In late 2011, when Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan underwent surprise surgery on his digestive tract and rumors were swirling that the leader was sick with cancer and didn't have long to live, even Erdogan's most vocal critics seemed to have a hard time imagining a Turkey without the mercurial Erdogan running it. The shoes were simply to big to fill, the political space he took up almost impossible to occupy.
Cut to today and it seems that in the wake of the recent protests in Istanbul and other cities, even some the PM's supporters are already contemplating a post-Erdogan Turkey. Sure, Erdogan still has a solid base of support and can still rally his troops and deliver one of his classic barnstorming speeches to get them fired up, as he did at Istanbul's Ataturk airport upon his return to Turkey earlier today from a trip to North Africa, but it's hard not to get the sense that there's something diminished about him. As commentator Mustafa Akyol put it, the recent turmoil in Turkey may signal that we may be looking at Erdogan’s "'solstice' — a turning point marking the shift from a steady rise to a gradual decline."
Erdogan, of course, must be credited with presiding over a decade of spectacular economic growth and some significant domestic reforms which contain within them the potential for upgrading Turkey's democratic credentials. The long view -- if you compare today's Turkey to ten years ago -- certainly is charitable towards Erdogan. But if we narrow the focus to the last few years, the picture become more problematic. As Amberin Zaman (who, it must be noted, is one of several journalists to have been sacked by a Turkish media organization in recent years for criticizing the government too strongly), writes in the Economist:
Critics say the judicial reforms that were approved in 2010 have given the government a worryingly big say over the appointment of judges. They point to the Ergenekon case, which has put nearly every serving admiral behind bars. The trial has been dogged with allegations of fabricated evidence. Prosecutors have at times seemed more interested in exacting revenge than justice.
Turkey’s foreign policy is falling apart, victim to Mr Erdogan’s hubris. Even if his salvoes against Israel have pleased the Arab street, they have raised eyebrows in Washington and deprived Turkey of a useful regional partner. His overt support for rebels fighting to topple Syria’s president, Bashar Assad, whom he wrongly predicted would quickly fall, is growing more unpopular. In May twin car-bomb explosions ripped through the town of Reyhanli on the Syrian border, killing 51 people. Turkey said Syria’s secret service was responsible; Syria denies this. But most Turks believe that Mr Erdogan risks dragging their country into war. In the ultimate irony, the Syrian government has warned people not to travel to Turkey, declaring it “unsafe”.
The economy, too, is lacklustre. Growth has fallen to 3%, and unemployment is stubbornly high (see chart). A large current-account deficit makes Turkey vulnerable to a shift in market sentiment that might easily follow the present unrest.
As I wrote in a previous post, the recent protests and Erdogan's tone deaf response to them are an indication that the PM is not only dangerously out of touch but also that his up-until-now successful politics of polarization are starting to backfire on him. But the Erdogan brand is also starting to look diminished abroad. His recent trip to the Maghreb, which took place under the shadow cast by the violent events in Turkey, appears to have been rather lackluster and generated none of the excitement of Erdogan's previous trip to the region, in 2011. Syria, of course, has been a major debacle for Erdogan, who first gambled on cultivating a close personal friendship with Bashar al-Assad and then bet everything on the Assad regime collapsing in a matter of months. Both turned out to be bad wagers. In fact, the protests in Turkey even gave Damascus a chance to stick a finger in Erdogan's eye, issuing a travel advisory for its citizens and with a Syrian minister calling for the Turkish PM to step down because of the "barbarity" shown by the Turkish police.
Meanwhile, Erdogan's visit to Washington last month found him without the swagger he had displayed on previous visits. Erdogan left the White House with little in his hands, particularly regarding his desire to see Washington take a more active stance on Syria. His public events, while well attended, were unusually low key, with little of the firepower that Erdogan had shown in the past. At the Brookings Institution, for example, Erdogan spent most of his time reading out a laundry list of the AKP's economic successes and describing with great pride some of the large infrastructure projects he's cooking up for Istanbul. For a crowd interested in hearing about foreign policy issues, it was something of a puzzling event.
As Erdogan showed upon his return to Turkey, he remains a towering figure with a deep reserve of political strength that he can draw on. Still, it’s hard not to get the sense that some heavy bricks are falling off this edifice’s façade.
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