Erdogan's geopolitical own goals
We had a discussion about Ataturk the other day, and Erdogan was mentioned there. So, in the context of our monthly topic (geopolitics/Realpolitik), here are some thoughts about Erdogan's recent spree of "own-goals".
First of all, what's an "own goal"? In football (soccer), that's when a player experiences a moment of ultimate fail and puts the ball into their own net. Maybe something like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4tVtfDTqJs
Now back to Turkey. I think it's become evident from the present developments there that the "democratic" PM Recep Erdogan has practically turned out to be no less authoritarian than, say, his southern neighbour Bashar Asad, whom Erdogan himself never misses an opportunity to label a horrible "tyrant". By Erdogan's orders, the Turkish police, without hesitating for a minute, used all the forceful tools they had at their disposal to disperse the ceaseless protests of the local opposition.
The dissenting moods among the Turkish society had started to bear fruit way ahead of those events, and most of all due to the systematic policies of the present PM both on the domestic and foreign front. But for Erdogan himself (as is btw the case with all recently deposed leaders throughout the Arab world), the crisis appears to have struck suddenly and out of the blue. It's true that on the surface it all looked fine and nice for him until very recently: his position seemed unshakable, especially after the last parliamentary election in 2011 when the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) got almost 50% of the votes and enjoyed a comfortable majority in Parliament. The mass cleansing among the military (which is ongoing even today, with the Ergenekon trial and all) resulted in many "disloyal" or "not-so-loyal" generals and high officers being put behind bars. This presumably granted the PM control over the military, which is by far the most influential institution in Turkish society, and is traditionally considered to be a guarantor for the stability and secular development of the country. The Turkish media are presently working in the conditions of extreme censorship, journalists risking imprisonment merely for publishing articles that are too critical of Erdogan and his government, etc. The way in which the regime interprets the freedom of speech is quite "unique", too: one example is the Turkish-Armenian author Sevan Nisanyan who was sentenced to 13 months in jail for his "offensive remarks" about the prophet Muhammad.
By the way, as the events in Istanbul and other cities have shown, the repressions only stimulated the protest moods even more. In these circumstances, just a minor trigger was needed to ignite the situation, and that was the attempt to build a new shopping mall in the place of the Gezi park. The protests united all of Erdogan's diverse opponents, who in other circumstances would've hardly showed up shoulder to shoulder in the same camp: leftists and ultra-leftists, students, union members, nationalists, Kemalists, Kurds, and of course the omnipresent football ultras - who participated in unprecedented unity.
Ironically, Erdogan's policies only serve as a confirmation of Brussel's (i.e. EU's) long-time criticism of Turkey. Among the alarming tendencies the one that sticks out is that the actions of the government are in a direct contradiction to any norms of democracy, particularly the pressure on various public figures of renown, opposition leaders and journalists, as well as the attempt to force conservative Islamist approaches and norms upon the modern Turkish society. The present hard-line course toward more restrictive norms of behaviour in public places, the lack of public expertise in defining the socially significant issues and all the failures of connecting with all the people (as opposed to just those more conservative segments who are Erdogan's "base"), are all indicators for a dangerous deviation from the loudly proclaimed model of "democracy with an Islamic face". In fact, the main demand of the protesters is not so much related to the democratic reforms and improving the living standard (as was the case across the Arab world), as they are a rejection of the government's plans to curb the liberties that a significant part of the Turkish society has already grown accustomed to in the last few decades. They just do not want a more theocratic revision of the secular state model that has been fostered for such a long time and with such painstaking effort.
