Demirtas, had undermined the confidence of moderates.

Enduring threats: Fear of life without Erdogan

Demirtas is the charismatic figurehead for the Kurdish political movement in Turkey, though he is viewed by many as a mouthpiece for the other jailed Kurdish leader, Abdullah Ocalan. The threat to execute a popular politician is no idle threat in a country that did just that following the coup of 1960. Adnan Menderes was the leader of the Democratic Party, which ruled for a decade in the 1950s following an early multi-party experiment in the Kemalist state.

Following the party’s fall in a military coup, the coup leaders chose to execute Menderes by hanging, an act that still casts a long shadow over Turkish politics. It is one small window into the minds of those who support President Erdogan and his ruling AKP. Like Menderes and his party, Erdogan and the AKP came to political prominence through popular support at the ballot box, not through military tutelage. They too spoke for a largely disenfranchised provincial electorate of pious Turks who had never wholly embraced Kemalism.

Despite all the turmoil of the last few years, and all the illiberalism exhibited by President Erdogan, his supporters have the whole 20th century to reference in considering where their interests lie. It was a century dominated by the staunchly secularist Kemalist elite, supported by a military that was ready to defend the state created by founder Kemal Ataturk, even against the popular will of its citizens. Long years of cultural and religious oppression are not easily forgotten.

Just because I’m paranoid…

Erdogan is a personification of this history. He was himself jailed by the Kemalist establishment in 1998 for the crime of reading a poem by the Turkish nationalist Ziya Gokalp that spoke of how “the minarets shall be our bayonets” — a reference that whiffed of Islamism to the Turkish elite of the era. Perhaps even more acutely, the AKP constituency has the failed coup of 2016 to consider now. Though it has been surprisingly quickly forgotten in Western media against the prominent post-coup purge, what occurred on July 15, 2016, is now central to President Erdogan and to his support.

For all that he and his ruling circle can now appear paranoid, defensive and illiberal, it cannot be denied — beyond conspiracy theories of a false flag operation — that Erdogan’s administration was the victim of a violent attempted coup. It claimed the lives of over 200 people, involved elements in the air force who bombed key government buildings, and even the hotel in Marmaris where the president was staying that night. Whatever we may think of the likes of US President Donald Trump or British Prime Minister Theresa May, neither has been subjected to such action from within their own state.

Consider for a moment what that means to a man in Erdogan’s position. He is a combative leader, determined to not only bring his constituency within the country representation, but real power and influence. Turkey is no stranger to the military coup, but for an attempt to have occurred in 2016 was, nevertheless, an audacious surprise in a country now wary of such practices. Moreover, in the shadow of Menderes, President Erdogan can have been pretty sure that night of what his fate might so easily have been.

In such a political climate, it is easy — perhaps not that surprising — that a leader would move toward illiberalism, toward a majoritarian vision that rested on the knowledge that unless you hold the power, those who do will not hesitate to oppress you. Unlike what might now be seen as the “AKP Spring” of the early 21st century, Erdogan’s trajectory now borrows much from the lessons of the rule of Ataturk himself, who erred on the side of one man, one party rule — strength and stability for the good of the nation. There are many for whom that message still rings true.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. 

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In a speech on May 8, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said, “If one day our nation says ‘enough,’ only then will we step aside.” It may have seemed innocuous, but in the world of social media and electoral spin, such passing phrases can quickly come back to haunt you. So it was for President Erdogan. The opposition jumped on this lone word to galvanize the most energetic campaign so far in the run-up to the snap general election called for June 24.

The Turkish word that Erdogan uttered, “tamam,” is a slippery one. While it means “enough,” it can also have a meaning closer to simply “OK” or “fine.” So, which is it for the president? Is this really the beginning of a groundswell of opposition to his long rule, or is there really nothing for him to worry about?

An alliance of convenience

The #tamam campaign has indeed become a worldwide trending hashtag, being taken up by Hollywood stars such as Elijah Wood. They are joined by a whole array of political opposition figures in Turkey, with tweets from Republican People’s Party (CHP) presidential candidate Muharrem Ince; Meral Aksener, leader of the new breakaway conservative nationalist Good Party (IP); and the leader of the old guard Islamist Felicity Party (SP), Temel Karamollaoglu.

Though the charismatic Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas remains in detention following the crackdown on the opposition People’s Democratic Party (HDP), his Twitter account offered his “T A M A M” by proxy and his co-leader, Pervin Buldan, added her voice to the campaign. This paints a picture of an entire opposition landscape — from secular Kemalists to hardline Sunni Islamists to Kurdish democrats — united behind one phrase and one demand.

Such a groundswell ought to prove formidable, and yet the cracks are betrayed by one tweet from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, whose platform is currently blocked in Turkey under the state of emergency imposed following the failed coup of July 2016: “I love Turkey. I love Turkish culture and people. The beautiful city of Istanbul…  great food, great wine, great culture. I call on Erdogan to unblock Wikipedia and to listen to the people! #tamam #wemissturkey.”

The sentiment to uphold a people and a nation as inherently good (i.e. of like-mind to oneself) in opposition to a single man who acts as a spoiler and dictator, suppressing masses that would otherwise share my worldview, is a common one. It is an echo of similar refrains used in reference to 20th-century dictators and also contemporary ones. Yet the narrative that one man — Recep Tayyip Erdogan — is suppressing the will of the Turkish people is palliative. It does not get to the heart of the issue.

Erdogan is indeed a symbol

All the most successful political leaders are men — and occasionally women — who have been adept at identifying access routes to power and influence. These access routes already existed within the framework of a society. An individual leader is merely someone who is firstly astute enough to spot it and, secondly, happens to embody everything that is required to make the most of that route.

President Erdogan is now plainly a one-man hate figure for a large segment of Turkish society and wider international observers. He personifies for many everything that is wrong with Turkey, everything that is suspicious, corrupt and vengeful. There is, on the face of it, nothing extraordinary about a broad desire to remove a political leader who has been in power as long as President Erdogan. It is part of a natural cycle of renewal. But there is more to this than the desire for a new face. Many in Turkey are not simply tired of Erdogan — they loathe and reject everything he stands for.

Just as President Erdogan has become a symbol for the opposition to him, so too has he become a symbol for his supporters. It is, perhaps, a difficult and dangerous place to find oneself. In many ways, Erdogan the man and even Erdogan the politician has been hollowed out. Every day, it becomes harder to distinguish the man himself, his own drives and passions, from those that are attached to his person by others. There is every reason to suppose that the more vehemently the opposition rejects President Erdogan, the more entrenched the support that holds him up will become.

The sins of our fathers

As much as we like to focus on the here and now, and to believe that the vote in Turkey on June 24 will be about current issues in the lives of people today, much about what we do in the politics of the present is preset in the actions of the past. Turkey is not a dictatorship in the way of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s Egypt or even of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. That is precisely what makes elections in Turkey so important. It was also not a democracy prior to President Erdogan in the way of Britain or the US.

It is easy in today’s analysis to gloss over a 20th century in which the religiously-minded majority in Turkey were second-class citizens. Generations grew up under far more dictatorial conditions than exist today in which cultural and Islamic practices were forcibly uprooted in the name of progress. Even after the partial liberalization of the 1950s, the military system still ensured that this sector of society was unrepresented. It became as much a class issue as a religious one.

What Erdogan and his party have achieved in the 21st century is extraordinary. He has not only given this constituency representation, but also overwhelming power and economic success. In that sense, a social revolution has occurred in Turkey. While it may be viewed more as a counterrevolution by many secularists, the figure of President Erdogan has become the embodiment of that transformation for what has remained, until now, a majority of the electorate.

The real threat to President Erdogan is from within, not from outside. The excited rumors about the possibility of former President Abdullah Gul — co-founder of the ruling Justice and Development Party or AKP — running against Erdogan on June 24 would have indeed been explosive had they come to pass. As it is, Gul shied away from the challenge. Just as secular Kemalists have always put their faith in the old guard in times of crisis, the base of support for the AKP will remain as well. Until it splits, they won’t. No amount of tamams will change that equation.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a master at outflanking his political opponents. Despite rumors that an early general election would be called, no one expected it to be quite so last minute. On June 24, Turkey will go to the polls in a watershed vote that will — so the script goes — see Erdogan consolidate his grip on a new executive presidency in a transformed political landscape.

Once again, President Erdogan has showed himself to be a politician who goes with his gut and trusts in the enduring appeal of his persona among the bedrock of conservative support in the Anatolian heartland. He has also showed that he is a man unafraid to take the risks needed to keep winning in politics.

When the army — the old guardian of the secular order — threatened another “postmodern” coup in the face of Abdullah Gul’s appointment to the presidency in 2007, then-Prime Minister Erdogan called their bluff by letting the electorate decide in snap polls. When support for this ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) wilted in 2015, he shunned coalitions and called another poll that brought the AKP back as a majority-ruling party.

Erdogan has also been as ruthless in his alliances. Since coming to office in 2002, he has engaged in talks with Abdullah Ocalan, the imprisoned leader of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), on settling the Kurdish issue, sidelined major allies within his own party such as Gul and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, and subsequently formed an alliance with Devlet Bahceli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

Such a track record suggests a man who knows when to make his move, and yet this latest gamble has created one of the most unlikely of outcomes even before the poll has occurred: It has triggered a creative and potentially transformative reaction from the long moribund main opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

Signs of fight in the opposition

Much analysis of Turkish politics over the past two decades has been increasingly obsessed with the figure of President Erdogan and his effect on the nation — almost to the exclusion of all else. Whether supporters or detractors, he is held up as the wellspring for all. Yet this simple act of adulation or vilification obscures much of the reality.

The success of the AKP has been meteoric. It has galvanized not simply a pious conservative base, but a vast hinterland of voters who felt unrepresented by the traditional secular elite and who saw opportunity — economic and otherwise — in the rise of the AKP. The party also arrived at a moment when the ability of the traditional establishment to maintain power with military force, if necessary, was waning.

Yet despite its evident success, the AKP has also succeeded against a stagnant main opposition. Since 2002, the electoral share of the CHP has remained largely static at between 20 to 25%. It has a solid constituency among the secular, Kemalist populations of Thrace, the Aegean seaboard and certain metropolitan areas (as well as religious minority groups such as the Alevi), yet it has made no significant inroad into other constituencies.

The principle threat that the AKP has had to calculate in elections has been from the two smaller opposition blocs: the far-right nationalist MHP and the party backing Kurdish aspirations, currently the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). This is where AKP votes have been taken. But an unprecedented move by the CHP on April 22 to offer 15 of its members of parliament to the newly-formed Iyi Party has thrown potential new life into the contest.

Pretender to the throne

The Iyi Party was formed by Meral Aksener, a conservative politician from the far-right MHP who split with the party over its alliance with President Erdogan and has now gone on the offensive with her own bid for the presidency. The technicalities of electoral law meant that her party needed the parliamentary representation offered by the CHP in order to qualify for the June 24 poll.

That such support has been offered is not completely unthinkable. The notion that the CHP must create alliances with more conservative politicians has been tried before. At the presidential election of 2014, then-Prime Minister Erdogan was challenged by Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, a conservative academic who stood as the joint candidate of the CHP and the MHP.

With her pious persona and strong nationalist credentials, Aksener is seen as a genuine challenger to Erdogan. It has even been suggested that she was the reason for the decision to call snap elections on June 24, so quickly that her Iyi Party would be disqualified from standing. Yet she is not of President Erdogan’s stature and, crucially, her party is nationalist but secular in orientation. Most of Erdogan’s base would still be wary of her.

This is where the CHP has been truly audacious. The party that has consistently failed to offer a new vision of a way forward has been planting rumors of its ability to lend a hand in resurrecting an earlier AKP vision. The whispers are that former President Gul — a more moderate AKP founder member and one of the few politicians who could challenge President Erdogan — has been approached to stand as an alternative candidate.

Any port in a storm

Nothing could be more ironic. Abdullah Gul — the man the CHP, with support from the military, attempted to thwart from taking the presidency partly due to the headscarf his wife wears. Such is the surreal nature of Turkish politics. Yet it is just the kind of bold thinking that could make the CHP relevant once more.

The hard truth is that with the dawn of the 21th century and the delegitimizing of the military as an arm of government in Turkey, the CHP was not ready for genuinely democratic politics. When parties from an Islamist base had gained support and power in the past, the military had simply stopped them when it got too much for the establishment. As that threat receded, so did the ability of the traditional secular parties to get into government.

Much of the domestic turmoil in Turkey over the past five years has been the result of feuding within the conservative political landscape — whether rifts between leaders within the AKP, the collapse of the tacit alliance between the AKP and Fethullah Gulen’s Hizmet movement, or the new emergence of Aksener as a conservative rival to President Erdogan.

The fact that the CHP has even been mooted to be making a move that could shake up these equations is a startling turnaround that bodes well for Turkish politics. President Erdogan could even consider taking the credit for this reinvigoration. With his track record, you would still get very long odds on his not retaining the presidency. Yet the array of opponents he has now amassed — from the secular opposition to alienated Kurds and Gulenists and even elements of the conservative base — could make this one of the most unpredictable polls in recent Turkish history.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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In November 2015, a Turkish F16 fighter jet shot down a Russian Sukhoi Su-24M on the Syrian-Turkish border, sparking a diplomatic row that resulted in painful Russian sanctions against Ankara. Two recent incidents in the Syrian War illustrate not only how international that conflict has become, but also how opaque and surreal it is.

First, a Russian-made missile was blamed for the destruction of a Turkish tank and the killing of eight soldiers in the single largest loss of Turkish lives in the Afrin offensive to date. On the same day, a Russian fighter jet was shot down in Idlib province. All the evidence suggests that the Syrian rebels who did so have strong links to Turkey.

What is termed the Syrian Civil War is now a convoluted set of interrelated conflicts occurring in the geographical space internationally recognized as Syria. The contortions now being performed by some of the outside actors in these conflicts can only magnify for the Syrian forces involved their plight as pawns in much bigger strategic games.

The responses to the latest incidents highlight the importance placed upon Russian-Turkish relations in the context of the conflict. Both sides wish to maintain an engaged stance with each other. Not only was there no Turkish reaction to the suggestion of Russian materiel being responsible for Turkish deaths, but the Russians responded to the downing of their jet by Turkish allies by asking the Turks for assistance in the repatriation of the pilot’s body.

Russia has since asked for Turkey’s further cooperation in recovering the jet and establishing what sort of device was used to down it. This strangely gentlemanly behavior among large powers on different sides of the Syrian conflict calls the entire war itself into question. How long can conflict be sustained if the opposing international backers are inching closer and closer together?

Asymmetric alliance

This question highlights a recurring issue at the heart of Turkish foreign policy since the Arab Uprisings, not only with relation to Russia, but the United States as well. For all President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s posturing for his domestic audience, the hard truth is that Turkey is a junior partner whenever it steps to the negotiating table with either major power.

The stark difference between Russian-Turkish relations today, and relations in 2015 following the Turkish downing of a Russian bomber, is the result not of rapprochement so much as the weakness of the Turkish position. As has been witnessed since the beginning of the Syrian conflict, Russia’s position remains virtually static. It backs President Bashar al-Assad’s forces. All other actors are illegitimate. Most are active targets under the catchall of “terrorists.”

Turkey has always been the most hawkish among the nations that lined up behind the US in support of the rebel uprising. It has maintained that Assad must go in order for any political settlement to take place. It has actively backed rebel groups, and its forces are now fighting on Syrian soil for territory. As they do so, they get closer and closer to Russian forces.

Yet they do so with Russian largesse, and it is clear that such largesse has its limits. Russia controls the airspace and appears reluctant to give Turkey a free rein in the Kurdish enclave of Afrin. Yet Turkey is useful to Russia. It has control over portions of the Syrian rebels. It is also a major country within the NATO alliance, offering an opportunity for disruption that is a key strategic goal of the Vladimir Putin regime.

By bringing Turkey into the peace talks it has conducted with Iran, Russia plays at presenting Turkey as a powerbroker with a place at the top table. It buys the talks credibility whilst simultaneously undermining and isolating the US. It also pushes Turkey into the same corner the United States had previously been pushed into — that of feeling the pressure to accept Assad as a fact on the ground.

Setting the agenda

Turkey is not the United States. It has fewer resources at its disposal with which to resist Russian power. With the Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Simsek emphasizing on February 9 the Turkish desire for a “unified, stable Syria” above all else, it appears that the diplomatic trajectory is on a collision course with Turkish goals in Syria. The insistence on the removal of President Assad has softened as the conflict has drawn on. Others concessions may soon follow.

Turkey seems close to the point where it might theoretically accept Assad’s forces, with the backing of Russian airpower and Iranian militias, overrunning the Kurdish YPG militias all the way to the Turkish frontier. There is, however, one problem: The role of spoiler — so often the preserve of the Russians — is now being played in Syria by the United States.

