The fate of Turkey lies in Erdogan’s hands
His priority is not Isis but the Gulenists and Kurdish insurgents, writes David Gardner
Turkey is in trauma after the failed coup attempt 10 days ago by a faction of the army. But as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his neo-Islamist ruling party launch sweeping purges against the rival Islamist movement he blames for the putsch, Turkey’s allies in Europe and the Atlantic alliance have reason to worry about where it is heading — whether, indeed, the west could lose this pivotal country straddling Europe and Asia.
The perception had taken hold long before this drama that Turkey, an eastern pillar of Nato and an EU candidate member in a volatile region, had ceased to be a team player. Mr Erdogan has subordinated almost every consideration of domestic or foreign policy to his quest for a Vladimir Putin-style presidency. Relations with western allies have become transactional. He has mused about whether the country would be better served inside other alliances, such as the Eurasian Economic Union, brainchild of the Russian president, or the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, rather than in Nato or an EU that has no real plans to admit Turkey.
By dismissing the idea of Muslim Turkey as a full member, EU states led by France and Germany helped turn Mr Erdogan away from Europe. But Turkey really started slipping its western moorings in 2013, when a civic and rather European rebellion against the then three-term prime minister’s piously intrusive rule was put down by force. By December, Mr Erdogan was in bitter conflict with Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric and former ally whose secretive networks inside the state launched a graft probe deep into his inner circle. The ferocity of their intra-Islamist power struggle buckled institutions such as the judiciary and has now destroyed army cohesion — with the arrest of one in three of its generals, denounced as Gulenists behind the coup.
Turkey’s army, a linchpin of the secular republic built by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire, is the second-largest in Nato. Turkey’s western allies look askance when a third of its commanders are said to be under the influence of a shadowy Islamist cult. Mr Erdogan and his circle, for their part, point the finger at the US, where Mr Gulen lives in Pennsylvania.
A few ministers and pro-Erdogan media outlets accuse the US of being behind the coup. They are referring to a well-thumbed Erdogan script: at the end of 2014, for example, the president told an Islamic conference that westerners may “look like friends but they want us dead”. Often pugnacious but sometimes pragmatic in pursuit of power, he holds Turkey’s future in his hands.
The pragmatism was on show before the coup, when Turkey started mending diplomatic fences with Israel and Russia, and even put out feelers on Syria, where it has backed Islamist rebels against Bashar al-Assad’s regime for five years. This was recognition, above all, that Ankara’s expansive Syria and neo-Ottoman regional policy was in ruins. In what looks to be a gesture to Mr Putin, Mr Erdogan arrested the pilots who shot down a Russian jet last November near the Syrian border, implying it was a Gulenist provocation to drive the two strongmen apart. After this abortive coup, it is from the west that Turkey risks being driven apart.
The scale and depth of the post-coup purges, so far netting 60,000 people — teachers, academics, journalists and judges in addition to military suspects — will accelerate Turkey’s rupture with the EU over basic freedoms and the rule of law. The transaction whereby the EU offered politically undeliverable sweeteners such as visa-free travel if Turkey served as a holding pen for Syrian refugees looks like an early casualty.
The transaction with Nato, where the US air force uses Incirlik base in south Turkey for raids against Isis across the border in Syria and Iraq, now looks more complicated. The US in return was supposed to restrain its main ground force: Syrian Kurdish fighters Ankara sees as a greater threat than Isis because of their alliance with Turkish Kurd insurgents. Now it looks as though Turkey is linking access to Incirlik — closed during the coup attempt — to its demand that the US extradites Mr Gulen for trial.
Anti-Isis coalition and Syrian rebels suffer as Ankara looks inwards after attempted coup
The plain fact is that Mr Erdogan’s priorities are not the west’s; his are the wars against the Gulenists and Kurdish insurgents, not the war against Isis.
Isis has cells inside Turkey because of Ankara’s until recently permissive policy for jihadis transiting into Syria. Last year Isis attacked Kurdish targets inside Turkey, but this year — as it feels the US heat from Incirlik — it is hitting targets such as Istanbul airport. But Mr Erdogan and his Justice and Development party (AKP) see Isis as a mere security threat, whereas they see the Gulenist “parallel state” and Kurdish insurgents as existential threats.
Since becoming president in 2014, Mr Erdogan has sharpened the Sunni, Islamist and Turkish identity of the AKP, polarising it against ethnic Kurds and quasi-Shia Alevi, grouped in separate opposition parties, as well as against secularists spread between them. Dog-whistle xenophobia has become fuller throated. The parliamentary opposition nevertheless stood by him against the army mutiny. The president could forge with them a new democratic consensus or, with Islamists and ultranationalists out in force on the streets, continue his record and stitch all his opponents, at home and abroad, into one seamless conspiracy.