The Turkish crisis is a direct consequence of Erdogan's blatant mistakes both on the domestic and international front. He had all the opportunities to fulfill his plan of putting Turkey on the geopolitical map as an insurmountable factor located just at the bridge between the East and West, and so far he's been failing pretty badly on most fronts. In the meantime, probably due to particularities of his character, the PM seems utterly incapable of recognising the validity of his society's criticisms and expectations of him. Instead, he stubbornly keeps trying to regulate and direct people's private lives without even consulting with them, and he remains unwilling to realise that he has put almost everyone against himself at this point. The Turkish youth, who are strongly culturally Westernised and politically pro-European, will not agree with his course towards further Islamisation of everyday life. The intelligentsia and the business circles, in turn, are extremely discontent with the obvious failures in foreign policy, especially on the Syrian issue, which are putting Turkey in direct collision with both the US and Russia, and which have led to a catastrophic deterioration of the economic situation, particularly in the south-eastern part of the country. And finally, the Kemalist segments of society are appalled with Erdogan's demonstrative rejection of the principles of the Turkish republic that Kemal Ataturk created (Erdogan implicitly qualified Ataturk as a "drunk" at some point, which angered a lot of people).
It's no surprise then that the supporters of the opposition People's Republican Party (CHP) have been very active participants in the anti-government protests in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and other big cities across the country. There's a rising alarm among the secular segments of the Turkish society who fear the increasing clerical element in Erdogan's policies. The government's efforts to impose and enforce Islamic norms and rules are designed to suffocate public activity and deter the normal functioning of the secular political parties, and ultimately they're straying Turkey off its secular path, and creating conditions for the establishment of a sort of one-party dictatorship with strong theocratic elements.
A serious role in forming and spreading the protest movement belongs to the abrupt deterioration of the real incomes of the medium group of Turkish society, at the background of an accelerated enrichment of the activists and leaders of the ruling party (the so called "Anatolian economic group").
In the meantime, the policy of the government on the Kurdish issue is now at the brink of total failure. That's confirmed by the fact that many activists of the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) are now joining the anti-Erdogan camp, because they've now realised that the ongoing negotiations between the regime with Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan and the slight softening of the pressure against the Kurds are all but propaganda stunts, aiming to guarantee the ruling party some extra votes on the next election. In practice, Erdogan's course on the Kurdish issue remains largely unchanged and continues to try to undermine and ultimately dismantle the Kurdish movement.
Despite the formal normalisation of the previously imploding relations with Israel after the diplomatic furore in the wake of the so called "Freedom flotilla" incident in the Mediterranean Sea, Erdogan does not intend to quit his close relations with he Muslim Brotherhood (no surprise that the Turkish government is so vocal in condemning the Egyptian military coup against the MB), and his aid to their Palestinian branch, namely Hamas.
By replicating the West's policy of putting maximum pressure on Syria, including by keeping the military option on the table in case of certain conditions, Erdogan's government is inviting a myriad of challenges and threats to Turkey's national security. So far, the anti-military moods that dominate the Turkish society have forced the PM to refrain from using the country's territory as a launching pad for a direct military campaign against Syria, which btw has seriously disrupted the US plans for a faster solution of the Syrian problem.
It's telling that there are coordinated protests demanding for Erdogan's resignation - not just in Turkey itself, but also across Europe (Brussels, Madrid, Berlin, etc). And they started right after Erdogan's demand that the protesters in Turkey cease and desist. In result, much like Putin's conspiracy-theory craziness in Russia, Erdogan has resorted to accusing the West of using the social networks to spread the ideas of the Arab spring on Turkish territory. The irony here is staggering, since Erdogan had been one of the first leaders to praise the "democratic awakening" of the peoples of the Middle East). Many observers believe that this shows a pattern of behaviour that's very similar to what the authoritarian leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen did, as soon as trouble arrived at their doorstep.
There was also an unexpected turn of events in the story with the explosions on the border town of Reyhanli (just a couple of km away from Syria), which happened in May. While the official media in Turkey were still eager to keep accusing the Syrian intelligence for the attack, some recently published classified documents(tr) on the Internet forced the government to (at least officially, if not actually) reconsider its stance, as they showed that there had been preliminary information about the vehicles that were used for the attack. Well, turns out those actually belonged to the Syrian opposition group Jabhat al-Nusra (the Victory Front) from the region around Ar-Raqqah. This leads to the conclusion that either there is an actual false-flag conspiracy going on, or more likely an opposition faction exists among some of the Turkish top intelligence, which is discontent with Erdogan's foreign policies and is covertly working to undermine them.