While many predicted that US support for the Syrian Kurds would evaporate with the defeat of the Islamic State, it seems that the Trump administration sees the Syrian Kurds as the best way of maintaining leverage within the Syrian state. The attempt to form a US-trained border force made up ostensibly of Syrian Kurdish YPG militiamen is a case in point.

The result is that Turkey has been forced across the border into Syria, in pursuit of its own strategic objectives. Yet this move has brought it directly into conflict with Russia, an external player with a far stronger hand in Syria, and one that has recently faced down the Turks in the diplomatic row that followed the 2015 downing of the Russian fighter jet. Turkey is loath to isolate itself from Russia again. The result is an awkward dance in Syria that is likely to get a lot more difficult.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The scepter of Turkey’s reorientation from its traditional pro-US foreign policy has been the subject of fevered speculation in Western policy circles for many years now. The latest series of spats between the administrations of Donald Trump and Recep Tayyip Erdogan — two men not inclined to dodge a confrontation — appears to lend added weight to such concerns. Is the fear justified?

There is no question that relations between the long-time allies are strained. In recent months, there’s been a dispute in which the US suspended most visa services in Turkey in response to the arrest of a Turkish citizen employed by the US consulate; repeated disgruntlement on the part of Turkey about US support for the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, including the recent summoning of the US Charge d’Affaires in Ankara, Philip Kosnett; and now a tit-for-tat advisory against travel to the respective countries.

These recent rumblings can be viewed within the context of a broader move away from unconditional support for the US on the part of Turkey. This has its roots in the shift in political control from the traditional liberal-secular elite to an emergent conservative-religious elite. One of the first telling outward signs was the Turkish parliament’s refusal to allow US use of the Incirlik air base in southeast Turkey in the Iraq War of 2003.

Undiplomatic diplomacy

The decision by Turkey to advise its citizens against travel to the US must be seen within the context of diplomatic — or not so diplomatic — posturing rather than as a response to actual threat. The Turkish advisory immediately follows a US travel advisory to American citizens that cited Turkey as an “increased security risk” due to “terrorism and arbitrary detentions.”

These happen to be exactly the same reasons given by the Turkish government in issuing its own advisory against travel to the US. This is tit-for-tat diplomacy that bears a striking resemblance to similar episodes in recent US-Russia relations, in which actions by one side led to the threat of reciprocal action from the other.

However, though Turkey would like the diplomatic spat to be viewed in the same light as American-Russian entanglements, it is significantly different. The reality is that US-Turkey relations are deeply asymmetric. The US is the global superpower and Turkey is an ally. If the US issues an advisory against its citizens traveling to Turkey, it has real consequences for the Turkish tourism sector.

Unlike the US, Turkey is not a rich country. It is an emerging economy with reasonable growth, but many regions have significant reliance on tourism. This reliance was observed in the Russian ban on its citizens visiting Turkey in 2015. That hit Turkey hard and eventually led to a rapprochement. The US is further away geographically, but it still has an effect.

In contrast, a Turkish advisory is much more about diplomatic positioning. It has negligible effect on the US or its economy. Though President Erdogan would not like to see it this way, its prime function is simply to send a message to the Trump administration. The trouble is, when you are the weak partner in an asymmetric relationship, such actions can end up simply looking like petulance rather than a serious threat.

Many will say that these actions hold in them the threat of Turkey abandoning its long-time allies to the West. The question to consider, though, is abandonment in order to pursue what? The idea of a drift to the East has involved theories of a reorientation of Turkish foreign policy toward the Middle East, toward China and even toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which is a major supplier of Turkey’s energy needs. None of these are yet convincing alternatives.

Zero-sum politics

The counterrevolution that followed the Arab Uprisings has destroyed Turkish aims at an integrated Middle East. The Syrian Civil War has pitted Turkey against both Iran and Russia, even leading to the downing of a Russian jet and the ensuing diplomatic crisis. Perhaps the only steady partner has been China, yet it is still no substitute for the alliance with the US and NATO.

Despite President Erdogan’s evident antipathy toward much of what the US represents, his government knows it must remain within its orbit for now. There simply isn’t a safe alternative. The world is increasingly ruled by inflexible strongmen who see politics as a zero sum game, just as Trump and Erdogan do. None of those leaders — in Russia, in the Middle East or elsewhere — are reliable enough for Turkey to put its faith in.

The posturing that now characterizes US-Turkey relations will increasingly become the norm, as Ankara seeks to gain the maximum leverage for itself in an ever more multipolar world. Yet, while the US may not reestablish itself as the close, intimate ally it was in the 20th century, Turkey will also be careful not to sever ties completely, nor seek a new overbearing ally in an unstable Asian neighborhood.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The referendum result in Turkey­ bore an uncanny resemblance to last year’s result in the Brexit vote and will also mirror it in the fallout. Like the British government, the Turkish administration will present an almost perfectly divided vote as the united will of the people as a single body. It is a majoritarian attitude that will justify the wholesale implementation of the proposed reforms. That much is clear. But what is more obscure is what the shadow men of the Turkish ruling party will do next.

All eyes are naturally on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — the charismatic leader who now appears poised to usher in the most profound revolution in Turkish society since Kemal Ataturk instituted his radical Westernizing campaign of the 1920s and 30s. The parliamentary opposition to Erdogan’s reforms has remained largely ineffective, with its constituency largely static. Yet the president only just won this vote. Indeed, many observers have questioned whether he even won it fairly at all. Why was such a dominant political figure pushed to the brink of defeat?

The answer lies in the conservative political majority in Turkey and even within the ranks of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) itself. Erdogan’s reforms had some heavyweight, if fairly muted, critics. Former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said in January: “I conveyed my views, evaluation and concerns on the current amendment proposal’s method and content to our president and prime minister in detail.” Those concerns are regarded as one of the reasons he resigned as prime minister in May 2016.

AKP founders such as former President Abdullah Gul and former Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc have also been noted by their absence from the “Yes” campaign in the referendum. These less nationalist, more consensus-building politicians are now of fundamental importance to the future of Turkey. Their importance lies not in polarizing opposition, which is what has marked most discourse in Turkish politics recently, but in their ability to act from within the ruling party. Such a knife-edge result increases their influence.

Victory at a price

What is clear is that President Erdogan still has huge support. Indeed, much of the change that has occurred since AKP rule began in 2002 has been for the greater good, including the suppression of the military role in politics, the acknowledgement of Islam as an integral part of Turkish culture and, until the conflicts of the past seven years, a growing openness to both regional neighbors and the minority Kurdish community within Turkey.

The danger lies in the fact that the Turkish Republic has been built, from day one, on distinctly undemocratic foundations. Behind a façade of European-style democracy, the regime of Ataturk built a one-party state with a single acceptable vision of what Turkish society could be. Until the rise of the AKP, any alternative narrative had been snuffed out, if necessary, by force. One of those competing narratives — that of the Islamic and Ottoman heritage of the region — has been empowered by the AKP and its success largely personified in the figure of President Erdogan.

Do not underestimate the power of the feeling, embodied by the AKP, that “it’s our turn.” While many in the AKP clearly feel uneasy about the concentration of power in the hands of the president, they also feel the weight of Turkish history. This is a country in which a constituency of provincial, religiously observant voters has long been alienated. Even those who are uneasy about the reforms are also nervous of the AKP losing its grip on power, lest it usher in a return of the old guard. Such processes have already played out in less stable states, such as Egypt.

That nervousness explains, in part, the reticence of the likes of Davutoglu, Gul and Arinc in the lead up to the referendum. At the same time, their silence is an acknowledgement of the political power and ballot box appeal of the president’s circle within the AKP. The question now is whether, in light of an extremely narrow and contentious victory, those silence ranks within the ruling party will feel emboldened to counsel restraint and compromise, or remain silent in the hope that a better Turkey is indeed born as the president promises.

Widening the circle

Why should the president compromise? The idea that such a dominant figure would take counsel from politicians who could be viewed as yesterday’s men might seem perverse. Yet the referendum result presents Erdogan with a new conundrum: In forging ahead with the remaking of the Turkish Republic, just how wide, or how narrow, does he want his circle of support to be?

His enemies are now well arrayed and clearly defined. They include the official opposition parties of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) coalition, spanning a range of secular nationalists, liberals, radical left wingers and the Kurdish vote. By his embrace of the hardline Nationalist Action Party (MHP), Erdogan has made enemies of most Kurdish voters and the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Further afield, the president’s stance is increasingly isolating him from the European Union, the United States and most Middle Eastern countries. Nationalist rabble rousing has proved devastatingly effective in elections, but it has also been hugely polarizing. The calculation is whether Erdogan can afford to remain at odds with even some of the central figures of his own party, or whether, now that he has consolidated power, he will look to them to offer avenues to wider support and acceptance.

If the president chooses his equivalent of what the British term a “hard Brexit,” there is the prospect of prolonged instability. This referendum has signaled the dismantling of one pillar of the state Ataturk built: that of the suppression of Islam. Those within the AKP support base will welcome that achievement. Yet there is another pillar — that of Turkish ethnic nationalism — upon which Erdogan is now standing. Until compromise is sought in that arena, peace will continue to elude Turkey.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: ARSELA

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Turkey needs a new constitution. Yet despite the claims on both sides of the current debate, the mechanics of the system are changing, but not the system itself. It is a shame that the focus has become the merits of a presidential versus a parliamentary system, since that is not the main flaw of the current constitution—written by a military junta in 1982, shortly after it staged a coup d’état.

The tone and content of the current constitution lay bare its fundamental failure—that it protects the state over and above the people; that it places the military in the position of guardian of the state; and, most divisively of all, that it maintains a nationalist mantra of ethnic exclusivity that is at odds with the manifest reality. For the past decade, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has been courageous in addressing this issue. It has met with considerable resistance.

Lessons From History

It is easy to view the current turmoil surrounding Turkey’s constitutional reforms in simple and familiar terms: a democratic constitution—bringing to mind the American or French models—is to be torn up by an autocratic strongman intent on establishing one-man rule. While not entirely unrealistic, this is also a long way from the whole truth. To understand the parameters of debate, it helps to understand the evolution of Turkey’s constitution.

The first constitution of the modern state of Turkey was drafted under conditions of war and imperial collapse in 1921. As such, it was a document of convenience. Its fundamental purpose was to unite those who had traditionally sworn allegiance to the sultan and caliph against the subjugation of their lands by invaders from Christian Europe.

Ironically, given the many revisions since, that original 1921 document is regarded by Kurdish groups—the country’s largest ethnic minority—as the best blueprint for a new constitution. This is because, in rallying diverse ethnic groups to the war effort, it made no mention of a specifically Turkish nation or of the people living under the constitution as Turks. It also contained provision for regional autonomy within the state.

Founding father Kemal Ataturk’s redrafting of 1924 was a very different document. With Turkey established and its borders secure, his regime began the work of nation building. This drive toward nationalism was aided by two factors. The first was the ethno-religious cleansing of non-Muslim populations: The earlier removal of Christian Armenians from Anatolia during World War I was followed by the compulsory exchange of populations of Christians and Muslims with the Greek state from 1923.

The second was the establishment of an ethnic rather than religious identity in the remaining Muslims. The nationalist pursuit of ethnic purity is not unique to Turkish history. It is the Achilles heel underlying many state-building projects. Even the 99.8% of the Turkish population that is Muslim are far from all being ethnically Turkish. Excluding for a moment the Kurdish population, there are large hidden and less hidden ethnic strains of Slav, Greek, Laz, Circassian, Tatar and Arab, to name but a few.

By insisting on a purely ethnic Turkish identity within the constitution, the modern state has remained locked in a crisis that has ebbed and flowed ever since 1924. In 1961, the military junta that overthrew the elected government enshrined military oversight in the redrafted constitution, including the creation of a National Security Council (NSC) that institutionalized the power of the military in Turkish politics. This role was deepened by the 1982 redraft following the military coup of 1980.

The current document not only maintains an exclusively Turkish ethnic tone (e.g. Article 66: “Everyone bound to the Turkish State through the bond of citizenship is a Turk”), but also outlaws the use of languages other than Turkish (e.g. Article 3: “The State of Turkey, with its territory and nation, is an indivisible entity. Its language is Turkish”; Article 42: “No language other than Turkish shall be taught as a mother tongue to Turkish citizens at any institution of education”).

These flaws are fundamental to the roots of the Kurdish question in Turkey. Without an acknowledgement of Kurdish ethnic identity and linguistic and cultural rights, the state cannot hope to find an enduring political settlement to a problem that has been approached almost exclusively from the perspectives of security and economics.

Security Trumps Pluralism

Turkey’s constitutions have been written by military men for whom strong, centralized control came naturally. With the new constitutional reforms, a major opportunity appears. It will be the first constitution in the history of the modern Turkish state drafted by civilians rather than military men. Since the AKP began pushing for it, hopes have been raised of a democratization, liberalization and diversification of the document.

That is not what is being delivered. Not all of the blame for this lies at the feet of either President Recep Tayyip Erdogan or the ruling AKP. Attempts at finding a consensus for a redrafting of the constitution met with resistance from the opposition secular nationalist Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP). While the AKP has gained the assistance of the minority Nationalist Action Party (MHP) in pushing the recent reforms through parliament, the CHP offers an alternative redraft, yet one with few genuine reforms.

The CHP proposal offers one element that can be seen as a liberalization that would address Kurdish grievances. It involves the reduction of the current 10% threshold for entry into parliament to 3%. This extremely high current threshold was conceived by a military junta with the expressed intention of barring Kurdish representation from the Turkish parliament. It was, until the election of Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) candidates in 2015, reasonably successful in that aim.

The CHP decries the proposed constitutional amendments backed by President Erdogan and the AKP as eliminating neutrality within key branches of government. CHP deputy for the province of Canakkale, Muharrem Erkek, has stated that “This proposal moves Turkey away from a democracy. It would eliminate the independence and neutrality of the judiciary.” Such an analysis is disingenuous.

While technically accurate, it omits to acknowledge that the Turkish judiciary has—alongside the bureaucratic establishment and military—long been far from neutral and, in fact, propagated the highly undemocratic system laid down in Turkey by successive constitutions with the chief aim of protecting a secular nationalist establishment. This judiciary has been instrumental in banning Kurdish and Islamist parties throughout the state’s history.

Far from dismantling democracy, constitutional reform in Turkey would lead the country away from a history of military constitutions, coups and repressive actions that have curtailed religious, cultural and linguistic freedoms. The removal of the 1982 Turkish constitution would be a good day for Turkey. It does not necessarily follow that what the AKP propose is positive.

The most obvious reason to doubt the reformist credentials of the proposed constitutional reforms is that the AKP is achieving them with the parliamentary assistance of the MHP. The MHP is Turkey’s far-right nationalist party. It is instinctively conservative, distinctly ethnically exclusive and against any concession to the Kurdish minority. A constitutional reform backed by the MHP will not resolve Turkey’s fundamental weaknesses.

The result is that the central emphasis has become that of Erdogan’s presidential system, creating a strong presidency that will eliminate the often ineffective workings of the parliamentary system—with the MHP leader Devlet Bahceli likely offered the vice presidency. It provides a comforting focus on security and stability, but not the concessions needed for genuine long-term stability.

It is noteworthy that the constitutional reforms that are now heading toward a referendum have not had unqualified support even from within the ruling party. Former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who resigned in May 2016 after a strained relationship with President Erdogan, was a senior figure who was clearly ill at ease with the relentless focus on a presidential system.

A Missed Opportunity?

Sadly for the Turkish people, events both internal and external have contributed to mean that this process is now occurring within an atmosphere of combative nationalism in which the space for consensus politics has been largely snuffed out. This may result in a historic missed opportunity. Some of the blame for that must inevitably fall to the ruling AKP and the president, but blame can be well distributed in the current climate of polarization.

Lest we forget, it was only a few short years ago that Erdogan’s AKP declared a “Kurdish Opening” when the government was in serious talks with imprisoned Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan, and that the move to rewrite the constitution was being hailed by many as fundamental to the resolution of the Kurdish conflict and the further democratization of Turkey.

Events are sometimes beyond any individual’s ability to influence—yes, even President Erdogan’s—and events in Turkey have become so destabilizing that to steer a broad, liberal course through them might well be impossible. Erdogan has offered Turkish citizens a strongman presidency with the stability to hold Turkey together and avoid weak coalition governments.

A majority will almost certainly back him at the polls. He has some validity in the claim that parliament has been unequal to the task of recent events. It failed in its ability to find consensus on constitutional reforms. And for all the ingenuity of Erdogan and the AKP, the opposition has been lamentable. Aside from the brave stance of the HDP, which drew voters as a result, the vote share of the main opposition CHP has barely changed in the 21^st century. This speaks of an inability to engage anyone outside its core supporters through genuinely new approaches to old problems.

