{"id":1207871,"date":"2023-06-09T09:27:53","date_gmt":"2023-06-09T07:27:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/?post_type=articles&p=1207871"},"modified":"2023-06-09T09:27:53","modified_gmt":"2023-06-09T07:27:53","slug":"make-turkey-great-again-and-again","status":"publish","type":"articles","link":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/articles\/make-turkey-great-again-and-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Make Turkey Great Again. And Again"},"featured_media":1207873,"template":"","meta":{"_has_post_settings":[]},"schools":[],"areas":[449],"subjects":[419],"class_list":["post-1207871","articles","type-articles","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","areas-politics","subjects-global-affairs"],"custom-fields":{"wpcf-article-leadin":["Recep Erdo\u011fan's election victory came from using old recipes for new times, but he now faces a foreign policy quagmire of his own making, writes Oscar Mart\u00ednez-Tapia."],"wpcf-article-body":["A few weeks ago, I was in Istanbul for an academic conference and my driver told me a Turkish joke, one that illustrates the country\u2019s current political vibe: A prisoner goes to the jail's library to borrow a book. The librarian says: We don't have this book, but we have its author.<\/em> In Turkey, many a journalist, professor, and intellectual has been jailed or forced into exile \u2013 and yet here was a taxi driver openly amusing a tourist like me with a dose of local cynicism. Welcome to Istanbul, amigo.\r\n\r\nBetter the devil you know than the devil you don\u2019t is the conclusion of the Turkish 2023 presidential election. Twenty years of Machiavellian politics later, Erdo\u011fan remains. Many of us wonder how and why, but it doesn\u2019t really matter what any Western mind thinks. He always wins with the surprisingly effective potpourri of authoritarianism, Islamism, and equilibrism that my driver seemed to enjoy so much.\r\n\r\nLet\u2019s not fool ourselves with the business-as-usual branding of the elections. What was at stake here was not whether one president would be replaced by another. Rather, the vote Turks made was to either continue on the (slowed) route to a secular democratic republic or to initiate a clear-cut deviation towards one of the multiple blends of a la carte Islamism that are abundant in the region.\r\n\r\nIndeed, it is difficult to avoid the suspicion that Turkey today represents the most eloquent test to Samuel P. Huntington\u2019s \u201cClash of Civilizations\u201d theory, according to which the main lines of international conflict will be essentially cultural, not economic nor ideological \u2013 or, when shared, religious. In fact, Huntington famously ranked Turkey as a torn country, a nation with a single predominant culture that places it in one civilization while its leaders seek to shift it to another. According to this (conservative) reading, Erdo\u011fan would therefore be the Ottoman that brings Turkey back to its original culture after an abnormal and heretic secular century. Relatively easy to understand: make Turkey great again.\r\n
Erdo\u011fan has effectively convinced more than half the population of Turkey that they were better back when they were Muslim (and poorer).<\/blockquote>\r\nBeing the most Western of the Eastern and the most Eastern of the Western societies, there was eventually a toll to pay. Perhaps, in the end, it is not so easy to be a Turk. In his crowded political rallies during the last month before election day, Erdo\u011fan rhetorically (and repeatedly) put the question to his followers: \u201cWhat is it to be Turkish today?\u201d (A: identity and nationalism.)\r\n\r\nThere should be no surprise that Erdo\u011fan came out a winner yet again. In the same way that the likes of Trump, Le Pen, Orban, and Meloni clamor on about how we were better people, better parents, better neighbors, and better subjects (also better students) back when we were poorer, Erdo\u011fan has effectively convinced more than half the population of Turkey that they were better back when they were Muslim (and poorer). It\u2019s the same toxic, romantic nostalgia evident elsewhere.\r\n\r\nConsidering this, it is not so difficult to see that there are some historical inaccuracies in the nostalgic narrative. Fake news. The Turkish writer, singer, politician Z\u00fclf\u00fc Livaneli wrote in El Pa\u00eds <\/em>that the Ottoman people who ended up pushed onto Anatolia from all the lost Ottoman land after 1919 were anything but heterogeneous. Their \u201clanguages, customs, music, cuisine, religions and cults were all different.\u201d<\/a> So, Erdo\u011fan is embracing the dubious historical logic used by most of our populist-nationalists.\r\n\r\nErdo\u011fan is using old recipes for new times. Moral decadence? Anti-gay and pro-family narrative. Economic crisis? Blame the Syrians (and the Kurds). Earthquake tragedy? National unity around the flag. EU ambiguity towards Turkey? Say yes to Finland but no to Sweden. High Diplomacy? Cozy up with Russia while sending weapons to Ukraine. Continued dispute with Azerbaijan? Befriend Armenia.\r\n\r\nA cascade of congratulations<\/a> rushed at Erdo\u011fan on his election victory. Everyone wants to be the President\u2019s pal, or at least straddle the line enough to make something work. Putin was first to congratulate, according to the Kremlin, showing off his bromance. Then piled in the others with recognition, including Macron, Biden and Sunak, followed by Xi and Netanyahu. Even Ursula tweeted about the EU wishing to work on advancing the relationship. Let\u2019s not forget that she is German, home to around seven million Turks, a good portion of them potentially anti-Erdo\u011fan.\r\n\r\nWhy should this be considered unusual? Well, there\u2019s the relentless violation of human rights, obscene control of the judiciary, X-rated persecution of opposition with a new law that criminalizes \u201cdisinformation,\u201d new electoral laws to disadvantage rivals, amendments to the constitution that perpetuate those in power. The list truly does go on \u2013 and it will continue to do so until the next election (which he will surely win\u2026 is that Turkish humor?) Furthermore, there\u2019s what the OSCE International Election Observation Mission stated in its report<\/a>: \u201cIn an environment with restrictions on freedom of expression, both private and public media did not ensure editorial independence and impartiality in their coverage of the campaign, detracting from the ability of voters to make an informed choice\u2026biased media coverage and the lack of a level playing field gave an unjustified advantage to the incumbent.\u201d\r\n\r\nYet, in the end, all this adds up to is just a bit of unpleasantness. We Westerners seem to finally understand that in order to catch the fast train to the new global order, we must, regrettably, upgrade our flirt with the bad guys.\r\n\r\nErdo\u011fan's sui generis foreign policy has borne fruit. Marketed as the ideological, cultural, and military middle hub between the West and the East, the North and the South, Turkey is now as equidistant as possible from every single trouble out there. Here is a short list of the foreign policy dilemmas:\r\n

