Erdoğan’s Earthquake

Welcome to Shield of the Republic upon webcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and dedicated to the proposition, articulated by Walter Littman during World War two that has strong and balanced foreign policy is the indispensable shield of our Democratic Republic. Eric Edelman, a counselor at the Center for strategic and budgetary assessments, a bulwark contributor and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center. And I’m joined by my always cohost Elliot Cohen, the Robert E. Ozgood professor of Strategy at Johns Hopkins School of advanced international studies in Washington DC and the Arleigh Burke Chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Elliot, how are you?

I’m doing very well. I’m particularly looking forward to this episode. To learn not only from our guest, but from you, because you share a common expertise and familiarity with a pretty important country that we haven’t really been taught about enough?

Well, our guest is an expert. I’m merely a dilatant on the subject. Our guest is Ari Barkie, the Bernard, and Bertha Cohen professor of International Relations at Lehigh University. He’s also an adjunct fellow in Middle East studies at the Center and the Council for Foreign Relations rather and former care of the Middle East program at the Wilson Center and has had a stint in government as well for a number of years in the Clinton administration on the policy planning staff of the Department of State working on all things, Turkish and Eastern Mediterranean. And Ari, whether he wants to admit it or not, full disclosure requires me to say that he and I have been coauthors on at least two occasions.

We’ve co authored an op ed together about the plight of US foreign service nationals who are held hostage and still or in some cases being held under kind of house arrest in in Turkey by the government of Turkey. As well as a op ed together in the former journal, the American interest on the Obama administration and the siege of cobining way back in twenty fourteen are rewelcomed.

Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. Alright. I’m a dedicated follower of the podcast. So it’s a particular delight to be

Well, I’m glad to glad to have you very timely because of the very tragic events that are going on in Turkey as we speak as a result of the two earthquakes that have occurred, but also political tremors in the country as as well leading up to a presidential election that is now at least currently scheduled for May fourteenth. You in the past week or so have written a very, very penetrating essay on the importance of the presidential election. Turkey tell us a bit about why you see this as such a consequential election in Turkey.

Turkey has been ruled now by they should play by Iran since two thousand and three. His party won the election in two thousand and two. He became prime minister in two thousand and three. So it had essentially a twenty year run by him during which Turkey was transformed and the government was transform in many different ways. That is to say Turkey has become economically far more dynamic.

Partially, it was reforms that were introduced earlier by a previous president to get resolved that finally produced results. But the one at the beginning manage the country fairly well. But with time, as he won more and more elections, he became increasing the autocratic to the point where today, it really is a one one man show in Turkey that is to say that you have a president who has control of just about every single institution in Turkey. He decides everything. He is truly an amazing politician.

I mean, he is a detailed oriented person. Nothing happens without his permission. And so he now controls military. He controls the judiciary. He controls the press.

He controls universities. And the central bank. So it is his policies that are the the imprint of Turkish portfolio and domestic policy. So he is now running for re election and because the economy is suffering from very high inflation, a balance of payments deficit potential currency crisis he for the first time, he’s being challenged seriously because up until now, his one elections are very easily. But so where he to lose, and I’m putting it in quotation marks, it would be a major change in Turkey because it would provide Turkey or it would open the possibility of what I would call regime change in Turkey because what one of the things that Erdogan has done was to convert a parliamentary system into this one person presidential system.

And your position promises to return back to the parliamentary system. So in that sense, it’s very consequential. But there are clearly foreign policy repercussions as well we can talk about. So I just wanna say that as a stat. Yeah.

I mean, if I could follow that up, I mean, so a point you may in the article with which I hardly agree is that for Erdogan, you know, foreign policy begins at home, everything really is about how what he does in in foreign policy will redone to his domestic political benefit, and he’s someone who has changed, you know, many times in terms of different positions that he’s taken most recently after being at odds with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE for instance, he is. And Egypt, he’s made nice with all of them in part because he wants the flow of money. From the gulf countries into into the Turkish economy to help compensate for some of the economic difficulties that you were describing. It seems to me he’s just throwing money at voters before the election in an effort at sort of free spending populism to try and buy back some of the political difficulty that he’s been in, as you say, the mismanagement of the economy, I mean, you mentioned eighty five percent inflation. I mean, isn’t that largely due to his own self inflicted economic policies, which seemed to be at odds with what most traditional economists would tell you.

And on the foreign policy front, isn’t he searching for advantage in whether it’s in Syria or against Greece or blocking Finland and Sweden from accession to NATO. All of this is to try and puff up his position on the world stage and extract, quote, benefits that he can sell to the nationalist element of the coalition he’s put together with the MHP, the nationalist party. Is that fair?

No. That’s that’s that’s fair fact. Did you make one point about inflation rate? Yes. He has some very bizarre ideas about how to combat inflation.

Where most every economist in the world will tell you that if the rate of inflation increases, you’re also increasing to states the central bank should tried to fight inflation with increasing into states. He seems to think and he thinks that this is well established theory at this in his head. That in fact, it is the interest rates that cause inflation and not vice versa. If you reduce inflation, if you reduce the late interstates, then inflation will go down. And he seems very intense.

And the other day, he said anybody who doesn’t believe this is either a trade or a mortgage. So he’s not gonna get the economic, the private, the private, the private, the private, the private person economics. That’s for sure.