What is wrong today is not the desire to rewrite the Turkish constitution, but that the rewriting is now taking place in a climate of securitization and nationalist isolationism, rather than a climate of democratization and liberalism. The fault lies not only with President Erdogan and the ruling AKP, but also with the Turkish opposition, the PKK, autocratic leaders in the Middle East, Russia and beyond, and the failure of the West—and in particular the European Union—to offer Turkey real incentives for change.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit: FGorgun

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The Middle East has no shortage of dysfunctional states. The fallout of the Arab Spring has left civil war in Syria, Iraq, Yemen and Libya. Beyond them, states such as Egypt and Jordan teeter on the edge of chaos, destabilized by their regimes’ own repressive tactics. Yet beyond the outright war zones, nowhere is more plagued by terrorist attacks than Turkey.

How has one of the region’s few Islamist governments—and a country that was, until the outbreak of war in Syria, viewed as a popular model for the Middle East—become the primary target of revolutionary ire?

One would assume that a fall from grace so spectacular, impacting people’s daily lives, their safety, the economy and international outreach in terms of soft power and commerce, would have led to a change of government at the very least.

Well, that did almost happen in July 2016. And it is funny how quickly events can send a smoke screen across the landscape of the past. Not so long ago, in June 2015, a general election saw a fall in support for the incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) government that was close to trimming its power in the first coalition government of the century. That fall in support was the result of both a weakening economy and a stalling of the hoped-for peace process with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Turkey’s Islamic nationalism

The steady march of instability on Turkey’s doorstep, coupled with the struggle to find the levels of growth enjoyed in the early boom years of the AKP government, led to an illiberal pivot. Hardship and instability inevitably herald illiberalism, yet the choices of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan—a hugely popular leader—have been decisive ones. In choosing to abandon a more progressive line toward the country’s Kurdish minority and a more inclusive attitude to regional politics, he embraced Turkey’s nationalist right.

Erdogan may genuinely have felt that his grip on power depended on such a move. The climate of the Middle East region has become one of siege. Incumbent regimes are keen to bolster tried and tested defenses against the onslaught of new, iconoclastic movements. Yet Erdogan’s choice, while making his power safe for the time being within Turkish politics, has also placed him in an unwinnable long-term position. He has chosen to win a battle decisively, but in doing so has allied himself to a decaying set of structures that are on the wane.

Nationalism has been tried before in the Middle East. It didn’t last in Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt—or even Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s day—when the conditions were far more favorable. Today, the identities that nationalism rests on are far more brittle. Turkey’s chaos is so potent today because it is once again fighting the two traditional foes of the state: Kurds and Islamists.

It is ironic that a government drawn from the Islamist movement, and long viewed suspiciously by the secular nationalist establishment, has now come to embody that same establishment so thoroughly that it is being attacked—like the establishment of old—by Kurds and Islamists once more. History is indeed a circular, rather than linear, affair in Turkey.

What must be done?

Erdogan’s government has proven that a lot can be gained from a siege mentality. He is not alone. Across the region—and the world—politicians are profiting from the sense of threat from outside. Whether it’s economic hardship, immigrants or a lack of ideological vision for the future, everywhere the lure of drawbridge nationalism is compelling. Nowhere more so than Turkey.

Yet the appeal does not alter the illusion. Things will not get better by that route. Repression of basic rights, introspection, protectionism and a closing down of channels of communication does not lead to prosperity anywhere. The figures are dire for Turkey. It is regularly cited as one of the most overexposed economies in terms of dollar debt repayments and the risk of capital flight. Its annual growth rate has plunged from 9.2% in 2010 to an estimated less than 3% for 2016.

In the tourism sector, the most important area of the economy for large swathes of the country, the crisis is acute. Istanbul’s terrorism threat has killed off its visitor numbers whilst the important resorts of the Mediterranean coast, which have not experienced any terrorism yet, are empty through a combination of fear and Vladimir Putin’s recent blockade on Russian charter flights. Visitor numbers were at their lowest for 25 years in 2016. In an economic future like this, Erdogan is going to need to keep offering panaceas.

The truth is that there is no credible alternative to Erdogan’s AKP in Turkey today. The other half of the truth is that things are not going to get better in 2017. In early 2018, without any apparent alternative, Erdogan will succeed in transforming Ataturk’s state into a presidential system in time for its 100^th anniversary.

The new strongman is built very much in the old founder’s own image. Turkey goes round and round. The future is the past.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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With the latest terrorist attack on Turkish soil—twin blasts close to the Besiktas football stadium in Istanbul that killed at least 38 people and injured many more—the inevitable focus will be on heightened security, an expectation of solidarity from global allies, and questions about how it was able to happen.

The fact remains, however, that another terrorist attack in Turkey is sad, yet almost inevitable. It was clear from the outset that this was likely to be a Kurdish militant attack. Three broad groups have been responsible for multiple attacks over the past year in Turkey: Islamist extremists, left-wing radicals and Kurdish militants.

To strike outside the Besiktas football stadium—a club known for its traditionally left-leaning support base—would be a strange target for left-wing groups. To target the police, who were the majority of the victims, would be unusual for Islamic State-inspired extremists, who tend to focus on soft, civilian targets, often in areas frequented by Western tourists.

Sure enough, the attack was claimed by the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK), a splinter group of the more widely known Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). The distinction will matter little to Turkey’s government, and perhaps even less to shocked outside observers around the world. Yet in that distinction lies the heart of the problem in Turkey today.

Turkey: Fighting at the extremes

The nuance that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government will avoid drawing out is that the TAK represents the most extreme wing of Kurdish militancy in Turkey. While Kurdish militants of the TAK still proclaim that the imprisoned Abdullah Ocalan is their leader, they exist as an expression of the dissatisfaction among some with the passive direction of the PKK in the mid-2000s, when it began engaging politically with the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

How much the TAK and the PKK work together or apart is hard to assess in the opaque world of militancy, yet at the other end of the spectrum, the near-outlawed political party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), is widely regarded as the non-violent political affiliate of the PKK in Turkish politics. While there is a continuum of Kurdish political activism from the TAK to the HDP, there is a wide gulf between them in terms of actions.

It is in that gulf that Erdogan’s government must seek a political resolution to the deepening conflict in the country. Yet it is a conflict for which no end appears to be in sight. Indeed, two parallel events have conspired to make a reduction in this conflict highly unlikely. Ironically, they are events in which the PKK was not directly involved.

The first is the rise of Islamic State (IS) in neighboring Syria, and the second is the attempted coup of July 2016 in Turkey. In combination, both events have placed Erdogan in a combative role as president—the footing of a classic war president. It has increased the nationalist posturing of his government, which has led it back into old conflict paradigms of the Turkish state.

Whether these events have accelerated a trend that Erdogan’s government was likely to follow eventually anyway, or whether they pushed it toward this extreme and away from consensus politics is hard to judge. However, the destination is the same. There is increasingly little daylight between the position of the ruling AKP and that of the hardline nationalist—and avowedly anti-Kurdish—MHP, or Nationalist Movement Party, in the Turkish political landscape.

Had Erdogan and the PKK leadership acted differently, the Turkish engagement in Syria against the Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) might not have the character that it does, and the post-coup crackdown on Kurdish political figures within Turkey might not have occurred. After all, the AKP government itself has not claimed the coup to be a Kurdish plot, but rather one perpetrated by Fethullah Gulen’s Islamist movement.

The strength to bend

Supporters of the Turkish government might ask why it should be they that change course. The usual mantra is that one should never bow to terrorists and that any compromise is defeat.

But the facts on the ground are such that Erdogan’s government now has the undisputed upper hand in Turkish politics. It has no threat from within the parliamentary system. President Erdogan is increasingly unchallengeable.

Faced with a build-up of Turkish nationalism from the ruling party, the reaction in Kurdish militancy is a similar move to the extremes. Yet in any battle, the weaker side has a tendency to entrench its positions. Its very weakness makes it loath to offer an olive branch. Were Erdogan’s government—from a position of strength—to play peacemaker with those Kurdish activists willing to reject violence, it could set the agenda.

Whenever Erdogan feels the time is right, he must rediscover an ability to apply the carrot as well as the stick. If he doesn’t, he may be left with an increasingly ungovernable country.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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It is no surprise that many have regarded the failed Turkish coup d’état as a false flag event—one masterminded by the government itself. After all, in its failure it does appear to have vastly strengthened the hand of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This accusation has even come from the main culprit that the Turkish government is blaming: exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen.

Coups have been the modus operandi of the Turkish state throughout its modern history. Yet what makes this one particularly curious is that it comes at a time when the public perception of military takeovers has become so negative that it was assumed no serious power player would entertain such a course of action. Indeed, coups in Turkey have often erred on the side of caution.

The coup of 1971 was a so-called “coup by memorandum,” in which the military issued a statement that led to the fall of the government. In 1997, Turkey even had what has been termed a “postmodern coup,” in that only the suggestion of the military’s wishes led Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to stand down.

This latest attempt on July 15 was either strangely old-fashioned or, as the conspiracy theorists suggest, yet another Turkish first: a false coup.

Beware the paranoia

Turkish politics is famously opaque, with talk of a “deep state” never far from the surface. Aside from the question of whether Erdogan controls that deep state—should it exist—or is in confrontation with it, there are reasons to assume this was not a coup of his own making. Most obviously, even for a gambling man, this was one hell of a gamble.

To unleash units of your own army, resulting in bombing raids and the deaths of 265 people would be cynicism on a massive and, as Erdogan says himself, treasonous scale. As the Turkish president spoke over FaceTime via an iPhone broadcast on TV, he appeared more vulnerable than theater would have allowed.

All coups are unpredictable events, even as they occur. To have hoped to stage-manage such acts would be dangerously foolish. All sides in Turkey know that coups here often lead to death sentences. Erdogan could have reasonably feared the worst should it have been successful.

The people’s president

The second key feature that does not ring true is Erdogan’s own current position. His electoral gamble of 2015 was a triumph that has put him in a stronger position than ever. He can rightly claim the backing of the majority of Turks. To stage a coup would be the act of a desperate man, and Erdogan is not in a desperate position.

His position may not be desperate, but it is not entirely comfortable. The resignation of his prime minister and long-time party ally, Ahmet Davutoglu, in May was a blow. In foreign policy, President Erdogan has been forced to wind himself back from confrontations with Russia and Israel. There are many in Turkey who despise him, but there are also many in his own party who are troubled by his dominance. These are unstable times for Turkish society.

This leads to the question at the heart of the failed coup once more: Just who was desperate enough to attempt such an ill-judged act?

On the face of it, the coup attempt had all the hallmarks of a classic Kemalist military takeover. The army has always been a bastion of secularism and Kemalist nationalist ideology. The statement read out on national TV claimed that the current government had undermined the secular nature of the Turkish state, a common Kemalist attack. Furthermore, the junta assuming control was named the “Peace at Home Council”—a reference to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s famous phrase, “Peace At Home, Peace in the World.”

A Headless Serpent?

These facts would suggest a Kemalist element within the military, though it seems clear that it did not have backing from within the Republican People’s Party (CHP) leadership—the party of Ataturk’s legacy. It also appears not to have had the backing of key high-ranking figures in the military. This weakness proved fatal. The question is: Were promises made and broken?

One theory doing the rounds is that Kemalist elements in the military coaxed Gulenists—those loyal to the cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has been in a fierce battle with Erdogan’s forces for the last few years—into staging a coup they thought would have broad support. The line of this theory runs that, by doing so, Kemalists would see the removal of their Gulenist rivals in the inevitable purge.

The problem with this theory is that Erdogan currently poses a much greater threat to the Kemalist nature of the Turkish state than does Gulen’s Hizmet Movement.

This brings us back to that reclusive exiled cleric, Fethullah Gulen. Erdogan’s spat with him is clearly personal. The witch-hunt for his supporters in all areas of public life has been gathering pace. Could this have been a last desperate attempt to halt Erdogan?

Despite all the posturing from the main players and all the conspiracy theories, the facts of the coup point more to chaotic bravado than strategic thinking. This coup attempt was conducted without the firm backing of vital military top brass. It failed to make the capture of Erdogan a fundamental priority. But perhaps most importantly, it took no measure of the clear public mood in Turkey against the use of coups to further political aims.

It appears to have been a mid-level plot by elements within either the Gulenist or secular Kemalist political streams. As such, Fethullah Gulen and the CHP leadership can claim confidently not to have been involved.

But the question remains that for things to have reached the point they did, it is highly likely that the people at the top may have known—discreetly—what was coming. They may have thought it was ill judged, but they may also have thought to wait and see. After all, one never knows exactly how things will play out.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Among the bewildering array of grim predictions and shady statistics that characterized the British referendum of membership of the European Union (EU) was one truly breathtaking claim. It came from the campaign literature of the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) and the Vote Leave movement, and it stated that if the UK stayed in the EU, one key danger would be the accession of Turkey “by 2020.”

This claim was astonishing on many counts. Not only has Turkey’s accession bid been stalled now for a number of years, with interest in the project diminishing markedly within Turkey itself, but the main driver for its curtailment has been anti-Turkish sentiment within Europe.

Ironically, given the picture painted by UKIP and the Leave camp, the main obstacle to Turkish accession is anti-Turkish and broader anti-Muslim sentiment within the French and Austrian states. With even greater irony, it was actually the UK that was one of Turkey’s most consistent and vocal supporters in its accession bid.

For the UKIP claim of a Turkish entry by 2020 to come true, however, the UK would have needed to exercise monumentally more clout within the EU than it actually had. And perversely, it is the UK’s exit from the EU that has probably buried the hope of Turkish accession to the union for good.

European Islamophobia

It has become comfortable, over the past few years, to pin the blame for the failure of Turkey’s EU accession bid upon its combative president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Despite using the accession process as a key driver for internal reform in the early years of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) rule, Erdogan has since become notably cool on the project.

The result has been a stalling of reform, a regression toward conflict with the Kurdish community and a tightening of civil liberties. Within the atmosphere of instability in the Middle East, nationalism has made a resurgent comeback, and Erdogan’s Turkey can now be viewed as a deeply suspect candidate for membership.

This is a comfortable narrative, but the seeds were not sown solely on Turkish soil. The persistent anti-Islamic political debate within France and Austria, framing the EU as a “Christian club” and stating that Turkey was unsuitable to become a member, was a key motivator in alienating a majority of conservative and nationalist Turkish voters. They understood when they were not wanted.

Turkey’s European Friends

Despite French and Austrian opposition, backed by certain smaller nations, Turkish hopes rested on the support of Germany and the UK for Turkish accession. In the tripartite power balance of the EU (Germany, Britain and France), these two friends gave Turkey hope that if they merited entry, they might be granted it.

This had kept the European dream alive not only among secular, Westernized Turks in the major cities of the west, but also among key elements within the ruling Islamist party, the AKP. Ahmet Davutoglu, who was prime minister until his resignation in May, was a keen supporter of the accession process and its power to reform Turkey. He had reinstalled Volkan Bozkir as his minister for EU affairs—another powerful advocate.

However, the gradual cooling of Erdogan’s interest and his steady consolidation of power within the AKP has seen this window narrowing. With Davutoglu’s resignation, Erdogan has replaced Bozkir with Omer Celik, someone who will have a far less conciliatory agenda. Furthermore, the recent EU-Turkey deal on migration has set a new tone for relations.

The New Nationalism

If the Brexit vote reveals anything, it is the emergence of a resurgent and belligerent nationalism across Europe. It is a nationalism that could yet destroy the EU project entirely, with potentially violent consequences. Key drivers have been economic decline and mismanagement, coupled with the eagerness of those in far more impoverished African and Asian states to seek new opportunities in Europe.

The desperation with which the EU has sought a deal with Turkey to close its western border to migrants must surely strike Erdogan and many in Turkey as deeply hypocritical and protectionist. It does not account, after all, for the fact that refugees continue to flow into Turkey from the east, that Turkey is already burdened with one of the highest refugee populations in the world, and that they will simply mass on the Turkish border with the EU.

The Brexit vote will have sent another key signal to Erdogan, one that Russian President Vladimir Putin has already acknowledged with undisguised satisfaction: the European states are shutting up shop. They are pulling up the drawbridges and each nation state must fend for itself.

In this harsh new landscape, the Turkish EU accession dream will wither even faster than before.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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When the academic Ahmet Davutoglu published the book Strategic Depth in 2001, on the eve of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) rise to power, he set out a foreign policy vision for Turkey that included the concept of “zero problems with neighbors.” It became a key plank of AKP policy as he became minister of foreign affairs in then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government.

Fast-forward 15 years, and the political landscape has not only come full circle, but is now heading into unknown waters. Davutoglu is now prime minister. Yet his carefully built policy of zero problems with neighbors has been consumed by the multiplying crises of a region in turmoil. Turkey is now suffering the consequences of the Syrian-Iraqi war perhaps more than any other country outside those battlegrounds.

The latest attacks in central Istanbul on January 12 highlight just how many enemies the Turkish state now has. This is not an isolated act of terrorism, but one in a rapidly growing list of atrocities that reveal Turkey as a territory in which multiple conflicts are now playing out simultaneously. This is extremely dangerous for the country.

