The election — the first-ever direct election — of Recep Tayyip Erdogan as President of Turkey is an event of seminal importance because it portends a future that teeters on greatness as it does on a disturbing trend towards authoritarianism.
Mr Erdogan’s victory in the first round was taken for granted as well as his ambition to carve out a new role for an office that has thus far been mostly titular. There is little doubt that the leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), who has been the dominant political force in his country for the past decade as Prime Minister, is seeking to emulate the secular icon of the Turkish state that rose on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
But there is a twist to Mr Erdogan’s ambitions. His effort is to take his country to a more religious direction because his base in Anatolia, with its newly economically enfranchised people, is deeply religious. Indeed, his nation is divided between his religious supporters and the rest composed of secularists in the Ataturk mould and liberal democrats.
There are, indeed, several ironies to the unprecedented rise of Mr Erdogan. Over the years, he succeeded in showing the traditionally all-powerful Army, which was co-terminus with the state, its place many notches below its former glory. Second, he helped his country’s economic progress through a series of sweeping economic reforms and infrastructure projects even while seeking to join the European Union. Third, he made moves to seek to bring the significant Kurdish minority to the beginnings of a reconciliation process.
However, Mr Erdogan has many debits in his ledger, particularly in displaying his dictatorial tendencies. Apart from subjecting generals, other Army officers and journalists to a lengthy trial, his treatment of dissenters protesting against his proposal to convert Istanbul’s Gezi Park into buildings fashioned like the Ottoman barracks was sharp.
Mr Erdogan’s reaction to a major corruption scandal that targeted him and his inner circle leading to several senior Cabinet ministers’ resignation was equally peremptory. He muffled the scandal by suggesting that it was a conspiracy and transferred thousands of civil servants and judicial officers. His main target was the popular cleric Fethullah Gulen, once his comrade in arms living in self-exile in the United States.
Indeed, the rise of the Justice and Development Party was very much in concert with Gulen, who has an amazing presence in the administrative machinery of the state. After Mr Erdogan’s falling out with his former guru, his new objective is to target his followers, too many and too embedded in the system to be easily tamed.
No one doubts that Mr Erdogan will seek to whittle down the following of Mr Gulen. But this is easier said than done. A unique Turkish phenomenon is the spread of Mr Gulen’s Sufi-like philosophy buttressed by an empire of publications, an impressive video library and a chain of offices.
Nor has Mr Erdogan’s dream of cementing his place as a regional power of great consequence met with much success in recent years. His loyal foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu once famously described his country’s foreign policy as one of having “zero problem” with neighbours. Things have turned out very differently.
Turkey was among the first countries to take on Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad at the beginning of the three-year-long continuing bloody civil war betting on the early political demise of the ruler. In the process, it took a hard line by hosting the Syrian Opposition, opening its doors to millions of refugees and betting on a stiff US policy, only to be grievously disappointed. It is, of course, also an important member of the Nato. Even the strikes US President Barack Obama promised at one stage ended in a whimper, with Turkey left holding the baby.
Another great disappointment for Mr Erdogan has been the relationship with Egypt. Turkey had enthusiastically greeted the advent of Mohamed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood to power in that country’s first ever fair election. But he was dethroned in a military coup on the cusp of a popular revolt, and given Mr Erdogan’s religious affinity with Mr Morsi, he was on the wrong side of the coup leader subsequently elected, retired general Abdel Fateh el-Sisi.
Most Turks are convinced that Mr Erdogan’s aim is to make the presidency all-powerful, appointing a pliable supporter as his Prime Minister. How he achieves his aim remains to be seen because the present Constitution subscribes to the parliamenentary system.
He is reported to have remarked at one stage that there is nothing in the Constitution that limits the powers of the presidency.
In the field of domestic reconciliation, while the future President will show little patience with dissent, particularly from his secular and liberal opponents, the hope is that he will take his policy towards the Kurdish minority to it logical conclusion. Indeed, for the first time, one of his opponents in the presidential election was a Kurd, who secured a modest handful of votes.
Although Mr Erdogan is all set to take Turkey into a new era in emulation of the legendary Ataturk, his journey promises to be in the reverse direction. Ataturk left his mark by stamping out religiosity to build a modern state at the end of the Ottoman Empire, a legacy that was claimed by the Army after him. In the present instance, the President soon to assume office wants to build a more pious state by observing the tenets of Islam even as he expands his country’s influence far and wide. He will be cheered by half his countrymen, while the other half will wonder how far he will go.
