Despite the hype surrounding it, the gathering of the country’s ruling elite in Beijing is likely to prize measured change over dramatic reform.

If there was a clearer idea of what makes China’s new elite leadership tick, then the Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party that is about to be held in Beijing would not be such a big deal. But in a polity which privileges concealment over overt statement, it is viewed widely as the one chance for outsiders to see more clearly what the leadership aims to achieve. Expectations were raised by the October statement by one of the most staid members of the current Standing Committee of the Politburo, Yu Zhengsheng, that the plenum would presage a new era of reform.

In Chinese politics reform is a word that has a wholesome, positive air about it. But the question is where and when reform will happen and who will gain from it. The plenum is not like a party convention in the Western sense. It is not an eye-grabbing, media-dominating event that produces surprises. Comparing this year’s installment with the great Third Plenum of 1978 that heralded the repudiation of late Maoism and the embracing of the market, the non-state sector and foreign capital – all anathema before then – is misleading. The significance of the 1978 meeting was only obvious in hindsight. It took years for the scale of the radical transformation of the whole strategic direction of the Communist Party to be appreciated. That 2013 will prove a similar historic moment is unlikely, perhaps even impossible.

What is much more likely is that the highly tactical leadership now in charge will reaffirm its commitment to incremental reform. It will make some statements about the radical urbanization that China is about to undergo and say something about social welfare reform. China’s leaders will do what they have always done in plenums over the last three decades, namely set the broad parameters of politically permissible activity that provinces, ministries and other stakeholders will then need to implement.

This plenum will also have to produce something about the need to achieve greater egality and balance in the economy. It needs to answer some of the questions about how Premier Li Keqiang, in particular, intends to meet the goal of 'fast, sustainable growth' when a falling overall GDP figure looks likely. It needs to communicate to as broad a constituency as possible the arch-narrative of a world where the raw statement of growth on its own is no longer the be all and end all of government policy. It needs to say something about how the party is going to fulfill the increasingly complex aspirations of the Chinese people, aspirations that exceed purely having a materially good level of life and concern broader questions of well-being that vex the politics of all developed economies.

Observers will want to see some signs too of addressing the most sensitive issues. Yu Zhengsheng talked of economic reform. Reforming the economy is now a wholly uncontroversial mantra in China. However, it impacts on one enormously important issue that reaches beyond economics: whether wealth, prosperity and development benefit the few or are accessible to the many – in other words, good, old-fashioned questions of economic and social justice. At the heart of this lies the question of how state-owned enterprises have become vehicles of profit not just for the party state, but also for tightly knit networks of vested interests. Reforms that lap at the doors of these entities also creep into the space of powerful political players, who will resist any attempt to cut down their wealth, and who have the power to resist.

China’s new leadership is proving more confident than was expected and displays a high sense of historic mission. President Xi Jinping speaks increasingly like a politician who believes it is almost his historic destiny to sit at the centre of the leadership of a renascent 'rich, strong country'. The ultimate question for the plenum is not what outside observers make of it but what the vastly complex mixture of groups in China does. For them, a sign that the leadership is willing to take on some of the entrenched vested interests that penetrate the operations of some state-owned sectors to the core is critical.

This is likely to be couched in the language of more support for the market, which is the key channel in any attack on vested interests – through widening access to wealth and economic benefits, and support for the non-state sector and entrepreneurs. It is hard to see how deeper reform can occur without these two crucial elements. And it is through these that the attitude of China’s leadership to political and legal reforms – far more complex issues that, almost certainly, will not be addressed at the plenum but will lurk in the background − will become clearer. The leadership thinks it is too early to tackle these issues directly, but this plenum will still be part of the process for it to come up with ideas for how to transform not just China’s economy, but its polity too.

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Rapid economic growth and more widespread political stability have catalyzed increased international engagement with Africa in the past decade, as African states develop more significant roles in the global economy and political cooperation in geopolitics. Accompanying this is a shift in British engagement with African states from one with a development aid emphasis to one focused on trade and political cooperation.

HE Professor Kwaku Danso-Boafo will reflect on his time in London, developments in UK-Africa relations, the role of diplomatic engagements in informing and strengthening bilateral relations and the prospects for intergovernmental cooperation on African and global issues.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

This report serves as a record of the inaugural London Conference on Globalization and World Order, convened by Chatham House on 2–3 June 2014 at Lancaster House in London.