Enemies everywhere

The Istanbul attack appears to have been the work of a 27-year-old Saudi-born Syrian working on behalf of the Islamic State (IS). As such, it is a further example of IS bringing its war onto Turkish territory. It first did this in July 2015 when the terrorist organization attacked Kurdish volunteers at Suruc on the Syrian border. This was followed by the worst terrorist attack in Turkish history on a pro-Kurdish rally in Ankara in October.

The latest attack is a departure in that its target was very deliberately the Turkish state, not the Kurds. Sultanahmet is the epicenter of the Turkish tourism industry, in the shadow of the Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia—Turkey’s most recognizable symbols abroad. As such, it is both a physical and a symbolic attack in much the same way that 9/11 was in the United States.

Turkish policy under the AKP to this point has appeared to be predicated on the assumption that Islamist terrorism could not affect Turkey. It is after all a Muslim state governed by a party with Islamist roots. This was reflected in the low priority given to combatting IS, which at one point appeared to be a potential counterweight to resurgent Kurds in northern Syria aligned with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

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The Islamic State was also seen as a counterweight to the Assad regime in Syria, which has likely hit Turkish territory with terrorist attacks through proxies such as in Reyhanli in 2013. In both cases, there was a clear temptation for the Turkish state to view its enemy’s enemy as, if not a friend, at least no threat to itself. This calculation needed reviewing from the moment Turkey relented to US pressure to use Incirlik airbase for strikes against IS and openly joined the coalition against the group.

The result is a situation where Turkey now has a bewildering cast of enemies—IS, the PKK, the Syrian Kurdish YPG units, the Assad regime and, increasingly, Russia and Iran—not all of whom are on the same side, but all of whom can use Turkey’s many conflicts as leverage in their own struggles with the AKP government.

The aftermath of a terrorist attack that strikes at the heart of the Turkish state might seem a strange moment for reconciliation. However, despite the rhetoric of the Turkish government, terrorism is rarely tamed and never ultimately defeated through arms alone. In the current situation, Turkey needs to draw down the long list of enemies fast.

This is a tall order in the circumstances. Much of the current chaos in Turkey is due to the Syrian-Iraqi war. While it rages, there is limited capacity to stem its destabilizing effects on Turkey’s southern border. The crux of the problem for the AKP government is that Turkey has little power to leverage the situation within Syria or Iraq. The initiative is with its enemies and Turkey is at the mercy of forces beyond its control.

However, there remains one key dimension in which Turkey can directly influence the situation both at home and beyond its borders. The dialogue with the PKK, which has been allowed to unravel in the last half a year, must be reexamined. It is the one area over which Turkey has control and can change the status quo. Only through reengaging the PKK can the government stem the negative impact of YPG gains on Turkey and the ability of the Assad regime and its supporters to undermine Ankara.

Tourism Industry

The fact that everyone is discussing the attacks in Istanbul once again raises the issue of Western bias that emerged after the Paris attacks. The deaths of Westerners make global headlines and cause far greater shockwaves than the deaths of people from elsewhere. This is a sad truth that the perpetrators of such attacks understand and utilize.

Most people would have trouble naming a terrorist attack in the past year aside from those in Paris, Istanbul and Sousse. All were attacks on Westerners. The worry for Turkey is that while an attack in Paris creates a fierce determination to defend the homeland, attacks in Tunisia or Istanbul are more likely to make ordinary Westerners choose Greece or Spain for their vacation next year.

The result is a hardening of the line between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds, just as the Islamic State intended. For Turkey, this could mean greater isolation, fueling introverted nationalism and a further descent into the ethnic and sectarian conflicts that are tearing apart not only Turkish territory, but the entire Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Two dominant themes in global media coverage have accompanied the landslide victory by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the Turkish general election of November 1. The first is that the victory is a surprise, and the second is that it is bad news for Turkey.

Both these reactions betray a bias in much international media toward a reading of Turkish politics and society from the perspective of the secular urban elite—a section of society that has traditionally been heavily represented in the media and civil society, and has longstanding connections to what could be broadly termed the Western world.

These reactions hinder a clear understanding, firstly, of what has happened in Turkey, and secondly, of where it might be heading in the future.

First, the surprise: It is vital to appreciate the fact, borne out once more at the ballot box, that almost half the electorate supports the AKP. This is a considerable mandate by any democratic measure. They may not be drawn in great numbers from the traditional secular elite, and they may not be very active in the global media marketplace, but they are the hidden majority that has consistently returned the AKP to power since 2002.

What’s more, they are nothing new. Islamist politics have existed for as long as Turkey has existed. It took a concerted campaign over many decades for the then-ruling People’s Republican Party (CHP) and its friends within the military and judiciary to obscure that fact.

The latest results once again show that across the vast majority of Anatolia, conservative political Islam is a vote winner. It may not marry up with international notions of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s Turkey, but it is the reality. That said, the relative collapse in AKP support to 40% at the June poll should give the party’s leadership pause for thought.

Split Society

The AKP victory is seen as the triumph of a simple message during a time of crisis: Without us, there will be chaos. While the AKP allure extends beyond simple security politics (otherwise the Nationalist Movement Party would sweep the boards), there is truth in this assessment. It reveals not so much the strength of the AKP’s argument as the weakness of the opposition. Turkey has no other party that is offering a credible vision that can threaten AKP dominance.

Turkish society is not so much polarized as it is split between a large, conservative, religiously inclined majority and small rumps of secularists, extreme nationalists and Kurdish voters. A truly effective alternative vision would have to engage with and persuade that large, conservative and religiously inclined majority.

The reality of the November vote was that if it didn’t return a majority AKP government to power, the only alternative was chaotic coalition government. Turks have bad memories of such scenarios from the 20^th century, and given the stark choice, is it really surprising that so many voted for what they saw as stability?

Their judgment was borne out almost immediately in the financial markets, which reacted positively to the results. After all, Turkey is a country that is badly in need of economic stability in the face of massive regional upheavals. This leads us to the second question: Is the AKP bad news for Turkey?

Certainly, over a decade of rule by a single party is questionable in any democracy. Politicians become comfortable and corrupt, the system begins to lose its accountability and the opposition becomes disenchanted with the entire process.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been particularly guilty of a lack of consensus politics; though in the world of Turkish politics, consensus can be a hard thing to find. The slide toward nationalist rabble-rousing and the renewal of hostilities with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in the run-up to the election were ugly moves that may have drawn clear political dividends, but nonetheless are divisive and dangerous.

The 2023 Vision

What the AKP’s biggest ever mandate to govern does allow is a new opportunity. It is a chance for a strong single party government to drive the agenda in the country once more, and it will be a mark of those in the new government of what they choose to do with it.

The AKP set out in the early 21^st century upon a road to deep structural reform, European Union (EU) membership negotiation and a peace process to solve the Kurdish issue. Such ambitions laid out the possibility of transforming a partial democracy hamstrung by a highly repressive military constitution and elite structures more concerned with preserving the privileges of the state than promoting the freedoms of the people.

The AKP must once again demonstrate the resolve to truly change Turkey for the better, rather than repeating the errors of the past in another guise.

This is particularly true of President Erdogan, the most influential leader since Ataturk himself and still the personification of the party. He has his eyes set upon 2023—the centenary of the republic and a marker post for his transformation of a nation. The success or failure of Erdogan and the AKP will be marked in the type of country that emerges in the years to come. They have a mandate once more and must use it wisely.

Turkey could resolve its Kurdish conflict. It could institute reforms toward greater EU integration. It has already shown itself to be the most open country to intakes of refugees from the Middle East conflicts, and it has become a major transit point for migration into Europe.

Were the AKP to resolve the conflict within their country and to move toward their stated 2023 goal of becoming a top ten world economy, many of those migrants might actually consider Turkey a destination rather than a transit point. There is no better marker of a successful society than when outsiders wish to join you.

Turkey today is a long way from such a place, but a vision was laid down and the AKP needs to find that vision again.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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It has been well-documented that the current Turkish government offensive against the Islamic State (IS) is largely being conducted as a cover for a far wider assault against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG) of the closely aligned Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria. Both in terms of arrests and airstrikes, PKK and YPG targets have been engaged in greater numbers than have IS.

Given Turkish government policy to date regarding the Islamic State, in which it has been conspicuously reticent about joining the US-led campaign against the organization, this is perhaps unsurprising. This reticence compounded a situation where Turkish authorities have appeared to tolerate IS cross-border activity, bringing fighters and supplies into northern Syria via Turkey.

However, the decision to pursue PKK and YPG targets can be viewed as a strategic mistake on the part of the Turkish government for several reasons: It does not advance broader Turkish foreign policy goals in either Syria or Iraq; it increases instability within Turkey; and the evidence suggests it may be ineffective in securing the majority the Justice and Development Party (AKP) seeks at the next general election in November.

Targeting the Kurds

The catalyst for the Turkish decision to join the US coalition and allow the Americans to use Incirlik airbase was a suicide bomb attack in Suruc near the Turkish-Syrian border on July 20. This was the latest in a string of border region attacks. However, while previous incidents, such as one in the border town of Reyhanli on May 11, 2013, were regarded as the work of people linked to the Syrian regime, the Suruc attack was carried by a lone perpetrator inspired by the Islamic State. It specifically targeted Kurds heading to Kobane in northern Syria to help with reconstruction after the IS siege of the town.

As a catalyst for a campaign against Kurdish groups, then, this is a curious one. They were not the perpetrators, but rather the victims of the violence. In fact, the only recent Kurdish disturbances within Turkey, where a fragile ceasefire had been in play between the PKK and the Turkish government, was when Turkey failed to offer assistance to Kobane when it came under attack by IS in September 2014. This revealed the wider Turkish policy against YPG-controlled areas of Syria. This policy has been—and remains—one of resisting moves toward Kurdish autonomy in the Rojava (East Kurdistan) region made up of the enclaves of Jazira, Kobane and Afrin.

Turkish foreign policy

The current offensive against the PKK and YPG is liable to backfire in terms of Turkey’s foreign policy goals in both Syria and Iraq.

In Syria, such an offensive will inevitably drive the YPG and its political body, the PYD, into the arms of the Syrian regime, since Damascus will offer the only protection, however temporary, against attacks from Turkey and IS. Turkish engagement with the PKK through its imprisoned leader, Abdullah Ocalan, and by extension with the PYD, could have developed an important proxy force for Turkey, one that has proved capable of holding ground in northern Syria and could assist in removing the Assad regime—a key goal of the Turkish government.

In Iraq, the sustained bombardment of PKK positions in the Qandil Mountains puts a strain on the relationship with President Massoud Barzani’s ruling Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). While the KDP and the PKK are certainly not bedfellows, Barzani’s pretension to lead the wider Kurdish national movement is undermined if a close ally such as Turkey is seen to be bombing and killing fellow Kurds.

Politics inside Turkey

An equally grave strategic failure is occurring for the ruling AKP in terms of internal Turkish politics. As analysts have observed, the AKP have made the calculation that to obtain the majority they seek in November’s election, they need to court the Turkish nationalist vote. The AKP require a parliamentary majority in order to unilaterally alter the military-era constitution to strengthen the presidency, a key goal of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which is pro-Kurdish, are strongly opposed to a more presidential political system, and yet they are also the only other party with a significant vested interest in altering the military-era constitution, which discriminates against Kurdish interests. Neither the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), nor the more centrist Republican People’s Party (CHP) have anything to gain from a rewriting of the constitution.

At the 2015 general election, where the AKP vote share dropped by nearly 10% on the previous general election in 2011, the nationalist MHP took 16.2% of the vote, while the pro-Kurdish HDP took 13.4%. The AKP have assessed that to attack the PKK and halt the peace process will garner votes from the nationalist base. This assessment is based on the significant MHP vote across central Turkish provinces and represents a calculation that would move the AKP voter base in a nationalist direction.

However, there is also a more liberal constituency to the AKP voter base that saw considerable opportunities in a peace settlement with the Kurdish PKK. Moreover, the only party that can make any headway against the pro-Kurdish HDP in the Kurdish-majority southeast is the AKP, since the CHP and MHP have no representation at all in this region.

The 2015 results were striking not for the strong nationalist vote, which at 16.2% was relatively consistent with previous votes (15.9% in the local elections of 2014 and 12.9% at the 2011 general election), but for the huge surge in support for the pro-Kurdish party. The HDP achieved 13.4% of the vote, more than doubling the vote achieved by previous pro-Kurdish entities (with the caveat that the HDP is an umbrella party that includes the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party and smaller left-wing Turkish parties).

The constituencies that can be viewed as broadly Kemalist in ideology (the CHP and MHP) have remained remarkably constant for years. The CHP have taken roughly a quarter of the vote in the last three elections and the MHP takes 6-7 million votes. It is the AKP and pro-Kurdish votes that have been in flux, most starkly at the last election in 2015, where the AKP vote fell by almost the same amount as the pro-Kurdish vote rose. This would suggest the AKP lost votes to the HDP due to the increasing authoritarianism and lack of consensus politics from President Erdogan, rather than losing votes to the nationalist MHP. By this estimate, a policy in pursuit of accord with the Kurdish PKK would be more likely to bring votes to the AKP than one of attack.

By choosing conservative Turkish nationalist voters over Kurdish or liberal voters, the AKP have made a choice that could have profound consequences for Turkish politics and society in the future. Whether voters will cross the floor to the Islamist AKP from the nationalist parties in significant numbers remains to be seen. But it would be wise for the AKP to remember that Islamists were as much the enemies of the Kemalist state as were Kurds in the 20^th century.

In choosing their friends on the nationalist end of the spectrum, the AKP may find themselves losing influence not only among Kurds at home and abroad, but also in foreign capitals from Baghdad to Brussels.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The year ahead is one in which Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is keen to consolidate the gains of 2014 by institutionalizing reforms he believes will create a new — and better — Turkey, one that embraces its Islamic and multi-ethnic characters. Erdogan faces opposition from various actors: some are in the fragmented opposition; some are in foreign governments, media and institutions; and some are even in his own party. Until now, however, they have remained the minority, in Turkey at least. Here are five things to watch for in Turkey in 2015.

1. The Big Election

The big political event of the year ahead in Turkey will be the general elections that must take place on or before June 7. It is the culmination of a three-part saga that began in March 2014 with local elections and continued in August with a presidential election. The first two were both won convincingly by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) — the local elections with a 43% share of the vote and the presidential election with a victory for then-Prime Minister Erdogan.

Not only is the AKP expected to complete the trio with another general election victory, but the party also views this as a decisive moment that will lead to the implementation of major reforms in the Turkish political system. A dream scenario for the AKP would be an increase on its 327 seats in the Turkish parliament to allow the party to push through major legislation without the support of another political party — most significantly, the writing of a new constitution. This is ambitious, and the AKP may have to be content with seeking out a willing partner to help.

2. Rewriting the Rule Book

The current Turkish constitution was written by the military junta that took control of the country in a 1980 coup and who wrote it to reflect the desires of the secular establishment at that time. Two groups who were markedly excluded by this document were political Islamists — now in government — and the Kurds (Turkey’s largest minority ethnic group at roughly 18-20% of the population), both groups having their political parties repeatedly banned by the constitutional court.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan © Shutterstock

Turkey’s two main opposition parties, the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), a more rigidly nationalist party, are opposed to a rewriting of the constitution. However, in the Kurdish vote, the AKP has a potential ally. Pro-Kurdish parties typically garner around 6% of the national vote and, significantly, the latest pro-Kurdish entity, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), has chosen to have its members stand for the party at the general elections rather than as independents. This runs the risk that the HDP may not get over the high 10% threshold to enter the Turkish parliament; though the party is reckoning on leader Selahattin Dermitas’ impressive 10% of the presidential vote in 2014 translating into greater success at the general election.

Although the HDP claim that it is confident of achieving the 10% threshold, there has been speculation that a deal is being brokered whereby the Kurds facilitate an AKP election victory in return for reforms in the new constitution to recognize and safeguard Kurdish cultural and political rights. Should the AKP be tempted to backslide on such a deal, there is also something to help concentrate minds — the threat of a renewed insurgency by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

3. Turkey’s Long War

Bringing the Kurds on board will require a breakthrough deal in the negotiations between the Turkish government and the imprisoned leader of the PKK, Abdullah Ocalan. Such a deal will require concessions on both sides and, in an election year, the AKP’s moves will be watched closely. The party will be aware that any concession will cause a negative reaction by many Turkish nationalists. It is a balancing act but one that could potentially pay huge dividends if it removed a violent threat of instability that has existed — on and off — since the birth of the Turkish republic.

A deal is also far from certain on the Kurdish side of the table. While they have much to gain, we have also been here before, and the Kurds have a long history of political betrayals and deep suspicions. This was exacerbated in 2014 by what many Kurds saw as Turkish inaction in the face of an Islamic State (IS) onslaught on the Kurdish town of Kobani on the Syrian border with Turkey, which led to Kurdish riots across Turkey that left at least 19 people dead. Even if Ocalan does agree to a deal, the Kurds have also often proved factional and divided, and it is far from certain whether he would bring every PKK fighter with him.

