How Erdogan Got His Groove Back
It’s been a difficult and dizzying few months for
Turkey—which is just the way the president likes it.
| APRIL 8, 2021,
7:49 AM
Recep Tayyip
Erdogan salutes his supporters during a rally at Istanbul's Yenikapi fairground
to show solidarity with Palestinians after Israels aggression against
Palestinian civilians on the Gaza border in Istanbul on May 18, 2018. GETTY
IMAGES
While
everyone was puzzling through the who, what, and how of the coup-non-coup
family drama in Jordan, it was yet another wild week in Turkish politics. On
April 3, around the same time as Prince Hamzah was allegedly plotting against
his half-brother King Abdullah II in Amman, 104 retired Turkish admirals
released a letter expressing concern that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s
government apparent proposal to pull Turkey out of the Montreux Convention,
which grants Turkey the right to regulate access to the Dardanelles and
Bosporus straits. The letter also raised alarms over what the naval officers
regard as the Islamization of the armed forces.
This is a
big deal; there have been coups in Turkey over less. Yet it is entirely unclear
what the admirals intended. Perhaps they sought to activate like-minded
officers who remain in the ranks. If so, the letter was the first step in the
long-awaited showdown between the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and
secularist-nationalist officers who have disposed of their common enemies—their
NATO-friendly colleagues and followers of the cleric Fethullah Gulen. Perhaps
it was just a group of retired admirals upset over the changes Erdogan and his
party have wrought over the last 19 years who finally felt the need to unburden
themselves. Perhaps it was a setup.
Whatever the
admirals were hoping to achieve, their missive has worked in the Turkish
president’s favor. In the days since the letter appeared in the wee hours of
the morning on an obscure, ultranationalist news site called Veryansintv.com,
Erdogan, his advisors, and their media toadies have declared, “Coup!” Given the
government’s unrivaled ability to frame the public narrative, this odd episode
may be remembered as an attempted putsch. It may also be remembered as the
moment when Erdogan, at least in domestic politics, got his groove back.
The letter
capped off what has been a tumultuous few months in Turkey, most triggered by
Erdogan. It comes after the protests that rocked Bogazici University; Ankara’s
withdrawal from the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and
Combating Violence Against Women and Domestic Violence, also known as the
Istanbul Convention; yet another change at the top of the Turkish Central Bank;
a case filed at the Constitutional Court to close the Peoples’ Democratic Party
(HDP); the conviction of that party’s leader for insulting Erdogan; and the
arrest of another high-profile member of the HDP. Throughout the chaos, Turks
have had to contend with a deteriorating economy coupled with the uncertainty
of the pandemic and rising cases of COVID-19.
Although the
calendar says April 2021, Erdogan—a careful and paranoid politician—is fixated
on 2023, when Turkey’s next presidential and general elections are scheduled to
be held. There is an added urgency to this upcoming cycle for the Turkish
leader, as recent polls show support for him and his party softening, though they are
still able to garner the most votes. As a result, Erdogan has hit on several
hot-button issues recently in an effort to shore up the political support he
already enjoys, while maneuvering to improve his chances of victory and an AKP
parliamentary majority in the upcoming elections.
The protests
at Bogazici—an internationally regarded university—began when Erdogan appointed
an unqualified political hack and accused plagiarizer named Melih Bulu to be
the school’s rector. In response to the demonstrations, the government employed
riot police and blamed the university’s LGBTQI club for the protests. This was
gross bigotry playing to the gross bigotry of religiously conservative voters.
Yet, it was not the only time in recent weeks that Erdogan and his minions
trafficked in homophobia. When Turkey pulled out of the Istanbul Convention on
March 21, the Turkish president defended the move, declaring that the agreement has been
hijacked by groups intent to “normalize homosexuality, which is incompatible
with Turkey’s social and family values.” This was the AKP turning on
itself in the search for votes from reactionaries. It was only a decade ago
that Erdogan oversaw the signing of the convention—thus its unofficial
name—with great fanfare. Although he was already well down the road of authoritarianism
at the time, Erdogan remained interested in projecting an image of the AKP and
Turkey as forward-thinking and progressive.
