Soroor Ahmedavers how rabid anti-Erdoğan stand of the United States and its European allies has helped Erdoğan further consolidate his position.But the West’s antipathy for Erdoğan, he writes, is not new. The western opposition of Türkiye has a long history as the Ottoman’s occupation of Constantinople, now Istanbul, took place on May 29, 1453. Coincidentally, the latest election result came exactly 570 years later.
The victory of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the Presidential election and of his Justice and Development Party (AKP in Turkish abbreviation) in the parliamentary poll once again confirmed that notwithstanding decline in popularity and poor health condition he is still the number one choice of the people. At the same time, it exposed the fact that rabid anti-Erdoğan stand of the United States and its European allies has helped him further consolidate his position.
However, independent analysts are of the view that the sail would not have been smooth for him had Ekremİmamoğlu, Mayor of Istanbul and a leading light of Republican Peoples Party, not been sentenced to jail for two years, seven months and 15 days last December. Critics said that he was a potential challenger but was removed from the picture by Erdoğan with the help of judiciary. He was convicted for calling the members of Supreme Election Council fools.
Anyway, Erdoğan got 52.15% votes against 47.85% by his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who was the leader of multi-party National Alliance. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu himself is the leader of Republican Peoples Party (CHP), which was founded by Mustafa Kemal Pasha a century ago after the collapse of Ottoman Khilafat.
Ironically, the main Islamic outfit, Felicity Party of late Necmettin Erbakan, is a leading constituent of opposition National Alliance and is not with Erdoğan. It had won 10 seats in the House of 600. CHP itself won 169 seats while AKP-led Peoples Alliance 323. AKP alone won 268. The Presidential and parliamentary elections were held simultaneously.
Erdoğan, a shrewd politician, wooed the Islamic Kurdish Free Cause Party and managed to get one-third votes of Kurds. The rest of Kurds voted for the opposition alliance which included their secular party. Erdoğan showered praise on Salahuddin Ayyubi, the great general who snatched back Jerusalem from the Christian Crusaders in 1187. He was a Kurd. A few years back,Erdoğan also inaugurated an airport in Kurdish region named after Salahuddin Ayyubi.
The opposition, according to Türkiye watchers, made a tactical mistake by wooing Kurds, as in theprocess it pushed many Turks towards AKP. Nationalistic sentiment is quite strong in Türkiye.Erdoğan was once a close lieutenant of Erbakan, the former Prime Minister, but broke away from himlater.
No doubt the credit for the huge progress and complete transformation of Türkiye, which is the 19thbiggest economy of the world, goes to Erdoğan. He had stopped repeated coups and military interventionsand brought about political stability in the country, where the army had in 1961 hanged the formerelected prime minister Adnan Menderes and the finance and foreign minister in his cabinet. Menderes wasoverthrown in a military coup in 1960 after 10 years long rule. He first led his Democrat Party tovictory in 1950.
Türkiye has travelled a long way to emerge as a democratic society. Though it is also true that tracesof authoritarianism can be found in Erdoğan. Yet when the military tried to stage a coup on July 15,2016, it was the common people, cutting across the party lines, who took to streets and literally foughtagainst the army. The general opinion among the opposition parties was that they would fight Erdoğan intheir own political way, but not let the army take over the reins of the country.
It is another thing that the western media does not give due space to the past brutal record of theTurkish army simply because it is a secular institution and had crushed any party or individual whichwould espouse the cause of Islam or Muslim Ummah as such. The secular nature of the army can be gaugedfrom the fact that the wife of the then President Abdullah Gul (of AKP) was not invited in an armyfunction in 2007 because she used to wear a headscarf.
If Menderes and his ministers were executed, Erbakan, the first Islamic Prime Minister in mid-1990s(1996-97), had to step down. His party was banned several times only to resurface under new nameslater. The present Felicity Party also traces its origin to Erbakan’s Virtue Party, whose earlier nameswere Welfare Party and National Salvation Party.
The Virtue Party was banned by the constitutional court and after it resurfaced in 2001 it got split.The reformists under Erdoğan formed Justice and Development Party while Erbakan floated Felicity Party.Erbakan died in 2011. Erdoğan led his party to victory for the first election in 2002 and is in power since then.