The clock is ticking for the Turkish government. The more that the instability in Syria and Iraq leads toward greater Kurdish autonomy, the stronger the position of the PKK outside Turkey becomes. With secure bases in both Syria and Iraq from which to negotiate, and a perception of Turkish bias toward IS, elements within the movement might feel less inclined to come to the table.

© Shutterstock

4. The War on Gulen

The fight that the AKP is sure to pursue in 2015 is its struggle with former allies in the Gulen movement, which escalated in December 2013. After a decade of rising Islamist power in Turkey, the revolution is beginning to eat some of its children. The Gulen movement — for a long time a tacit ally of the AKP in a bid to unseat the military-secular establishment from power — has been under attack from Erdogan’s party since a corruption scandal that the AKP viewed as a Gulenist attempt to topple the government.

An arrest warrant issued for the exiled Fethullah Gulen in late 2014 means the government can request his extradition from the United States. This may be the year that the Gulen movement’s top figures are brought to heel by the AKP. It is a feud that has not cast either movement in a good light, as institutions of state and media are used to partisan ends. It is a measure of the ineffectual state of the opposition that it has failed to capitalize on this unseemly squabble.

5. South of the Border

With so much internal politics to occupy Turkish minds, it is easy to forget that a war is raging on its long southern frontiers. The rise of IS in 2014 added a new dimension to an already complex conflict and left Turkey making some very awkward foreign policy contortions. In Kobani, Turkey was slow and even obstructive to Kurdish efforts to defend the town from IS fighters and has even been accused of directly aiding IS. This was largely driven by Turkish distrust of the People’s Protection Units (YPG) — a Syrian party-cum-militia closely aligned to the PKK in Turkey — which is the governing power in the Kurdish enclaves of northern Syria. It is a situation that makes a resolution of the Kurdish conflict within Turkey all the more pressing for the AKP government.

Turkish policy has also been strained in Iraq, where it has been conspicuous in recent years in its support for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Turkey was absent as IS came perilously close to Erbil in the summer, revealing to KRG President Masoud Barzani the dangers of overreliance on one protective power. However, a hydrocarbon deal struck with Erbil in November 2014 and the new Erbil-Baghdad rapprochement in the face of IS could be good news for Turkish economic prospects going into 2015 — offering Turkey a new energy supply line and bringing down energy costs.

And Perhaps…

Since last year’s announcement of Ahmet Davutoglu as the successor to Erdogan in the prime minister’s office, it appears Abdullah Gul — the former president and co-founder of the AKP with Erdogan — has been eclipsed. This deterioration in his fortunes has been in direct correlation to the rise to supremacy of Erdogan. Yet it is still possible that Erdogan could overplay his hand. He has irked Prime Minister Davutoglu with his plans to move executive powers from the prime minister to a new presidential system that he will lead, and not all in the AKP rank and file are comfortable with the thought of strongman rule by President Erdogan. The year 2015 will certainly be an interesting one for Turkey.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s move from the prime minister’s office to that of the presidency of Turkey has long seemed inevitable, and now it has come to pass. In doing so, he appears to have engineered a way to remain politically center stage after having to concede the prime minister’s office due to the two-term limit stipulated in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) policy.

There was speculation — including this author’s preview of Turkey in 2014 — that this might lead to a job swap with then-President Abdullah Gul, à la Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in Russia. However, Erdogan and his supporters appear to have feared the prospect of Gul’s leadership of the party — the former prime minister also had to give up the chairmanship of the AKP in order to take the presidency — and the government.

Instead, the man maneuvered into position has been Ahmet Davutoglu, the scholar-turned-statesman who has led Turkey’s foreign ministry since 2009. Davutoglu is an intriguing choice, since he was first brought into politics and the AKP by Gul as a special advisor to the prime minister in 2002, before moving closer to Erdogan, the holder of decisive popular appeal in the party.

Gul and Erdogan were the founders of the AKP in 2001, following the outlawing of the Fazilet (Virtue) party by the Turkish Constitutional Court. Their relationship has been a complex one. While Gul is viewed as more moderate, pro-European but less charismatic, Erdogan is seen as more radical, less keen on Europe and a populist grandstander.

Gul’s relationship with the former prime minister has become more strained as Erdogan’s power has increased. Despite a short caretaker role as prime minister in 2002, he made way for Erdogan and has since held the largely ceremonial presidency. What Gul would like is the real power of the AKP chairmanship and the prime minister’s role. However, with Erdogan barring this avenue, he is left with a choice between a fight and potentially total defeat or a graceful exit.

The conservative, established business elites, such as the Dogan and Ciner media empires, tend to favor Gul within the AKP. These elites are natural supporters of the secular opposition, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), but with the opposition ineffectual, they are now quietly aligned with the AKP. For now, though, they also acknowledge that within the AKP and in popular public opinion, Erdogan has the power.

Whose Man is Davutoglu?

The power play between Erdogan and Gul begs the following question: Whose man is Davutoglu? The perhaps unspectacular answer is that he is both of theirs and his own. There has been feverish speculation recently about just who Davutoglu is and what he believes. This has included the publication of an essay and a series of articles by Behlul Ozkan, a former student of Davutoglu’s, painting a portrait of a man on a pan-Islamist mission.

There was speculation — including this author’s preview of Turkey in 2014 — that this might lead to a job swap with then-President Abdullah Gul, à la Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in Russia. However, Erdogan and his supporters appear to have feared the prospect of Gul’s leadership of the party.

Clearly, in the current climate of Middle Eastern counterrevolution and Western hysteria at the rise of the Islamic State, calling anyone a pan-Islamist is highly emotive. However, it is helpful to consider the details of Davutoglu’s strategic thinking rather than simply the labels of pan-Islamism or neo-Ottomanism that have been applied to it.

As a scholar, Davutoglu drew up a foreign policy doctrine under the title of “strategic depth,” which saw a newly assertive Turkey realigning itself after the end of the Cold War. Rather than a pivot away from western Europe and the United States, with whom Turkey had aligned throughout the 20^th century as a key NATO bulwark against the communist East, Davutoglu’s vision was for Turkey to open itself up to the East as well, turning itself into the hub it historically has been for the exchange of goods and ideas.

As a devout Muslim, Davutoglu clearly believes the rejection of Islam and the Middle East by the Kemalist elite of Turkey throughout the 20^th century has been damaging to Turkish culture as well as its economy. His desire to right these perceived wrongs put him on a collision course with secular Kemalists in Turkey; yet they do not put him on a collision course with the West, for built into Davutoglu’s vision was a desire for renewed engagement with external actors.

This renewed engagement — focused around the policy principle of “zero problems with neighbors” — was as much about affecting change within Turkey as it was about the country’s external relations. It was a change in the mindset of Turks about their neighbors. This meant engaging with neighbors culturally as well as economically and politically.

Furthermore, as Davutoglu explained in Foreign Policy: “It was in no way meant to suggest that Turkey would pursue a values-free realpolitik agenda.” Hence why, when confronted with a choice, the AKP chose to back the popular uprising in Syria over continued support for the Assad government. The tone as well as the content of Turkish policy was what Davutoglu wanted to change.

The Anchor of Europe

Ever since the AKP came to power, one of its greatest strengths and most valuable protectors has been its desire for and earnest pursuit of European Union (EU) membership. It helped to drive reform in Turkey and shield the AKP from the secular establishment’s wrath.

The spat between former allies Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen has become very damaging. Gulen is an exiled Islamic preacher living in the US whose supporters are deeply imbedded in the judiciary, bureaucracy and other public services. 

While it has become increasingly clear that Erdogan feels he can live without the EU, Davutoglu’s record, like Gul’s, reveals a man who sees the merit of close ties to Europe. This is evidenced in his choice of Volkan Bozkır as the new EU minister, a man determined to drive forward Turkey’s bid as a “strategic objective.”

A knock-on effect of the EU membership negotiations has been pressure for reform in the area of Kurdish relations, and this is another area set to be prioritized by Davutoglu. He has placed his key confidante, Yalçın Akdoğan, to lead negotiations with the Kurds, with their politicians likely to play a decisive role in helping the AKP get the votes it needs in parliament to rewrite the military constitution of 1981.

Trouble Ahead?

Davutoglu’s continued commitment to both the EU accession process and the Kurdish peace process are positive for Turkey and its hopes of democratization, economic growth and peace. However, there are less encouraging factors on the horizon, and these have mainly to do with political infighting.

First, the spat between former allies Erdogan and Fethullah Gulen has become very damaging. Gulen is an exiled Islamic preacher living in the US whose supporters are deeply imbedded in the judiciary, bureaucracy and other public services. Until 2013, there had been a tacit alliance between Erdogan and Gulen against the Kemalist establishment. This has begun to unravel as Erdogan consolidated his power.

The police probe of December 2013 that the AKP leaders believe was activated by the Gulenists in an attempt to topple the government has led to a strong backlash. Davutoglu has echoed Erdogan in prioritizing the eradication of what they term the “parallel state.” While the nature of the Gulen movement is indeed opaque, the AKP dragnet smacks of political score settling with a former ally. It is unedifying and will not win the AKP wider support.

On the subject of unedifying spectacles, the other area of unrest ahead is within the AKP itself. The Erdogan camp’s heavy-handed sidelining of former President Gul has clearly hurt him, as his wife’s outbursts at his departing engagement as president demonstrated. He will be keen to inflict damage upon the Erdogan camp if they show signs of weakness in the upcoming 2015 elections.

Predictions

We can expect to see evidence of strains between the Erdogan and Gul camps in the AKP over the coming months, even if those strains do not surface into the public eye. Davutoglu will aim to chart a middle course between the two diverging streams in the party, as has been his instinctive response.

While this may appear to present a crisis in the AKP, it will not threaten the overall stability of the party due to two reasons. First, the success of the AKP, and of Erdogan at the ballot box, will keep a lid on any dissent — at least until after the 2015 elections. Second, energies will remain focused on external threats outside the AKP, most notably the Gulen movement and the secular opposition.

It has been claimed that Davutoglu may baulk at Erdogan’s plans for a strong presidency, a move that would diminish the prime minister’s power. However, pragmatism is likely to mean that Davutoglu continues to engineer the conditions to strengthen the AKP’s hand in parliament, which will not only lead to a strong presidency but other goals Davutoglu likely holds dearer — namely, the writing of a new constitution and the conclusion of a peace deal with the Kurds.

The months leading toward the 2015 general elections will be crucial, as Erdogan and Davutoglu both take the temperature of their new roles and of Turkey’s capacity for change. Both are aiming high and know the stakes are huge. Yet Davutoglu will be aiming to stick around. While he might be President Erdogan’s friend, he will also attempt to not become Gul’s enemy.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The Turkish presidential election of August 10 is the second of a three-part political drama unfolding in Turkey in a little over a year. The opening salvo was the March 2014 local government elections, which were portrayed as a key indicator of the country’s mood in the aftermath of the 2013 Gezi Park protests, and the corruption scandal and political battle between the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Fethullah Gülen’s Islamist movement. The third act will be the general election of June 2015.

Despite heated talk of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s loss of popularity, particularly in Western media, the AKP once again gave a strong showing with 38.3% of the vote in March, almost identical to the 2009 results. What is more, it did not lose the pivotal urban centers of Istanbul and Ankara, highlighted as key battlegrounds with the opposition following the Gezi Park unrest.

As this author’s preview article of Turkish politics for 2014 predicted, the vote revealed the enduring appeal of the AKP, and Erdogan in particular. The strength of the AKP vote and its renewed command of the political center have fed into the way in which the presidential election is being fought by all sides, from the nomination of Erdogan himself to the choice of candidate made by the opposition.

Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu: The Middle Man

Nothing in the forthcoming presidential vote is more telling or more centrally important than the candidature of Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu. It speaks volumes about the crisis of direction among secular nationalists who have traditionally controlled the Turkish state. Ihsanoglu, a former head of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), is a moderately conservative Islamic scholar — hardly the kind of man who will appeal to the secular nationalist voter base of either the Republican People’s Party (CHP) or the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), for whom he is standing as a joint candidate.

This presidential vote is very much Erdogan’s creation, and it is part of its self-fulfilling narrative that he should now come through to take his crown. It is the first time the Turkish public will be able to directly elect their new president; all previous ones since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk were chosen by parliament.

After 12 years of the AKP government, this is the latest move of an opposition that is failing to grasp the true direction of Turkish politics. The CHP’s attempt to hijack the Gezi Park protest movement to its own ends smacked of a party prepared to step outside the ballot box, as its connections with the military and judicial elite have so often caused it to do.

The reaction of Prime Minister Erdogan was not diplomatic. He is a populist and his cult — among followers and detractors — rests on his charismatic personal mission. This can be seen in the way he has once again seized the Palestinian cause in the run-up to this vote. His strongly partisan stance makes the secular CHP inherently uncomfortable, emphasizing Erdogan’s role as a protector of Palestinian rights — hugely significant for Muslim voters in Turkey.

The unseemly clash between the AKP and the Gülen movement that erupted into the public spotlight in December 2013 revealed fault lines in the Islamist political landscape. However, the secular nationalist opposition, particularly the CHP, failed to gain any political capital from this as the AKP voter base — largely provincial or recently urbanized populations with a conservative Islamic perspective — does not believe they speak for their concerns and identities. Inter-Islamist squabbling would have to get a lot worse and the opposition a lot more enticing before this would automatically translate into CHP votes.

Had the AKP failed badly at the March elections, it is likely Erdogan might not be running for president at all. His populist approach has alienated opposition voters, while he has become mired in corruption scandals and ugly rivalries. There has even been speculation about his support within his own party. If Erdogan succeeds in broadening the mandate of the presidency as he suggests, this might create increased friction between his office and that of the AKP prime minister.

Despite all this, no one in the AKP will challenge him right now. Erdogan currently enjoys popular support beyond that of any other Turkish politician, and his nearest rivals are other AKP members such as the current president, Abdullah Gül, rather than opposition figures. Whether there will be a longer term price to pay for Erdogan’s bombastic approach to politics is open to question, but what is more clear-cut is his stranglehold on this presidential election.

Erdogan’s Hour

This presidential vote is very much Erdogan’s creation, and it is part of its self-fulfilling narrative that he should now come through to take his crown. It is the first time the Turkish public will be able to directly elect their new president; all previous ones since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk were chosen by parliament. The democratic message it conveys, and Erdogan’s obvious faith in the people’s will, are hugely telling for Turkey.

Had the AKP failed badly at the March elections, it is likely Erdogan might not be running for president at all. His populist approach has alienated opposition voters, while he has become mired in corruption scandals and ugly rivalries. There has even been speculation about his support within his own party.

This is a state that has struggled long and hard with the question of whether to truly let the people decide. Formed by military men with a clear revolutionary vision of what kind of state they wanted to build, it has essentially remained the tool of a revolutionary secular elite ever since. What has occurred in Turkey in the 21^st century, though its roots run back to the democratic government of the 1950s, is the emergence of the political voice of a broader Turkish public; and that voice is one Erdogan understands and largely represents.

The candidature of Ihsanoglu can be seen as a brave one for the CHP and MHP. Indeed, the decision to work in coalition to fight the AKP candidate reveals an understanding among secular nationalists that they must unite. Ironically, Ihsanoglu is probably a very good compromise candidate, who could forge a diplomatic middle ground between Turkey’s polarized social strata. The problem is that no one believes he is the candidate either the CHP or MHP really wants. He just appears to be a man they think can challenge Erdogan.

This reveals the secular nationalist bloc as devoid of a genuine vision of how to appeal to and energize the mass of Turkish voters. The constituency that generally backs the AKP sees a coalition that appears to be trying to beat Erdogan on an Islamist ticket, but who is likely to reveal their true colors upon victory. Conversely, the traditional voter base of the CHP and MHP — generally secular nationalists, both liberal and reactionary — see a candidate with whom they do not identify.

Finding a New Path

The only other candidate in this presidential vote is Selahattin Demirtaş of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). Like all pro-Kurdish political candidates, his is the minority vote — only expected to amount to some 6-7% of the total. But as a Kurdish candidate, Demirtaş is representative of where the secular nationalists have failed.

Erdogan’s government is the first to have given any real sense of political engagement to the Kurdish minority in Turkey. Although concrete change has been slow in evolving, there have been sustained negotiations with the jailed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Öcalan. Erdogan is mindful of the fact that the achievement of a successful and inclusive new constitution and of lasting stability in Turkey will have much to do with how the incumbent government can engage with Kurdish concerns.

Both the CHP and MHP have signally failed to engage with the Kurdish issue in a constructive way, just as they have been very slow in understanding and responding to the Islamist vote in Turkey. Throughout the many decades of CHP government in the 20^th century, the party espoused a policy of securitization. Although the CHP has made recent tentative steps toward an accommodation, the MHP has maintained a security-based stance to the Kurdish issue.

