The Longest Night in Istanbul: Turkey after the 6-Hour Failed Coup



The Longest Night in Istanbul: Turkey after the 6-Hour Failed Coup

Just three weeks before the news of Turkey’s failed coup, Middle East Briefing warned that a military move against Erdoğan would not succeed. We explained the dynamics that make a successful coup inconceivable in a context free of a popular tide against the Turkish President or an economic crisis that would make this tide possible. Neither was there. The coup appeared like a storm in a clear sky.

But what will Turkey look like after the failed coup?

In two words: not good.

There are quite a few forces that, though they have always been there, will be unleashed to the surface in full thrust in the coming weeks, and will shape the moment and the immediate future of Turkey.

Shortly after the seemingly half-baked coup attempt, Islamists who have been mushrooming in Turkey during the last few years, rushed to the streets to confront the rebelling military units. A number of soldiers were slaughtered instead of arrested and delivered to the police.

The following morning, Erdoğan moved swiftly to where he had in mind all the time: the judiciary and the armed forces. He immediately fired 2,754 judges and arrested a number of high ranking officers and thousands of officers known to have different views for the future of Turkey. How he could know, that quickly, that they were implicated in the coup attempt remains a question mark. But what is even more interesting is that the move, which was in the oven for some time now, reflected exactly the dynamics that will eventually make the Turkish President more vulnerable to making serious mistakes.

The Turkish President has a sense of gratitude towards the Islamists in Turkey. Activists from this large-scale social trend were the “first responders” in the early hours of the attempted coup. This sense of gratitude, coupled with Erdoğan’s realization that he is now more powerful than before, makes the Turkish President feel that he is now undefeatable and that his dream of becoming for Islamists what Nasser was for Arab nationalists is destined to create more foreign policy troubles for a President who has made quite a few already, even in ordinary circumstances.

We will see two contradicting dynamics playing out here, to draw the picture of Turkey in the post-coup period. First, we have a President who is drunk on a spectacular victory and who seems to be ready to step on the gas and go fast towards fulfilling his project for Turkey. The Turkish President said frankly that the coup attempt “is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse our army.” He does not remember what his friend, former Egyptian President Mohammed Morsi, once said: drinking and driving do not mix.

The second dynamic is that forcing reality to change rapidly and abruptly by forcing to fit one’s own plans and subjective ideas does not usually end nicely. Moving faster on the agenda of transforming Turkey’s political system and public culture recklessly risks a backlash. Being drunk on victory is a subjective perception of himself. Perceptions are not the makers of realities, rather the opposite is true. When one’s moves are driven by perceptions and personal plans, disregarding the surrounding concrete element , one is more susceptible to treading into sensitive areas and messing with existing and solid realities. Reality usually responds in kind.

This contradiction is, and will be, translated into many a chain of steps, which have already started.

* Humiliating coup soldiers in uniform publicly does not bode well for the military in general. The Turkish military has a long history of pride and a sense that they have always been, since the Ottomans, kind of “special”, distinct from and a little superior to their society.

This self-image is now tested with a flood of images of beaten and humiliated soldiers. The rise of the Islamists in the society, their sense of power, and their traditional enmity to the military guarantees that frictions will only continue to increase the frustration of army officers. Authorities in Ankara arrested 103 generals and admirals. The numbers of arrested lower ranks is several times that. This puts Turkey’s military under extreme pressure and may crack it from within. While it will not be easy to change the nature of Turkey’s military altogether, the impact of what is happening will weaken this institution substantially. At one point, it may trigger even another coup attempt.

* Erdoğan is cracking down not only on followers of Fethullah Gülen, the religious leader living in the US, but on all opponents of his project for the future of Turkey. As this project erodes the secular foundation of the state, and as its implementer harbors an exaggerated sense of empowerment, the gap between secular, republican Turks and supporters of Erdoğan will widen rapidly. The government’s oppressive policies are gaining steam.

Erdoğan once said that democracy is a train he rides until he reaches his destination, which is his project for the neo-Ottoman Turkey. This trajectory will now see more violations of democratic principles and human rights. The train traveled a long way in only six hours.

* Secular Turkey was anti-Kurds’ rights. But Erdoğan’s ultranationalist-religious Turkey is even more so. Islamists demonstrated in Diyarbakir a few hours after the attempted coup. The demonstrators were shouting anti-Kurdish slogans.

Tension has been rising in the eastern province of Malatya, as a number of people from a large crowd which had gathered to protest the failed coup reportedly chanted pro-government slogans in largely Alawi-populated neighborhoods in the province.

“The [ruling Justice and Development Party] AKP supporters are here. Where are the Alawis?” shouted the group in the Alawi-dominated Paşaköşkü and Çavuşoğlu neighborhoods, as they also parked their cars in the neighborhoods’ streets and played AKP election songs.

* Dismantling democratic institutions in Turkey will proceed on full steam. The AKP parliamentarians voted into law a major court-packing bill that will drastically reduce the ranks of Turkey’s higher courts and replace them with jurists handpicked by the president – the final nail in the coffin of Turkey’s wobbling judiciary. The law, passed immediately after the failed coup, follows another that passed last week, granting immunity from prosecution to security personnel and civil servants involved in counter-terrorism activities – a task which these days involves hunting down academics, journalists and students, as well as militants.