But

it is it is a strategy. I mean, it is definitely a strategy because he thinks he can get himself enacted by having both high inflation and avoid unemployment because He continues to pour money into the system. He wants people to invest. He makes it easier or certain sectors of the economy to get credits. So it’s a very good strategy, obviously.

But I should also say that inflation is not holy the result of his economic policies looked as a war in Ukraine and which has pushed gas and oil prices through the roof. So just like in Europe where and it says where you’ve had inflation as a result of of the the world. Turkey also suffers from from that. So it’s not wholly is this fault. I mean, the inflation rate is eighty five percent but I wouldn’t say maybe forty percent of that is outside So could I ask

you a question, Arie. You described Tim taking control of just about every major institution in Turkey. And yet you talk about the election here and and in that that terrific article as though it’s something that he could lose. And there have been elections where his party has lost most notably the the mayor of Istanbul, the mayor of Anquero, though, as you all so point out a fine way to remove those people from power. We’ll talk later on, I’m sure, about the impact of the earthquakes on that election.

But but just how clean or how dirty, maybe that’s a better way of putting it, is that election likely to be? That is to say

you

know,

there are dictatorships where you can just be sure that whoever is the president is gonna win because absolutely every ballot box has been stuffed. But but it sounds like Turkey’s not quite there yet, and I have to confess I don’t fully understand what’s the What’s the range here? Could you talk to that?

Yes. I mean, Turkey is not Belarus. I mean, there’s no question that I have to add commands. A great deal of power and influence. But elections have become important in Turkey because you’ve had successive elections over the years.

So so the Turkish public expects that it can have it it has a say in in the electoral process. So you can’t turn joking to Bella Goose where you stuff the the box the ballot boxes. So he he does play games with the system. But he’s it’s difficult to stop to stop the ballot boxes because, a, you have outside of service from the OECD and domestically from NGOs. And also, people can people take elections very seriously in Turkey.

The way he influences the elections is by banning political parties, banning politicians, by making use that the – I’ll give you one example. The Kurdish the poor Kurdish party, HDP, the People’s democracy party. After the municipal elections in twenty nineteen won a whole series of municipalities in in the southeast and east of Turkey. Within days of those elections, he removed all the mayors of that had one election and replaced them by government appointed pro AKP du look at. Why does he do that in part?

Because it is, after all, a system in Turkey where the state provides lots of benefits. So if you provide those benefits to expect that the voters will be, shall we say, sympathetic to you because you’d be poverty. And also, the threat of with doing those benefits make voters more likely to vote for the government party. That’s it. In some ways, you can say it’s not that different than other parts of the world.

But here is far more obvious. That is to say the the the the system that she’s created, right, of providing these

benefits

has voters who may be opposed to him both for him because they will say that those benefits will go away. And especially in less developed parts of the country like East the East and the Southeast, this becomes fairly significant. Then again, I should say that in that part of the country, the HDP is very, very strong. I mean, the Kepler Cheuvreux body. But but it plays these games and and the reason why in twenty nineteen when he lost the municipal elections in Istanbul when he had to do it.

He he forced we do of those elections. Is because Istanbul, he is a cash cow for his party, but also the it’s a way for him to control the voters. So that’s why he was very upset at losing it. But you can see that he can lose elections. If I could just ask a follow-up on that.

Clearly, one

of the things that’s critical to having a fair election is to have reasonably open information environment. And yet, one of the things that you document is this really extensive crackdown on a free press. And I was wondering if you could say a bit about the state of the Turkish press. And to what extent are average Turks living in a an information bubble or do, you know, dissenting ideas and views kinda come in through other venues.

In terms of the broadcast media, television radio, and print media. Most of it is in the con under the government control. And you can see when you look at the headlines of the newspapers, you can see that they have been told what to put on that front page because very often you have exactly the same headline for in all of these cases. So there’s a very clear control of the media. And most people get information from there.

However, there still exists some newspapers that are position newspapers that two of them come to mind. And they paradoxically, of course, since newspapers depend on government advertising, the government doesn’t advertise in those papers. They tried to, actually, say, squash them through not just through censorship. But also through economically. And somehow, they have survived some of them.

And today, the Turkish electorate or the Turkish public, I should say, is fairly sophisticated in the sense that it uses the Internet, and it knows about VPN. So it does have access to information. And you do see that the government very often is put in a defensive position because these alternative networks or Internet networks or Internet newspapers come up with information, and there’s some very good journalists there that that that work. And they really sometimes manage to put to the government on the defensive. Now, it’s very hard to tell you to tell you what percentage of the Turkish public actually reads those on a daily basis.

But people talk to each other. I mean, cell phones are everywhere. People use, you know, the Internet to communicate. And therefore, if there is a great deal of information flow at the moment. So I can’t tell you because as I said, what percentage percentage of the public is getting news from alternative sources on a regular basis.

But it is fairly significant since today when you look at the polls, there’s a great deal of the great number of the population, maybe fifty percent of the population is willing to vote against the government. So if you had complete control and if you control everything, that would not have happened, like, my guess.

Alright. Let me follow-up if I might. Elliott’s, you know, sort of line of inquiry here. First question is, you’ve pointed out that Erdogan has, quote, lost elections. I mean, we we can go back in twenty fifteen, there was a hung parliament his party didn’t win that election.

And he undermined the efforts of his then prime minister to forge a national unity government and forced the country back to the polls and and got an electoral outcome that was more to his liking. In in the green room before we started you and I and Elliott were talking about the twenty seventeen constitutional referendum that set up this presidential system you mentioned. And that does seem to be a case that was so close that there does seem to have been some actual fiddling of the vote, particularly in the southeast. Of the country. You know, different people say different things about whether it was definitive or not, whether it made the actual difference but it was very close vote.