One of the fundamental barriers to representation and engagement for Kurds has been the extremely high 10% threshold for entry into parliament for political parties. It is just one area in which Erdogan has offered change, in order to connect with the Kurds. The AKP administration has also been the first to allow public broadcasting in the Kurdish language, and the teaching in Kurdish in public schools as an elective subject.

There is little doubt that Erdogan will become the first democratically elected president of Turkey — a personal triumph for him as well as a milestone for the country. The big question is what he will do with that opportunity. It seems highly likely that his victory will lead to AKP success in the third part of this drama — the 2015 general election. By that time, Iraqi Kurds, now closely aligned with the AKP government in Ankara, may be a big step closer to statehood. Erdogan is on a mission to reshape the modern Turkish state, and to take Turkey’s Kurds with him. He will be in a position to do so.

Two big questions remain for Turkey. The first is whether we will see increasing strains within the AKP as it enters a fourth term in office, and how the Islamist political movement in Turkey will mature with the consolidation of its power. The second is how the different strands of the secular nationalist opposition will choose to respond. Sooner or later, Turkey will need an effective, alternative message to that of the AKP, for the good of its democracy. Currently, it does not have one.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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With the announcement of Thailand’s twelfth full-blown coup since 1932 on May 25, the country’s steady slide into paralysis and military rule is complete. It marks a new low for a country that was hailed only a few years ago as a beacon of stability and democracy in Southeast Asia.

At this low ebb, it is often instructive to step back and see what can be learned from history and comparative analysis. One country with a strikingly similar recent history — despite being apparently very different — is Turkey. So where are the similarities, what are the crucial differences, and what can Thailand learn?

Similar Trajectories

There is much that is different about Thailand and Turkey. One nation is situated in Southeast Asia, and the other at the meeting point of Europe and the Middle East. Thailand is ruled by one of the world’s most popular and long-running royal dynasties, while Turkey has been a republic for almost a century.

However, the similarities encourage closer analysis. The almost untouchable nature of the king’s persona in Thai society has echoes in the veneration of the Turkish republic’s founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. What is more, both figures are held high by an entrenched urban elite. This elite has traditionally controlled the military, judiciary and bureaucracy.

But in the latter half of the 20^th century, both nations experienced economic and social development that led to significant internal migration from provinces to urban centers. In the Turkish case, this was principally from provincial towns and rural areas of Anatolia into Istanbul and Ankara following industrialization efforts of the 1950s. In Thailand, internal migration was mainly from the rural northeast to the capital, Bangkok.

Both nations are also singular in their regions for having, largely, avoided the colonization experience of their near neighbors. This fact has been argued as contributory to their steadier and more successful development toward democracy and prosperity throughout the previous century.

Like Turkey, Thailand is a country that has developed to a stage beyond that of its immediate neighbors. As such, it has a population that will no longer accept strongman autocratic rule and economic stagnation quietly. An emergent opposition that is not only numerically superior, but also economically powerful cannot be stamped into submission.

The steady economic rise of a hitherto politically excluded, conservative and provincial population has had a dramatic impact for Thailand and Turkey. As economic growth has continued, so too have both nations moved steadily toward more representative democratic models. As a result, demographic realities have come into play.

Parties of the New Middle-Class

Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) may have been the latest in a long line of Islamist-oriented parties in the Turkish political landscape, yet they have much in common with Thailand’s Pheu Thai Party, who won successive elections on the strength of their popular support.

Both parties sprung from, and draw their core support from, the newly emergent entrepreneurial classes of the provinces, and those that have migrated from the provinces to the urban centers in the past two generations. Both exhibit a distinct brand of populist politics that appeals to this large constituency, whilst also offering them real economic and political power.

As a result, both have run hard up against the traditional establishment, which has been used to decades of rule on its own terms. In both cases, this has pitted a charismatic leader against that establishment, delivering for the old elite a central hate figure on which to hang all their frustrations. In Thailand, that figure is Thaksin Shinawatra, the now self-exiled founder of Pheu Thai. In Turkey, that figure is the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, one of the founders of the AKP. Their differing fortunes say much about the differing paths of Thailand and Turkey.

Soldiers Make Bad Politicians

Turkey’s establishment is no stranger to a coup d’état. Through the military, it has repeatedly curtailed democratic governments usually to suppress the rise of the more Islamist provincial political movements in the country. The judiciary has also repeatedly banned parties that are deemed a significant electoral threat.

What broke the cycle was the introduction of an external third element: the prospect of European Union (EU) membership. This economically and politically significant factor led to the steady reform and democratization of the Turkish system. Public support for the EU process helped to stop the military’s hand when the AKP swept to power in 2002.

Since then, this balance of power has led to the consolidation of the political class embodied by the AKP, and a fundamental shift away from the vested interests of the old elite — but only just. In 2007, the military tried to block the candidature of the AKP’s Abdullah Gul for the presidency and forced a general election, which the AKP won.

In 2008, the Constitutional Court came within a whisker of banning the ruling party, putting a severe dampener on its reformist zeal. Even in the past year, the establishment has been swift to turn any discontent — from the Gezi Park protests to the Soma mining disaster — to its advantage in an attempt to destroy the power of the new AKP-led political class.

Accepting the Inevitable

By most reckonings, and for all the instability, Turkey’s military will not attempt to take matters into its own hands as it has in the past. This is largely because it knows the mass of the Turkish public does not want military rule. It is also because new economic realities make such a move unpopular with far more influential circles of society.

In its desperation to dismantle the political power of the class represented by Pheu Thai, the traditional Bangkok establishment is not only in danger of setting Thailand back a long way; it is also being hopelessly unrealistic. Like Turkey, Thailand is a country that has developed to a stage beyond that of its immediate neighbors. As such, it has a population that will no longer accept strongman autocratic rule and economic stagnation quietly. An emergent opposition that is not only numerically superior, but also economically powerful cannot be stamped into submission.

The strength of this newly empowered population is evident in the fact that, despite the 2006 coup that ousted him from power, Thaksin’s Red Shirt supporters have remained active on the streets, while he and his party have continued to wield popular support in Thailand.

Without the foresight to find accommodation with this new force in state institutions, the old elite risks losing everything in the long-run. The starkly differing fortunes of the British and Russian imperial establishments in the 20^th century should be a lesson enough in that regard.

By adapting to the new political environment, Turkey’s old elites may well maintain many of their traditional privileges and economic advantages. Meanwhile, new cleavages will emerge in the rising middle-class, as has been witnessed in the intra-Islamist rivalry between the Gulen movement and the AKP.

If the Thai establishment does not learn from the Turkish experience and compromise with the new forces for change in Thailand, it risks short-term economic crisis and social unrest, and long-term insurrection that could sweep it away.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Turkey is about to embark on a year and a half of pivotal elections — local elections in March, a presidential election in August, and general elections in June 2015. Whatever the exact share of the votes, Turks will opt for perceptions of conservative strength and reliability.

The year ahead will belong to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) — particularly their pragmatic president, Abdullah Gül — and that despite some high profile protests at urban flashpoints, the gravest threat to the AKP at the ballot box will be from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) in the southeast.

The AKP Reveals its Appeal

From outside Turkey it appeared at times in 2013 that the AKP were the most hated party in the country. In 2014, they have the opportunity to prove to the world that they are not only a force to be reckoned with, but remain the force in Turkish politics.

What is their appeal? Firstly, they offer socially conservative, yet economically liberal policies with an Islamic flavor. Secondly, they are led by a charismatic leader – Recep Tayyip Erdoğan – as unswerving in his convictions as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk himself. And thirdly, they have ridden an economic wave. 

The economic forecast may be unspectacular, but on the other two points, the AKP can still count on support. Most Turks are socially conservative and patriotic to the point of nationalism. Since the foundation of the republic as a one-party state by military men, a sense of obedience to strong men in positions of authority has been deeply engrained and widely respected.

Despite the recent turbulence, do not expect Turkey to break out into liberal politics any time soon. Steady hands matter to Turkish voters, and they will continue to show that at the elections of 2014.

The March 2009 local election results saw the AKP take 38.8% of the vote, and as this map of electoral districts in 2009 shows, the AKP have a stranglehold of rural Turkey.

The question mark is over Turkey’s top two cities: Istanbul and Ankara. These decisive population centers have remained AKP until now, but the chaotic events of 2013 will put pressure on AKP support among swing voters in these areas.

How they fare will be telling, though it should not be assumed that a mid-term slump would necessarily translate into failure at the general elections in 2015.

An Islamist Spat

The two biggest names in Turkish politics right now are those of the prime minister, Erdoğan, and the US-based Islamic cleric, Fethullah Gülen. That in itself says much about the current state of Turkish politics. Despite Erdoğan’s trials in 2013, main parliamentary opposition leader Kılıçdaroğlu of the secularist CHP has still failed to make a major impression.

That the current furor around a corruption probe is ultimately the result of a battle between two Islamist leaders is also telling. Turkey has moved a long way in the past decade. This power struggle reveals the strength of Islamist politics in Turkey, as well as revealing its divisions. However, what it also reveals is how little has changed in Turkey.

Turkey is still a place in which personalities and networks of patronage matter. The most worrying thing about the current spat is that the question on everyone’s lips appears to be "who will prevail?" rather than "why are powerful individuals being allowed to manipulate public institutions?"

It makes the recent moves by Erdoğan to revisit the judicial cases in the Ergenekon and Sledgehammer investigations around attempted coup plots all the more ironic. Could it be that Erdoğan is now deciding to position himself as the military’s new best friend in a struggle with his rival, Gülen?

Gül’s Star Quietly Rises

The quiet man of Turkish politics forms the other half of a political partnership every bit as intriguing as that of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in the UK or Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev in Russia. Gül was a founding member of the AKP alongside Erdoğan in August 2001. Both men had been members of the Islamist Fazilet (Virtue) Party, which was banned two months prior.

Though the charismatic Erdoğan was leader of the AKP, his spell in prison for reciting a poem deemed anti-secular by the Constitutional Court meant he was ineligible to take office when the party swept to power in 2002. As a result, Gül led the first AKP government for a period of four months, before making way for Erdoğan.

Erdoğan then appointed him minister of foreign affairs until, in 2007, he nominated Gül for the presidency. Having faced down the military-judicial establishment to place an Islamist in the presidency, Erdoğan also achieved an amendment to the constitution whereby future presidents would be elected by public vote rather than parliamentary selection.

It sets up the highly likely prospect of Erdoğan once again changing seats with Gül later this year — Erdoğan becoming the first publically elected president in Turkish history, and Gül taking over leadership of the AKP (which Erdoğan must forfeit to become president). All this seems cosy enough, but the political landscape is becoming increasingly muddied.

The Gezi Park protests of 2013 revealed Erdoğan at his most politically combative and polarizing. It did not play well to the political middle ground. In contrast, Gül was notable for his measured approach to the crisis. He called for a more restrained and proportionate response from security services as well as praising the initial environmental focus of the protests.

The year 2014 will be cast as Erdoğan’s ultimate triumph, but it may appear in hindsight to be the moment of Gül’s ascension. He certainly offers the AKP a leader who is far more likely to appease the swing voter and build bridges.

Turkey Turns Peacemaker

It has been another rough year for Turkish foreign policy. Having risen to become the most influential soft power in the Middle East in 2010, the Arab Uprisings turned very sour for Turkey.

The AKP spent the 2000s espousing a foreign policy of "zero problems with neighbors," and the Arab Uprisings were delivering the final triumph of the so-called "Turkish model" of mild Islamism and democracy. Then it began to unravel.  

Turkey has gone from a situation where it had bilateral trade deals with Syria and Iraq, was laying down nuclear deals with Iran, and grandstanding in Egypt, to one where it is an avowed enemy of the Syrian regime, at odds with the Maliki government over its engagement with the Kurdish Regional Government in Iraq, and has lost any sway in Tehran and Cairo. However, 2014 could be the moment for change.

Both the election of the pragmatic Hassan Rouhani and the nuclear deal has made Iran a potential partner in peacemaking for Turkey. Directly following the nuclear deal, Iranian and Turkish Foreign Ministers Mohammad Javad Zarif and Ahmet Davutoğlu held a joint press conference in Tehran on November 27, at which they called for a ceasefire to precede planned Syrian peace talks in Geneva.

Turkey now supports the official "Friends of Syria" line that calls for dialogue towards a negotiated settlement in the Syrian Civil War. Moreover, in a visit to Baghdad in December 2013, Energy Minister Taner Yıldız stressed Turkey’s desire to seek the central government’s consent to any oil deals between the Kurdish Regional Government and Turkey, though recent statements from Iraq show how carefully this issue must be handled.  

All these shifts in policy bode well for generating a greater regional atmosphere of compromise. From appearing to be a conflict-maker, Turkey in 2014 may once more become perceived as a peacemaker, even if the shift is motivated by necessity rather than from a position of power.

Kurds Strengthen Their Hand

It may well be that when historians look back on the Arab Spring it reveals a moment of blossoming opportunity for another ethnic group entirely. The Kurds have stood on the sidelines of the uprisings, but the 21st century has been their century so far.

The US-led war to topple Saddam Hussein finally consolidated the emergence of a de-facto Kurdish state in northern Iraq. The Syrian uprising has led to the abandonment of Kurdish regions to local control. In Turkey, the AKP has done more than previous administrations to try and bring about a political settlement to the conflict with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK).

In March 2013, a potentially historic moment appeared to have been reached when imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan declared a ceasefire in exchange for AKP commitments to deliver on constitutional and judicial amendments to protect Kurdish cultural and political rights.

As with every deal the AKP has attempted with the Kurds, it is a political tightrope. Conservative and nationalist Turks react badly to any hint of concession to the Kurds. In an election year, the mood in Ankara will be ever more cautious. This is likely to result in a strengthening of the pro-Kurdish BDP vote in the Kurdish heartlands.

In 2009, the BDP’s now-banned predecessor, the Democratic Society Party (DTP), took 29.7% of the vote in the Kurdish southeast, trailing only the AKP. This was in the year that the AKP launched the much-vaunted Kurdish Opening that was expected to propel Turkey towards a settlement of the Kurdish conflict.

In 2014, the mood is more frustrated, and the AKP could be hit hard. The BDP will run under the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), a new leftist umbrella party, in non-Kurdish areas, and likely to little effect. But expect that the BDP may even take the highest share of the vote in southeast Turkey this time around.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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In early October, I visited Kiev for the first time. During my stay, I observed the tensions at the heart of this complex state that straddles the borders between very different political worlds. There was the routine bribery required in dealing with the police force, a palpable sense of dejection among the young a decade on from the Orange Revolution that they hoped would bring genuine democracy to their country, and a long shadow cast by the Soviet experience.

In the capital’s main square, the Maidan – or Independence Square – young people milled about in the already bitterly cold evening air. Yet though it seemed like business as usual, there remained an undertow of tension. Lining one side of Khreshchatyk Street was a long-term protest camp manned by supporters of imprisoned ex-prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko. When I pointed it out, a Ukrainian simply said dismissively, “It will make no difference.”

I passed a statue near the main square. On it was written: ленин. Even my limited knowledge of the Cyrillic alphabet told me this was a statue of the revolutionary leader himself, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. It struck me as odd that this likeness should still stand at the very center of the Ukrainian nation, 22 years after its independence from the Soviet Union.

I was not surprised to hear that it had become a focus for the anger of protesters in Kiev on December 8. I spoke to many young people and business and cultural leaders, who betrayed a sense of deflation. The Ukrainian system had failed to deliver on promises — former President Yushchenko had retired quietly to his dacha and allowed Viktor Yanukovich, elected in 2010, to ride roughshod over the rule of law in an attempt to consolidate his power.

A New Revolution?

What is currently happening in Kiev, whether it really is another revolution, and what the crowds involved want, are questions I put to Kate Galytska, a young woman who has been deeply involved in both the protests and in attempts to bring them to wider attention.

“This protest differs a lot from the one we had nine years ago. We didn’t have that much access to the Internet back then,” Galytska explains. “Nobody believes regular TV channels now, everybody is watching Internet TV, which was organized on the first day of the protests.”

One such outlet for footage of the protests is #Babylon’13, a Facebook initiative set up by young activists to record the events taking place. But the explosion of Internet and social media technology doesn’t necessarily mean that the crowds on the Maidan are better informed this time around. Rumors can spread like wildfire, and rumors are not always right. For example, on December 6, there was talk that Yanukovich had signed a treaty aimed at joining the Russian-led Customs Union, spurring people onto the streets.

A lack of trust is all-pervasive in Ukraine, and it permeates these protests. It is a country in which the police seem to be protecting the state and their own pockets rather than the people, and it is a country where only 3.2% fully trust their political parties, either incumbent or opposition, as highlighted in Leonard Lifar’s Fair Observer article, Ukraine: Echoes of the Orange Revolution.