The London Conference has three aims: to be comprehensive in debating how best to manage the profound economic and political rebalancing taking place across the world; to go behind the headlines and debate the trends underlying and connecting current events; and to build an international community of experts with a shared understanding of the major challenges accompanying globalization.

This inaugural conference was fortunate to draw together high-quality speakers for each session, who offered perspectives reflecting their geographic and sectoral diversity. It benefited enormously from the ideas for themes, speakers and participants suggested by its steering committee. The conference would not have been possible without the generous support of its two founding partners – Accenture and Chevron – and its supporting sponsors – Bloomberg and Rio Tinto – as well as the generous cooperation that we received from the Foreign & Commonwealth Office in hosting the event at the historic Lancaster House in St James’s. And the quality of the debate, insights and ideas generated over the course of the conference was driven largely by the input from its 200 participants. Steering committee members, sponsors and participants are all listed in the next section, along with speakers’ details and the conference programme.

The report itself opens with a short essay which explores one of the main conclusions of the conference: the loss of trust that appears to be permeating relationships between governments, and between governments and their citizens, as a result of the pressures they are all under from the process of globalization. This is followed by the key insights from each of the five main sessions of the conference on 3 June.

The final section brings together the five papers written by members of Chatham House’s in-house research teams in advance of the conference in order to stimulate participants’ thinking. Even following an eventful six months since these were written, their insights and proposals retain an important salience for the future.

We look forward to hosting the second London Conference on 1–2 June 2015.

Robin Niblett
Director 

China’s rise was highlighted again recently by reports that World Bank calculations of purchasing power parity could put the Chinese economy ahead of the US this year. China’s global influence has clearly spread substantially over recent decades, though the extent and impact of the country’s rise remain debated, and its economic size is not yet matched by influence in other areas.

Within China itself, the idea that the country has become a major power has become stronger. Put alongside Chinese analysis of global flux, this has resulted in changes in China’s approaches to foreign and security policy.

The impact of these changes remain uncertain. As set out in a new report on China’s Global Personality , there are several debates in China about the country’s approach to international affairs: around the implications of its rise for its continued identity as a developing country, whether it should become more ‘revisionist’ towards international affairs, and how assertive Chinese foreign and security policy should be.

So far, China’s post-2012 leadership has taken forward a number of areas of policy change. Institutionally, the creation of a new National Security Commission, chaired by Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, is likely to strengthen policy coordination and integration across a broad range of domestic and external issues.

The Chinese leadership has also promoted a much-discussed ‘new type of major power relationship’ in its approach to the US. The aim here is to avoid conflict between the US and a rising China, and to work towards a relationship characterized by equality, including in Asia – this therefore does not imply a desire to be a regional hegemon. The outcome, however, remains to be seen, and US responses so far have been cautious.

In dealing with disputes in East Asia, Chinese policy has become more assertive since around 2010, though the leadership has also set out its desire to deepen relations with its neighbours, and Beijing has been among the first to reach out to new Indian Prime Minister Modi. However, there are clear limits to this: relations with Japan in particular are likely to remain poor, and those with Vietnam have deteriorated substantially over recent weeks.

These issues are not simply bilateral, but should be seen as part of a wider renegotiation of regional order, involving not just China, but Japan, the US, and others. The last few years have seen changes in US approaches to the ongoing evolution of the international order and in particular to East Asia – the so-called ‘rebalance’ strategy, including ongoing – but slowing – negotiations for a trade and investment Trans-Pacific Partnership. And Japan’s security policy has been changing under Prime Minister Abe.

The idea of renegotiation can also be seen in the debates around institutions of global economic governance, such as the International Monetary Fund. Our research finds that China’s engagement with the existing international order remains strong, but there is also a growing element of gradual revisionism from China (and maybe others) within that order. China’s approach is consistent with the open and rules-based way that international institutions have developed, but it looks for its voice to be considered more in the setting of those rules.

The view from Europe

The implications of this analysis are that the questions policy-makers need to address should not be framed simply in terms of dealing with the rise of China and the changes in Chinese approaches this brings. Instead, the framework should be one which takes account of global flux and policy changes by other actors.