The perception had taken hold long before this drama that Turkey, an eastern pillar of Nato and an EU candidate member in a volatile region, had ceased to be a team player. Mr Erdogan has subordinated almost every consideration of domestic or foreign policy to his quest for a Vladimir Putin-style presidency. Relations with western allies have become transactional. He has mused about whether the country would be better served inside other alliances, such as the Eurasian Economic Union, brainchild of the Russian president, or the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation, rather than in Nato or an EU that has no real plans to admit Turkey.
By dismissing the idea of Muslim Turkey as a full member, EU states led by France and Germany helped turn Mr Erdogan away from Europe. But Turkey really started slipping its western moorings in 2013, when a civic and rather European rebellion against the then three-term prime minister’s piously intrusive rule was put down by force. By December, Mr Erdogan was in bitter conflict with Fethullah Gulen, a US-based cleric and former ally whose secretive networks inside the state launched a graft probe deep into his inner circle. The ferocity of their intra-Islamist power struggle buckled institutions such as the judiciary and has now destroyed army cohesion — with the arrest of one in three of its generals, denounced as Gulenists behind the coup.
Turkey’s army, a linchpin of the secular republic built by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk from the rubble of the Ottoman Empire, is the second-largest in Nato. Turkey’s western allies look askance when a third of its commanders are said to be under the influence of a shadowy Islamist cult. Mr Erdogan and his circle, for their part, point the finger at the US, where Mr Gulen lives in Pennsylvania.
A few ministers and pro-Erdogan media outlets accuse the US of being behind the coup. They are referring to a well-thumbed Erdogan script: at the end of 2014, for example, the president told an Islamic conference that westerners may “look like friends but they want us dead”. Often pugnacious but sometimes pragmatic in pursuit of power, he holds Turkey’s future in his hands.
The pragmatism was on show before the coup, when Turkey started mending diplomatic fences with Israel and Russia, and even put out feelers on Syria, where it has backed Islamist rebels against Bashar al-Assad’s regime for five years. This was recognition, above all, that Ankara’s expansive Syria and neo-Ottoman regional policy was in ruins. In what looks to be a gesture to Mr Putin, Mr Erdogan arrested the pilots who shot down a Russian jet last November near the Syrian border, implying it was a Gulenist provocation to drive the two strongmen apart. After this abortive coup, it is from the west that Turkey risks being driven apart.
The scale and depth of the post-coup purges, so far netting 60,000 people — teachers, academics, journalists and judges in addition to military suspects — will accelerate Turkey’s rupture with the EU over basic freedoms and the rule of law. The transaction whereby the EU offered politically undeliverable sweeteners such as visa-free travel if Turkey served as a holding pen for Syrian refugees looks like an early casualty.
The transaction with Nato, where the US air force uses Incirlik base in south Turkey for raids against Isis across the border in Syria and Iraq, now looks more complicated. The US in return was supposed to restrain its main ground force: Syrian Kurdish fighters Ankara sees as a greater threat than Isis because of their alliance with Turkish Kurd insurgents. Now it looks as though Turkey is linking access to Incirlik — closed during the coup attempt — to its demand that the US extradites Mr Gulen for trial.
Anti-Isis coalition and Syrian rebels suffer as Ankara looks inwards after attempted coup
The plain fact is that Mr Erdogan’s priorities are not the west’s; his are the wars against the Gulenists and Kurdish insurgents, not the war against Isis.
Isis has cells inside Turkey because of Ankara’s until recently permissive policy for jihadis transiting into Syria. Last year Isis attacked Kurdish targets inside Turkey, but this year — as it feels the US heat from Incirlik — it is hitting targets such as Istanbul airport. But Mr Erdogan and his Justice and Development party (AKP) see Isis as a mere security threat, whereas they see the Gulenist “parallel state” and Kurdish insurgents as existential threats.
Since becoming president in 2014, Mr Erdogan has sharpened the Sunni, Islamist and Turkish identity of the AKP, polarising it against ethnic Kurds and quasi-Shia Alevi, grouped in separate opposition parties, as well as against secularists spread between them. Dog-whistle xenophobia has become fuller throated. The parliamentary opposition nevertheless stood by him against the army mutiny. The president could forge with them a new democratic consensus or, with Islamists and ultranationalists out in force on the streets, continue his record and stitch all his opponents, at home and abroad, into one seamless conspiracy.
Comments
Post a Comment