Introduction

Ninety years after the foundation of the Turkish Republic, Ankara appears to be on the verge of a paradigmatic change in its approach to the Kurdish question. It is too early to tell whether the current negotiations between Ankara and the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) will manage to accommodate Kurdish cultural and political demands. Yet, for perhaps the first time in its history, the Turkish Republic seems willing to incorporate Kurds into the political system rather than militarily confront them. For decades, Turkey sought to assimilate its sizable Kurdish minority, about 15 million people, or around 20 percent of its total population. From the mid-1920s until the end of the Cold War, Ankara denied the ethnic existence of Kurds and their cultural rights. It took a three-decade-long PKK-led insurgency – which started in 1984 and caused a death toll of 40,000 – for the republic to start accepting the “Kurdish reality” and introduce cultural reforms. This perhaps explains why the PKK’s jailed leader Abdullah Öcalan is a national hero in the eyes of significant segments of Kurdish society.

Of the approximately 30 million Kurds in the Middle East, about half live in Turkey. Kurds also constitute a significant minority in neighboring Iraq, Iran and Syria. The Palestinians are often referred to as the most famous case of a “nation without a state” in the Middle East. But the Kurds, who outnumber the Palestinians by a factor of five, are by far the largest ethnic community in the region seeking national self-determination. The future of Turkey - and the Middle East - is therefore intimately linked to the question of Kurdish nationalism.

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• Turkey and the Kurds: From Predicament to Opportunity

Supporters of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) who often use the term “New Turkey” believe that the 12-year rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has opened a new phase in Turkish history.

They are partially right. Even those who resent Erdoğan's autocratic discourse need to recognize that the country has come a long way in the last decade in areas such as health-care, infrastructure, fiscal discipline, inflation, municipal services and civil-military relations. The big question that continues to polarize Turkish politics, however, is whether the new Turkey is more democratic than the old one.

Again, the supporters of the AKP answer this question with a resounding “yes.” In their eyes, the AKP represents the will of the people and, for the first time in modern Turkish history, the military is unable to exert real influence behind the scenes. The critics of the AKP, however, strongly differ. They believe Erdoğan's understanding of democracy is based on a simplistic and populist notion of winning elections. To them, this is a majoritarian and electoral understanding that comes at the expense of pluralism and liberalism. Such electoral autocracy does not pay attention to freedom of speech, the rule of law and the separation of powers and, thus, condemns Turkey to a second-class category among democracies. For them, this is exactly why the new Turkey of Erdoğan resembles the old one, where the military used to call the shots. In other words, the old type of authoritarianism has been replaced by a new one.

It is important to note that the West -- mainly the United States and the European Union -- tend to agree with the critics of Erdoğan. In the wake of recent local elections, it was hard to find a single editorial in Western media praising the "new" Turkey's democratic standards. Instead, the focus was on corruption scandals and the bans imposed on social media like Twitter and YouTube. There is now a general consensus among Westerners that Erdoğan's growing authoritarian style has eroded the positive image of the Turkish model that was praised only a few years ago. Under such circumstances, the question that most Westerners ask is simple: Why is an increasingly authoritarian Erdoğan still winning elections? The answer to this question is equally as simple: “It's the economy, stupid!”

The AKP voters come from the largest segments of Turkish society: the urban-rural poor as well as the lower-middle classes aspiring to upper-middle class status. These masses amount to probably 60 to 70 percent of Turkish society. In their eyes, bread and butter problems take precedence over the Twitter ban, political freedoms, the independence of the media, crony capitalism or separation of powers. What really matters for most of these AKP voters are economic services and living standards. The fact that they come from conservative and nationalist backgrounds and share the patriarchal culture of the prime minister is the icing on the cake.

As a result, it should not be surprising that Erdoğan will keep winning elections as long as the economy performs reasonably well and adequate socioeconomic services are provided to these large segments of society. This is also why the real paradox of the new Turkey is to be found beyond the economy and elections.

The real paradox of the new Turkey is the following: If Erdoğan is indeed becoming increasingly authoritarian, why is he the only hope of Turkey for solving the Kurdish problem? This paradox is even more puzzling, since solving the Kurdish problem requires the opposite of what Erdoğan seems to provide: democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law, separation of powers, liberalism, decentralization of decision-making and less patriarchal governing structures.

Can Erdoğan provide all these attributes with his more authoritarian style? If the answer is “no,” why do the Kurds seem ready to support him? To answer this paradox, we need to analyze the pragmatic and Machiavellian side of Erdoğan. We will do so next week.

This piece was originally published in Today's Zaman.

