MESOP RECOMMENDATION : Michael Gunter – Erdoğan and the Decline of Turkey

© 2016, The Author Middle East Policy © 2016, Middle East Policy Council
Erdoğan and the Decline of Turkey
Dr. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Technological
University and the author of 14 books on Kurdish and Armenian issues.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — Turkey’s current president (elected 2014) and former prime
minister (2003-2014) — in his first decade in power, won three parliamentary
elections by ever-larger shares of the popular vote because he had helped to
build Turkey into a burgeoning economic powerhouse and a moderate Islamic democracy.
In the past half-decade, however, despite winning Turkey’s first popular
election for president in August 2014 and presiding over another great parliamentary
victory in November 2015, Erdoğan’s increasing authoritarianism has helped
precipitate the disastrous decline of the nation as well as his own inevitable fall from
power. What happened, and what lessons can be gleaned? Can Turkey’s decline be
reversed, and its progress revived?

DOMESTIC AFFAIRS
Erdoğan created the Adalet ve Kalkinma
Partisi (AKP), or Justice and Development
Party (JDP), as a moderate, socialconservative
party with Islamic roots in
August 2001 after the two previous Islamic
parties — the Virtue Party (Fazilet Partisi)
and the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) —
had been banned, along with their longtime
leader and Erdoğan’s former mentor,
Necmettin Erbakan (1926-2011).1 Erdoğan
had already earned an admirable reputation
for honesty and efficiency as the mayor
of Istanbul during the mid-1990s. Having
apparently learned a lesson from his earlier
political experiences as an Islamist politician,
Erdoğan specifically declared that the
AKP did not have a religious agenda and
would work within the secular-democratic
framework. Barely a year later, in the parliamentary
elections of November 2, 2002,
the AKP swept to victory. After solving a
brief problem concerning an earlier conviction
for having publicly read lines from
an Islamic poem,2 Erdoğan became prime
minister of Turkey in March 2003, a position
held until becoming the first popularly
elected president in August 2014.
When he first assumed power, many
critics warned against Erdoğan’s supposed
secret Islamic agenda. This did not materialize,
though the economy kept expanding,
to the advantage of many who had usually
been left behind. Erdoğan seemed to have
proven his critics wrong; indeed many
began to compare the AKP with Europe’s
democratically-oriented and economically
progressive Christian Democrats. In
addition, Erdoğan began to tame and then
politically defang the military, Turkey’s
ultimate political arbitrator.3
One of Erdoğan’s goals in reforming
Turkey’s political and economic situation
R
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was to win membership in the European
Union (EU), with which accession negotiations
began in October 2005. The effort
eventually foundered,4 but as a reward for
his worthy accomplishments, the international
community too sought to reward the
Turkish leader. The West held him up as a
moderate Muslim alternative to the Islamic
extremism plaguing much of the Middle
East.5 And to his credit, Erdoğan achieved
real successes: a record 7.5 percent average
annual growth rate, foreign investments
that jumped from $1.2 to a record
$20 billion and a decline in inflation. In
addition, AKP social-welfare networks
played an important role in reducing the
negative consequences of a shift to a
market economy. Turkey’s chronically
inflation-ridden currency was replaced
by a new lira that held its value. As the
economy took off and incomes sharply
rose, so did Erdoğan’s popularity. He was
duly rewarded with even more votes in the
national elections of 2007 and 2011.6
Erdoğan also sought a solution to the
Kurdish problem by emphasizing Islamic
unity. As a result of skillful positioning in
the ideological marketplace and portraying
itself as the party of opposition to the “system”
while being “sensitive” to the Kurdish
problem, Erdoğan’s AKP was able to secure
an amount of support in the ethnic Kurdish
regions.7 In August 2005, he also famously
stated publicly in Diyarbakir that Turkey
had a “Kurdish problem” and needed more
“democracy” to solve it.8 After his AKP
won an even greater electoral victory July
2007 against strong military opposition
and elected his then-friend and colleague
Abdullah Gul as Turkey’s new president,
however, Erdoğan and his party were soon
put on the defensive by a nearly successful
attempt in the Constitutional Court to ban
them as a threat to Turkey’s secular order.
Having barely survived this threat to
his political existence, Erdoğan and the
AKP seemed to lose their reformist zeal
and became a party of the status quo.
Addressing the Kurdish issue during the
campaign for the local elections of March
2009, Erdoğan called on his Kurdish opponents
in the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society
Party (DTP) to love Turkey or leave it.9
This remark by the security-oriented prime
minister of 2009 provided a sharp contrast
to the one who in 2005 had called for more
democracy to solve the Kurdish problem.
Nevertheless, Erdoğan engaged in
negotiations with the Kurdistan Workers
Party (PKK) from 2008 to 2011 at meetings
in Oslo (the Kurdish Opening).10 In
addition, on June 30, 2012, Erdoğan met
with the iconic Kurdish political spokeswoman
and member of parliament (MP)
Leyla Zana, who declared that she had
confidence in his ability to solve the
Kurdish problem.11 However, this meeting
caused a great deal of bitter debate in the
Kurdish community. Furthermore, Erdoğan
advanced few concrete proposals, and the
Kurdish Opening eventually closed.
Nevertheless, Erdoğan approved
further negotiations, which finally led to
a ceasefire with the PKK in March 2013.
These too eventually failed; neither side
was willing to compromise enough.12
Following the failure of the AKP — for
the first time since it came to power in
November 2002 — to retain its majority
in the parliamentary elections of June 7,
2015, heavy fighting began again. Many
believe Erdoğan purposely goaded the
PKK into it so that he could unite the Turkish
nationalist vote and regain his majority.
