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DEBATE: ERDOGAN BLUNDERED BY STANDING BY MURSI
Asharq Alawsat (The Middle East), UK
July 30, 2013 Tuesday
Anybody watching Turkish TV over the last month could be forgiven
for thinking that Mohamed Mursi was Turkish. News channels that
broadcast wildlife documentaries during the recent Turkish protests
aired long and impassioned debates about what was going on just across
the Mediterranean. For pro-government commentators, it was a game of
"compare the coup"-exactly which Turkish military intervention did the
Egyptian one resemble the most? Was it 1960? 1971? 1980? 1997? (The
foreign minister reckons it was 1997.) Anybody risking a more nuanced
view faced accusations of groveling at the feet of tyranny.
Government circles in Turkey clearly fear that what has happened in
Egypt could happen to them. too. More radical Turkish secularists
doubtless hope it will. In reality, though, the parallels between the
two countries are tenuous. The Justice and Development Party always
was one of a kind, for all the talk in the Western press about it
being a democratic model for the region. So, as it falls, is Mursi's
Muslim Brotherhood. It isn't just that coups are almost unthinkable
in Turkey today, or that Turkey's economy continues to grow while
Egypt sinks further into insolvency. It is, above all, that Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has charisma and guile and Mursi has little of either.
Yet there is one crucial thing, other than a shared ideological
heritage, that links the two men: the structural similarities of the
political groups that they lead. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr.
Erdogan's political base owes its strength to its tightly-knit and
hierarchical grassroots network. In opposition, that made it immensely
resilient: it regrouped quickly after being swept from power by the
military in 1997. Between 2003 and 2008, it linked shields and fought
off military and judicial efforts to shunt it aside again.
But the same characteristics that gave it strength in the past
have left it ill-suited to rule in a consensual way since it took
full power. Mr. Erdogan's political charisma has always depended
heavily on his having enemies. Enemies have enabled him to justify
the extraordinary hold that he has over his party apparatus. First
it was the Kemalist establishment. Then, with the army defeated,
it was Israel. Now that he stands at the zenith of his power, it is
the world, and half of his own people. Listening to him speak since
the street protests kicked off late in May has been like listening
to Saint-Just, the philosopher of the Jacobin Terror: "Since the
people has manifested its will, everything opposed to it is outside
the sovereign, and all that is outside the sovereign is the enemy."
"I won more than half the vote, therefore I am the nation." The
domestic implications of this vision of perfect social homogeneity are
obvious-society stops being a society and becomes a barracks. In Mr.
Erdogan's case, though, there are also signs that it has rubbed off on
his vision of the wider world too, fatally weakening his pretentions
to regional leadership.
In the early years of his time in power, one of the guiding principles
of his foreign minister's foreign policy was "zero problems with
neighbors." In some ways, it is arguable whether the slogan differed
that much from the most famous statement of Turkish foreign policy
there is, Kemal Ataturk's "peace at home and peace in the world".
(Both, when you think about it, are the sort of cautious stance you
would expect the leaders of new and as yet unconsolidated regimes to
strike.) But it seemed to tally with the government's move away from
Turkey's traditionally conservative approach to the wider region
towards a more proactive approach, and again it went down well in
the West.
Gradually, though, and in parallel to Mr. Erdogan's rise to absolute
power inside Turkey, his government's claim to be a pragmatic
big brother to the region, a broker between Israel and Palestine,
willing even to push for peace with Armenia, morphed into something
more ideological. Ankara weakened its admittedly limited leverage
over Palestine through its strong support for Hamas. It fell out with
Iraq over its support of Tariq Al-Hashemi. It may now be supporting
radical Salafi groups against the Kurds in Syria. And it fumed over
the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood while Riyadh and other regional
capitals publicly gloated.
Mr. Erdogan's mistake has been to fall victim to his own intoxicating
domestic rhetoric about being the voice of the people, the soul
of Anatolia, the long-awaited champion of pure Turkish and Islamic
values, and to assume that he speaks for a perfectly homogeneous mass
of people. He doesn't. His support base is not homogeneous. Turkey
certainly isn't. As for the wider Sunni Arab world, it couldn't be
more disparate.
Islamist politicians like Mr. Erdogan are more powerful today than
they have ever been. Paranoia and a barracks-room mentality served
them well during their years in opposition. If the region is to
escape from a vicious circle of coup and counter-coup, of secular
authoritarianism followed by Islamic authoritarianism, though, they
need now to replace it with something more nuanced.