Could’ve could’ve gone the other way. There you’ve mentioned the efforts to nullify the votes in Istanbul when Ekram Yamaloyulu was elected mayor of Istanbul in twenty nineteen. You’ve mentioned the mayors who were removed from office the h d p mayors in the southeast. So he has methods even if he loses for kind of mitigating that from his point of view. He goes into this presidential election, as you point out in your article, traveling all of the potential competitors.

In the polls, although he he strengthened his poll numbers recently. My question to you is this, can he afford to lose an election in the sense that if he loses, you said, correctly, in my view, that we are going to see an effort at regime change because the table of six, the opposition parties, want to try and go back to the parliamentary system that he ended instead of this strong presidential system. There’s no prime minister in Turkey now. There’s a vice president who is of no account. And as you say, everything revolves around the person of the president.

Can in that circumstance, can he afford to lose? Because not only will there be regime change in the sense that there will be an effort to go back to a parliamentary system? But isn’t it the case he’s very likely to be he and members of his family very likely to be prosecuted for corruption if he loses. And so in that sense, is he not a little bit like you know, president Putin who can’t afford to have a successor because the danger is that, you know, he’ll he’ll pay a huge you know, maybe in Super Bowl price for it. I’m I’m struck by the fact that he constantly refers to what happened to odd non tenders.

In nineteen sixty three when he was executed by the military. After a coup, he he said repeatedly, privately and publicly that I’m not have happened to me, what happened to Mendoza. Isn’t that haunting him in some sense? Yes. It is haunting him.

I mean, So let me just make one slight correction. He’s not

trailing every single potential candidate. I think he’s still beats the Gustavo over. The main opposition party leader. I think that’s so he’s trying to maneuver the current situation at the moment so that style will becomes his opponent because he thinks he can beat English that beat English style, which I think is probably is right. But But yes, he cannot afford to lose this election.

It’s not just him and his family that would go down. But it’s a whole contrary of people who have benefited from him, especially in the construction industry. The creation of very large conglomerates that get all the contracts to do bridges, tunnels, hospitals, you name it. And also, this amazing media conglomerates that do his bidding Right? So people who worked and judges, right, who have done his his bidding over the years.

So the number of people who would suffer, got a got from a vision change is quite large. So of course, he may he would look at it from his own perspective and his immediate family’s perspective. But I I would say that the consequences are much larger than the family. Now whether he will be prosecuted you know, it’s one of these things like we have in this country. Would you go after the former president or not?

And whether whether you know, they would take the chance because he does have a very solid support base. I mean, that we may see the same thing we saw in the United States and Brazil of people trying to attack the the institutions in Anke, where he to actually lose elections. I mean, this is a definitely possibility. So maybe they would find this to say, an agreed exit for him. I mean, so that there’s not that much unrest in the country, so to say, afterwards.

Right? But it is it look. The other aspect of losing, of course, is that everyone has become in his own mind and he’s in the minds of his followers much greater than that. I mean, he losing. It’s a little bit that Trump, but but losing would be such a defeat personally for his ego, for his his place in history.

How can somebody who is not rivaling in his own mind at a jerk? The founder of his of the country can lose an election? That to him to in my view is impossible to contemplate. So he will do everything in his power to avoid the defeat. And we saw that and and I I even think that he’s really willing to start an international crisis if that if he thinks that will help him.

Yeah.

That I have to say it was one of the more chilling things in your article you talk about the possibility that even manufacturing a violent incident with Greece is a possibility that these awful earthquakes are first and foremost to a great humanitarian tragedy. But of course, one also has to ask, okay, what how do you assess the possible political consequences of that given that the elections are not all that far off.

Look,

I think the earthquake will be a decisive factor. And it may be that the earthquake will be the nail in this coffin. The reason I say this is because, yes, I thought he if especially if he were to run against mister Khushar over the main opposition, party leader. I thought that his chances of winning were pretty good. It’s only against the mayor of Istanbul, the mayor of Vancouver that he the chances of losing increase substantially.

And of course politics is the kind of spot that at the very end, you don’t know what will happen. Like, you know, the opposition could stage a comeback but the earthquake changes all of these because by virtue of the fact that Erdogan essentially became the state. I mean, very much in with the fourteen star. He is now responsible for everything. I’ll just just say, I I that’s something that I had to sit

today.

After the earthquake, the Istanbul Stock Exchange went through a great deal of time out and fell a huge percentage. And there was a discussion of whether or not they should stop trading on the assembly stock exchange. And this decision had to be made by the minister, the treasury minister. Well, he did not make take the decision because he was afraid of asking Erdogan whether or not he should do it. In other words, Erdogan in his mind, Erdogan would have to make that decision.

And and the minister is a little bit unfair to say, I I don’t know, not maybe very sure of himself within the bureaucracy. So he was afraid that I had to ask everyone. Right? So either one makes every single decision. Now you will say some stopping trading on the Istanbul Stock Exchange is an important decision.

I mean, surely he had the and and all to say. But the way the president has played him up over the years, the way he has played himself everybody looks at add on for every single decision. So when you have an earthquake of this size, And the response by the state of to this calamity has been very poor to put it mildly. They couldn’t get they couldn’t get the the leaf equipment and really people to the locations. There are still places that have not been reached yet.

