Washington’s Erdogan Dilemma

Turkey’s President Erdogan has begun to ring a lot of alarm bells in Washington, although you wouldn’t know it from the Americans’ public statements – or lack thereof. Washington’s “walk on egg shells” approach towards Ankara instead seems to rely on private warnings, behind the scenes reproaches and friendly attempts to cajole Mr. Erdogan and his government. If another wikileaks were to occur today, however, the public would likely be reading a trove of very alarmed diplomatic cables from Turkey-based American diplomats.

Over the last decade, as Mr. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) increasingly solidified their hegemony over Turkey’s politics and society, they appeared to jettison the tactical caution, moderation and liberalism that marked their first few years in power. With the Kemalist “deep state” and military completely defanged by 2011, they busily went about replacing them with their own Islamist “deep police state.” As many of us suspected from the beginning, the AKP’s early push for democratization and adherence to European Union Copenhagen accession criteria was nothing more than a cheap stratagem, designed to protect them from a Kemalist coup. 

The scheme worked brilliantly, and Mr. Erdogan and his AKP found in Europe and America their most ardent supporters and backers. Turkey’s “old guard,” its Kemalist military officers, secular jurists, and pro-Western business elites were all made to understand that they would pay a heavy price internationally should they attempt to undemocratically overthrow the AKP. President Obama went to Cairo and around the world holding up Turkey as a model Muslim democracy. European leaders likewise sang the praises of Mr. Erdogan’s governments, even if they were not all completely ready to embrace Turkey as one of their own.

Once securely ensconced in their seats of power, however, Mr. Erdogan and the AKP may have felt sufficiently comfortable to revert to their original, more instinctive political positions. Perhaps they rode their democracy train to where they wanted to go, and then had little use left for it. With real conspiracy coups against them crushed, they invented new ones. The imaginary threats aiming to “weaken Turkey and divide the country” came from anywhere and everywhere, from the “interest rate lobby” and “parallel state” to “telekinesis attacks,” “marauders” in Gezi Park and stray cats causing mysterious country-wide power failures on election nights. 

Even the American ambassador in Ankara was made a target by Erdogan during the December 17, 2013 corruption scandal. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone told fellow EU ambassadors at a meeting that  “We requested the end of the financial ties of Halkbank with Iran. But they didn’t listen. You are watching the collapse of an empire [Turkey].” Following this, pro-AKP media outlets accused the Americans of fabricating the corruption allegations, presumably in cahoots with U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen. Mr. Erdogan told supporters at a December 2013 rally that “These recent days, very strangely, ambassadors get involved in some provocative acts. I am calling on them: Do your job, if you leave your area of duty, this could extend into our government's area of jurisdiction. We do not have to keep you [Ricciardone] in our country." 

This was followed the next year when an Erdogan stalwart, long-time mayor of Ankara Melih Gokcek, called State Department Spokeswoman Marie Harf a “dumb blond” in a series of vitriolic tweets. This, of course, is the same Melih Gokcek who never hesitates to launch lawsuits against journalists and average citizens who criticize him (taking a cue from his boss, who turned enforcement of laws against insulting the Turkish presidency into a form of crowd control). 

Things only got worse from there. Turkey’s press freedom ranking fell from 98th out of 161 countries in 2006 to 149th out of 180 countries in 2015. In 2015 alone, some 500 journalists were fired from their jobs and another 70 were physically attacked, including one of the most prominent columnists of the venerable Hurriyet secular mass daily paper. Then came Turkey’s role in supporting jihadis in Syria, something which your humble columnist has commented upon a good deal and will not repeat here. 

Recent comments from Mr. Erdogan regarding Hitler, and how Germany offered an example of a [presumably successful] executive presidency system under him, were just icing on the same, reflexively anti-Western, Islamist cake he has gone back to serving. In 2014, Mr. Erdogan told supporters that “They [Israelis] always curse Hitler, but they now even exceed him in barbarism. Some Americans ask why the prime minister [Erdogan] makes such comparisons with Hitler. What’s that to you? You’re America, what’s Hitler got to do with you?” Of course, the United States lost over 400,000 of its best and brightest fighting Hitler and his allies in World War Two, so Mr. Erdogan’s comments displayed a level of offensiveness and ignorance that seems hard to outdo (although we might nonetheless add that Hitler actually abolished the German Presidency when he took office, moving all power to his office of the Chancellor). 

Last but not least, we have the Erdogan government’s choice to resume a full out war against the Kurdish national movement in Turkey. The cities under siege in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish regions, the months long curfews, the snipers shooting anything that moves, growing numbers of civilian casualties, promises to “totally eradicate the terrorists” and general polarization of society in Turkey under Mr. Erdogan have caused alarm in every human rights organization worth mentioning. Even the New York Times editorial of January 6, 2016, opined that “Turkey’s allies, America and Europe, have been disgracefully acquiescent as the army brutally pounds Kurdish targets in the country’s southeast region.”

All of which brings us back to American policy towards Turkey and Mr. Erdogan. The “walk on egg shells” and “complain privately” approach failed. Washington needs to stop imagining that Turkey under its current government is something it is not and prepare for more trouble down the road. 


David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He holds the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and is the author of numerous publications on the Kurds and the Middle East.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.