He did just that in the snap parliamentary
elections of November 1, 2015.
Based on his performance to date,
one might conclude that Erdoğan does not
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grasp the depth of the Kurdish issue because
he has little sense of ethnic or civic
nationalism. His dominant identity is Muslim,
and he thinks that Islamic identity will
magically solve the problem.13 Although he
has been somewhat more concerned with
the Kurds than most other Turkish leaders,
Erdoğan has failed to develop any coherent
policy. Indeed, since his ceasefire with the
PKK broke down in July 2015, Erdoğan
has seemingly turned his back on any approach
other than military force.
In recent years, Erdoğan has also
attempted to convert Turkey’s government
into a presidential system that would
grant him
significant
new powers.
14 Indeed,
he became
Turkey’s first
popularly
elected president
in August 2014, forcing former ally
and one-time president Abdullah Gul out
of politics and hand-picking his new prime
minister, Ahmet Davutoglu — whom he
then fired in May 2016 to appoint the even
more compliant Binali Yildirim. Erdoğan
has also jailed many perceived political
opponents: journalists, academics, military
officers, and Kurdish leaders, among others.
Media freedom in Turkey, as ranked
by Freedom House,15 Reporters Without
Borders16 and Bianet,17 has deteriorated at
an alarming rate as Erdoğan aggressively
used the penal code, criminal defamation
legislation, and the country’s antiterrorism
law to punish critical reporting. Journalists
have faced growing violence, harassment
and intimidation. Can Dundar and Erdem
Gul — editor-in-chief and Ankara bureau
chief, respectively, of the leading opposition
newspaper, Cumhuriyet — are two examples
of this egregious situation. Erdoğan
personally filed a criminal complaint
against them for leaking state secrets, and
both were sentenced to five-year prison
terms in May 2016 for reporting on how
Erdoğan’s government had tried to ship
arms to jihadists in Syria. Zaman, a wellrespected
(but Gulenist–run) newspaper
and Turkey’s largest, was placed under
state control, another instance, among
many, of Erdoğan’s effort to curb public
criticism of his actions.
The Ergenekon trials of supposed ultranationalists
and retired military officers
charged with planning violent campaigns
to destabilize
Erdoğan’s
AKP and
seize power
began on July
28, 2008, and
continued
until February
2011.18 The original 2,455-page indictment
(ultimately reaching 8,000 pages)
described an elaborate plot ultimately
connecting 531 military officers, mafiosi,
ultranationalists, lawyers and academic figures
who supposedly attempted an illegal
intervention against the Erdoğan government.
Critics, however, accused Erdoğan
— in league with his then-Gulenist allies,
who had infiltrated the police and judiciary
— of simply trying to take revenge on
their military and Kemalist opponents with
all these charges.
On August 5, 2013, Istanbul’s High
Criminal Court sentenced 275 of the accused,
including the former chief of the
General Staff, General Ilker Basbug, to
life or long prison terms. However, on
April 21, 2016, the High Court of Appeals
overturned the convictions because of procedural
flaws and the case’s lack of merit.
To symbolize his vision of a strong
president, Erdoğan built a huge (1,000
rooms) Pure White Palace (Ak Saray) so
large that aides move around the grounds
by means of shuttle vehicles.
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Although a new trial remained possible,
many felt that dismissal of the case indicated
that the original charges were based
on little more than conspiracy theories
promoting Erdoğan’s and increasingly the
Gulenists’ agenda.19
It has proven difficult for Erdoğan to
amend the Constitution to his satisfaction,
20 so he has used de facto executive
power over the political system to achieve
some of his aims. To symbolize his vision
of a strong president, he built a huge
(1,000 rooms) Pure White Palace (Ak
Saray) so large that aides move around
the grounds by means of shuttle vehicles.
Given that this new structure was built on
supposedly protected land, Erdoğan’s opponents
have referred to it as the Kac-Ak
Saray, or illegal white palace, in reference
to Erdoğan as a would-be sultan. In
2013, Erdoğan turned on his erstwhile
Islamist allies, the Gulenists, after they
accused him of corruption. The wide-scale
Gezi Park riots in June 2013 against his
perceived authoritarianism created more
opposition to Erdoğan’s rule.
Failed Coup
On the night of July 15, 2016, a failed
coup occurred in Turkey; its aftermath has
led to drastically changed conditions likely
to make the political situation, including
the Kurdish problem, much worse. At
least 260 people were killed and more than
2,000 were injured, according to government
reports. Erdoğan himself, however,
declared to his supporters that the failed
coup was a “gift from God.”21 The failed
coup gave him an excuse to further his
own authoritarian ambitions, while purging
his few remaining opponents.
Amnesty International (AI) reported
that the Turkish government had fired or
suspended at least 50,000 people from
various institutions, including judges,
teachers, soldiers, police and journalists.22
The government was labeling “terrorists”
anyone it did not like or agree with. AI
also reported it had credible evidence that
post-coup detainees, including generals,
were being beaten, tortured and raped/
sodomized either digitally or by gun barrels.
Turkish police were keeping detainees
in stress positions for up to two days at a
time, beating them and denying them food,
water and medical treatment. The detainees
were being held arbitrarily, denied access
to lawyers and family, and not properly
informed of the charges against them. AI
termed these reports “extremely alarming,
especially given the scale of detentions.”
In the vast majority of cases, lawyers
added that no evidence establishing reasonable
suspicion of criminal behavior was
presented against their clients.
The Turkish government also declared
a sweeping three-month state of
emergency, giving it the power to rule by
decree and bypass the duly elected parliament.