The day
before leaving the Istanbul Convention, Erdogan sacked the governor of the
Central Bank, Naci Agbal, who had only been in the job since November 2020.
Agbal’s transgression was to hike interest rates in a reflection of sane
monetary policy. Until Agbal took over, Turkey had lurched from one lira crisis
to another over the last three years. In his place, Erdogan installed Sahap
Kavcioglu, a former AKP legislator, manager at the state-controlled Halkbank,
and, most recently, a writer for the very pro-Erdogan daily Yeni Safak, where
he wrote columns arguing—like the Turkish president—that raising interest rates
causes inflation. It seems clear that Erdogan looked at the calendar and
decided that his politics dictated an unorthodox approach, even with its
attendant inflationary effects and long-term damage, as opposed to a policy
that would have inflicted pain on an overextended middle class and
business community associated with higher interest rates.
Then there
is the plight of the HDP. Next to the Gulenists, the party is Erdogan’s biggest
bugaboo. That is because, even though it is routinely described in the press as
“Kurdish-based,” the party has a broader appeal. In the June 2015 general
elections, the HDP garnered 13 percent of the popular vote, which was enough to
get into parliament (the threshold is 10 percent) and deny the AKP a
parliamentary majority. That is why Erdogan sabotaged coalition government
talks that summer, forcing a rerun election in which he was able to reverse the
AKP’s losses. Since then, Erdogan has sought to decapitate the HDP,
accusing its leadership of colluding with the terrorists of the Kurdistan
Workers’ Party (PKK). Selahattin Demirtas, an HDP co-founder and presidential
candidate, has been in jail since 2016 on terrorism charges and was recently
found guilty and sentenced to more prison time for insulting Erdogan.
Another high-profile party leader and member of parliament, Omer Faruk
Gergerlioglu, was recently stripped of his immunity in March and arrested
for sharing and commenting on a tweet in 2016 that
called on the Turkish government to restart peace talks with the PKK.
Clearly, the
Turkish leader is worried about the HDP and its ability to draw enough votes to
once again deny the AKP a parliamentary majority in 2023. The executive
presidency that Erdogan engineered through constitutional amendments in 2017 only
works in the way he desires—unchecked—if the president shares party membership
with the Grand National Assembly’s majority party. It is hardly a coincidence
that in recent weeks Turkish prosecutors filed a case with the Constitutional
Court to close the party on the grounds that it supports terrorism. The court
sent it back, citing technical problems, but that probably will not end the
case. The ironies here are almost too much to take. The AKP is the successor to
a series of parties that were closed and whose leaders were banned and jailed.
That is why, shortly after the AKP came to power, it implemented reforms to
make it harder for the authorities to shutter parties they do not like. That
was then.
It is hard
to judge what might happen when elections are still about two years away, but
it seems clear that Erdogan has been looking for every possible advantage
wherever he can get it. The polls suggest it was not working––and then, like a
gift from God, some retired admirals wrote a letter that caused a political row
given who they are and the issues that concerned them. The political discourse
in Turkey will now surely revolve around a politically potent dichotomy: You
are either with Erdogan, or you are with coup plotters.
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Erdogan has
long been successful at turning the tables on his opponents. The Ergenekon
plotters were jailed, Abdullah Gul became president despite the military’s
efforts to block him, and Gulenists are on the run. Perhaps the admirals’
letter will be another one of these affairs that gives Erdogan a political
boost even as his and the AKP’s rule decays and deteriorates further into
coercion and corruption, proving, as the old saying goes, it is better to be
lucky than good.
Steven A. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei
senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign
Relations. His latest book is False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and
Violence in the New Middle East.
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