{"id":44469,"date":"2018-08-11T05:00:15","date_gmt":"2018-08-11T09:00:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=44469"},"modified":"2023-06-20T11:51:06","modified_gmt":"2023-06-20T15:51:06","slug":"post-coup-turkey-every-move-has-served-to-increase-erdogans-hold-on-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/08\/11\/post-coup-turkey-every-move-has-served-to-increase-erdogans-hold-on-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Post-coup Turkey – every move has served to increase Erdo\u011fan’s hold on power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Austin Bay<\/a>‘s recent essay for Strategika<\/em> on the post-coup Turkish political situation and its NATO membership:<\/p>\n

Ataturk bequeathed Turkey what his greatest biographer, Andrew Mango, called \u201cthe structure of a democracy, not of a dictatorship.\u201d He authored an orientation, not an ideology, creating a political, social, and cultural process that he believed would eventually make Turkey capable of perpetual self\u2010modernization. Ataturk was a political giant and a superb military commander. Eighty years after his death he remains a cult historical and political figure.<\/p>\n

President Erdogan is a canny politician and, to be fair, Turkey\u2019s most significant political figure since Ataturk. The green-eyed monster feeds his inner fire; Recep knows he disappears in Kemal\u2019s giant shadow. Not capable of displacing Ataturk the man, he has chosen to replace Ataturk\u2019s state, first under the guise of extending democracy, now behind the fa\u00e7ade of maintaining stability. Erdogan also intends to remain in office over twice as long as Ataturk. Turkey 2034 will be an Erdoganist political construct, not Kemalist.<\/p>\n

That last paragraph sketches a novelistic interpretation of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s motives. It expands on the answer I gave at Hoover\u2019s October 2017 Military History and Contemporary Conflict symposium after Barry Strauss asked me what I thought drove Erdo\u011fan \u2014 the deep drive that might shed light on his long-term vision for Turkey and help us craft policy responses to his challenge.<\/p>\n

Novelistic speculations have numerous weaknesses. However, over the decades Erdo\u011fan has supplied plot points and psychologically-indicative dialog. We are able to assess action through time. Early in his career Erdo\u011fan routinely employed Islamist poetry: \u201cDemocracy is merely a train that we ride until we reach our destination. Mosques are our military barracks. Minarets are our spears.\u201d That poetry led to his arrest for sedition. After his release he renounced his piously seditious poetry, claiming his fundamentalist views had fundamentally altered. His sudden commitment to Turkish democracy energized his \u201cmoderate Islamist\u201d Justice and Development Party\u2019s (AKP) 2002 victory over a tired and corrupted Republican Peoples Party (CHP). In 2003 the AKP became Turkey\u2019s governing party with Erdo\u011fan serving as prime minister.<\/p>\n

First he tested Kemal\u2019s structure, then he began to dismantle it. Erdo\u011fan purged the military of suspected political opponents. A cunning narrative camouflaged his operation. He claimed European Union accession rules demanded he strip the military of its political powers and make certain Kemalist military coups entered history\u2019s dustbin. Sometime in 2008, as Erdo\u011fan began pursuing the Ergenekon conspiracy of \u201csecular fundamentalists\u201d and other secret nationalist vigilante organizations, I finally realized whatever explanation du jour Erdo\u011fan offered for his actions, the dismantling scheme always expanded his personal power and influence.<\/p>\n

The bizarre July 2016 coup follows the same pattern. The Turkish people defeated the coup. Ironically, Erdo\u011fan remains in office today because Turkish citizens (across Turkey\u2019s complex political and ethnic spectrum) courageously defended their hard-won democracy \u2014 a democracy nine challenging decades in the making. In its aftermath, however, Erdogan used emergency powers to purge Gulenist Islamists and his political opponents. He dismantled elements of the democratic system that saved him and his government.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Austin Bay‘s recent essay for Strategika on the post-coup Turkish political situation and its NATO membership: Ataturk bequeathed Turkey what his greatest biographer, Andrew Mango, called \u201cthe structure of a democracy, not of a dictatorship.\u201d He authored an orientation, not an ideology, creating a political, social, and cultural process that he believed would eventually make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,370],"tags":[1517,766,337,220,249],"class_list":["post-44469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-europe","category-middle-east","tag-coup","tag-democracy","tag-eu","tag-nato","tag-turkey"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-bzf","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44470,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44469\/revisions\/44470"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}