Under one decree, suspects could
be detained for as long as 30 days without
charge, and the government could listen in
on all their conversations with attorneys.
As already mentioned, opponents of the
government, even peaceful ones, were being
accused of “terrorism.” To make room
for the thousands of post-coup detainees,
Erdoğan released from prison thousands of
supposedly nonviolent criminals not connected
to the attempted coup.
The Kurds
This new state of emergency was
added to the government-enforced curfews
that had allowed its forces to roam
freely against the civilian Kurdish population
since the summer of 2015, when the
Turkish-PKK ceasefire broke down and
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heavy fighting resumed. Kurdish leaders
in Turkey tried to dissociate themselves
from the attempted coup — many of the
military leaders now under arrest had been
involved in the government’s war against
the PKK. Erdoğan, however, still needed
the PKK as an enemy to unite Turkey’s
nationalist vote behind him. After all, the
pro-Kurdish Halklarin Demokratik Partisi
(HDP, People’s Democratic Party) had cost
him an absolute majority in the parliamentary
elections of June 7, 2015. Thus, even
though HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas
had immediately denounced the coup,
Erdoğan chose not to thank him or invite
him to the presidential palace, unlike the
leaders of the Republican People’s Party
(CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party
(MHP), the other main parties in parliament
that had condemned the coup. This
snub was clearly intended to isolate the
peaceful pro-Kurdish party.
Many Kurds in Turkey feared that the
HDP’s exclusion from Erdoğan’s post-coup
rallies and other peaceful events would
further push the Kurds toward greater extremism.
They believed this was Erdoğan’s
intention in order to secure Turkishnationalist
support. His earlier attempt to
criminalize the 1,128 Turkish and Kurdish
academics who signed a petition in January
2016 asking the government to end its
renewed violence in the southeast,23 and his
successful campaign to strip HDP co-leader
Selahattin Demirtas and other HDP MPs
of their parliamentary immunity so they
could be tried on trumped up charges of
treason, had already served to marginalize
the Kurds. Thus, if conditions had become
so bad for many ethnic Turks — military
officers, judges, lawyers, journalists and
teachers, among others — what could hated
and feared minorities such as the Kurds expect?
As close friends of the Turkish Kurds
concluded: “Kurds across the country are
now threatened with suspension of their
civil rights and freedoms by the widespread
crackdown that Erdoğan has launched in
the wake of the attempted coup.”24
At the end of May 2016, a subsequent
report stated that Turkey’s continuing war
against the PKK had cost about $400 billion
over the past three decades, adding
that since the new fighting had begun in
July 2015, “About 5,000 rebels have been
killed in the southeast and in airstrikes
in northern Iraq…, while 438 security
personnel, including 296 soldiers, have
died, according to the state-run Anadolu
news service.”25 Although state censorship
prevented complete coverage of the
ongoing fighting, another report claimed
that “Turkey deployed 20,000 soldiers
and police officers to Mardin and Hakkari
Provinces in March 2016 as part of a new
wave of operations to expel the PKK from
several district capitals.”26
FOREIGN RELATIONS
Erdoğan’s hand-picked former prime
minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, once touted
the policies of “zero problems with
neighbors” and strategic depth. These
have morphed into nothing but problems
with neighbors and a strategic quagmire.
The 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq — and
the overthrow of Saddam Hussein — is
a major background cause of this catastrophe.
Iraq has been shattered into its
sectarian and ethnic parts; it exists as a
state only in the minds of true believers in
the United States.27 The resulting instability
has opened up opportunity spaces for
both the Kurdistan Regional Government
(KRG) in Iraq28 and the Islamic State of
Iraq and Syria/the Levant (ISIS/ISIL).29
More recently, the Syrian civil war has
also boosted ISIS, as well as institutional128
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izing Rojava (western or Syrian Kurdistan)
as a second de facto autonomous Kurdish
state (in this case, closely linked to the
PKK).30 ISIS and Rojava, two dynamic
non-state actors, have all but erased the
borders drawn in the Sykes-Picot Agreement
of 1916. Moreover, in all of these
new situations, including his early call for
the demise of Bashar al-Assad’s regime,
Erdoğan has arguably come down on what
seems to be the losing side.
In a well-documented, misguided attempt
to facilitate the overthrow of Assad
and restore
stability to
his southern
Syrian neighbor,
Erdoğan
allowed
jihadists
from all over
the world to
transit Turkey
and cross into Syria.31 Erdoğan also hoped
to reduce or even eliminate the perceived
threat from Rojava, which Erdoğan saw as
a proto-PKK state that would consolidate
its success against ISIS into a contiguous
territory along Turkey’s southern border.
Thus, Turkey passively watched ISIS try
to destroy the Syrian Kurds holed up just
across the Turkish border in Kobane from
September 2014 to January 2015.
As Erdoğan explained, support for the
Syrian Kurds in Kobane would be tantamount
to aiding the PKK, a terrorist enemy
that had been trying to dismember Turkey
for more than 30 years: “For us [the] PKK
is what IS [ISIS] is.”32 Why should Turkey
get involved when the United States,
its superpower NATO ally, would not do
more? It suited Erdoğan that ISIS and the
Syrian Kurds were weakening each other
while Turkey sat idle.
Furthermore, many Turks felt betrayed:
by giving the Syrian Kurds air support
against ISIS, their American NATO
ally was strengthening Syrian Kurdish
attempts to gain autonomy, and this could
encourage separatism among Kurds in
Turkey as well as the seizure of Arab land
near the Turkish border.33 On June 15,
2015, for example, Syrian Kurdish forces
— led by the PKK’s closely associated
Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its militia
the Peoples Defense Units (YPG) and
women’s branch, the YPJ — took control
of the Syrian
border town
of Tal Abyad.