This means that there is space for European governments, for example, to engage in shaping the future global and regional order. In doing so, there could be particular challenges if strategic difficulties in the US-China relationship continue − the perceptions of opportunities and threats in Asia as seen from Europe may increasingly diverge from Washington’s. As China’s rise continues, it will not just affect relationships with China – Europe’s relationships with the US, and their stances on questions of regional order and governance in Asia, will also be called into question.

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With China’s economic power on the rise, there is a growing sense among many publics around the world that the global balance of power is shifting and that China already is, or will soon be, the world’s leading power, according to a new survey. The Pew Research Center’s latest Global Attitudes survey found that despite China’s rise in economic power, the People’s Republic is not very popular in Asia, Europe and the United States. As for the US, although the ‘Obama Bounce’ effect of more positive attitudes toward the United States is waning in Europe and China, anti-Americanism in most countries remains much lower than it was during the Bush administration, but remaining consistent in the Middle East. 

Bruce Stokes will present these findings and the expert panel will discuss the insights it provides into an emerging superpower rivalry. In addition they will discuss how these nuances in global attitudes might increasingly shape the security and economic policies of governments around the world.

Reaping the benefits of more than a decade of stability and fast economic growth, Angola increasingly wields global influence. Angola seeks to diversify its bilateral partnerships and improve existing ones, and is well-placed to exert its influence in multilateral fora. 

At this roundtable event, Angola’s Secretary of State for Cooperation, Hon Dr Maria Angela Bragança, will discuss Angola’s international priorities and how Angola is helping to shape key issues of global importance in a multipolar world.

President Barack Obama’s recent visit to Asia has reanimated the debate over what America’s ‘pivot’ to Asia really means. The level of uncertainty over its regional engagement has been heightened by what many in the region, and beyond, consider an inadequate response to the events taking place in Ukraine. Rather than being reassured by the ‘rebalancing’, many Asian allies suspect the United States is becoming a less reliable ally. At the same time, concern is also growing about China’s increasing assertiveness, as demonstrated by recent events with Vietnam.

America’s Asian partners are increasingly exploring new ways to ensure their security, and they will, in time, find different ways to engage with it in the region. Unless the United States is more transparent about its intentions, and what others can expect from it, it is possible that it will be pushed towards a role not necessarily in line with its interests.

President Obama’s announcement of the ‘pivot’ to Asia in November 2011 provoked much debate over what it would mean in practice. It continues to be treated with much scepticism in the region and has raised tensions, with many fearing a military response from China (a fear that, in the eyes of many in the region, has already come to pass).

Allies have also questioned whether American rhetoric is being matched by action. US assets in the region remain strong (additional troops are being rotated in and new partnerships are being formed with the Philippines and others), but America’s will to use them appears less so.

Despite reassurances from Obama during his trip that the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands ‘fall within the scope of Article 5 of the US–Japan Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security’ and that the United States opposes any unilateral attempts to change this, Japan was not reassured. A more ambiguous statement made last year by Secretary of State John Kerry, that the United States ‘does not take a position on the ultimate sovereignty of the islands’, has left many Japanese policy-makers wondering whether the US would ultimately back their country up in a conflict. Again, they look at America’s responses to events in Ukraine, Libya and Syria and wonder what it would be prepared to commit to if China were to try to seize control of disputed territory.

This uncertainty is leading many of America’s principal allies to consider additional ways to ensure their security. There are three main paths available to them: building domestic capabilities, forming ad hoc groupings, and reinforcing established regional groups.

The allies are first looking internally: across the board, defence spending has increased; for the first time, in 2012, Asia surpassed European spending, reaching a total of $310 billion. Countries such as India are expanding their naval capabilities to enhance their power projection and Japan is moving forward a reinterpretation of its constitution to allow a more ‘normalized’ role for its military, one in which it could come to the assistance of allies.

Asia-Pacific states are also looking to engage one another in informal bilateral or plurilateral groupings. Over the past decade, a proliferation of new groups has formed for such activities as strategic dialogue, joint training or operations. Building on their similar values and concerns, Japan, Australia and India, in particular, have been prolific in creating various combinations of partnerships among themselves and the United States. There are also some more unexpected (and potentially valuable) groupings, including that established between China, Japan and South Korea.