The number of dead at the moment is over thirty thousand, but everybody expect that it will go up significantly certainly over fifty thousand. And so the failure is seen especially in the areas where the earthquake hit, the four provinces, that because it is everyone’s fault. And those four provinces represent about fifteen percent of the population. And they traditionally have been pro I do unpull AKP provinces. Of the four provinces, in three of them, in the last section, Q1, by more than fifty percent So he got a majority with all the parties coming.

And the only in one, if he get thirty six percent and he was still the number one, the number one party. So but the anger in those provinces is so incredible that he’s bound to pay price. And people are watching, and in part of the to reset the communication revolution in Turkey that people know exact know exactly what’s happening and people connect. And and you will see citizens from those four provinces ultimately going to different parts of the country because it’s impossible to live there at the moment. Right?

So they will go to their families, to their friends seek seeking shelter. And and the stories of poor relief work is gonna spread. And I think he really now is in danger of losing the election. I mean, even I think maybe Mr. Khuncharalo will be able to beat them in this under these circumstances.

So I so he’s gonna have to figure out or prove a habit out of a hat if or in these upcoming elections. I mean, I would bet today if every sector’s fabulous, all things being equal, he would definitely lose. But this is our one. He he he will come up with something. Well,

will he postpone the elections? I mean, you know, you’ve outlined essentially a a kind of neo patrimonial state that he’s created, right, in which, you know, as you said led to us, saying, well, I own everything and what you get if it’s a construction thing or if it’s a newspaper or a TV property, it’s, you know, by less magic state because I, the sovereign have given it to you. But if you own if you own the state, you own the state. And when the state fails, you own the failure, which is sort of what what which is what’s happening right now. And there’s a and there’s another element where the corruption comes in.

Right, Irene, which is that Turks have been paying a tax since nineteen ninety nine. That was instituted to make the country earthquake proof if you will after the nineteen ninety nine terrible earthquakes in Istanbul. And people have been saying, where is that money? And where is it gone? What’s happened with that money?

And Erdogan has been extremely cagey in answering the question of what’s happened to that money? He won’t he won’t answer the question. Doesn’t that tend to even make him a bit more suspect in people’s eyes? Yes. And

the other thing that happened is that there is a government those those type those those Turkish lira that were connected was supposed to go to this organization called Afad, a f a a d, which is a relief organization. It turns out in the twenty twenty three budget, I have known somewhere that they significantly cut the budget of this organization. By contrast, they increased the budget of the religious authority in Turkey by almost an equivalent. I mean, people are saying the money that was supposed to go to relief, the relief organization has been transferred to one of our advanced pet institutions, the the Annette, which is the religious governing board in Turkey. So that is one thing that people are going to ask.

The other big issue is

that

in Turkey because of the corruption. All over Turkey, not just in in in the areas that was that were hit by the earthquake. We have show the construction in legal construction. So you get a permit to build, let’s say, an apartment building that has five floors. But then build three more floors illegally on top.

Right? And you don’t the local authorities cannot give you a permit for those three. So you live a kind of a nimble in those apartments because those apartments are designed to have people buy those apartments. So there was pressure from all those people all around Turkey who wanted to legalize their illegal apartments. And in twenty nineteen, Erdogan did that all over the country.

And he in Kalamazoo, which is one of the four provinces of to hit by the earthquake. He came in twenty nineteen, I think, or or maybe I have the dates. I just got something on that. And told the the people of she said, a hundred and forty four thousand of you now are much better off because I’ve legalized basically, this journey construction. And of course, the state when it legalizes, you have to pay a fine, not a very significant fine that goes into state coffers.

Right? But effectively, what he what he did was to to legalize constructions that were illegal or who had done not to specifications, especially in an earthquake and earthquake zone. Right? This is going to come this is gonna haunt him. There’s no question about it because a great deal of I mean, those those apartment buildings you saw from the deck just collapse like pancakes.

Right? And and it’s not one, it’s not two, it’s it’s thousands of them. And many of them, by the way, have not been created yet. We don’t know how many bodies are out there. So this is going to haunt you because essentially he said, what is more important is that you you quote unquote live with a permit in a place that is sexually unsafe.

Right? And now people are in in this symbol of because that’s he also legalized them in this symbol. Are now going and trying to find experts who will say if the building, the living is safe or not.

Arie, can I pull a thread on something you said about the increase in budget to the religious authority? And in a way this is to you, but it’s also, you know, Eric, I think our listeners know you are our ambassador to Turkey. So you know that country firsthand. You know, on the one hand, you’ve been portraying Erdogan as a strong man, somebody who will do just about anything to stay in power, personally corrupt or at least family, very corrupt. And yet, there’s also a side which from the outside looks ideological.

That is to say an Islamist in some sense, however one chooses to interpret that word, who is in some ways revising the the basic structure of a a state that was created by Kamalaodaturk to be secular. Another word that gets thrown around is Neo Ottoman is that he has a a foreign policy vision, which is of recreating Turkey, not not, of course, is the Ottoman Empire to be sure. But as a state with much greater reach than one might think, and with important influence in areas that were part of the Ottoman Empire. So I’m wondering if you could explore and Eric also if you would comment as well To what extent are we dealing with a leader who is informed by ideology as well as Aboris or simply the desire for power to stay in power. And I don’t think by the way he’s alone with this.