This supposedly
forced its
non-Kurdish
population
to flee to
Turkey, where
a burgeoning
refugee population of 2.7 million was
destabilizing the country.
Moreover, illustrating the law of unintended
consequences, blowback had already
led to the capture of 49 Turks when
ISIS overran Mosul in June 2014. They
were only released after who-knows-what
bribes and threats. Subsequently, Erdoğan
came to blame ISIS for deadly attacks
that killed ethnic Kurdish citizens in such
Turkish cities as Suruc (Kobane’s twin)
and Ankara in July and October 2015.
These attacks furthered the Kurdish belief
that the Turkish government was unable or
unwilling to protect them. Some actually
claimed that Erdoğan had turned a blind
eye to further the perception of Turkey
under siege and increase his fortunes in the
elections held on November 1, 2015. Such
a wag-the-dog strategy might have helped
Erdoğan regain power in the short-run
Why should Turkey get involved when
the United States, its superpower NATO
ally, would not do more? It suited
Erdoğan that ISIS and the Syrian Kurds
were weakening each other while Turkey
sat idle.
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but would certainly hinder his chances of
restarting the Kurdish peace process.
In the summer of 2015, Turkey finally
claimed to have entered the struggle
against ISIS, allowing the United States
to use the Incirlik air base to carry out
bombing raids.34 However, most Turkish
air attacks hit the PKK bases in the Qandil
Mountains along the border of the KRG
and Iran, and even on occasion Syrian
Kurdish YPG forces in Rojava. This led
some to conclude that Erdoğan was simply
using ISIS as a foil to really go after the
PKK and the PYD.35 The situation grew
even more complicated on September
30, 2015, when Russia began air strikes
against Syrian rebels, only to have a
Turkish missile destroy one of its jets on
November 24, 2015.
Cemil Bayik, the co-head of the PKK’s
umbrella Kurdistan Communities Union
(KCK), claimed that Turkey was really
supporting ISIS and that Russia might begin
directly supporting YPG/YPJ forces in
Syria.36 The Turkish action against Russia
also had the potential to draw the United
States into a confrontation with Russia,
which might be supporting the U.S. bombing
campaign against ISIS in a civil war
that was becoming a Hobbesian struggle
of all against all. As 2015 came to a close,
Erdoğan did begin a domestic crackdown
against ISIS, arresting several hundred suspects.
It came too late, however, to prevent
worse problems.
In the autumn of 2015, the Syrian
crisis expanded when more than a million
Syrian refugees, among others, began
entering Europe from Turkey. This desperate
sea of humanity threatened the stability
of the European Union and soon led the
EU to offer Turkey $6.8 billion, progress
toward visa liberalization and a revitalization
of Turkey’s moribund EU accession
process in return for Turkish help in
stemming the refugee flood.37 However,
this deal had become problematic by the
summer of 2016, as Erdoğan’s increasingly
arrogant behavior repelled the EU.38
The Syrian civil war has presented
Erdoğan with additional daunting obstacles
to peace in Turkey. As of September 2016,
at least 18 separate bombings connected in
one way or another with Syria had killed
more than 350 people in Turkey during
the previous 12 months. The deadly blast
in Istanbul on January 12, 2016, that left
13 foreign tourists dead was followed by
another on February 17 against a bus filled
with Turkish soldiers in what had been considered
the most secure district in Ankara,
killing 28 while wounding more than 60. A
horrific attack against the Istanbul Ataturk
airport on June 28, 2016, killed 45 and
wounded 230; the bombing of a Kurdish
wedding party in Gaziantep on August 20,
2016, killed 54 and wounded even more.
There were several other such strikes, illustrating
the deteriorating situation.
Turkey blamed ISIS for the Istanbul
bombing; the PYD’s YPG militia or the
PKK offshoot, the Kurdistan Freedom
Falcons (TAK), for the one in Ankara; and
ISIS for the Istanbul airport and Gaziantep
wedding-party assaults. Although the U.S.-
backed Syrian Kurds denied culpability,
it was clear that all four of these attacks
were at least partial blowback from the
violence radiating out of Syria as well as
the renewed Turkish-PKK fighting.39 What
is more, the February Ankara bombing
elicited vituperative recriminations from
Erdoğan against the United States for its
aid to the YPG.40 (Denunciations of the
United States increased exponentially
when Turkey began to blame Washington
for allegedly supporting the Fethullah
Gulen Terrorist Organization (FETO), or
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parallel state, which Turkey accused of
backing the failed coup of July 15, 2016.)41
For its part, the United States declared
that the YPG was not a terrorist organization
and urged Turkey to stop shelling its
operatives in northern Syria, action that
had begun when the Syrian Kurds crossed
west of the Euphrates River in mid-February
2016 in their drive to join the isolated
Kurdish canton of Afrin (Kurd Dagh) in
Syria’s west with the already unified Syrian
Kurdish cantons of Kobane and Hasaka
(Jazira) to the east.42 The PYD — now the
lead organization in the Syrian Democratic
Forces (SDF), a coalition of 13 Kurdish
and Arab fighting groups from northeastern
Syria that had been patched together on
October 10,
2015, becoming
the main
boots on the
ground for
the U.S.-led
military campaign
against
ISIS — was
seeking to eliminate the Manbij pocket that
anchored the 98-kilometer ISIS foothold
on the Syrian-Turkish border and connected
it with the Syrian headquarters of ISIS
in Raqqa to the south. Erdoğan bitterly
opposed the SDF; its success in eliminating
the Manbij pocket presented Turkey
with an almost unified, pro-PKK southern
border that Erdoğan saw as an existential
threat, especially after the renewal of his
struggle against the PKK in Turkey.
