Opinion Analysis by Anthony Ahrend, Featured Writer

June 22nd, 2021

Recep Tayyip Erdogan was born on February 26th, 1954, in the city of Kasımpaşa. This city contained the Imperial Arsenal and Navy of the Ottoman Empire after the fall of Constantinople. As the Empire declined, the city started to be forgotten. Today, Kasımpaşa is a poor neighborhood in Istanbul.

Erdogan first served as the Mayor of Istanbul between 1994 and 1998, and then became the Prime Minister of Turkey between 2003 and 2014. His party, the “Fundamentalist Welfare Party” was declared unconstitutional by the Turkish constitutional court in 1998 since it threatened the secularism of Turkey. The goal of the party is to establish a theocratic and Sharia-based state through civil war and promoting Jihad. He was imprisoned for four months in 1999. After that, he founded his party, AKP, in 2001 which made him win the elections in 2002. And so, he describes himself as a conservative democrat.

Turkey was officially recognized as a candidate for a full EU membership on December 12th, 1999. Since then, not much has happened. Most of the EU countries, especially Germany and France, are opposed to the idea of Turkey joining the union. As such, it seems like Erdogan is willing and trying to bring back the Ottoman empire today.

Let us start with the Syrian-Turkish border, a former ISIS territory that was liberated by Kurdish resistance and American soldiers. The Kurdish prisons held thousands of former terrorists’ captive inside their walls, up until Erdogan saw the growing influence of the Kurds as a threat at the border and decided to take action. This takes us back to Trump ordering the withdrawal of US troops from Syria. The American public was praising him for bringing the army home. Little did they know, leaving the Kurdish forces without back-up gave Erdogan the opportunity to gain back territory in Syria and liberate prisoners. With Turkey being the only country helping the villages and cities across that border, the country is now growing its influence in Syria, with schools that are teaching Turkish, shops that are selling Turkish goods and the use of the Turkish Lira by a majority of the people in the country. The Turkish backed Syrian rebels control a strip of territory between 13 and 30 km deep into the continent.

When it comes to Libya, Turkey, Qatar and Italy are endorsing the official government (GNA) that is recognized by the United Nations, whereas Egypt, KSA, UAE, Russia and NATO colleague France are on Haftar’s side, who is the general of the Libyan’s national army. Erdogan says that his decision to back up the GNA is a result of him wanting to “ensure Libya’s peace and stability”, but some sources affirm that the real reason why the two countries signed an agreement on maritime boundaries was because of the gas-rich eastern Mediterranean passing by and taking a portion of what Cyprus says is its international border.

In Afghanistan, Turkey is ensuring the security of Kabul Airport as a lot of troops are withdrawing from the country.

Regarding the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict over the disputed mountain territories opposing Azerbaijan and Armenia, Turkey is helping and encouraging the assault, with 850 Syrian mercenaries backing the attacks. Once again, we have NATO colleague France and Russia helping the Armenians. And speaking of Armenia, US President Joe Biden became the first president to officially recognize the massacre under the Ottoman Empire as a genocide in April of 2021, whereas Obama did not want to damage ties with a key regional ally. Biden sees it in a different way: he publicly called Erdogan an “autocrat”. To that, Erdogan answered that if the United States talk about genocide, they should look in the mirror. After their talk at the NATO summit that took place in June, the only thing Biden said was that they had a “good meeting”.

In the Mediterranean, Turkey has not signed the “Convention on the Continental Shelf” nor the “UN Convention on the Law of the Sea”, creating tensions with Greece, another NATO member, over the maritime border that is rich in gas, given that they signed the two conventions.

At the EU border, Erdogan keeps using the 3.6 million Syrian refugees as leverage to apply pressure on the policy making of the Union. With the EU, there is the “sofagate” that took place in April of 2021, where the President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen had to sit on the sofa, further away from the President of the EU Council Charles Michel who was seated next to Erdogan. There was a critic who said that it was based on the fact that she was a woman, but Turkey denied those sexist claims: the minister of foreign affairs Çavuşoğlu said that the arrangement was conform to the European demands.