Where they are based on similar interests, these informal groupings can be a source of moral and political support, and even perhaps in time more operational support in the security arena. They can also provide a starting point for engaging a wider audience through more traditional regional groups, such as ASEAN and the East Asia Summit – the third option for allies to enhance their security.

These more established groups, while widely dismissed in the West as mere ‘talking shops’, perform a well-regarded function in the region. By supporting the broader web of networks on which states can come to depend, they provide opportunities for debating and managing (or diffusing) regional tensions.

America remains the most militarily powerful nation in the world. Its influence and common interests with its Asian allies will continue to ensure that it has strong sway in the region. Realistically, it will for the foreseeable future remain a necessary partner for its traditional allies, particularly those concerned by China’s growing assertiveness. And it remains in America’s interests to stay engaged. However, as ambiguity about its willingness to act increases, these allies will continue to reach for alternative solutions for managing their security.

While this aligns with the US desire to share more of the burdens of global citizenship, if it wants to remain a key Asia-Pacific power, America still needs its allies to need it. A little more clarity and transparency on its part, even if only stated privately, could start to rebuild trust and confidence, which would serve both America and its allies well. 

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As Nigeria celebrates one hundred years of unity, significant differences – real and perceived – remain between different parts of the country. This event marks the Nigeria launch of the Chatham House Briefing Who Speaks for the North? Politics and Influence in Northern Nigeria. Its author, Dr Leena Hoffmann, will discuss the effects of democratization and pacted politics on northern Nigeria, broader governance challenges, and how relations among decision-makers nationally have evolved.

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

Nigeria’s prospects, with its rise to international prominence as Africa’s largest economy, are tempered by the many development and security challenges the country faces. While essential reforms in the power and agriculture sectors are underway, such efforts are balanced against the Boko Haram insurgency in the northeast, significant concerns around youth unemployment, and an increasingly contentious political environment in the run-up to the February 2015 elections. 

Dr Doyin Okupe, Senior Special Assistant to President Goodluck Jonathan, will discuss what steps the presidency is taking to address the country’s most urgent challenges, and how the political environment can be managed to overcome tensions that may impede progress.

The overarching theme of this event will be Korea’s changing role as a global power and its effect on the country’s relationships, including with the UK and Europe. It will aim to raise awareness of these issues to an audience of key decision-makers, and to encourage experts to think together strategically about areas of mutual interest, as well as practical ways to achieve deeper cooperation. 

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

This event is held in partnership with the South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo.

The speaker will argue that President Xi Jinping's accretion of substantial political power has rendered him the most influential Chinese leader in decades. Still, there is much debate over how President Xi intends to wield that power, and to what end. The speaker will seek to deconstruct Xi's understanding of the nature of power, speculating on his likely game plan for his tenure and exploring the implications for China, the region, and the world in the first quarter of this century.

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULL AND REGISTRATION IS CLOSED.

Long predicted, many observers now think that China has or is about to become more powerful than the United States on the global stage. Joseph Nye will explore the facts behind these beliefs and question if the century of American centrality in the global balance of power is at an end.

LIVE STREAM: This event will be live streamed. The live stream will be made available at 18:00 BST on Tuesday 9 June.

ASK A QUESTION: We will endeavour to ensure that questions are put to the speaker from our online audience as well as from the audience in the auditorium. Questions can be sent in advance via email to questions@chathamhouse.org and during the event on Twitter using #CHEvents.

It has become routine for China’s leaders to use high profile international events as a means of projecting a preferred image of what China stands for and how it will act as  a great power, one that is perhaps now second only to the US in the league table of global powers. So it is no surprise that Xi Jinping has used his interventions at the UN development summit and his address to the General Assembly to showcase China’s growing role as a global aid actor, and to call for greater ‘democratization’ of global governance institutions (or, in other words, a greater role and say for China and other developing countries). China’s alleged and self-proclaimed (and challenged) predilection for peace, a desire to build a ‘new type’ of (vaguely defined) international relations, and support for the UN as the sole arbiter of when sovereignty might possibly be put aside (instead of the US or a coalition of the willing) are also now relatively well-established and rehearsed Chinese positions.