If you think about Victor or Bonn, who strikes me is also rather corrupt, also preoccupied with retaining power, also somebody who’s weakened institutions, but there’s still there’s also a bit of an ideological dimension and there’s something of a foreign policy vision as well. So if you could

take those thoughts and expand on them, might be grateful. First of all, we should we should put I I don’t in a category. I mean, he is one of the populist authority and leaders like Orban, like, Putin, old scenario, I mean, who essentially have a vision for themselves. They decide to rule them to rule almost absolutely. And that vision of themselves that they have for themselves is also a vision for for their own country.

Alright? So for Adorn almost from the beginning, he you could see that he had in his mind that Turkish is given its geopolitical location. Given its prowess, I mean, after all, this is the second largest army in NATO, It is a dynamic economy. It is among the twenty largest economies in the world. And he essentially saw that Turkey had a much greater future.

That Turkey could be a really influential country in in the world politics. And at the same time, of course, he as the leader of that country would also become one of the great leaders of the of of current international politics. And almost from the beginning, he kept saying that he would do the science in the United Nations is larger than five, meaning the five permanent members of the security council. He almost he almost said that he kind of saw himself and Turkey deserving of his seat in a permanent seat on the UN’s UN Security Council. As a representative not just of Turkey but also of the Muslim world because he saw himself as a leader of of his Mozambique.

And in some ways, of course, Turkey, yes, he has competition from Indonesia and Malaysia, maybe. But Turkey is again member of the Western Alliance and therefore and also economically very powerful and therefore you can say maybe Turkey deserves a greater say in world politics. But this ambition that he has is both personal and also for ideological. Right? But it is actually into I mean, I’ll put this question out there since both of you guys do see this IR.

And when you look at the at the foreign policy of Turkey or Russia or even Hungary? Are we looking at national interest? Are we looking at the interest of the individual leader who dominate and who shapes national interest. Right? I’m not gonna start a conversation on this, but but with everyone, you clearly see that his own interest trumped the interest of the country.

Right? And and he’s by the way, he’s also quite flexible. So I mean, he can go after Saudi Arabia and and Egypt and and Israel and lambast them and and call them names, etcetera. And then if you use data as he’s doing now, make peace with them and tell me, because he he figures out he needs them. And so he he will switch policies very, very easily.

So ideology matters, but he is quite adaptable. Again, to to still progress he he’s he’s on he’s on ambition. I I I you I mean, you dealt with him and you

Yeah. I agree. I think everything you said is is right, or I think he is very ideological. I think a lot of his ideological I mean, I would describe him only slightly differently than you did. I mean, I think he is and Islamic nationalist populist.

But there’s definitely an inflection of Islam there in his thinking, not you know, kind of the ISIS al Qaeda brand, but the Mohammed Mahatir brand in Malaysia, I would say, is pretty close to how he, you know, sees it. Definitely sees himself as playing a huge role on the world stage. A lot of Amur proper there that’s grown over the years. I think those ideological pretensions were fed by his one time assistant and then later foreign minister and prime minister who’s now broken with him. Amit Daffotolo, who filled his head with ideas of Turkey being a a a a Muslim superpower or a leastern superpower, which is, hence, where you get a lot of this discussion, I think, of of neo Ottomanism from his book strategic depth, which talks about these ideas.

I think those, frankly, you know, those pretensions were all always beyond Turkey’s grasp in in the sense that, for instance, the Arab states remember the Ottoman period very differently. From the way Turks do. And I think Turks have seriously underestimated the ongoing lingering resentment that Arabs feel when Turks try and speak for the region or speak for them. And you’ve seen that come out in in various ways over the last twenty years of Erdogan’s rule. The other thing I would say in response to Elliott’s question, And, Anri, I’d be interested in your view of this.

So We tend to in terms of Ada Turk, Erdogan clearly sees him as creating you know, a a new dispensation in Turkey and that he is a founder of a new Turkey in the sense that Ottoman or that auditork was the founder of modern turkey on the ashes of the Ottoman Empire. And you know, this is where I think Americans have a little bit of problem understanding because we talk about secularism. And we talk about tech Turkey as a secular republic. And the problem is for Americans, you know, our country was founded by dissenting protestants who fled essentially England and, you know, the Netherlands and other parts of Europe. Because they wanted to be able to practice their religion, and they were afraid that the state was corrupting religion.

And they wanted religion to be independent of the state. When Atatir disestablished the the sultanate and the caliphate, he was concerned about the opposite that that it was religion that was corrupting the state and it was the state that had to be made pure. From the influence of religion. And so when we talk about secularism, I think we Americans and Turks who talk about it, talk past each other on this subject. But Erdogan clearly, I think hopes to change the dispensation, but more by evolution and revolution.

He knows that turks if you look at them in Poland are are still pretty by, you know, large majority still very secular in outlook even if they vote for the Islamic party. And so you see a pattern of slow change in municipalities where the AKP has taken over and suddenly every public figure’s wife is wearing a headscarf, and the municipality has banned the you know, the sale of alcohol. So it’s more of an effort to move the country gradually in the direction of something that looks like Pakistan or or Malaysia rather than, you know, imposition of sharia law. Would you would you agree with that, Pori?

Yes. I I would agree with that, but I would I had one little thing to it. And that is that part of the reason why Turkey and I don’t think he can get away with a lot of things is because we have also indulged him and we have indulged Turkey over the years. Right? Because there has always been a tilt towards Turkey in your old institution, Eric, the the state department, that Turkey is so important to us.

