A reduced Tayyip Erdogan will hurt Turkish pride although the pain, as
in some forms of sprain, will be a delayed effect. The Turkish election
results will also alter the West Asian political dynamics because the
Muslim Brotherhood, whose banner Erdogan had begun to flutter to
reinforce his regional moves, will now be forced to retreat.
Erdogan’s
contribution in rebuilding Turkish pride was enormous when his cohorts
blocked US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s troops from crossing
Turkish territory to invade Iraq. He dressed up his decision as a
triumph of democracy by placing the issue before parliament. It was
model behaviour one that was imitated by Pakistan’s Nawaz Sharif when he
came under pressure from Saudi Arabia to send troops to Yemen.
By
standing upto the US, Erdogan had neutralized national humiliation of
years when Europe thwarted Turkey’s very earnest desire to enter the EU.
Ankara was then short changed when Greek Cypriots joined the EU and the
Turkish north was left high and dry.
Coordination with Israel,
which had peaked under Prime Minister Itruk Ozal, was also challenged by
Erdogan. After Israeli soldiers entered Turkish ship Mavi Marvara
carrying humanitarian aid for Gaza relations with Israel all but
collapsed.
Correspondingly, this rub with the Israelis boosted
Erdogan’s popularity in the Arab street. Developments in diplomatic
history are not linear. This popularity of Erodgan’s among the Arab
public was to become the snare into which Erdogan was led by the noose
which was held by global, regional and Turkish interests.
Having
stood upto America and Israelis, the Turks looked tall in the West Asian
theatre. After 2008, the US decline was somewhat exaggeratedly
predicated by pundits who do not pause. Greece the mother of western
civilization was on its knees. The Arab Spring had knocked out two of
the West’s favourite dictators - Zine El Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis, and
Hosni Mubarak in Cairo.
To rub salt in European wounds, Turkey
was now declaring itself disinterested in entering Europe which was in
economic decline. Ironically, it had improved itself enormously in
preparing for European entry. This became its own advantage.
Turkey’s air was now cleaner, administration better, human rights on the mend and an economy which thumbed its nose at Europe.
By
the time of his third term as prime minister, Erdogan’s reach and
control was over a wide cross section of Turks, way beyond the deeply
religion Anatolians, his core support. With his rising power he had also
tamed the Kemalit army, the guarantor of the secular state. The
deftness with which he managed this enabled him to zoom part Mustafa
Kemal Ataturk in the popularity stakes.
The success of his long
prime ministerial innings sometimes obscures his very effective and
audacious term as mayor of Istanbul when he defied the powerful secular
establishment by standing on the ticket of Refah or the Islamist Welfare
party founded by his political guru, Nekmetin Arbakan.
Erdogan
was jailed for excessive Islamism and had to give up his mayorship. He
reinvented his party the AKP or Justice and Development party,
technically in line with the Kemalist constitution, but something of an
Islamist Trojan Horse.
In Shakespeare’s great tragedy, Macbeth
was promoted as “Thane or Prince of Fife†exactly as the weird sisters
had prophesied. Then he became Prince of Cawdor and finally ended up as
King. After his third term as prime minister, Erdogan, like Macbeth, was
faced with the existential question: what next? That is when the great
tragedy began.
When all was going Erdogan’s way, his
international detractors thought of the perfect psychological moment to
dangle before him a huge carrot: democratic leadership of West Asia in
the throes of change.
Tragically for him, Erdogan swallowed the
bait, hook line and sinker. First he urged Syria’s Bashar al Assad to
accommodate the Muslim Brotherhood, thus exposing his Islamist colours.
Then he turned up in Tripoli to lead the prayers as a regional Brother.
Turkey became the main conduit for men and money for the extremist
Muslim opposition inside Syria. Turkey facilitated everybody’s including
Thomas Friedman’s entry into Aleppo. Erdogan’s eclipse as a result of
the election results began just when he was openly siding with the
Islamic state.
A muscular Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey would
have given heart to its counterparts in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Gaza.
Reversal in Turkey will reverberate differently in the region.
Even
though inside Turkey all other parties would consider gameplans to way
lay Erdogan and then gore him in public for the corruption which plagued
his final years, the Turkish secularists may yet live to rub their eyes
with wonder that the man they sought to destroy “hath so much blood in
himâ€. Erdogan is down all right, but he cannot be counted out quite yet.
Is
there a distant moral for India in the Turkish experience? Just as
there is a large moffusil, religious constituency, comfortable with
calendar art of Gods and Goddesses, there is an urbane, Brahminical
(Kemalist) elite which contemplates with unease the aesthetic of the
contemporary national discourse. This will impact on national politics.
(A
senior commentator on political and diplomatic affairs, Saeed Naqvi can
be reached on [email protected]. The views expressed are
personal.)