In addition to wielding China’s financial power in support of this national image projection, Xi’s activities also represent a move towards mobilizing discursive power (话语权) as well. To date, and for a number of years, this discursive power has been primarily deployed in a defensive manner, with the aim of denying the supposed universal nature of many of the norms and principles of the international order. These norms, as articulated by both Chinese government officials and some supportive academic scholars, are not universal at all, but merely the product of a small number of Western countries’ histories, philosophies and developmental trajectories. So, in this formulation, while it is important to have a common set of principles and responsibilities as the basis for international interactions, each country should be free to develop its own nation-specific definitions based on its own unique histories and contexts. And it is only these Chinese-inspired definitions and aspirations – of human rights, for example, or development – that China should be judged against.

But this position has changed under Xi, with China’s leaders increasingly keen on promoting Chinese understandings and definitions as the basis for international debates and international action. Hot on the heels of Chinese attempts to take a leading role in defining the basis for global cyber diplomacy,  China is now seeking to shape the way that development is defined and understood – which of course has massive implications for how development, thus defined, might be attained.

Leading on development, missing on security

Xi’s willingness – or should that be desire – to establish Chinese potential global leadership was less apparent when it came to solving the major security challenges of the day. To be sure, there was talk about the need for new ways of dealing with insecurity that recognize the consequences of globalization and that no country can solve problems on its own – including, presumably, the United States. The pledge of more peacekeepers will cement China’s position as one of the world’s major contributors to UN overseas activities, and the promise of a military assistance fund to the African Union shows that Beijing really is an important security actor beyond its own borders. But when it comes to conflict in places like Syria, China seems content to maintain its back seat and allow Russia to take the lead in a crisis that is admittedly some distance from China’s own backyard. Expect a Chinese-led agenda for the G20 summit in 2016 in China that reinforces this differential willingness to assume leadership roles depending on the specific issue at hand.  

So for the time being, the aim seems to be primarily to confirm the idea that China is a new and very different type of great power; one that is a friend and supporter of those smaller developing states and emerging powers that had previously suffered from the asymmetric economic and military power of great powers in the West (or in some cases, still do). As part of this ‘difference’ a second related objective seems to be to establish China as a global leader on development issues.

But simply asserting something does not mean that it is true, and its something of an understatement to suggest that China’s pacific and non-interventionist self-identity has not been accepted by everybody, particularly in East and Southeast Asia. China’s developmental achievements have also been questioned. The response in Beijing to Hilary Clinton’s tweet that it was ‘shameless’ that Xi was co-host of a meeting on women’s rights shows that the defensive nature of Chinese policy remains in place: ‘those in the best position to judge the state of women's issues in China are Chinese people, particularly Chinese women’, according to the foreign ministry. And Clinton’s comments also show that the field of ideas is not being left open for China to do whatever it wants just yet; gaining widespread acceptance for Chinese preferences is not going to be an easy task and will likely face considerable resistance. But the suggestion here is that the world is likely to see a growing Chinese presence over the coming years not just as a global development and aid provider, but also as a putative developer of new global norms.

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Professor Brown will examine how Xi Jinping has consolidated authority since becoming head of the Communist Party in 2012 and explore what his goals are for the future of China. Is Xi trying to cement his own power or protect the interests of the party by guiding it towards a more sustainable rule?

This talk will introduce the key arguments in CEO China: The Rise of Xi Jinping, the speaker’s full-length, English language study of Xi, his background, current position and core beliefs.
 

Much of the focus on China’s 13th Five Year Plan – its centralized and integrated economic guidelines for the next five years – has been on the estimated growth rate of 6.5 per cent, its lowest in recent history. This reflects the so-called ‘new normal’ of China’s development, as President Xi Jinping’s administration describes its aspiration for higher-quality growth in the context of a slowing economy.

But this growth target is an estimate, rather than a pledge. The emphasis on ‘ecological civilization’ – another of Xi’s signature buzzwords, referring to a broad set of approaches environmental protection – is striking. Further, by putting innovation and ‘green development’ at the heart of its ambition to create a ‘moderately prosperous society’, China has sent an important signal: that the country’s strategy for future prosperity in many respects converges with a shift away from its environmentally costly development model.