So we always allow them to get away with things that we would not allow other countries to other countries. So so they’ve gotten used to to this notion of importance. Right? And that has also propelled the other one to become much more demanding if you want and much more effective, so I said, misusing the word here, but visionary. In terms of Turkey.

Turkey is all in the world because Turkey is so important, right? And United States especially kind of agrees with that. And therefore, he he pushes that envelope as much as as possible. So there is a little bit of American

implicit moment. Yeah. We’re we’re implicit because we we

Well, the people

we’ve regarded as Turkey as too big to fail, too important to fail. Exactly.

You know, I’m an outsider in all this, of course. But I I mean, I definitely wouldn’t can interpret most things go on in in the world is representing a failure of American foreign policy. But but it does seem to me he’s been rather clever in how he has played us. And not just us, I think he’s been clever in the way he played Vladimir Putin. You know, if you look at the way they’ve positioned themselves on the Russia Ukraine war, he’s actually on the one hand supplied lots of hard work to the Ukrainians.

I think He has been quite careful not to say that to say that Crimea is not Russian. It’s obviously in Turkish interest to get the Black Sea fleet out of Sevastropel. On the and he’s welcoming lots of Russian refugees, but he’s also getting there’s lots of Russian money flowing in, and he’s sort of positioned himself in the middle in some ways. And, you know, in various places in the world, think of Olivia, for example, had been fairly adroit. I think about inserting themselves You know, I one question that I have, as I look at Turkey, you know, I think about other great empires that have coped with the end of empire.

And I it strikes me, Turkey is somewhat unusual in having gone really from being an imperial state, which it’s not just that you had a kind of a metropole that was won nationality and lots of colonies and so under the outside. But there was really a multi ethnic state. I believe the majority of Istanbul was not Turkish actually for or not Muslim, I should say, for a long time. And then it’s become pretty much a single certainly a single religion state. And and I’m curious to know how the reaction to the end of Empire continues to reverberate.

I mean, clearly, auditorium was a huge part of that rejecting openly things that were associated with the empire, you know, including head gear. Has Turkey really kind of turned its turned the page on its imperial past? Or does it haunt it in some of the ways that the Imperial passed arguably haunts Britain and France down to the present day.

No. Look, this is a very interesting question. I mean, I would say that the end of the empire, still constructs. That is to say, there is something called syndrome in Turkey. Today, when you look at Turkey’s relationship with the most important global part of the United States.

It’s very, I should say, ten years in a sense that, yes, we are formally allies But when you do you pull people in Turkey and there was one we not recently. And when you asked Turks which country represents the greatest threat to Turkey. Seventy percent of the population said the United States. Seventy percent of the Turks think that the United States is an effort to note Turkey. So I just did a chapter for a book that’s I don’t know if it’s gonna be published, but when I tried to look at that phenomenon and In fact, it is partially because United States and Turkey have been allies and we have been very involved in the region, etcetera.

But starting with the fibrous crisis in sixty four. Then the Kurdish issue, starting with operation provide comfort in nineteen eighty seven, right? And then ongoing to this day, we have Turkey an America Kurdish problem. And then you have a revisionist neither an adult one who wants to change. These three strands have come together.

There’s always been anti Americans in Turkey, I mean historically, but not to to this extent. Right, where people think that we we create we we try to undermine the government. We organize screws. That we even some people now said the earthquake was caused by the the aircraft carrier Georgia. I mean, there is enormous amount of fear of the United States.

Even though the and it goes back to the safety because people think that the west in general wants to dismember Turkey. For

our listeners already, I think it’s important to explain that the PDF sever was part of the Versailles post World War one settlement that was given over to dividing the former lands of the Ottoman Empire. And as as Arri says, it’s led to this notion of the severed plot that the Western allies wanted to dismember Turkey by creating a Kurdish state and a a it intersected with Greek aspirations after World War for a greater Greece as well.

And that’s not entirely unreasonable. I mean, the the European virus was supported with I I just finished reading Oren Palmaux nights of plague. So this is his latest novel. And and, of course, Orange Publok himself is, as I understand, fairly liberal. But it is it was striking to me that this novel is indeed all about, you know, the fall of the the Ottoman Empire’s disintegration, but also this fear of the external powers that are gonna rip the empire apart.

And, you know, that that has made me think more about, you know, to what extent you’re dealing with the aftermath of Empire even here.

I can attest to what Ari was saying about the continuing power of anti americanism and the concern that, you know, the United States is Turkey’s number one enemy even though we’re tied by treaty alliance. So in two thousand four, when I was ambassador, I went and it was during the US election year and, therefore, it’s not a lot for me to do in that period of time. So I went and decided I would go to lecture at universities, which I thought were the, you know, that where anti Americanism was sort of endemic and where famously at at Matthew, at Middle East Technical University, my predecessor, as ambassador Bob Commer’s armored Cadillac limousine was overturned and burned. So I would typically go out and give speeches. And when I came back, you know, my my staff, the embassy to say, how would how did it go mister ambassador?

And I would invariably say, well, I exceeded the comers standard. They didn’t burn my limo, but I did go to to Celgic University in Konya, which is deep in the heart of some of the, you know, really the kind of Islamist Anatolian Heartland.

And

I gave a speech and the first q and a I got in the q and a session was we know that the United States has bombed Afghanistan and overthrown the government there. We know you bombed Iraq and overthrow the government there. We know you wanna bomb Iran and overthrow the government. When are you gonna bomb Turkey and and overthrow the government of Turkey? And I said, look, you know, the last thing that the president of the United States of the American people want is to bomb Turkey and overthrow its government.