Indeed, in March 2016, the PYD had
already announced the establishment of
an autonomous region based on federalism
in Syria for the three Kurdish cantons
of Jazira, Kobane and Afrin, territory that
included large Arab minorities.43 The area
in question contained a large portion of
Syria’s resources: nearly two-thirds of its
gas and oil reserves and important cotton
and wheat-growing areas as well as almost
two-thirds of its water resources, ten dams
and much of its grazing land. Although all
the inhabitants of this putative federal region
would theoretically be represented in
a decentralized bottom-up administration
divorced from the oppressive nation-state
— based on PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s
theory of democratic autonomy lifted
from the writings of American anarchist
Murray Bookchin44 — it was clear that
the real power would be centralized in the
hands of the PYD/PKK.
Both Turkey and the Assad regime,
despite their mutual animosity, bitterly
condemned
this move,
while the
United States
and Russia
took a more
neutral view.
Thus, on August
24, 2016,
Turkish forces entered northern Syria and
with their jihadist allies quickly pushed
a demoralized — or possibly compliant
— ISIS out of the border town of Jarabulus,
demanding that the Syrian Kurds and
their allies (the SDF) pull back east of the
Euphrates River. The Turkish purpose was
to halt the expansion of Rojava, a move
the United States partially supported, given
Turkey’s importance in the struggle against
ISIS, but also found problematic: it has a
de facto alliance with the Syrian Kurds,
after all.
If Turkey continues to become more
involved in Syria to counter both Rojava’s
expansion and Russia’s support for Assad,
all three of which Turkey sees as its principal
foes, a disastrous escalation could
If a Turkish invasion of Syria goes badly,
Turkey might even end up losing Hatay,
the province Ataturk’s patient and astute
diplomacy added to the country in 1939
but Syria has never recognized.
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Gunter: Erdoğan and the Decline of Turkey
ensue. This could even include an indirect
clash with the United States; the SDF
coalition provides the most viable boots on
the ground against ISIS, which the United
States views as the main enemy.
Turkey should recall that the United
States refused to support it in Cyprus in
1964, when the Soviet Union had threatened
intervention.45 Similarly, NATO
might not support Turkey in a Syrian
incursion that produces a clash with Russia,
much less the United States, which
supports the PYD/YPG/SDF. If a Turkish
invasion of Syria goes badly, Turkey might
even end up losing Hatay, the province
Ataturk’s patient and astute diplomacy
added to the country in 1939 but Syria has
never recognized. Erdoğan made a visit
to St. Petersburg on August 9, 2016, in an
attempt to mitigate these dangers — as
well as to mend fences with Vladimir Putin
and bring lucrative Russian tourism back
to Turkish beaches — but it is not likely to
reverse the overall strategic situation.
The Russian-Assad advance in Syria
that began early in 2016 has clearly improved
their strategic position. This will
include deciding who would be invited to
future peace talks and under what conditions.
The Turks will continue to face challenges
to their statecraft as they attempt
to avoid further immersion. In addition,
Erdoğan should work more closely with
his U.S. and NATO allies instead of just
pretending to do so while actually supporting
jihadist oppositionists. Furthermore,
Turkey should get over its unreasonable
fear of the Syrian Kurds and seek to embrace
them, just as it successfully reversed
its opposition to the Iraqi Kurds in 2007.
Despite Erdoğan’s errors, once the Syrian
civil war ends, Turkey likely will remain
the most powerful country in the region as
well as the sixteenth-largest economy in
the world. The Syrian Kurds will have no
alternative other than to embrace Turkey
— to the mutual benefit of both. Meanwhile,
Turkey should avoid confronting
Russia (or the United States) in a senseless
war that cannot be won.
CONCLUSIONS
In his drive to protect and increase his
authoritarian ambitions, Erdoğan seems
largely impervious to the damage he is
creating for himself and Turkey. Although
his approval rating jumped from 47 to 68
percent after the failed coup,46 it is likely
that some of this new support stems from
modern Turkey’s disdain for coups. In
addition, there are those fearful of being
branded supportive of the coup if they
oppose Erdoğan’s methods. However,
Erdoğan has created too many enemies
and too much chaos, both domestic and
external, for his own good. Human-rights
abuses are expanding and, since the failed
coup, involve many elite Turkish groups
— the military, the judiciary, journalists
and academics, among others — in addition
to peaceful Kurds. Many prominent
Turks are embarrassed by how Erdoğan
has abused the system to further his own
glory, damaging the state in the process.
Scholars are hesitant to publish these facts,
fearing that their families and friends
might be the objects of retribution.
In some ways, Erdoğan’s ongoing
struggles and crises remind one of the
fevered situation Mao Zedong created during
China’s Cultural Revolution in which
one erstwhile supporter after another was
“revealed” to be an enemy. Finally, however,
came Thermidor and a more rational
leadership. Once the current dictatorial aberration
is corrected, the well-established
Turkish ship of state will be righted and its
more natural progress resumed.
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1 For a brief period (June 1996-June 1997), Erbakan was secular Turkey’s first Islamist prime minister, but
was forced to resign by the military for violating secularist provisions of the Constitution.
2 “The Mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our
soldiers.”
