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Erdoğan: the Putin of Turkey
As some of you may know, I was a fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs from 1984-86 and was based in Istanbul. I learned to speak the Turkish language adequately (but never, alas, quite fluently), and I traveled far and wide in Turkey, Greece, and Cyprus in those years. Between 1986 and 1992, I returned every couple of years for a month, and I went back again in 1998 and 2002. I once knew the country well.
I mention all of this because, in the last few days, I have made brief forays into Istanbul, the region south of Izmir, and the region of Antalya and Alanya on the south coast. I left Jerusalem on 27 July; flew to New York, Detroit, and Portland, Maine; spent one night at my wife’s parents’ home in Whitefield, Maine; and flew on the 28th from Boston to Istanbul via Amsterdam. There my wife and I boarded the Regent Seven Seas Mariner and I took up duties as a shipboard lecturer on a Hillsdale College cruise. If this itinerary seems mad, it is because it really is mad. I was not invited to take up these responsibilities until 17 July when I was already in Jerusalem about to start my teaching stint at Shalem College; and, given the troubles at Ben Gurion Airport outside Tel Aviv, the itinerary I followed was the way to go.
But enough about me. What is interesting is the manner in which Turkey has changed. I first visited Kusadasi on Turkey’s west coast in 1973. At that time, it was a fishing village. Cruise ships docked there so that those in attendance could visit Ephesus. But the village was nothing. It boasted one hotel, and that hotel, in which I stayed, was a dive. There were no paved streets.
Today, however, Kusadasi has, in the summer, a population of a quarter of a million people. It is a city of some importance and it lives off the tourist trade. To be more precise, it lives off the Turks from other parts of Anatolia who spend a month or more each summer in a Holiday Village.
I first visited the south coast of Turkey in the summer of 1984, when I was based in Istanbul. In those days, Anatalya, the leading city in the region, had not more than 60,000 inhabitants. Now it is a city of 1.2 million people. At that time, Alanya was a village, and almost no one lived along the coast between Antalya and Alanya. Today, that coastline is nothing more than a collection of hotels. There must be more than one thousand of them along the road. The population has grown in ways that beggar the imagination and there is wealth. The hotels I have in mind are luxury hotels. In many cases, the architecture is stunning. I have never seen anything like it.
Turkey is now a middle-class country, and it is, alas, no longer a reliable ally of the United States. The Islamist Justice and Development Party of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won an election in 2002, not long after my last visit to Turkey, with something on the order of a quarter of the vote. He became prime minister in 2003 and has won two elections since — the last one with about 49% of the vote. Initially, Erdoğan posed as a moderate, courted liberal support in Turkey and American and European support abroad. He even visited Israel in 2004 and he was the first Turkish prime minister to do so. In later years — after he stabilized the Turkish lira, liberalized the economy, profited from massive economic growth, and consolidated his political position — he began displaying an authoritarian streak and periodically spewed forth vicious anti-Semitic rants. His enemies were jailed; newspapers were closed; Twitter and the Internet were temporarily shut down; and a host of retired generals and intellectuals were convicted of sedition after a kangaroo court trial.
Now Erdoğan has had the Turkish constitution rewritten to provide for the direct election of the republic’s President, and he is running for the office himself. The first round of the election will be held on 10 August, and there may be no need for a second round. When I arrived in Istanbul, I found it plastered with gigantic posters describing Erdoğan as “the people’s man.” His main opponent — a chemistry professor turned international bureaucrat, who had served as Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic States — was almost invisible. I saw only a handful of posters touting his achievements, and they were minuscule. On the state-run television station, Erdoğan is ever-present. His opponents receive no notice. He is the Vladimir Putin of the Turkish Republic.
I fear that Erdoğan’s election is a foregone conclusion. His aim is evidently to reconfigure Turkey on the Gaullist model as a Presidential state, and this will allow him to follow through on his authoritarian instincts. There may be dark days ahead.
Published in General
Another parallel with Russia is how useless, from a Western point of view, the opposition seems.
Paul,
I have a really bad feeling about him. As if Obama’s CIA is pulling his strings. If he were to come down with Egypt & Saudi Arabia with Israel that would be it. A conclusive coalition would be possible for the elimination of jihadists, the toleration of religious minorities, and the emergent economic growth of the Middle East. Instead Obama-Kerry use him to wedge a Hamas fantasy proposal that goes nowhere.
Ask Claire. I haven’t got a clue.
Regards,
Jim
This morning, Steve Hayes of The Weekly Standard, who is on the ship with me, sent me a link to a powerful piece by Alexander Christie-Miller on the Newsweek site that casts light on the species of crony capitalism practiced by the current Turkish government. It is well worth reading.
Erdogan once said that Democracy was like a bus ride. “When I get to my stop I’m getting off.” He is a classic case of how you can turn a secular Muslim country into an Islamic state governed by Sharia law. Even if elected president as expected he has major problems. His goal of establishing Turkey as a regional power to counteract Iran is not being realized. The economy is stalling, youth unemployment is high, and foreign investment has dried up. He backed the non-ISIS rebels against Assad and Iran. ISIS controls two of the three crossing points between Syria and Turkey and is threatening to move into Turkey. His backing of the Muslim Brotherhood has turned Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Gulf states against him. He has not resolved the Turkish-Kurdish situation and the Kurds present a real threat to Turkey’s internal security. He has closed the free press in Turkey and put his supporters onto the Supreme Court. He has imprisoned many high ranking Turkish Army officers on trumped up charges, so a coup is unlikely. President Obama’s favorite Middle East leader is a disaster for Turkey and the West.
Yes, Alex’s piece is outstanding. Here’s a link to his website, which often has longer versions of his published work, all of which comes with my highest recommendation. For those with an interest in Turkish politics, here are a few more recommendations: James in Turkey is your best bet for election coverage and analysis, and Turkey Wonk is outstanding on security issues.
Paul, I agree with all of your assessment.
The OP reminded me of this 2007 piece by Michael Gurfinkel in Commentary. His thesis was that changes in Turkey have been driven in large part (as, IMO, can most geopolitical trends) by demographics. Specifically, slower demographic growth in more-secular, more-European Rumelia vs. faster growth in more-traditional, more-Islamic Anatolia. Are the towns Prof. Rahe describes in Anatolia? If so, his description of booming growth in those towns would appear to corroborate Gurfinkel’s argument.
The towns I described are in Anatolia. But, interestingly enough, I found very few Erdogan posters in the towns I passed through. I know that Izmir, on the Aegean, is a stronghold of his opponents. My guess is that his strength lies inland, away from the coasts, and in the megacity of Istanbul, which is now largely populated by people from the interior of Anatolia.
Sounds like he’s settling in:
“Price tag of Erdogan’s new palace revealed: $600m”
“The controversy over a new 1,000 room palace for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, has deepened with a government acknowledgment that the complex costs more than $600m, nearly double previous estimates.
“Mehmet Simsek, finance minister, said the complex, which dwarfs the White House, the Elysee and Buckingham Palace, would cost a total of TL1.37bn, ($616m) of which TL964m had been spent so far from the budget of the prime minister’s office. This compared with previous reports estimating the cost at $350m….”