It’s been a NATO ally since nineteen fifty two had fought together with us and Kriya gave all the normal talking points. Next day, the local newspaper had a headline. US ambassador confirms US has list of countries to bomb Turkey last country on the list.

But look, there are also some real events that have produced this. I mean, most people won’t know, but in nineteen sixty four, there was a crisis on in Cyprus. And the text was about to invade Cyprus. And it turns out that Then the Turkish Prime Minister is Netanyahu, who was the number two to atthetoric at the beginning of the republic. Did not want to invade, but was feeling the pressure to invade.

In fact, the Turkish military was not ready did not have the way with didn’t have even landing ships, didn’t have maps of Cypress. So he told the ambassador at the time that he was going to invade the ambassador. Right? So to Washington Washington overnight produces a letter called the Johnson letter because it comes from President Johnson. Which was very, very badly.

It was written by George Boggart by Yes. Yes. And and it was a terrible letter. But that nineteen sixty four letter, the Johnson letter is still part of the discourse today, even though it was a letter I mean, it could have written that been this written differently and given, you know, the cover he needed not to invade. But it people now think that Inner Newell was going to invade in the United States, stopping with this horrible letter that said, you know, NATO article number five would not operate the possessions attacks and the Soviets all that he, you know, said Turkey could not use American weapons and so on and so forth.

They were skinny very, very harsh. And it’s a letter that Johnson realized afterwards, it was a mistake and invited in a new to Washington to to kind of make amends. But in terms of Turkish, should we say, consciousness, the Johnson never keeps being brought up over and over again in any conversation about Turkey and United States that we essentially expect stop the Turks in sixty four, except that we were doing what the Turkish government wanted us to do. Right? We did it poorly.

But that’s and that eventually led to this nineteen seventy four invasion of Cyprus because they they would not listen to us in seventy four.

You mentioned the Turkish military already. I mean, one of Erdogan’s achievements, if that’s what we wanna call it, seems to have been really sort of breaking the military as an independent institutional force in Turkey, which it had been for decades. And to the — to include, unfortunately, things like executing political leaders, But I I have to say, you know, I’m curious, how did he manage that? And is that is the Turkish military now simply new dirt? Which might not be such a bad thing?

Or is it an instrument of this kind of populist, nationalist movement which he’s built around himself.

The Turkish military committed suicide. The Turkish military which was the power behind the front from essentially at the time to essentially two thousand and seven. I had one at the very beginning of his rule was very worried about the direction of intervening and overthrowing him. And that’s why he was so poor Western. See, he he became the darling of the West because he introduced all these democratic institutions, ideas, etcetera, people could say and write anything they wanted.

Right? But in two thousand seven, the army of the military, I should say, made the kind of mistake that people who are too self confident like Putin and Ukraine or have the have the one today made. So there was an election for the presidential election. At the time, the president was not this all powerful person, but was mostly a symbolic leader. And after one, this is two thousand seven.

So he’s been in Parana for four years, proposed Abdul as the candidate, the AKP candidate for the presidency. The military stepped in and said, no way. You can’t have Abdul Akhil. Why? Because Abdul Akhil’s wife was head south, and the idea that a woman with a headscarf would sleep in Atatura’s bed.

Alright? Was too much for them to tell them. So they warned them. In non certain terms. So what did he do very smartly?

He called for an election. Whereas he had one, only thirty two percent when he came to Parq in two thousand and two, In two thousand and seven, he won forty six percent. It was a renegotiation of the military. And no answer. And the military from that point onwards lost power.

After the twenty sixteen, who attempted creditor, and it wasn’t the whole military. We really need it’s very dubious what happened in two thousand sixteen. But nonetheless, that also gave him an excuse to cleanse the army of something like fifty percent of the admirals and and generals. And now, it is not a military that has been neutered. It’s a military that has become subservient.

To to add on. There was an incident the other day, which was very a hotel sign. He was at a factory that was producing some new homemade, not the bullet, but the artillery piece that the trucks had we created. And he had the he had the brass the top military brass in in attendance there. He gave his speech And Adam, by the way, expects a little bit of Kim Jong un to for everybody to explore them after every speech he gives.

And the military all the offices that also uploaded here. And that actually created a reaction because for the first time people saw the military offices when they should have they’re supposed to be apolitical, should not have I applaud the president. But it gives you a sense of how much power he now has over the military because all the officers presumably were not sympathetic to him. Not bad, and he controls the promotion process, obviously. So it is now one of the institutions he controls.

We’re running out of time. And before we leave our listeners, we talked earlier about the institutions that Erica One has come to dominate, and you pointed out that he completely controls now, the judiciary and that the rule of law in Turkey has to the extent that it ever really existed, I remember a senior government government minister when I was ambassador telling me that getting justice in Turkish courts was I actually said it was equivalent to a coin flip and he said, oh, no, mister ambassador. That’s, you know, a coin flip would be fifty fifty. And you you and I both know that chances of getting justice in a Turkish court are far less than that. So you’ve had your own personal experience with this.

And I

wonder if

you’d share it a little bit with our audience because it’s really quite extraordinary in my view what’s happened to you.