3 The military successfully staged coups in 1960, 1971 (indirectly), 1980 and 1997 (indirectly), seeing itself
as the ultimate guardian of the Turkish Republic originally founded by Kemal Ataturk, supreme military commander
in Tukey’s epic War of Independence during the early 1920s. However, when it tried again indirectly
to influence the parliamentary elections in July 2007 by posting on its website the so-called e-memorandum
(e-muhtira) warning against the threat posed by the AKP, Erdoğan prevailed. For background on the historical
role of the military in Turkish politics, see William Hale, Turkish Politics and the Military (Routledge, 1994);
and Mehmet Ali Birand, The General’s Coup in Turkey: An Inside Story of 12 September 1980 (Brassey’s
Defense Publishers, 1987).
4 Michael M. Gunter, “Turkey’s Floundering EU Candidacy and Its Kurdish Problem,” Middle East Policy 14
(Spring 2007): 117-123.
5 See, for example, Michael Crowley, “Did Obama Get Erdoğan Wrong?” Politico, July 16, 2016, http://
www.politico.com/story/2016/07/obama-turkey-225659.
6 Constanze Letsch, “Turkey’s Economic Success Threatened by Political Instability,” The Guardian, January
9, 2014, http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/09/turkey-instability-threatens-economic-success-
Erdoğan. However, a case can be made that Kemal Dervis, as minister of economic affairs from 2001 to
2002, laid the groundwork for Erdoğan’s perceived economic success with his tough stabilization program,
deep structural changes and sweeping bank reforms that protected against political manipulation.
7 For background, see Michael M. Gunter and M. Hakan Yavuz, “Turkish Paradox: Progressive Islamists
versus Reactionary Secularists,” Critique: Critical Middle Eastern Studies 16, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 289-301.
8 Cited in “The Sun Also Rises in the South East,” Briefing (Ankara), August 15, 2005. Subsequently, however,
see “Turkey’s Erdoğan Says the Country Never Had a Kurdish Problem,” Ekurd, March 16, 2015, http://
ekurd.net/Erdoğan-says-turkey-never-had-a-kurdish-problem-2015-03-16.
9 Cited in “Turkey Press Scan (02 April 2009),” The Journal of Turkish Weekly, April 2, 2009, http://www.
turkishweekly.net/2009/04/02/news/turkey-press-scan-02-april-2009/.
10 Michael M. Gunter, “Reopening Turkey’s Closed Kurdish Opening?” Middle East Policy 22 (Summer
2013): 88-98.
11 “Zana Reveals Details of Erdoğan Meeting,” Hurriyet Daily News, July 1, 2012, http://www.hurriyetdailynews.
com/zana.
12 For an analysis see Michael M. Gunter, “The Kurdish Issue in Turkey: Back to Square One?” Turkish
Policy Quarterly 14 (Winter 2016): 77-86. The entire issue of this journal contains many other articles related
to the failure of the ceasefire.
13 For background, see M. Hakan Yavuz, Secularism and Muslim Democracy in Turkey (Cambridge University
Press, 2009); and M. Hakan Yavuz, Islamic Political Identity in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2003).
14 Soner Cagaptay, “Erdoğan’s Nationalist Path to a Full Presidential System,” Washington Institute for Near
East Policy, May 24, 2016, http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/view/Erdoğans-nationalistpath-
to-a-full-presidential-system; P. Scharfe, “Erdoğan’s Presidential Dreams, Turkey’s Constitutional Politics,”
Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective 8 (February 5, 2015), http://origins.osu.edu/article/
erdo-s-presidential-dreams-turkey-s-constitutuional-politics; and Semih Idiz, “Erdoğan Aims to Create Stronger
Presidential System,” Al-Monitor, February 3, 2015, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2015/02/
turkey-Erdoğan-presidential-system-campaign.html.
15 Freedom House, “Turkey 2015 Press Freedom Report,” https://freedom/house.org/report/freedompress/
2015/turkey, which ranked Turkey as “Not Free.”
16 Reporters Without Borders, Turkey, https://index.rsf.org/#!/index-details/TUR, accessed August 23, 2016,
where Turkey ranked 149th out of over 180 states.
17 Bianet, “Increasing Pressure on Press: Democracy in Question,” Media Monitoring Report 2015, 3rd
Quarter, http://bianet.org/english/freedom-of-expression/168464-increasing-pressure-on-press-democracy-inquestion,
accessed August 23, 2016. Bianet is an independent Turkish press agency based in Istanbul that has
somehow managed to survive.
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18 For background, see Yusuf Ziya Durmus, “Court Overturns Verdicts in Coup Case Allegedly Tied to Gulenists,”
Daily Sabah, April 21, 2016, http://www.dailysabah.com/investigations/2016/04/21/court-overturnsverdicts-
in-coup-case-allegedly-tied-to-gulenists; and “Justice or Revenge?” The Economist, August 10,
2013.
19 In 2014, former Turkish president Kenan Evren — the general who had led Turkey’s military coup in 1980
that most observers felt saved the country from the violence it had fallen into although at considerable cost
to human rights — was convicted of crimes against the state, demoted to the rank of private and sentenced to
life imprisonment. He died a year later. Erdoğan had secured amendments to the Turkish constitution allowing
Evren’s trial.
20 For background, see Michael M. Gunter, “Turkey: The Politics of a New Democratic Constitution,” Middle
East Policy 19 (Spring 2012): 119-125. The Turkish constitution provides two different ways for its amendment:
1) through a two-thirds majority in parliament (i.e., 367 out of the 550 MPs voting in favor), or 2) a
three-fifths majority (330 votes) plus passing a popular referendum. Currently, Erdoğan’s AKP has only 317
MPs. This gives him yet another reason to court the ultra-right MHP, which has 40 MPs. Erdoğan might also
seek to call new elections in the hope of the pro-Kurdish HPD failing to cross the 10 percent threshold, with
the result that his AKP would win most of the HDP’s current 59 MPs.
