Global Courant 2023-05-12 01:42:55
From a geopolitical perspective, Sunday’s Turkish presidential election may seem like one of the most pivotal nonviolent political events of this year. But appearances can be deceiving in Turkish politics.
In the intensified polarization of “West versus Rest” in international politics, the Western media supports the defeat of incumbent President Recep Erdogan, so that one of the leading proponents of multipolarity and strategic autonomy in the emerging world order, who sets a terrible example to the Global South, walks into the sunset.
The importance of Erdogan is really that, unlike so many self-proclaimed advocates of the Global South who have been springing up like mushrooms lately, he does what he preaches.
The Western media’s excitement stems from the simplistic idea that Erdogan, a charismatic “strong man” who has ridden the wings of his immense popularity and acumen to exploit the fragmentation of the Turkish electoral scene, meets his nemesis in the united opposition candidacy of Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
While Sunday’s election may seem too close, it could well deliver a clear victory for Erdogan in the first round itself (with more than 50% of the vote), making a runoff unnecessary. The known unknown today is whether Kilicdaroglu’s eclectic form of partisan politics, which helped him clinch the presidential nomination and obscure ideological divisions that are both historical and cultural, would be enough to convince enough voters to help him win the race.
Erdogan is a man of history with a formidable record of consolidating citizen supremacy in a working democracy.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after meeting in Soch in 2020. Photo: Global Courant Files/AFP/Mustafa Kamachi/Turkish Presidential Press Service
Kilicdaroglu, on the other hand, has nothing to show and has never held any elected office. But if Western capitals dream of victory in the Kilicdaroglu, it underscores the high stakes in Sunday’s election.
The paradox, however, is that even if Kilicdaroglu is the winner, the Western powers cannot expect Turkish foreign policy to be fully aligned with Western demands. Kilicdaroglu himself recently noted that Turkey’s foreign and defense policy is “governed by the state” and “independent of political parties”.
What does he mean by that strange remark? Make no mistake, Kilicdaroglu is an old-fashioned “Kemalist”, a social democrat passionately committed to the ideological foundations of the Turkish state created by Ataturk, who believes in the core tenets of nationalism, secularism and statism.
The Western hope is that given the alchemy of the rainbow coalition that can propel Kilicdaroglu to victory, he will lead a weak government – unlike Erdogan’s assertive, stable government.
Indeed, the West has vast experience in manipulating weak allies and partners in directions that suit the requirements of Western hegemony. But, as current events in the West Asian region, especially in the Gulf, show, the former vassal states of the United States are resisting encroachment, asserting their strategic autonomy and systematically plotting the promotion of national interests from a long-term perspective. .
The Saudi-Iranian détente; Saudi Emirates reconciliation with President Bashar Al-Assad; the burgeoning peace talks on Yemen and Sudan – these show that regional states are perfectly capable of promoting their national interests, and that the exclusion of Western hegemony can actually have productive results rather than perpetual conflict and strife.
Turkish foreign policy is rooted in its history, geography, national interests and the ethos of a classical ‘civilization state’. Ankara pursued a largely non-aligned independent foreign policy with an emphasis on maintaining its strategic autonomy in the highly volatile external environment that surrounds it.
Typically, half a century ago, Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit risked US sanctions and ordered military intervention in Northern Cyprus to ensure the safety and well-being of the ethnic Turkish community. No subsequent government reversed that decision and the Turks learned to live with the veto power of Cyprus and Greece over their EU membership.
Kilicdaroglu will adhere to Cyprus policy (and strategy). Given that President Biden is completely in the orbit of the influential Greek lobby in US politics (which lavishly funded his political career for decades), Kilicdaroglu will be under no illusions as he makes claims of maritime boundaries, special economic zones or gas reserve exploration. up in Eastern Europe. Mediterranean.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Photo: Wikimedia Commons
The biggest impediment in Turkish-American relations is the lack of confidence, largely due to Washington’s intentions to turn Turkey into a national security state. This is not just about the failure of the 2016 CIA-backed coup attempt to overthrow Erdogan, but specifically about Washington’s alliance with separatist Kurdish groups in Syria and Iraq (who also have long-standing ties to the Israeli intelligence) destabilizing Turkiye (and Iran).
Ironically, Kilicdaroglu himself is a staunch supporter of normalizing relations with Assad’s government. He would favor reviving the Adana Agreement (1998), which provided for bilateral cooperation between Ankara and Damascus in anti-terrorism activities, something that horrified Washington, Paris and Berlin.
It comes down, of course, to the close, amicable, mutually beneficial relationship Erdogan has forged with Russia. This has an ancient history. The new kids on the block don’t know that Atatürk himself was friends with the Bolsheviks. Even in the Cold War era, Ankara, despite its NATO membership, maintained a certain detachment. In short, Erdogan has not only returned to that past, but has done so openly and quickly built on it as he hastened to optimally position Turkey in the emerging multipolar world order.
Turkish neutrality in the Ukraine conflict cannot be seen as an isolated issue. In reality, geoeconomics has been a driving force in the Turkish-Russian relationship. Whether or not Kilicdaroglu can be used for Russia’s S-400 anti-missile system is a moot point, but it certainly can’t do without the $20 billion Akkuyu nuclear power plant, which Russia’s Rosatom is not only building, but will to operate. future.
The Turkish economy is partly built on the “German model” – Turkish companies use cheap energy from Russia to produce industrial products at competitive prices for the European market. Why would Kilicdaroglu mimic the folly of today’s ‘transatlantic’ leaders in Berlin to end cheap long-term energy supplies from Russia at the expense of deindustrialisation?
Scholz has deep pockets and can probably afford to replace Russian gas via long-term contract pipelines with LNG supplies from America at phenomenally high prices, but Russia has proven to be a very reliable source of abundant energy via pipelines just over the Black Sea to Turkey.
The raison d’être of Turkey’s dual orientation – eastward and westward – corresponds to an old tradition in Turkish foreign policy. The country has its own understanding of Russia, born out of a long, difficult common history. Therefore, the great deliberation and congruent interests involved when Erdogan and Vladimir Putin, each in their own way a complex personality, put so much effort into understanding and cooperating with each other, cannot be regarded as aberrational.
The Western powers fantasize that they can bring the dour Kemalist to his knees by manipulating the right-wing, pro-Western parties that have joined Kilicdaroglu in the Faustian deal to keep Erdogan out of power. But in reality, Erdogan too has largely pursued a foreign policy rooted in the ideology of the Turkish state that Atatürk founded, including the fetishism about secularism typical of an archetypal Kemalist like Kilicdaroglu.
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