Environmental goals

The plan endorses a ‘vertical management system’ that will help overcome structural impediments to the local enforcement of environmental laws,  and of its 13 binding targets, 10 relate to the environment and natural resources. In the plan, China commits to an 18 per cent reduction in carbon emissions per unit of GDP from 2015 levels by 2020 and a 15 per cent reduction in energy consumed per unit of GDP from 2015 levels by 2020. It also re-commits to generate 15 per cent of primary energy from non-fossil sources and introduces an important new target of keeping energy consumption below 5 billion tonnes of standard coal equivalent by 2020. Underlining how air quality has become a major driver of energy and climate policymaking, it also promises a 25 per cent reduction in harmful PM2.5 particulates.

In short, the plan suggests that decision makers in China not only take seriously its UN pledge to see a peak in the country’s emissions before 2030, but also that they hope the country will be the leading supplier of low-carbon technologies. Among its non-binding targets are some significant innovation-related measures: to raise gross expenditure on research and development as a percentage of GDP to 2.5 per cent, from 2.1 per cent today; and over the same period to almost double the number of patents owned per 10,000 people, from 6.3 to 12.

Innovation

The document makes clear the principal driver of China’s economy should be innovation, rather than investment. Innovation, says the plan, ‘must be placed at the heart of overall national development’ and ‘integrated into all the works of the Party and the country’. There is emphasis on strategic areas at the ‘frontiers’ of science, ‘mass entrepreneurship’ through new models such as crowd-funding, and digital economy projects – what the leadership likes to call ‘Internet+’ – including around the Internet of Things, quantum computing and big data.  

Under China’s 12th Five Year Plan (from 2011 to 2015), the state focused on a defined number of specific technology goals in its ‘strategic emerging industries’. Renewable energies and electric vehicles, for example, were afforded specific preferential policies. By contrast, the new plan has a greater focus on ‘clean coal’ and hydropower in the energy sector; and while it doesn’t abandon solar and wind, it also suggests greater diversity in its overall approach, with more of an emphasis on reform of the energy sector, developing smart power grids and investing in energy storage technologies such as batteries and fuel cells.

Moreover, innovation in the plan is not framed as simply being about hardware – the commercialization of science and technology. Rather, the text reiterates that innovation should come in many different varieties: ‘theoretical, institutional, scientific and technological, and cultural innovation’. This raises the intriguing and hopeful possibility that the country’s planners recognize some of the challenges and opportunities the public, particularly in the form of newly vocal, engaged and connected urban constituencies, pose in the governance of innovation.

Policymakers – taking ‘social innovation’ seriously – could begin look at the public as technology users, incubators of demand-driven successes, and innovators in their own right. In a context of low public trust around food and agriculture in China, for example, organic cooperatives and ecological entrepreneurs have pioneered supply-chain innovations, typically facilitated by digital networks, to connect farmers with urban consumers looking for safer food. Lower-tech approaches to energy too – such as inexpensive solar water heaters, which garner a mention in the latest plan – have been driven by rural users and supported by local initiatives, rather than central government coordination or subsidies.

These approaches to innovation would present a quite different model than previous central government plans have encouraged. Whether in the plan’s implementation they are harnessed and given support might be critical to meeting China’s environmental goals, as well as its drive to create a more innovative economy and society.

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The arbitration between the Philippines and China on the dispute in the South China Sea is coming to an end. The Permanent Court of Arbitration is to issue its decision on 12 July. This meeting will discuss the notable points of the tribunal’s award and the next steps. 

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has responded with an iron fist to last Friday’s failed military coup attempt in Turkey by detaining, dismissing or suspending, so far, 60,000 military officers, police and intelligence officials, judges, teachers, academics and civil servants, and imposing a widespread travel ban and a three-month state of emergency. He is vowing to reintroduce the death penalty, abolished in 2004 as part of reforms required for opening EU accession negotiations.

This uncompromising approach in the post-coup period will have profound negative implications on Turkey’s domestic politics, security and foreign policy in the foreseeable future to the detriment of its stability and prosperity.

Fractured politics

Erdogan’s indifference to the unprecedented political unity against the coup is, regretfully, a missed opportunity to dilute the deepening polarization and divisiveness bedeviling Turkish politics. His determination to use the putsch to consolidate political power in the presidency and to erode or eliminate the secular character of the Turkish state by means of a new constitution will widen the ideological and ethnic divide between, respectively, secular and conservative Turks and Turks and Kurds. Just a few months ago, Ismail Kahramam, speaker of the Turkish parliament and Erdogan ally, exhorted that ‘secularism cannot feature in the new [religious] constitution’.