Yes. I was in twenty sixteen, I was in Turkey, the night of Akura was organized I was at the Wilson Center. I was on even a lease program, and we had a grant to look at the impact of Obama’s JCPOA. And what did the Middle Eastern countries thought about it. So instead of bringing everybody from the Middle East to Washington, I decided I would do it in Istanbul because I liked and I found this hotel in an island near a sample that I liked very much.

And so we the first night as people were coming in, the coup happened. When the coup failed and I had brought all these people to to Turkey, started it Sunday. We did our business. We had our workshop. And then the workshop ended I went down to Istanbul, stayed a couple of days and came home.

Two days later, there was this amazing attack that started where I was accused of being one of the organizers of that failed cool attempt in twenty sixteen on July fifteen. And it was clearly a government initiated campaign because the the first articles of me had the exact time of my arrival and passport control coming in and coming and going out. And those times were correct. So this is something only The government has, obviously, in terms of information, and Turkish journalists never do any work. So, you know, that they they would fed that information.

And from then on, this all became an enormous campaign. They have it now, and I guess, forums on me. But they they use that I mean, they wanted to blame the United States, and it just happened to be that it was I was a convenient target if you want. They wanted to blame United States for the coup. And since I had been in the state department for most official.

And since they always think that any American who that’s in Turkey must be a CIA agent. I’m also a CIA agent. So that is the it was a way for them to be able to say that United States was involved in the coup. Later on, they that goal was morphed into I mean, I’m still I’m still was the organizes masterminds of the crew. But they issued an indictment because they needed to also blame somebody else that they wanted to keep in prison gentleman by the name of Osman Kabbalah, who’s this philanthropist and civil society leader that I’ve done for reasons, that I still unclear to me and make most people.

Edwin really dislikes and hates. So he’s been in jail now for almost six years. And they issued an indictment to keep him in jail by saying that he had met he had dinner with me, and therefore, he was part of a coup attempt. And I have read this very thick indictment. And I actually wrote about it in the Atlantic a year ago.

It is it is really that’s why you see how the judicial system in Turkey has become a joke. The former New York Supreme Court, I saw what they used to say, you can forgot about who he said it about, but it was they can invite a a Hamzah language if they want to. Right? And this is exactly the case where you look, you read the indictment and it is absurd. I mean, there’s nothing that connects us.

Postman accepted, I bumped into him. I take a restaurant, my favorite restaurant in Istanbul, two a few days after the crew and I walked in and he was sitting with other Europeans. We shook hands. That was it. They made that into a dinner.

And investigating, etcetera. So they they they came up with his indictment of how he and I organized the coup. It’s absurd. It’s I mean, to say, Kafka esque is is we’ll be doing injustice to Kafka in some ways. I mean, it’s worse than Kafka esque.

And but so there’s an indictment on me that, and I I guess, warrant. And every couple weeks, there’s some new crisis that occurs that I’m I’m I’m involved in. When I wrote that phone at for an IFRS piece that you you mentioned, they decided that here I am. I’ve decided who the next Turkish prime minister should be and that I, the CIA, have and the Turkish an American deep state has have now a candidate for for the for the presidency. I mean, everything I do or I don’t do becomes a story unfortunately, and it has cost me a great deal in terms of my career, in terms of friends who won’t talk to me because I’m afraid I just could I mentioned to you just to give you an idea of how it works.

I was asked to write a chapter on Texture Mac and Relations for a book that deals with a couple of deals of Turkey by French Turkish editor, I mean, academic and another one. So I wrote to be seven months, I mean, it was really it because I I tried to take a different approach. I finished the article, sent it to them, they were very happy for this data. They said we won’t be able to include it in the in the book because there were three offers from Turkey who apparently objected and said it was too dangerous for them to be in the same book with me so I got kicked out. So if you want, if you want an article on the Dundee, so they can share back in the business.

I mean, I’m looking for a place to publish it. But So but it but it’s crazy. I mean, you realize how people are are really afraid. I mean, I’m I’ve got there was a not only that, I mean, there was a once I was invited to a conference and they tried to disinvite me after he biting me because of actual objecting. So, I mean, it’s it’s crazy, but but it’s all based on nothing.

But that’s but last thing I want to say that after I read the indictment, you realize that the the two people who signed off on that indictment are the chief process terms of Istanbul and his deputy. Now these are very, very, very high officials in the Turkish system. That they would put their names to garbage, to fiction, that they they invented things. Right? It tells you a little bit about the state of the of the Turkish legal system.

If Erdogan wants somebody to go to jail, all he has to do is say come up with a reason and they were selecting the metash. The the form a leader of the people’s democracy paper party is in jail for six years. Why? Because I don’t blame him for the election defeat in Istanbul in the in the galaxy because, sir, I think, Demetesh told Kurds to vote for the opposition. And he’ll and I don’t wanna never forgive him for that.

Yeah.

I think

Stalin’s jail

Stalin’s prosecutor, Vashinsky, said give me the man. I’ll show you the crimes. So Right. Exactly. I think that’s where we are.

Arie, you’ve been very gracious with your time. You’ve been a terrific guest, Elliot. Thank you. Any last words?

No, I just want to say this is I think one of the most instructive sessions we’ve ever had and that that kind of personal story at the end makes it even more poignant. I think I know I don’t I’m not sure I know who I’m rooting for in the next trigger, so I but I think I know who I’m rooting against.

Thank you very much for inviting

me. That’ll be it for this episode of Shield of the Republic. If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave us a review. Like us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcast from, and drop us a line at shield of the Republic at gmail dot com. We may not be able to answer all the letters and emails we get, but we do read them.

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