“I do believe that all those guys who were throwing rocks on the soldiers were paid to do so,” says Galytska of the rock-throwing protesters of December 1. She suggested that it was the work of men associated with Dmytro Korchinsky, a right-wing political leader alleged to be financed by Moscow as an agent provocateur at protest events.

Forces For Change?

With the events of the Arab Uprisings still fresh in the global consciousness, along with the question of which side security personnel take in such standoffs, the Ukrainian situation offers a similarly murky case.

“The only guys I felt sorry for were the soldiers,” explains Galytska. “They are just young guys on obligatory military service, taken from the Crimea (which is 1,000km away) to Kiev, with no chance to leave for fear of court martial. Protesters take care of them – bringing them coffee and tea, snacks and cigarettes, and making fires so they can warm up.” 

But this comradely picture is offset by darker fears. Galytska speaks of “real fighters” who lie in wait behind the lines of boy soldiers, offering the muscle that will keep the system protected. “I fear that it will end badly, and there will be a night when the Berkut soldiers will enter the Maidan,” says Galytska. “We all know what they are capable of,” she adds darkly.

The Berkut are the special forces soldiers, brought in at times of real crisis. They are tough, they obey orders and, according to Galytska, they were earning good money (€400) on the night of November 30, when they beat mainly student protesters in the Maidan. “They live in terrible conditions, €400 is huge money for them,” she says.

What Future?

Among the musicians, politicians, and activists who have thronged the stage set up in the Maidan since the protests began was one named Lyapis Trubetskoy. They are a Belarussian punk-rock band, who were banned from playing in their own country in 2011 for criticizing the regime of Alexander Lukashenko.

Their presence here, rather than a Belarussian rally in Minsk, was illustrative of the line Ukraine straddles. On one side are the largely authoritarian regimes of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus — and on the other, the promise of EU integration. For now, such bands can continue to play and shout in the Maidan in Kiev, but for how long?

The real tragedy for Ukraine is that the current state of its politics and its economy is driving its brightest hopes for the future abroad. The estimated population growth rate is -3.1% — a decline by 150,000 a year — and much of that figure is due to migration.

The death rate is also outstripping the birth rate, revealing an aging population — one that has an increasingly bleak view of the future. This is deeply entwined with an economic outlook that has been viewed as catastrophic, with the country slipping close to bankruptcy.   

Young people like Galytska may soon be faced with a tough choice between staying and leaving. “This is what I fear most,” Galytska says, “my roots are here.” The key for the protesters appears to be that it remains peaceful and that it brings change. But what kind of change is less than clear.

“It is not a protest to get into the EU,” says Galytska. “For us it is a chance to impeach Yanukovich.” But she then stresses that there is no clear opposition leader who unites the protesters. “For the moment, opposition leaders are the tool for the protesting crowd, and not vice versa,” she says, and frustrations are building at a political opposition that so far appears incapable of taking the fight to the government.

“We feel that every weekend, when there is a million crowd on the Maidan, and opposition leaders are doing nothing, the moment is lost,” says Galytska.

She is one voice among many hundreds of thousands, and hers is an urban, connected and Western-looking voice. There are many in Ukraine who clearly do not share her vision. But for now she still feels her voice matters. The question for Ukraine is whether those at the top will start to listen.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Amid the hubbub of excited chatter surrounding the initial six-month deal signed between Iran and the P5+1 over Tehran's nuclear program, it is worth casting our minds back to an earlier age.

Indeed, May 17, 2010, seems like another world now, especially in a Middle East geopolitical landscape that has shifted with incredible speed. That was the date when Turkey and Brazil — two rising powers who had both stepped out from behind the US’ shadow — dared to sign a joint declaration with Iran on a deal to swap nuclear fuel as a possible solution to the intractable Iranian nuclear row.

Both Turkey and Brazil were cold-shouldered for their eager impertinence. Even though the deal was based on an October 2009 agreement struck in Vienna between Iran, the US, Russia, France, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), it was still the work of smaller regional powers who were presuming to influence world events. The cold-shouldering let Turkey and Brazil know that big deals are for big boys, and that their job as regional players was to react, not to lead.

Chained Reactions

Fast forward to November 24, 2013, and Turkey finds itself in a reactive role once again. With news of the interim nuclear deal, Turkish stocks leapt to three-week highs and the lira rose by 0.5% with the ensuing drop in oil prices and optimism for potentially greater regional stability.

While this may be good news, it also highlights how far Turkey has slipped from leading the curve in the Middle East. Throughout the 2000s, Turkey’s standing in the Middle East was catapulted by its newly assertive, soft power policies of "zero problems with neighbors" and "strategic depth" to that of a regional, cultural, political, and economic poster boy. It was the country every state in the Muslim world wanted to be like.

An annual poll of Arab public opinion conducted by the University of Maryland with Zogby International, revealed the stunning ascent of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from a regionally unknown politician to the most inspiring world leader in the minds of the Arab public. This was an example of serious soft power — and it was democratic, yet Islamic.

Then came the uprisings. Revolutions spawned counter-revolutions in a messy brawl for control over an economically crippled, yet pivotal region of the world. Turkey — led by its charismatic leader, Erdoğan — was politically hardwired to ride with cavalier gusto into the heat of the battle.

Battle Lines

Uprisings calling for democracy in a region long regarded as the last bastion of the strongman dictator, were always going to cause trouble. Turkey’s elite, with the important assistance of close US military ties, had maintained an undemocratic police state for much of the 20th century.

Yet to its credit, Turkey steered a path out of military rule into a democratic landscape that had the inevitable result of empowering the voting public. The country's more conservative, more religiously observant masses re-elected the Justice and Development Party (AKP) three times.

Given the chance, the public did the same in Egypt and Tunisia, pointedly rejecting the representatives of the established elite. In Egypt, this resulted in the 2012 victory of Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood over Ahmed Shafiq, a senior Air Force commander who had previously served as prime minister under the deposed dictator, Hosni Mubarak. This not only shocked elites with a sense of entitlement, but was also a euphoric moment of power for a class used to repression and powerlessness. The initial results have been predictably rocky.

Presented with the prospect of the democratic removal of their inherited power, the old guard has naturally pushed back. Rather than wait for the Muslim Brotherhood to make their own mistakes in governing a state, the military elite swept them from power in Egypt, backed by the royalist forces of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

The Gulf states have also clamped down heavily on Muslim Brotherhood activity and its calls for democratization in the Gulf. Meanwhile, what began as a pro-democracy movement in Syria was successfully transformed by the Assad regime into an armed and increasingly sectarian conflict. The Syrian Civil War has pulled in regional and international powers with their own agendas.

No More Center Ground

For Turkey, the result of all these developments is a bewildering loss of cohesion in its own foreign policy, and a resulting slump in its regional prestige.

More than any other regional state, the interaction of the various crises in the Middle East has resulted in a fragmentation of Turkey’s foreign policy. Firstly, the AKP rightly viewed the fall of dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya as a historic opportunity for not only democracy, but also the mildly Islamist brand of democracy which they were elected upon in Turkey.

However, events did not turn out as Turkey might have wished. Perhaps most uncomfortably, Ankara did not influence its perceived friends as expected. Erdoğan’s triumphant visit to Cairo in September 2011 was meant to cement his role as a regional trendsetter. Instead, the trip revealed the divergence between his political vision and that of the Muslim Brothers.

Nevertheless, Turkish support for the Morsi government remained strong, and his removal by the Egyptian military was met with Turkish fury. The rise of the Muslim Brotherhood was deeply opposed by the Gulf monarchies and Israel, and distrusted by Iran. The push back by the establishment in Egypt — and to a lesser extent Tunisia — left Turkish support for the revolutions at odds with Saudi Arabia, the other key Sunni power in the region. And why is the Sunni nature of their power so important? Take a look at Syria.

In Syria, the Sunni-Shi’a conflict that had already erupted in Iraq, and which is fuelled by Iranian-Saudi geopolitical rivalry, has taken center stage. The entrance of the Hezbollah Shi’a militia means Turkish support for the armed opposition now appears to be a Sunni stance, rather than simply a Turkish one.

Though the pro-Sunni position of Saudi Arabia and Turkey might be thought to have created shared interests, their opposing visions for the wider region have undermined cooperation. Turkey’s regional stance was far closer aligned to that of Qatar, the Gulf state which did so much to support the revolutions and the Muslim Brotherhood until the abdication of the assertive Sheikh Hamad al-Thani and Qatar’s subsequent diplomatic retreat.

Consequently, Turkey is at odds not only with Saudi Arabia and Egypt’s new regime, but also with Iran over Syria. To pop the cherry on the top, Turkish-Israeli relations had already soured in the late 2000s as Erdoğan became the most popular voice of the Muslim Middle East, while being a staunch critic of Israeli policy in Gaza. The result is Turkish non-alignment with any of the major powers in the region.

Jam for the Donut?

By a curious twist of circumstances, we find a region where — aside from the recent Egyptian vassalage to Saudi oil dollars — perhaps one of the most closely aligned foreign policy perspectives are those of Israel and Saudi Arabia, two very strange bedfellows indeed. Both are anti-Brotherhoodl; both are anti-Iranian; and both are increasingly anti-Turkish policy.

Where in this polarized mess can Turkey turn now? Is there any way of becoming the regional jam in an otherwise hollow geopolitical donut? With so much clear space in the center ground of Middle Eastern politics, small movements could have profound effects for Turkey.

The potential for a thaw with Iran is not only presented by the nuclear deal, and the ensuing upturn in bilateral trade, but also by working in tandem on Syria. Despite backing opposing sides in the civil war, Iranian and Turkish Foreign Ministers Mohammad Zarif and Ahmet Davutoğlu held a joint press conference in Tehran on November 27, at which they called for a ceasefire to precede planned Geneva peace talks in January. With the new government of President Hassan Rouhani, Iran is likely to be far more willing to join Turkey in treading a moderate diplomatic line.

Yet while there may be competition between Iran and Turkey for the moderate middle ground, other regional rivals may be checked for the time. Israeli and Saudi antipathy towards Iran has so far forced them onto the diplomatic fringes of the region’s most pressing crises. Egypt’s turmoil makes it hard to envisage a moderate regime emerging there anytime soon.

As the political and security situation in the Middle East has deteriorated, Turkey’s standing has appeared on the surface to collapse as well. Yet such a judgment is misleading. Many years of earnest soft power cultivation does not count for nothing. Though the Turkish government may have stumbled, Turkey itself still offers one of the region’s most successful models for the future.

In both cultural and economic terms, Turkey’s power and influence in the Middle East is still on the rise, and this compels its politicians to seek compromise for Turkey’s own benefit. Paradoxically, as the region appears to reach a nadir, Turkey may find that it is better placed than others to turn the charm offensive back on.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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We are all aware of the power of reputation. How we are described by others, matters. It influences people’s perception of us. We can fast develop a bad — or a good — name. The same applies on the macro-level. Governments can get a very different reputation depending on the way in which they are described.

This may sound all rather obvious, but reputation formation is not always as straightforward as we may imagine. The assumed equation we tend to carry around in our heads goes something like this:

Government acts badly =

Government is described in negative terms =

Government gets a bad reputation

However, in the world of international politics and its media portrayal, more subtle semantics are at work. The people who write the news stories we read are generally educated in, and ideologically committed to, the western democracies.

This state of affairs could be expected to incline them to describe governments of a western democratic nature in a positive light. So far, so good, you may say. If a government is democratic in nature, it should develop a good reputation. If it is not a democracy, it should get a bad name accordingly.

“Regime” vs “Administration”

And so it is borne out in our media diet. Take two different words, both of which describe a system or method of government: regime and administration.

The word “regime” is from the French régime — derived from the Latin regimen — meaning, to rule. It is a noun described by the Oxford English Dictionary as “a government, especially an authoritarian one.” The Cambridge English Dictionary notes that the word, meaning “a particular government or a system or method of government,” is used “mainly disapproving[ly].”

What is clear is that this word, though rooted in the objective matter of ruling, nonetheless holds negative connotations when applied to the rule of a governmental system over a population.

Meanwhile, the word “administration” from the Latin administratio, means the process of running something. In the context of government, the word is described by the Oxford English Dictionary as a count noun, denoting “the government in power.” The Cambridge English Dictionary describes the word as merely “the arrangements and tasks needed to control the operation of a plan or organization” — so banal, one could argue, as to be beyond ideology entirely.

What emerges from such analysis is that to describe a governing authority as a “regime” connotes something quite different to describing it as an “administration.” While the first tends to connote a government with a tendency towards authoritarian or totalitarian rule, the latter connotes a democratic, and therefore legitimate, ruling political actor.

For example, the description the “US administration” sounds entirely plausible to the western media consumer, as does the description the “Nazi regime.” The opposite, the “US regime” and the “Nazi administration,” sounds distinctly subversive.

This pattern can be seen repeated many times: the “Ba’athist regime,” not the “Ba’athist administration;” the “Conservative administration,” not the “Conservative regime;” the “Qaddafi regime,” not the “Qaddafi administration.” All descriptions refer to the governing power in a country, but all offer a tacit value judgment about the legitimacy of that power.

In terms of dictatorships such as those in Ba’athist Syria or Qaddafi’s Libya, it can be argued that such a value judgment is entirely justified in the presentation of the facts to the western media consumer. It places a “regime” without the moral authority of a democratic mandate in a fair context as opposed to a democratic “administration.”

The Grey Areas

Such a linguistic moral gauge is reasonably easy to find a consensus on when we are dealing in terms of a “Nazi regime” or a “US administration.” It is assumed that only the most radical would question such linguistic value judgments. The trouble starts when we enter the murkier waters where ideologies and cultures meet.

Take, for example, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Turkey, led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The AKP is a party that has won three general elections that were regarded as free and fair, not only within Turkey, but also by the international community. It would not be controversial to regard it as the democratically elected government of Turkey.

However, this government does not always receive the designation of “administration” in the international media. It has been termed “the Turkish regime” in the Jerusalem Post and “Turkey’s Islamist regime” in the US weekly, the Jewish Press. This is perhaps not surprising when we consider the mildly Islamist nature of the AKP, and the tense relations between its leadership and the Israeli government — a traditional Turkish ally.

Yet, the AKP government of Turkey has received the title of “regime” more widely in the western press. On June 9, the Huffington Post termed the Turkish government as “the Erdogan regime,” the Independent on June 2 described “anti-regime protests” in Istanbul, and the Wall Street Journal ran a June 7 story entitled “Pro-Regime Turks Answer Protestors.” Despite the democratically elected nature of the government, the “regime” tag is one that triggers an instant moral reaction in most western media consumers.

Protests — sometimes violent — against western democratic governments are never portrayed in the mainstream western media as protests against “regimes.” Such protests often target what they perceive as government corruption, capitalist greed and heavy-handed policing, just as the protestors in Turkey have, and yet western democratic “administrations” do not become “regimes.”

The Islam vs Democracy Issue

What appears to be at work is not merely a straightforward moral judgment, embedded in linguistics, based upon democratic principles, but a wider objective based upon rather more subjective western prejudices. Dictatorships are run by “regimes” and democracies are run by “administrations.” Yet, too often for coincidence, democracies run by Islamist “administrations” are called “regimes.”

On February 6, the Independent ran a story entitled “Uprising in Tunisia as Regime Critic is Murdered.” The “regime” referred to is the ruling coalition that was formed as a result of the first free and fair elections in Tunisia since the fall of the Ben Ali dictatorship. It is led by the Islamist Ennahda Party, in coalition with the secular Congress for the Republic, and the centre-left Ettakatol.

Although the implication of the headline is that the “regime” murdered a critic, the slain man — Chokri Belaid of the left-wing Democratic Patriots’ Movement — was not killed by Ennahda or the ruling coalition, but by a lone gunman likely motivated by an extreme Islamist ideology. A democratically elected government would have little to gain from murdering its critics, and much to lose.

On April 21, the Guardian wrote of the “Muslim Brotherhood regime” in Egypt, in an article that also spoke of “the old Mubarak regime.” This places the now ousted Egyptian government on par with the Mubarak government in terms of the moral implication of the language used. Similarly, the Telegraph spoke of “a regime” in reference to the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Egypt in an article on December 1, 2012, and the Financial Times referred to Egypt’s military pulling the plug on “Morsi’s regime” in a story on July 3.

Run as a semi-presidential system, Egypt witnessed the only free and fair presidential election in the nation’s history in 2012, with the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohammed Morsi winning with a 51.73% share of the vote in the run-off. Parliamentary elections saw the Muslim Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party win most seats, followed by the Salafist Al-Nour Party.

To apply the same linguistic description to the democratically elected Islamist-led governments of Tunisia and Egypt, as is applied to the dictatorships that preceded them, is to deal — whether consciously or not — in dangerous value judgments about the legitimacy of democratically elected Islamist leaders.