21 Cited in “After the Coup, the Counter-coup,” The Economist, July 23, 2016, 14.
22 A subsequent report increased the figure to 80,000 civil servants suspended from their jobs and more than
20,000 arrested. Mustafa Akyol, “Turkey’s Great Purge,” New York Times, August 23, 2016, http://www.
nytimes.com/2016/08/24/opinion/turkey’s-great-purge.html. The following discussion is based largely on
Amnesty International, “Turkey: Independent Monitors Must Be Allowed to Access Detainees amid Torture
Allegations,” July 24, 2016; Merrit Kennedy, “Amnesty International: After Turkey’s Failed Coup, Some Detainees
Are Tortured, Raped,” National Public Radio (NPR), July 25, 2016; “Amnesty International Reports
‘Credible Evidence’ Turkey Torturing Post-coup Detainees,” Haaretz, July 29, 2016, http://www.haaretz.
com/middle-east-news/turkey/1.733018; Jason Hanna and Tim Hume, “Turkey Detainees Tortured, Raped
after Failed Coup, Rights Group Says,” CNN, July 27, 2016, http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/26/europe/turkeycoup-
attempt-aftermath/; William Reed, “Turkish Police Torture, Rape Own Soldiers, Officers, Judges,” The
Clarion Project, July 25, 2016, https://www.clarionproject.org/analysis/turkish-police-rape-own-soldiers-officers-
judges; Elizabeth Redden, “Turkey’s Fraying International Ties,” Inside Higher Ed, July 29, 2016; and
interviews with various sources who asked to be anonymous given the dangerous situation.
23 “Turkish President Vows ‘Treasonous’ Academics Will Pay the Price,” Hurriyet Daily News, January 20,
2016.
24 Peace in Kurdistan Campaign, “Neither Coup nor State of Emergency: Turkey Needs Peace and Democracy,”
July 25, 2016.
25 Selcan Hacaoglu, “Siege at Edge of Fallen Empires Tests Erdoğan’s Hold on Turkey,” Bloomberg, May 26,
2016, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-05-26/turkey-s-kurdish-conflict-turns-once-great-towninto-
deserted-battleground.
26 Genevieve Casagrande, Christopher Kozak, and Franklin Holcomb, “Russia & Turkey Escalate: Russia’s
Threat to NATO Goes beyond Eastern Europe/The PKK Participation against Europe,” MESOP, May 23,
2016.
27 For background, see Peter Galbraith, The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War without
End (Simon & Schuster, 2006); and U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden’s still very relevant three-state solution
in Joseph R. Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, “Unity through Autonomy in Iraq,” New York Times, May 1, 2006.
28 For background, see Michael M. Gunter, The Kurds: A Modern History, 2nd ed. (Markus Wiener Publishers,
forthcoming). Among many other excellent studies on the KRG, see the relevant sections of David Romano,
The Kurdish Nationalist Movement: Opportunity, Mobilization and Identity (Cambridge University Press,
2006); and Denise Natali, The Kurds and the State: Evolving National Identity in Iraq, Turkey, and Iran
(Syracuse University Press, 2005).
29 Among many other recent studies of ISIS, see Till F. Paasche and Michael M. Gunter, “Revisiting Western
Strategies against ISIS,” Middle East Journal 70 (Winter 2016): 9-29; and Michael M. Gunter, “Iraq, Syria,
ISIS and the Kurds: Geostrategic Concerns for the U.S. and Turkey,” Middle East Policy 22 (Spring 2015):
102-111.
30 On the Syrian Kurds, see Michael M. Gunter, Out of Nowhere: The Kurds of Syria in Peace and War (Hurst
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Middle East Policy, Vol. XXIII, No. 4, Winter 2016
& Company, 2014); and the review essay on this book by Jonathan Steele, “The Syrian Kurds are Winning!”
New York Review of Books, December 3, 2015, 24-27.
31 See, for example, David L. Phillips, “Research Paper: ISIS-Turkey List,” Huffington Post, November 9,
2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-l-phillips/research-paper-isis-turke_b_6128950.html, which
cites numerous sources. In addition, see Amberin Zaman, “Syrian Kurdish Leader: Ankara Supporting
Jihadists,”Al-Monitor, September 23, 2013, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/security/2013/09/pyd-leadersalih-
muslim-turkey-support-jihadists-syria.html#; and “Syrian Kurds Continue to Blame Turkey for Backing
ISIS Militants,” Al-Monitor, June 10, 2014, http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/zaman-syriakurds-
rojava-ypg-muslim-pyd-turey-isis.html#.
32 “ISID ne ise PKK da odur,” Al Jazeera Turk, October 4, 2014, as cited in International Crisis Group, “A
Sisyphean Task? Resuming Turkey-PKK Peace Talks,” Crisis Group Europe Briefing No. 77 (International
Crisis Group, December 17, 2015), 4n10.
33 Alexander Sehmer, “Thousands of Arabs Flee from Kurdish Fighters in Syria’s North,” Independent, June
1, 2015. Also see similar claims in “‘We Had Nowhere to Go’ — Forced Displacement and Demolitions in
Northern Syria” (Amnesty International, 2015).
34 Liz Sly and Karen De Young, “Turkey Agrees to Allow U.S. Military to Use Its Base to Attack Islamic
State,” Washington Post, July 23, 2015.
35 Tim Arango, “Turkey Confirms Strikes against Kurdish Militias in Syria,” New York Times, October 27,
2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/28/world/europe/turkey-syria-kurdish-militias.html.
