Where are Erdogan and Turkey Heading?

Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been Turkey’s prime minister since 2003, and also chairs the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has now been elected president of the republic for a five-year term.

Erdogan, the first popularly elected head of state, had the support of some 52 per cent of those casting their ballots in the election held on Aug. 10. His main rival, diplomat Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the former head of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, captured more than 38 per cent of the vote. An ethnic Kurd, Selahattin Demirtas, took almost 10 per cent.

Parliament has in the past chosen the head of state and until now the presidency has largely been a ceremonial position, but this was changed under a law passed in 2010 by Erdogan’s government.

The ruling AKP will need to replace him as premier and party leader. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is seen as a leading candidate.

Turkey’s most audacious leader since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk himself, Erdogan has repeatedly stated his wish to use “the full extent of his constitutional powers” to be an “active president.” He apparently plans to change the constitution to establish a fully executive presidency, similar to the French or Russian ones.

Erdogan has been criticized for his increasingly autocratic ways, as he continues to steer Turkey along a more conservative and religiously Islamic path, thus continuing to reverse the political culture of the resolutely secular, indeed anti-clerical, Turkish state founded by Ataturk in 1923 after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

“Today national will and democracy have prevailed again,” Erdogan told his supporters from his party’s headquarters in Ankara. “Today, greater Turkey has prevailed again.” Some analysts suggest that he will run again in 2019, in order to lead the country during the hundredth anniversary of the modern Turkish state in 2023.

Erdogan confronts a Middle East in turmoil, and his foreign policy has faced setbacks. Along with the small Gulf state of Qatar, he is a steadfast supporter of Hamas, and last year hosted Hamas political leader Khaled Meshaal.

Hamas is now involved in war with Israel for the third time in a decade. As a consequence, Erdogan’s speeches have taken an increasingly shrill anti-Israeli tone in recent weeks.

 “Those who condemn Hitler day and night have surpassed Hitler in barbarism,” he said late last month. (The U.S. State Department called the remark “offensive and wrong.”) During an Aug. 2 election campaign speech Erdogan called on the international community to “stop Israel’s desire for genocide.”  He warned that “they will drown in the blood they lust for.”

Erdogan said that a normalization of ties with the Jewish state, in crisis since the death of ten activists during an Israeli raid on a Turkish ship bound for Gaza in 2010, was at this time out of the question.

Meanwhile Erdogan, who fancies himself perhaps the major figure in the region, has lost the support of the Arab world’s most important country, Egypt. From 2012 to 2013, under the leadership of former President Mohamed Morsi, a long-time member of the Islamist Muslim Brotherhood, relations between the two countries flourished.

But when Morsi was ousted last year and replaced with Abdul Fattah al-Sisi, Cairo’s enthusiasm quickly cooled.

Turkey’s Arab neighbours Syria and Iraq are both in the throes of vicious civil wars, and here too Ankara has ended up in trouble. Erdogan, a Sunni Muslim, has strongly opposed Bashar al-Assad’s Shi’ite regime in Damascus, nor is there any love lost between Erdogan and Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki.
As well, the Saudis, who have always considered the Muslim Brotherhood (and its Hamas offshoot) a menace, have also looked askance at Turkey’s embrace of the organization.

Erdogan is now relatively isolated – something a few years ago he would have considered an improbable outcome of his foreign policy, when he and his foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced a policy of “zero problems” with Turkey’s neighbours. Many today are joking that it now has become “zero friends.”