The moral judgment embedded in such language has a wider context within western intellectual thought. The theory that Islam and democracy are essentially incompatible has deep roots. However, the theory has been developed in recent decades by scholars such as Ernest Gellner (Conditions of Liberty: Civil Society and its Rivals), Bernard Lewis (What Went Wrong? Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response), Elie Kedourie (Democracy and Arab Political Culture), and Samuel Huntington (The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order).

The theory has been a central intellectual bulwark of western foreign policy that chose to support the maintenance of autocratic dictatorships in the Middle East and North Africa. From such theory, the political argument follows that it is better to have an autocratic “regime” friendly to Western interests than an Islamic “administration” that would — the theory runs — be ideologically anti-democratic.

Judgments vs Subliminal Judgments

The question of whether moral judgments should be embedded in the language that the media uses is one for debate in itself. Perhaps all governments should be classed as “governments,” without the moral value of “regimes” or “administrations” laid upon them, allowing the reader to analyse the politicians’ actions for themselves?

This is not to argue that the media should not analyze and express the differences between an autocratic and a democratic government. To pretend that they are somehow equal would be absurd and ultimately self-censoring. The danger is when the media makes oblique, moral judgments in the language it uses — whether consciously or unconsciously.

However, if a consensus is to exist in which it is deemed acceptable to linguistically differentiate the dictatorship (“regime”) from the democracy (“administration”), then it is even more beholden upon journalists to act with conscious impartiality in this regard.

As soon as democratically elected governments that appear potentially ideologically at odds with western interests start turning into “regimes” in our media, all judgment becomes clouded.

The western media — for the benefit of its audience and itself — must avoid the trap of self-serving propaganda rather than genuine moral assessment. Following the coup in Egypt, this is important not only for the elected Islamists of Tunisia and Turkey, but also for the democracies within which they govern.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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On July 3, Egypt’s military overthrew the government of President Mohammed Morsi. Having warned of its intention to intervene, the Egyptian armed forces seized control of state media, sealed the borders, placed Morsi under house arrest, and issued arrest warrants for over 300 members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the political force behind the Freedom and Justice Party who led the ruling coalition. This was followed on July 8 by members of the army killing over 50 people who were protesting the ouster of President Morsi.

According to the Cambridge English Dictionary, the term coup d'état is defined as follows: “A sudden illegal, often violent, taking of government power, especially by part of an army.” Yet curiously, the governments of the liberal Western democracies, usually so quick to condemn such actions, have failed to even acknowledge these events as a coup d'état.

Neither the UK nor the US government has described the events in Egypt as a coup d'état. The French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, merely confirmed the Egyptian military’s actions in a statement that gave the impression that the Morsi government had never even existed: “In a situation that has worsened seriously and with extreme tension in Egypt, new elections have finally been announced, after a transition period.”  

Even the EU foreign policy chief, Catherine Ashton, a normally cautious observer, remarked: “I urge all sides to rapidly return to the democratic process, including the holding of free and fair presidential and parliamentary elections.” This statement implies that "all sides" had departed from the democratic process, rather than that the military-judicial establishment carried out a coup against a democratically elected government.

Not only did the Egyptian coup take place with the barely disguised support of the US government and its Western allies, but it also achieved something quite remarkable in the contemporary diplomacy of the Middle East: it produced a united response from both the Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and the regimes of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, all of whom congratulated the Egyptian people on their achievement.

To understand why a military coup — usually such a destabilising and threatening event — could occur without even being acknowledged as such, it may be helpful to analyse the Egyptian coup with relation to the Turkish experience of military-civilian relations.

Military Rule vs. Islamic Democracy

Of all the unrest that has occurred in the Middle East since Mohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in December 2010, two particular episodes stand out from the rest and draw comparison. They are the protests of the Tamarod (Rebel) movement in Egypt that led to the military coup of July 3, and the protests in Turkish cities a month earlier.

What sets these two events apart is that the focus of the anger was a democratically elected, moderately Islamist government, rather than an autocratic regime. In both cases, protests were dominated by an urban, Westernised, secular population that has traditionally controlled key aspects of state building, specifically the military, judiciary, media, and bureaucracy.

In Egypt, the protests have been led by members of the Tamarod movement, which has support from Kefaya, the National Salvation Front, and the April 6 Youth Movement. It is predominantly young, urban, secular, and comparatively Westernised. According to a poll carried out by Zogby Research Services, the organised opposition to the Morsi government is majority anti-political Islam, with 67% seeing Morsi’s election victory as a setback for Egypt. This opposition is concentrated in urban and tourist centres.

Likewise, in Turkey, the protests were led by a young, urban, Westernised population that termed themselves “libertarian” in a survey conducted by academics at Istanbul’s Bilgi University. A total of 64.5% of respondents defined themselves as “secular”, 63.6% were aged between 19-30, and the protests were confined to major urban centres.

A fundamental — if initially surprising — element of the Egyptian coup has been the active support of the protest movement for military intervention. Considering the role that the military has played in establishing and maintaining successive dictatorships in Egypt for over half a century, this may seem a strange desire for an apparently liberal protest movement.

However, the desire of an urban, Westernised, secular elite for the military to protect their vision of the state leads to a situation, whereby military coups are not only accepted and welcomed, but are not even acknowledged as having occurred. The process becomes so embedded as to be submerged under layers of linguistic and intellectual denial.

In such a case, it can be claimed as leading Egyptian author Ahdaf Soueif did on BBC Radio 4’s The World at One programme, that, “this is not a coup.” Such a surreal situation bears comparison with the events of 1997 in Turkey, in which a military coup took place that became known as the "postmodern coup" or the "coup by memorandum".

It was termed "postmodern" for the fact that, in many ways, it appeared not to happen at all. There was no recourse by the military to outright coercion. Instead, a group of generals submitted their complaints to the government by way of a memorandum, which Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey first Islamist prime minister, was forced to sign. Following the issuing of the memorandum, which included anti-Islamic measures such as the banning of headscarves in universities, Erbakan was forced to step down and his political party was banned.

This was the last of a series of four coups spanning less than 40 years. The preceding three — in 1960, 1971, and 1980 — were all more traditional affairs in which the military took control by force and became the active rulers of the state without the façade of civilian political representation.

Building Civil Strength

Although the Turkish protesters of June 2013 would be loath to admit it, military intervention was absent in Turkey largely due to the efforts of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. With its roots in political Islam, the AKP party was only the latest in a long line of Islamist parties in Turkey, all others having been banned by the military-judicial establishment.

The AKP administrations of the 21st century have done much to neutralise the political influence of the military, so long the ultimate arbiter of power in the Turkish state. While this may be seen as enlightened self-interest, for the military was the greatest threat to AKP rule, it also meant that society at large was freed from the oversight of the military.

With key mechanisms of the state system in Turkey placed in civilian rather than military hands, it meant that military intervention became far less achievable. But that was not the only change. The other was public opinion. Although the urban, Westernised, secular population of Turkey may be wary of Islamist politics, it has learnt that such politics is better accommodated within a truly democratic system, rather than excluded by force.

As a result, in the survey of the protesters of Taksim Square, conducted by academics at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, it was found that while 92.1% did not vote for the AKP, only 6% of those polled said they would support a military takeover. This is real progress in a country where the same constituency would have reacted in a far more Egyptian way only a decade or so earlier.

Democracy For All

The denial that a coup has taken place in Egypt is worrying, not only for Islamists, but for democrats everywhere. It reveals an urban, Westernised, secular population that will choose military rule over democratic rule by Islamists. International reaction suggests that this constituency in the Middle East can expect to keep the support of Western governments.

It recalls the military coup in Algeria in 1992 to terminate the electoral victory of the Islamic Salvation Front, which led to years of civil war between a Western-backed army and Islamist militants. More recently, the far from condemnatory response of Western powers to the Egyptian coup also echoes the refusal of Western governments to accept the democratic victory of Hamas at the polls in Palestine in 2006.

For the democratically elected En-Nahda Party and their opponents in Tunisia — the birthplace of the Arab Uprisings — it now sends a very troubling message. It suggests that military assistance to the secular elite in barring Islamists from power is acceptable. It suggests that it can be linguistically and intellectually woven into the democratic narrative of the West as a vital, if painful, part of the revolution. It tells Islamists that democracy is not for them.

The path laid down by the military-judicial establishment in Egypt plants the seeds of a violent political Islamist reaction that would only help to justify the perpetuation of dictatorships in the Middle East. The Turkish experience shows that institutional rejection of political Islam does not remove it, and that by accepting a moderate expression of political Islam in the form of the AKP, the Turkish establishment actually helped to neutralise the threat from extremist Islamism.

The actions of the Egyptian military and its supporters on the streets dangerously undermine the largest and most moderate expression of political Islam in Egypt: the Muslim Brotherhood. It will not only radicalise Brotherhood supporters and bolster party hardliners, it also appears likely to remove the Salafist Nour Party from mainstream politics as well.

Ultimately, if democracy cannot be extended to all sectors of society, then it is no democracy. No wonder the autocrats of the Middle East were so quick to congratulate the Egyptian people on their victory.  

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The post When a Coup is Not a Coup appeared first on Fair Observer.

Some of the language used during the recent events in Turkey — and the media reaction to it, particularly in the West — warrants closer scrutiny.

Not only has there been talk of a Turkish Spring and of Taksim becoming a new Tahrir, but there have also been such statements as “we hope that Tayyip [Prime Minister Erdoğan] will have to go” and “this is our museum…memories of the days when a dictator ruled Turkey” — quoted in The Observer on June 2.

While much Western coverage has taken such statements at face value and placed them within the context of the Arab Spring as yet another chapter in a Middle East awakening, it is important that a broader, and deeper perspective is presented.  

The media attempt to associate the events of Taksim with those of Tahrir is — beyond the helpful alliteration — deeply misleading, especially to a Western audience less in touch with the context of the region. The protesters of Taksim and other urban centres in Turkey may appear to be a marginalised youth movement, but the reality is more nuanced.

Unlike Tahrir — and indeed, any of the Arab revolts — the political opposition that has lent its support to these Turkish protesters is not illegal, the protesters are not a deprived urban youth squeezed by the socio-economic effects of a state in financial crisis, and the leader they despise is not a dictator.

The Weight of History

In Turkey, even a protest against the redevelopment of an urban park is a highly politicised issue. Two key objections repeatedly raised by the protesters: one of the building projects on the Gezi Park is to rebuild an old Ottoman barracks; and a new Bosphorus bridge is to be named after an Ottoman Sultan.

It reveals a protest movement that is a hostage to Turkey’s political history. A rejection of the Ottoman past is deeply embedded in the traditional ideology of the state — Kemalism — as espoused by the Westernised, staunchly secular establishment through its political party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), as well as key structures within the military, judiciary and bureaucracy.

The CHP was quick to back the protests. Hence, when the protesters call for the downfall of Prime Minister Erdoğan, they are not merely whistling in the wind. Though drawn from a broad range of interest groups, they are nonetheless expressing the desires of a key constituency that has traditionally controlled Turkish society.

Prime Minister Erdoğan is now a popular hate figure. What he represents is a major constituency rooted in provincial Anatolia — though many have migrated to urban centres — with a marked Islamic religious and cultural sensibility. These are values that are seen as regressive and Middle Eastern in origin by the sectors of society represented in the protests.

The Demographics of the Protest

At the core of these protests is a highly Westernised urban youth. In a recent survey by academics at Istanbul Bilgi University, 63.6% of respondents were aged between 19 and 30, and 92.1% did not vote for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).

While 96.1% claimed a “respect for liberties” was a core demand of the protests, this reveals contradictions at the heart of the debate. For example, Turkey is a country in which it is illegal for a woman to wear an Islamic headscarf in state institutions. Yet, not only have women in headscarves been conspicuously absent from the protests, but the protesters have also not mentioned this civil rights issue.

Though 81.2% of the protesters surveyed claimed to be “libertarian” in outlook, their notion of civil liberties appears highly subjective. It is not civil liberties that are demanded so much as civil liberties for the Westernised and the staunchly secular.

Such demands closely correspond with the ideology of the traditional Turkish establishment. This convergence makes what appears to be a new protest movement rather less so. In fact, 6.6% of respondents called directly for a military coup, which has been the preferred method of removing Islamist politicians from power on several occasions in Turkish history.   

Turkey’s Violent Past

Founded by army officers and ruled as a one-party state until the 1950s, Turkey’s military has since staged three coups d’état in 1960, 1971, and 1980 in order to remove governments of which it disapproved. It did so with the justification of upholding the principles of the republic and restoring law and order.

This was followed in 1997 by the so-called "coup by memorandum" in which the military advised the Islamist Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan to leave office. Much of this military activity aimed at the suppression of political representation for a vast constituency in Turkey that identifies closely with Islam. Among them, Prime Minister Erdoğan has not been immune, having been imprisoned in 1998 after making a speech in which he recited a poem viewed as “anti-secular”.

The ruling AKP is the latest manifestation of Islamist politics in Turkey, a political movement that can claim as much understanding of state repression as any. The traditional establishment has — through the military and the judiciary — outlawed the Islamist National Order Party (1971), the National Salvation Party (1980), the Welfare Party (1998), and the Virtue Party (2001). Turkey’s chief prosecutor has also made two attempts, in 2002 and 2008, to ban the AKP.

Military coups were initiated in the past — particularly the highly repressive coup of 1980 — upon the pretext of restoring law and order on the streets. This has since made the prospect of civil unrest an especially threatening one for Islamist politicians, and a potent weapon for the traditional, Westernised establishment.

The recent trials in the Ergenekon case revolved around this very question, with defendants accused of attempting to foment civil unrest in order to give the military a pretext for overthrowing the AKP. The reaction of the AKP to the protests must be understood in the context of this political environment, which has imbued the party with a siege mentality.

The Errors of the AKP

It can certainly be claimed that police tactics in dealing with the current protests have been heavy-handed and counter-productive. The liberal use of tear gas, pepper spray, and disproportionate violence does not calm a situation. Such tactics demand investigation and a review of police conduct.

Another crucial context for these protests is the increasing inflexibility, and perceived lack of responsiveness of the AKP administration. It has been in power for over a decade, and such a period invariably exposes the flaws of any political party. It has certainly made mistakes, most significantly the stalling of many aspects of the EU-driven reform programme.

However, the traditional, Westernised establishment must also take responsibility. In pursuing an obstructive policy towards the participation of Islamist politicians in Turkish political life, it created a culture of suspicion. Quite apart from the contentious Ergenekon case — which has led to successful prosecutions — the establishment has engaged in actions such as the judicial attempt to block President Gül’s candidacy. The result is a political debate in which both sides have become steadily more polarised.

The Cultural Battleground

For much of the 20th century, Turkey’s cultural battle was more one-sided. The dominant narrative was that of a culturally European and secular state in which the Islamic heritage of the Turkish people was largely erased through such actions as the suppression of religious orders and language, dress, and legal reforms. It was a narrative enforced by the strength of arms.

It is now being challenged. In approaching history, each constituency selects and ignores what validates its arguments. The protest movement argues that naming a Bosphorus bridge after Ottoman Sultan Selim is insulting to Alevis (a minority branch of Shi’ism) since Alevis were massacred during his 16th-century rule. Yet, this same movement does not question the naming of countless monuments after Atatürk, who ruled during the massacre of Alevis in Dersim in 1937-38.

What history bears out, however, is that no country is an unchanging monolith. All democratic societies must be able to evolve. What was constructed in the 1920s was the vision of men who, as products of their age and background, were in-thrall to Western European civilization and felt deep ambivalence towards Islam.

The problems Turkey currently faces are tied to the transition from a single monolithic cultural narrative to a period in which varying, often competing, cultural narratives vie for power and legitimacy. Whether all sides in this debate can receive and retain a sense of ownership over the Turkish project will depend on the actions of those involved.

The Chance of a New Turkey

The success of the AKP over the past decade has been twofold. Firstly, they have given a sense of ownership of the Turkish project to a previously marginalised constituency. Secondly, they have done so without a wholesale revolution that excludes the voices of the traditional, Westernised elite and its supporters. This is a political balancing act; one in which the respective powers of each side are shifting.

Turkey has a significant, and highly vocal, Westernised and staunchly secular population. Yet, three free and fair general elections have revealed that they are not a majority in the country. They are a powerful minority, with rights certainly, but not the right to demand how Turkey should be, as they have done for most of the 20th century.

In the changing political landscape of Turkey — where power has been flowing increasingly from the Westernised establishment towards a new, emerging class with profoundly different sensibilities — friction is inevitable. The recent protests are the latest and most vocal manifestation of this uneasy recalibration of Turkey’s identity. 

If the AKP wishes to break with the monolithic narrative of Turkey’s 20th-century history, however, it must also attempt to break with the Kemalist notion of paternalistic government. The AKP must be mindful that it governs on behalf of all the people — not only the constituency that voted it into power. If it succeeds, it will ultimately be Turkey’s success.

The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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