36 “KCK’s Bayik: Turkey Downed the Russian Plane to Protect IS,” Kurdish Info (Firat News Agency), November
26, 2015, www.kurdishinfo.com/kcks-bayik-turkey-downed-the-russian-plane-to-protect-isis.
37 “EU Reaches $3bn Deal with Turkey to Curb Refugee Crisis,” Al Jazeera, November 30, 2015, http://www.
aljazeera.com/news/2015/11/eu-seeks-deal-turkey-curb-refugee-crisis-151129152134803.html.
38 “Europe’s Murky Deal with Turkey,” The Economist, May 28, 2016, 43.
39 Michael Cruickshank and Gissur Simonarson, “A Kurdish Convergence in Syria,” New York Times, February
25, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/26/opinion/a-kurdish-convergence-in-syria.html.
40 “Turkish President Accuses U.S. of Supporting Terrorism,” Today’s Zaman, February 23, 2016, http://www.
todayszaman.com/diplomacy_turkish-president-accuses-us-of-supporting-terrorism_ 413109.html.
41 Tim Arango and Ceylan Yeginsu, “Turks Can Agree on One Thing: U.S. Was Behind Failed Coup,” New
York Times, August 2, 2016. For a strong case that the Gulen movement did indeed mastermind the failed
coup, see Michael A. Reynolds, “Damaging Democracy: The U.S., Fethulllah Gulen, and Turkey’s Upheaval,”
Foreign Policy Research Institute, September 26, 2016, fpri.org/article/2016/09/damaging-democracyu-
s-fethullah-gulen-turkey’s-upheaval, among others. Fethullah Gulen is an important interfaith Islamic
scholar and imam who heads the Gulen or Hizmet (Service) Movement, which is an international network of
universities, hospitals, charities, business associations, news outlets and schools spread across more than 150
countries. He has lived in exile in the United States since 1999. Some dismiss him as a dangerous cult leader
infiltrating existing state structures such as those of Turkey, while others hail him as an enlightened beacon
of interfaith ecumenicism. Apparently, he is both. Formerly an ally, he became a bitter political enemy of
Erdoğan in 2013 after accusing Erdoğan of corruption. The two actually had already begun a power struggle
earlier. Erdoğan accused Gulen of masterminding the failed coup and demanded that the United States
extradite him. As of October 2016, the United States has refused on the grounds that there was no credible
evidence indicating Gulen was guilty. On the other hand, given how many Gulenists have infiltrated various
Turkish institutions, it is likely that some of them were involved. However, this does not prove that Gulen
himself was even aware of the attempt, much less masterminding it. Gulen has been ambivalent toward the
Turkish-PKK peace process. For background, see M. Hakan Yavuz, Toward an Islamic Enlightenment: The
Gulen Movement (Oxford University Press, 2013). During my trip to Turkey in October 2016, I spoke with
some who suggested that the Turkish Armed Forces Assistance (and Pension) Fund (OYAK) also might
have been involved in the failed coup because Erdoğan was threatening to eliminate its lucrative benefits for
retired Turkish military officers.
Many Turkish conspiracy theories argue that former CIA official Graham E. Fuller, who did originally
help Gulen obtain a green card to remain in the United States, masterminded the attempted coup. This is
doubtful since Fuller is now retired from the CIA and teaches as an adjunct professor of history at Simon
Fraser University in Canada. Fuller is very knowledgeable about Turkey and other related subjects, and he
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Gunter: Erdoğan and the Decline of Turkey
recently self-published an insightful analysis: Turkey and the Arab Spring: Leadership in the Middle East
(Bozorg Press, 2014). Another fanciful conspiracy theory has it that Henri Barkey, an American academic
who happened to be in Turkey at the time attending a conference, also masterminded the attempted putsch.
Although it is true that the United States did not denounce the coup until it had clearly failed and many in
the U.S. government had become frustrated with Erdoğan’s behavior, it is unlikely that the United States was
behind the failed coup. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden repeated this denial during his visit to Turkey on August
24, 2016. “U.S. Had No Foreknowledge of Turkey Coup Attempt: Biden,” Press TV, August 24, 2016,
http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/08/24/4815/Biden-US-Turkey-coup-yildirim, accessed August 26, 2016.
However, further revelations may eventually alter this assessment.
42 “U.S. Calls on Turkey to Stop Shelling PYD, Citing Syria Ceasefire,” Today’s Zaman, February 24,
2016, http://www.todayszaman.com/diplomacy_us-calls-on-turkey-to-stop-shelling-pyd-citing-syria-ceasefire_
413216.html.
43 “Syria: Opinions and Attitudes on Federalism, Decentralization, and the Experience of the Democratic
Self-Administration,” The Day After, May 19, 2016, http://tda-sy.org/federalism%d9%80decentralization%9
%80report/.
44 Abdullah Ocalan, Prison Writings III: The Road Map to Negotiations, trans. by Havin Guneser (Cologne:
International Initiative Edition, 2012). For further thoughts on these ideas, see Joost Jongerden and Ahmet
Hamdi Akkaya, “Democratic Confederalism as a Kurdish Spring: The PKK and the Quest for Radical
Democracy,” in The Kurdish Spring: Geopolitical Changes and the Kurds, Mohammed M.A. Ahmed and
Michael M. Gunter, eds., (Mazda Publishers, 2013), 163-185.
45 George S. Harris, Troubled Alliance: Turkish-American Problems in Historical Perspective, 1945-1971
(American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1972), 114-15.
46 Ceylan Yeginsu, “After Failed Coup, Turkey Enjoys a Rare Period of Unity,” New York Times, August 23,
2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/24/world/europe/after-failed-coup-turkey-settles-into-a-rare-periodof-
untiy.html.