By the way, in May France proposed that the UN include this group in the main list of terrorist organisations. And while we're on the UN, at the Council on Human Rights and in the report of the US Department of Human Trafficking, the US has clearly confirmed the conclusions of the independent commission on Syria, which says that armed opposition groups are using children in their battle with the Assad regime. So far almost a hundred children have died in Syria, fighting among the rebels, half of them this year alone, which indicates that this tendency is deepening. In the meantime, the US law (from 2000) for protecting the victims of human trafficking stipulates special sanctions to countries that are using children soldiers. They could be potentially deprived of US military aid. Despite that, president Obama recently ordered the delivery of arms and military equipment to the Supreme Military Council of the so called National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Force, which the White House now recognises as the one legitimate representative of the Syrian people. In other words, the decision of the US president not only clearly contradicts the US legislation in this domain, but it also directly violates it, and in result US taxpayer money is being used for arming Syrian Islamist rebels of dubious reputation, methods, motivations and purposes. That - as an aside.
By openly supporting the Syrian opposition through providing a base for preparation and attacks from its fighters on its own territory and protecting the arms delivery routes and safe passage of Jihadists, among other rebels, Turkey is risking to very soon turn itself into a target for radical Islamist groups, and repeat the grave strategic mistake that Pakistan did. Similarly, when Pakistan decided to meddle in the affairs of neighbouring Afghanistan, this ultimately turned Pakistan itself into a base for the Taliban and Al Qaeda - and Turkey could very soon experience the effect of the pressure of the extremists from Jabhat al-Nusra and other similar formations who could spread religious conflict in the country by putting the Suni majority against the Shia and Alawite communities.
Thus, ironically, Erdogan is likely to find himself in the same or a similar position as Bashar Assad, the tyrant that he is so eager to bash at every occasion. As we know, he was one of the staunchest critics of the Syrian government, calling his neighbour "a cruel oppressor" and demagogically declaring that, since the "street" had turned against the regime, the regime had to go. But in the meantime, that same Erdogan did not budge from his conviction in his own correctness even for a minute, and he had no doubts in the rightfulness of his own actions when he ordered the police to disperse the crowd with tear gas and water cannons at Taksim Square. In response to the legitimate calls of his countrymen to preserve the last remaining green spot in the centre of the largest Turkish megapolis, where his loyal Anatolian businessmen wanted to build a huge shopping mall, yet another mosque, and an Ottoman-worshiping museum, the "Islamic democrat" Erdogan declared that he wouldn't grant even one single wish of the protesters. He instantly forgot all his prior rhetoric about the "suffering people" and called the peaceful protesters "terrorists", "hooligans" and "drunks". And btw, during the most heated days of the standoff, he preferred to leave the country and go to Tunisia, from where he declared that those protesters should "hang on the trees they were claiming to protect".
Except, if Ataturk were alive today, he'd probably be the first to want to hang Erdogan on the first tree that he comes across.
All this said, while dancing their funny diplomatic dances on the issue, the international community is probably having serious second thoughts about the advisability of a possible further European integration for Turkey. I suspect Brussels is already starting to realise the full scope of such a factor as the creeping Islamisation in parts of Europe, and a huge player like Turkey potentially being a major driving engine for that process (although we could argue that the reverse is true too: Europe being largely responsible for Turkey's new chosen course toward Islamisation). Some European officials must be shaking in their boots at the prospect of the likes of the Muslim Brotherhood and other such radical Islamist formations gaining access to the European Parliament, and as a consequence, their attempts of furthering the Sharia agenda gaining momentum.
The assaults on British and French military personnel in London and Paris earlier this year by solitary radical Islamists may be putting some further water into the mill of the alarmist camp, and the bad news is that this could only cause more suspicion and distrust between the East and West, with all the grave consequences that come with it. And let's not pretend that Erdogan, being the leader of the most powerful geopolitical factor standing at the bridge between East and West, and the spearhead of this new "Islamist democratic" agenda that he and his aides have crafted and are actively promoting, is not playing a crucial role in all that.