His policies and rhetoric, in other words, will undermine even more the almost imperceptible presence of ‘interpersonal trust’ in Turkish society - the willingness of one party to rely on the actions of another party – seen as incongruent with a robust polity and cohesive society. According to a 2010 OECD survey Turkey’s levels of interpersonal trust are considerably lower than OECD averages and it stands out among the 20 surveyed countries as the only one where higher educational attainment correlates with lower feelings of trust. That posture can only breed even more discord and mistrust between the different segments of the Turkish electorate and entrench personality-based and top-down politics, the root cause of political turmoil in Turkey.

Diminished state capacity

Turkey’s NATO partners fear that the purges of experienced military and security personnel have the potential to diminish its capability to thwart the threat posed by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and other militant groups and to better manage its long and porous borders with Syria and Iraq. Thus far, Turkish authorities have incarcerated nearly one-third of Turkey’s senior military commanders and more than 7,000 police and intelligence officials. This constitutes a major loss of expertise and institutional memory at a time of heightening security challenges. After all, Turkey witnessed 14 bomb attacks over the last year, many of them carried out by ISIS or the separatist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Similarly, the removal of tens of thousands of school teachers, both in private and state schools, university academics and education ministry officials will severely disrupt the provision of adequate educational services to enable future generations to succeed in an increasingly complex global economic environment. This ‘cleansing’ operation did not spare even the elite and renowned state and private universities considered bastions of liberalism and cosmopolitan values in Turkey.

In all probability, the government’s replacements of key staff with less qualified loyalists will rupture the institutional integrity and professionalism of the military establishment and the state institutions. Such a hollowing out process was already underway prior to the coup but post-coup decision-making has greatly accelerated the speed. Sadly, under the best case scenario, it will take Turkey years, if not decades, to restore a modicum of rule of law and public services’ delivery at pre-coup standards to which the Turkish citizenry have been accustomed.

Foreign policy challenges

Erdogan’s endorsement of the death penalty might signal the end of Turkey’s (already nearly non-existent) EU accession prospects and a more troubled relationship with Europe and the US. He was, before the coup, a prickly and challenging partner for the US and NATO to handle, a recalcitrant member of the US-led anti-ISIS coalition and vociferously against the US cooperation with PKK-affiliated Syrian Kurdish fighters targeting ISIS in northern Syria. After the coup, he will probably become more disagreeable to US and European foreign policy and security objectives.

His disagreeability will probably extend to Turkey’s deal with the EU to stem the flow of Syrian migrants across the Aegean Sea and Greece into mainland Europe, which looks increasingly unsustainable. A pugnacious Erdogan may utilize the forthcoming EU refusal to abolish visas for Turkish travellers to the Schengen borderless zone by end-October to wring out more concessions from an Erdogan-sceptical Europe. Despite their exasperation, they should decipher from his rapprochement with Israel and Russia that he tends to compromise with muscular diplomacy as opposed to diplomatic niceties.    

Turkey will be so convulsed and self-absorbed by internal political machinations and its security and military capabilities so compromised that it cannot afford to deploy sizeable assets to promote regime change in Damascus. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian and Iranian backers are, naturally, the prime beneficiaries while the armed largely Sunni opposition are the biggest losers. Arguably, Assad must now feel very secure in power and confident that he will enlarge his territorial acquisitions at the expense of the Sunni groups. Equally, the Syrian Kurds will seek to strengthen and, perhaps, extend the quasi-autonomous zone along the Turkey−Syria border commensurate with Turkey’s declining influence in the Syrian quagmire.

Europe’s lesson

Turkey is a bitter testimony to the ill-effects of sacrificing progressive values to political expediency, fear and interests. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and former French president Nicolas Sarkozy demonstrated a lack of strategic foresight by stymying Turkey’s desire to join the EU in 2005. Had the EU engaged Turkey in a credible accession process, however arduous it may have been, the coup would probably have never occurred. Turkish political leaders would have been forced to implement deeper and wider reforms to strengthen democracy, secularism, human rights and a functioning market economy. Instead, Europe is reaping what it sowed: a coup-rattled and more unstable Turkey on its doorstep.

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