* Sitting more securely in the driver’s seat, and with an exaggerated sense of power, Erdoğan made, and will continue making, abrupt foreign policy moves based on what he wants, not on how things are. A few examples:

   Erdoğan’s ties with the US are heading towards tension. They have not been particularly warm lately, but in the aftermath of the coup things will get worse. The Turkish Minister of Trade accused the US of standing behind the coup. Secretary Kerry’s response was decisive: “Do not play this card.”

Furthermore, Turkey has requested the extradition of Gülen from his self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania; Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım said on July 18 that “Turkey may question its friendship with the US. amid calls for the extradition of U.S.-based scholar Fethullah Gülen after a failed coup attempt.

“Even questioning our friendship may be brought to the agenda here. Nonetheless, our Justice Ministry is conducting the necessary work,” Yıldırım told reporters while speaking at a press conference after a cabinet meeting in Ankara.

US Ambassador in Ankara, John Bass, explained that the extradition of Gülen will be based on evidence submitted to US authorities that implicates Gülen. “I underscore that our extradition treaty and U.S. laws have specific requirements that must be met before a suspect individual can be transferred to another nation’s jurisdiction,” he added. Yıldırım responded by saying that the failed coup itself is a piece of evidence. “Is there better evidence than this? We will be a little bit disappointed if our friends say ‘show us the evidence’ while there are members of this organization which is trying to destroy a state and a person who instructs it,” Yıldırım added. Turkey does not look ready to drop its demand as its Foreign Minister will arrive to Washington soon to pursue the matter.

– Erdoğan and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin will meet face to face next month. The Russian President is actually weaker inside Russia than the image he tries to project. His economy is suffering. Erdoğan, on the other hand, may be tempted to play the classic “Russia” card which is as old as the Emperors of St. Petersburg and Istanbul.

The problem for Erdoğan here is that to go East in order to pressure the West, he will be taking a risk with his Islamist base and Western allies alike.

One example: There are persistent whispers about an Iranian-Algerian mediation between Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. Some political figures in Turkey secretly met with high ranking officials in the Assad security agencies throughout the past few years. Most likely, President Putin knows that, even if he’s not participating in it. If Putin ever senses that Erdoğan is turning against the West, a deal with Assad and Iran could be raised in clearer terms by Moscow. This will change the strategic alignments in the Middle East. It will anger some Arab capitals and will certainly strain Erdoğan’s ties with the Islamists who have had to swallow his recent step of normalizing ties with Israel. It’s true that the Islamists are ready to look the other way when their “hero” makes such steps, but there will certainly be questions and doubts rising among them.

– The European Union was never comfortable with Erdoğan’s domestic policies, particularly in the domain of human rights and free speech. NATO has also had some reservations about Ankara’s Middle East policies. Returning to the death sentence in order to settle the account with coup leaders will hurt Turkey’s trade ties with the EU. NATO’s leadership has made it clear that a commitment to “uphold democracy, including tolerating diversity” is one of the five core requirements for members of the alliance.

Erdoğan will be strongly tempted, due to his personal nature and outlook, to exacerbate the EU and NATO criticism. He already started. By going East, Erdoğan is not helping to restrain the deterioration of ties that had already started sometime before the failed coup.

– The foreign policy shift that Erdoğan implemented just prior to the coup (his reconciliation with Moscow, normalization with Israel, and realist approach towards Syria and Egypt), was done under pressure from a business class worried about clogged horizons of growth and uncertain prospects of trade and investment with neighbors.

To simplify the picture, albeit at the expense of important details, Ahmet Davutoğlu was representing the agenda of Turkey’s business class. Erdoğan got the message but fired its carrier. The pyramid of power, in his mind, should have only one tip. It cannot take two. And in a move that reflects his loyalty to himself, he adopted the message and made the U-turn we have recently seen in his foreign policy. Erdoğan the activist, the leader of Islamism, the new Caliph of the neo-Ottomans, retreated one step in favor of Erdoğan the statesman.

But now, by the very nature of the moment, Erdoğan the militant may be the one in the driving seat. The Turkish leader’s sense of power and gratitude towards the Islamists, coupled with his views about the world and himself, will collide head-on with Erdoğan the statesman. Tension with the US and the EU certainly goes against Davutoğlu’s prescription of “Zero Problems” and may return Turkey back to where it was under Erdoğan’s motto of “Problems are Welcomed” if they are the price for constructing the neo-Ottoman era.

Erdoğan sees himself, and the Islamists see him, as the knight sitting on his horse, bearing the flag of the revival of old Islamic glory in the face of the enemies of Islam, who surround Muslims from all directions and who want to extinguish the rising flames of the revival. He explained his moves toward Israel as he may explain all his future deals with Russia, Iran, and Syria: tactics! Just smart tactics to use the opportunity to raise the great old flags.

It is indeed a risky moment both for Turkey and for Erdoğan himself. For Turkey, the split between the secularists and the Islamists will widen with the more aggressive policies expected from Erdoğan after the failed coup. Democratic principles will come under harsher attacks. Radicalization of larger segments of the population, particularly in rural Turkey, will proceed in earnest. 

For the Turkish President, the sense that he is invincible will encourage him to drive faster. But we all know that Morsi was, for once, right: Drinking and driving do not mix. It is the fastest dancer who gets his legs entangled in robes before all others. Or as the Arabs say: The best of swimmers is the one who drowns.    

In some cases the poison that does not kill you makes you stronger. Erdoğan believes this to be his case. But it may not be. Douglas MacArthur once said “Oh Lord, who will be strong enough to know he is weak and humble and gentle in victory.”


 














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