ERDOĞAN MORE PRAGMATIC
Those who support Erdoğan concede that he has become too powerful and does not tolerate anyone whoopposes him. He has a tight control over the media. Yet they are of the view that his approach is morepragmatic, therefore, he succeeded while Erbakan (and other secular politicians) didn’t. Had Erdoğannot been tough, he would not have checked the army, which became a stumbling block on the path ofdevelopment. Even the bitterest critics acknowledge that if Türkiye is able to look eyeball to eyeballwith the West, it was just because of Erdoğan. But as is often seen, such leaders become over-confident,sometimes self-willed as well as dictatorial.
Besides, Türkiye had no long history of uninterrupted democracy as in India, the US or UK. In thissituation whatever freedom the people enjoy, they are better than in the past when military used to ruledirectly or indirectly.
WEST’S OPPOSITION TO ERDOĞAN
Among other things the West opposes Erdoğanis that he refuses to toe its line, more after the start ofwar in Ukraine. Initially Türkiye even played the role of mediator between Russia and Ukraine. This wasnot much liked by the United States and its allies which want to see the military defeat of PresidentVladmir Putin.
But the West’s antipathy for Erdoğan is not new. From the very beginning the United States and otherWest European countries had been supporting various opposition parties and anti-Erdoğan individualsliving outside. In the run-up of the 2020 US Presidential election, the Democratic Party candidate, JoeBiden, openly called for the overthrow of Erdoğan. It is this anti-Erdoğan sentiment and a mixture ofIslamophobia and Turkish-phobia which Erdoğan fully exploited in this election. Thus, it wasunnecessary intervention of the West which spoiled the chance of the opposition CHP-led NationalAlliance to win the election. Otherwise, most experts and surveys had predicted that the deterioratingeconomic condition and massive earthquakes on February 6 had made the task much more difficult for him.
The western opposition of Türkiye has a long history as the Ottoman’s occupation of Constantinople, nowIstanbul, took place on May 29, 1453. (Coincidentally, the latest election result came exactly 570 yearslater.) This led to the collapse of the Eastern Roman Empire. The Turkish push deep inside Europecontinued till 1683 when it reached the outskirts of Vienna, the capital of Austria. English and otherEuropean literatures, are filled with material which lampoon, ridicule and demonise Turks.
LEADERSHIP OF MUSLIM WORLD
Like Erbakan, who ruled briefly in 1990s, Erdoğan wants to emerge as the leader of Muslim world. Thegrowing proximity of Türkiye, Iran, Russia and China is not being welcomed by the West. Türkiye, whichearlier wanted to be included in European Union, is now not so much insisting on it.
Erdoğan often speaks for the cause of Palestine and backs the position of Pakistan on Kashmir. That isone reason why it along with Saudi Arabia and China – not to mention about Egypt and Oman (the twospecial invitees – did not attend the recent G-20 meet in Srinagar. Yet he is expected to attend the G-20Summit in India in September. This will be his first visit to India after six years.
However, against the general perception, the fact is that even when Türkiye was ruled by secular leadersand army it, had adopted the pro-Pakistan stand. Türkiye, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and the United Kingdomwere the members of Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO), a military pact which came into existence onFebruary 24, 1955. So, Türkiye (along with Iran) sided with Pakistan in 1965 and 1971 wars with India.Not only that Türkiye was among the last country to recognise Bangladesh as an independent country.
Iraq had withdrawn from CENTO after 1958 coup and the Baathist takeover of the country.CENTO was dissolved on March 16, 1979 after the Islamic Revolution in Iran on February 11, 1979.
Though Türkiye is one of the original members of North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, it is now followingan independent foreign policy. Of late Ankara, instead of whole-heartedly backing the position of theUnited States-led West on the issue of Ukraine, it initially played the role of mediator.
Though Erdoğan had won on the basis of his tough and uncompromising foreign policy, it is to be seenwhether he would be able to overcome the challenge within. The Syrian and Kurdish crises are stillthere. Then there is the issue of return of Syrian refugees and rehabilitation of earthquake victims,who had reposed full faith on him. In 10 out of 11 quake-hit provinces, his party emerged victorious.
Incidentally, AKP did very well in the rural pockets and small towns while the opposition performedwell in the metropolitan cities, for example, Istanbul.