Asharq Alawsat (The Middle East), UK
July 30, 2013 Tuesday
Anybody watching Turkish TV over the last month could be forgiven
for thinking that Mohamed Mursi was Turkish. News channels that
broadcast wildlife documentaries during the recent Turkish protests
aired long and impassioned debates about what was going on just across
the Mediterranean. For pro-government commentators, it was a game of
"compare the coup"-exactly which Turkish military intervention did the
Egyptian one resemble the most? Was it 1960? 1971? 1980? 1997? (The
foreign minister reckons it was 1997.) Anybody risking a more nuanced
view faced accusations of groveling at the feet of tyranny.
Government circles in Turkey clearly fear that what has happened in
Egypt could happen to them. too. More radical Turkish secularists
doubtless hope it will. In reality, though, the parallels between the
two countries are tenuous. The Justice and Development Party always
was one of a kind, for all the talk in the Western press about it
being a democratic model for the region. So, as it falls, is Mursi's
Muslim Brotherhood. It isn't just that coups are almost unthinkable
in Turkey today, or that Turkey's economy continues to grow while
Egypt sinks further into insolvency. It is, above all, that Recep
Tayyip Erdogan has charisma and guile and Mursi has little of either.
Yet there is one crucial thing, other than a shared ideological
heritage, that links the two men: the structural similarities of the
political groups that they lead. Like the Muslim Brotherhood, Mr.
Erdogan's political base owes its strength to its tightly-knit and
hierarchical grassroots network. In opposition, that made it immensely
resilient: it regrouped quickly after being swept from power by the
military in 1997. Between 2003 and 2008, it linked shields and fought
off military and judicial efforts to shunt it aside again.
But the same characteristics that gave it strength in the past
have left it ill-suited to rule in a consensual way since it took
full power. Mr. Erdogan's political charisma has always depended
heavily on his having enemies. Enemies have enabled him to justify
the extraordinary hold that he has over his party apparatus. First
it was the Kemalist establishment. Then, with the army defeated,
it was Israel. Now that he stands at the zenith of his power, it is
the world, and half of his own people. Listening to him speak since
the street protests kicked off late in May has been like listening
to Saint-Just, the philosopher of the Jacobin Terror: "Since the
people has manifested its will, everything opposed to it is outside
the sovereign, and all that is outside the sovereign is the enemy."
"I won more than half the vote, therefore I am the nation." The
domestic implications of this vision of perfect social homogeneity are
obvious-society stops being a society and becomes a barracks. In Mr.
Erdogan's case, though, there are also signs that it has rubbed off on
his vision of the wider world too, fatally weakening his pretentions
to regional leadership.
In the early years of his time in power, one of the guiding principles
of his foreign minister's foreign policy was "zero problems with
neighbors." In some ways, it is arguable whether the slogan differed
that much from the most famous statement of Turkish foreign policy
there is, Kemal Ataturk's "peace at home and peace in the world".
(Both, when you think about it, are the sort of cautious stance you
would expect the leaders of new and as yet unconsolidated regimes to
strike.) But it seemed to tally with the government's move away from
Turkey's traditionally conservative approach to the wider region
towards a more proactive approach, and again it went down well in
the West.
Gradually, though, and in parallel to Mr. Erdogan's rise to absolute
power inside Turkey, his government's claim to be a pragmatic
big brother to the region, a broker between Israel and Palestine,
willing even to push for peace with Armenia, morphed into something
more ideological. Ankara weakened its admittedly limited leverage
over Palestine through its strong support for Hamas. It fell out with
Iraq over its support of Tariq Al-Hashemi. It may now be supporting
radical Salafi groups against the Kurds in Syria. And it fumed over
the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood while Riyadh and other regional
capitals publicly gloated.
Mr. Erdogan's mistake has been to fall victim to his own intoxicating
domestic rhetoric about being the voice of the people, the soul
of Anatolia, the long-awaited champion of pure Turkish and Islamic
values, and to assume that he speaks for a perfectly homogeneous mass
of people. He doesn't. His support base is not homogeneous. Turkey
certainly isn't. As for the wider Sunni Arab world, it couldn't be
more disparate.
Islamist politicians like Mr. Erdogan are more powerful today than
they have ever been. Paranoia and a barracks-room mentality served
them well during their years in opposition. If the region is to
escape from a vicious circle of coup and counter-coup, of secular
authoritarianism followed by Islamic authoritarianism, though, they
need now to replace it with something more nuanced.