Ottoman whispers

Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s victory for a third term places him in a league of his own in the country’s modern history. Through his Justice and Development Party (AKP), he transformed the modern state built by Kemal Ataturk by putting the all-powerful Army in its place, exchanged his country’s previous privileged relationship with Israel for a new thrust to befriend Arab neighbours and took Turkey into a high trajectory of economic growth.

Mr Erdogan’s critics and opponents will welcome the fact that his party received fewer seats than the last time, well short of the two-thirds majority he craved in a House of 550 seats, because he cannot now single-handedly change the Constitution. Everyone agrees that the Army-framed Constitution needs changing, but AKP’s secular critics fear that given the Islamist roots of the party, the proposed changes may tilt the country to a more pronounced Islamist direction.
On the debit side of Prime Minister Erdogan’s record, he did too little for the important Kurdish minority — estimated at between 10 and 20 per cent — in his second term, proved less tolerant of criticism and involved journalists and serving and retired Army officers now under detention in a murky coup plot in which no one has been charged so far. Indeed, many Turks are concerned over the authoritarian streak in Mr Erdogan’s character and his inclination to reach for the stars. Apart from economy, the AKP’s innovation has been in the field of foreign policy.
With his special adviser and now foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, Mr Erdogan has been pursuing a policy of “zero problems” with neighbours, transforming the traditional suspicions Turks have harboured of their Arab neighbours into something of a love fest with them. Realising that Turkey presents an attractive model to aspiring Muslim states with its blend of a largely religious-oriented population having made its peace with the modern world, Turkey is pursuing its new policy with a missionary-like zeal. Indeed, some have termed the new Turkish thrust “neo-Ottoman” in its orientation, harking back to the time of the Ottoman empire. The AKP leader does tend to be over-ambitious in his policies, ever ready to serve as a mediator in disputes. His apparent desire to change the Constitution to a presidential system feeds his critics’ suspicion of his desire to centralise all authority.
By any standards, Mr Erdogan is entitled to take his bows. He has projected his country on the world stage and while continuing to be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, he has managed to place Ankara as a natural regional superpower willing to bear the burden of leadership. His strength is, of course, in Anatolia, particularly among the new industrial and entrepreneurial class resentful of the traditional rulers, the Army and the cosmopolitan urban elite. By their very nature, the newly rich and empowered people are more observant Muslims and appreciate the fact that both Mr Erdogan’s and President Abdullah Gul’s wives wear the Muslim headscarf.
After his victory, Mr Erdogan has promised to be consensual in seeking a new Constitution, but in immediate terms he has no choice. Short of a two-thirds majority, the alternative to seeking a consensus is to take the issue to a referendum, a lengthy and bruising process. Of greater immediate importance is the Kurdish problem; the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which fielded candidates as Independents to get around the high 10 per cent minimum bar for entry into Parliament, has done well and will press the government to give Kurds their due in terms of autonomy and greater room for the development of their language and culture. The leader of the banned PKK Kurdish Workers Party, Abdullah Ocalan, is still languishing in jail since his capture in the 1990s.
Mr Erdogan is already being compared to the founder of modern Turkey, Ataturk, in his dominance of the political landscape. In a sense, he stands on the cusp of a historic moment that can define his country’s future. Ironically, while Ataturk left a country that he had pulled into modernity by its bootstraps, Erdogan began his eventful rule by largely demolishing the Army’s pre-eminent role — the Army that had become the state after the founder’s death. It was no mean achievement in itself. Turkey is still an aspirant to membership of the European Union although fewer and fewer Turks believe it will happen, but the process of fulfilling the criteria of membership has served the AKP well because it could whittle down the Army’s prerogatives one by one under the guise of fulfilling the EU’s guidelines.
The question now boils down to Erdogan’s ability to muzzle his vaulting ambition for himself and his country. In a sense, Turkey is already a regional superpower — the other being Iran — but it would be hazardous to peg the country’s ambitions too high in a restive region. Turkey is already directly feeling the effects of the Arab Spring by the thousands of Syrian refugees flooding the country to escape President Bashar Assad’s onslaught. Ankara is still keeping the door to Israel open, as behoves an aspiring regional superpower, but its direction is distinctly towards its dominant Muslim neighbourhood. To an extent, the Arab world has moved beyond Turkey’s ken under its own steam, but Ankara can have an important role in influencing regional events by providing the firm mooring most other regional countries lack.
In Davatoglu, Mr Erdogan has both a dreamer and strategist and his expansionist policies bear the imprint of his leader. The problem, of course, is in marrying Turkish ambitions to the changing contours of the Arab world. Erdogan has become sharper in criticising President Assad’s policies; Ankara had introduced a visa-free regime between the two countries in line with its regional ambitions, facilitating the influx of refugees. Turkey has set up special camps for them, also with a view to preventing their longer sojourn. It will require all of Davatoglu’s prowess to keep his country ahead of the curve of events as they overwhelm individual countries’ leaders and the major outside powers nervously monitoring events.