Russia-Ukraine:<\/strong> Erdo\u011fan brokered a deal so that Russia ended the blockade on Ukraine's grain supply and therefore plays an active role in refereeing the war \u2013 and, as a NATO ally member, Turkey fully participates in the organization\u2019s operations. Then again, Erdo\u011fan does not miss a chance to brag about his hyper-testosteronized alliances at the dark end of the street.<\/p>\r\n

China:<\/strong> Self-appointed middlemen of the non-existent middle, Erdo\u011fan and Xi have sought to expand their regional leadership positions in Central Asia, for example stepping up ties in Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Moreover, Erdo\u011fan is pressing China to be a much larger investor in Turkey\u2019s branch of the Belt and Road Initiative and in doing so, is going after resources initially promised to the thriving Gulf Muslim brothers. Proxy potential conflicts.<\/p>\r\n

Iran:<\/strong> Erdo\u011fan\u2019s visit to Tehran in July took many by surprise. The purpose of the trip was apparently to leave behind past antagonisms and \u2013 no more no less \u2013 boost oil and natural gas imports from Iran. Despite the obvious obstacle of US sanctions, Erdo\u011fan feels that an increase in bilateral trade-offs will help cushion Iranian-Turkish zero-sum regional competition.<\/p>\r\n

Refugees.<\/strong> Erdo\u011fan has warned Brussels that it will soon prove difficult for him to stand by his promise to keep refugees from entering the EU via the Greek coasts. Estimates vary, but Turkey is host to roughly four million migrants<\/a>, the majority of whom come from Syria and now more from Afghanistan. The swelling number of refugees and asylum-seekers has proven unpopular with the Turks and fodder for Erdo\u011fan\u2019s rivals<\/a>.<\/p>\r\n

Greece<\/strong>. The disputes in the Aegean Sea make for daily headlines on both sides, not to mention some indispensable and ongoing drama between Brussels and Ankara. At the end of June, there will be a snap parliamentary election in Greece \u2013 one that will likely benefit conservative party New Democracy who might have to negotiate the government with Kyriakos Velopoulos of the ultra-nationalist populist Greek Solution party.<\/p>\r\nTo top everything off, Hakan Fidan, the all-powerful head of the Turkish National Intelligence Organization, has been recently appointed the country\u2019s top diplomat. The spymaster will finally be able to print his name on the foreign policies that he was already plotting. (Sailors, you\u2019ve been warned.)\r\n\r\nOf course, as my taxi driver would certainly be able to explain better than I, things are always more complex than they appear in Turkey. We could note that there were only four points difference between Erdo\u011fan and Kemal Kilicdaroglu (little more than two million votes), that Turkey is profoundly polarized, that Erdo\u011fan is now at his lowest popularity ever. We could go so far as to call him a sociopath. Yet, changing the parliamentary for a presidential system was a master move, one that will ensure Erdo\u011fan generous and almost unchecked power to shape Turkey according to his messianic and nativist (national-populistic) vision. We could say a lot of things when talking about Erdo\u011fan, but the thing that comes to my mind is Make Turkey Great Again<\/em>. And Again.\r\n\r\n \r\n\r\n\u00a9 IE Insights."],"wpcf-audio-article":[""],"wpcf-article-extract":["Recep Erdo\u011fan's election victory came from using old recipes for new times, but he now faces a foreign policy quagmire of his own making, writes Oscar Mart\u00ednez-Tapia."],"wpcf-article-extract-enable":["1"]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles\/1207871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/articles"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/articles"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1207873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1207871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"schools","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/schools?post=1207871"},{"taxonomy":"areas","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/areas?post=1207871"},{"taxonomy":"subjects","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ie.edu\/insights\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/subjects?post=1207871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}