Back in 2020, Turkey and France were on a NATO mission under NATO commandment. The French Navy suspected a boat carrying guns to Libya when three radar illuminations showed up on their screen coming from a Turkish ship. The French ship qualified this act as an “extremely aggressive maneuver”. As well, tensions between the two countries escalated even more after the caricature of the Prophet Muhammad was republished by the magazine Charlie Hebdo in early September of 2020. As a consequence, protests in Muslim nations, the boycott of French goods, two stabbings, the beheading of Samuel Paty (a teacher in Paris), and stabbings in Nice, erupted. The magazine also published a caricature of Erdogan, sitting next to a woman wearing the hijab, whilst he was wearing a white shirt and underpants. He replied back to this by saying that he will be taking the necessary legal and diplomatic steps as a result of this preposterous caricature. Both countries are part of the same alliance but are taking two different sides in many of the ongoing conflicts around the world. One country is secular and the other one promotes religion above all.

We can see that Turkey is fighting many wars, all at the same time. However, does the country have the reserves and the means to fulfill Erdogan’s dream? The country is currently going through an economic crisis, excessive foreign debt and unemployment rates that are rising: they went from 6.5% in 2000 to 13.5% in 2019. Also, let us not forget that Erdogan put 160 000 people in jail and that 90% of the media is pro-government today. On the other hand, he invested in healthcare, education, and infrastructure. Turkey’s GDP per capita dropped considerably during the last few years: from 12.614$ in 2013 to 9.127$ in 2018. And so, who voted for him? In 2018, he got 53% of the votes, whereby his closest rival Muharrem Ince only received 31%. The voter turnout exceeded 80% and was approximatively 83% that year.

It is worth noting that a big chunk of his electorate are expats residing in other countries. In Germany alone, 1.4 million people of Turkish heritage are eligible to vote. For a minority of expats, the important factors are freedom of press and democracy. Yet, for the biggest majority that is not living in Turkey, they look at other criteria such as religion and see Erdogan as a charismatic leader that helped Turkey become a power to be reckoned with once again, which is why they voted for him. One of his most precious weapons is the diaspora that is spread all over the world. He ignited many pro-Turkey and pro-Islam demonstrations all over Europe, for example in Amsterdam, where he said to Turks: “you are the future of Europe”. Turning the Hagia Sophia Church into a Mosque shows how far he is willing to go to get what he wants.

On June 18th, 2021, the Berliner Morgenpost reported that Erdogan is planning on creating an Islamic children’s channel due to the fact that more and more children and young adults are turning their back on religion and therefore, will not vote for him in the upcoming elections. The Turkish Islamic Theologist Ali Erbas said: "We must raise our children with our own national values. We know that 70 percent of the character of the human being is shaped during the first seven years of life. We will therefore help to shape the character of our children with programs based on the Koran and the Sunnah”.

Erdogan spreads his values and interests through the diaspora and associations, like Milli Görüs’s schools and mosques, that are very much present in Germany and France and that directly serve his will.

"The challenge for Erdogan is to succeed in turning the third generation of immigrants into real Turkish citizens capable of defending the country's interests abroad," explained Stéphane de Tapia, a geographer in the Department of Turkish Studies at the University of Strasbourg.

All in all, we can see that Turkey is trying to defend its interests on many fronts, all at the same time, sometimes with no support at all from other countries. From a military point of view, Turkey is still a strong NATO partner, and some would argue that it is better to keep them on the boat, where they are more manageable then if they would go rogue on their own with no accountability towards anyone. Yet, the Turkish society is divided: Turkey is one of the countries that has the most political parties that you can choose from in the world, and that could be a reason leading to Erdogan’s success. From an economic perspective, after witnessing years of booming economy, the Turkish Lira’s inflation rate is growing, and the economy is in recession. Tourism has seen better days and the COVID-19 pandemic has made the situation even worse. There clearly is an indoctrination and propaganda that is currently happening, yet the EU and NATO are not doing anything to counter Turkish imperialism. The referendum done in 2017 under Erdogan gives the president control over the state’s budget, military, and it gives the president the right to appoint judges and dissolve the parliament, and last but not least, to extend the term limit. For all we know, he could be staying until 2029, or even longer.