As I tried to explain in this column last week, there is a glaring paradox about the so-called “new Turkey.” I will remind readers and clarify what the concept of “new” means exactly, but one needs to have some basic familiarity with how the Justice and Development (AKP) and its supporters define the “old” Turkey.

The old Turkey, in their eyes, was a place where the economy was in shambles -- with high inflation, chronic public deficits, poor municipal services and systemic corruption. Most importantly, the military, the guardians of the system, called the shots by toppling or pressuring civilian governments. And as far as foreign policy was concerned, they believed Turkey used to punch below its weight and had almost no regional soft power in the Middle East as a model of Muslim democracy.

Those who don't buy the rosy picture of today rightly point out that the current state of Turkish democracy in this so-called new Turkey leaves a lot to be desired. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's understanding of democracy is indeed based on a simplistic and populist notion of winning elections. His majoritarian and electoral understanding comes at the expense of individual rights and liberties, an independent media and the freedoms of expression and association. The absence of rule of law as well as problems with the separation of the executive, legislative and judicial powers still condemns Turkey to a second-class category among democracies. This is why, under the populist and hegemonic style of Erdoğan, the old type of Turkish authoritarianism (dominated by the military) has been replaced by a “new” one based on the tyranny of the majority and the hegemony of Erdoğan.

What about the economic achievements of the new Turkey? Although it is hard to argue against the fact that the country is a more prosperous place compared to the 1990s, the latest corruption scandals clearly revealed that political networks of tender-fixing, influence-peddling, patronage and cronyism still plagues the Turkish system. Corruption is indeed still systemic in the new Turkey. It is also important to remember that the structural reforms that changed the “old” Turkey, dominated by state-owned enterprises under import substitution, came not with the AKP but thanks to the visionary leadership of Turgut Özal in the second half of the 1980s.

However, those who don't buy the rosy picture of the new Turkey face an important dilemma. Why is an autocratic Erdoğan still the only hope for solving the Kurdish problem? Everyone agrees that the Kurdish problem is the most daunting challenge facing Turkish democracy. As argued last week, solving the Kurdish problem requires the opposite of what Erdoğan seems to provide: democracy, freedom of speech, rule of law, separation of powers, liberalism, decentralization of decision making and less patriarchal governing structures. The fact that Erdoğan is the best hope of fulfilling such a promise -- by negotiating a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) -- is indeed a glaring paradox that requires explanation.

Some argue that the peace process with the Kurds is cosmetic, tactical and hollow. They believe Erdoğan calculated in a Machiavellian way that he needs the support of Kurds to get elected to the presidency and to change the system into a presidential one after the AKP wins the next parliamentary elections. But this is a highly risky strategy since winning the Kurdish vote also means losing a significant amount of support from Turkish nationalists -- an important segment of the AKP base. Another way to analyze the paradox is to actually believe that Erdoğan is genuine in his willingness to solve the Kurdish problem by adopting a more Ottoman system of multiculturalism and decentralization, where the sultan delegates power to regions.

One should also not underestimate the fact that Erdoğan manages to identify with the victim narrative of the Kurds. He, after all, has a similar narrative of victimhood based on being a pious Muslim under secular Kemalist hegemony. What we may be witnessing in the new Turkey is a coalition of pious Muslims and Kurds taking their revenge on Kemalism. In that sense, the best way to analyze the new Turkey is to remain skeptical of the rosy picture and focus on what post-Kemalism will bring to the country in terms of solving the Kurdish question. The "newness" of Turkey can only be confirmed when a more democratic and multicultural Turkey does emerge and peacefully solves the Kurdish problem in a post-Kemalist context.

This piece was originally published in Today's Zaman.

Event Information

For the first time in Turkey’s history, the electorate directly cast their votes for president earlier this week, overwhelmingly electing current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to the position with 52 percent of the votes. After 12 years in power, Erdoğan’s victory was widely expected, even though the two main opposition parties chose Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu as their common candidate in a rare show of unity, and Selahattin Demirtaş the leader of the main Kurdish political party in Turkey, tried hard to appeal to an electoral base beyond just Kurds. The impact of the election’s results, however, remains to be seen.

How should the election results be interpreted? Will Erdoğan succeed in transforming Turkey from a parliamentary system to a presidential one? Who will he chose as prime minister? What will this outcome mean for Turkey’s economic performance and its foreign policy at a time when the neighborhood is sliding deeper into instability, if not chaos? What will happen to Turkey’s European vocation and its transatlantic relations?

On September 4, the Turkey Project of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings hosted a panel discussion to consider what President Erdoğan’s new mandate means for the nation, its government and institutions and the ruling Justice and Development Party. Kemal Kirisci, TÜSİAD senior fellow and Turkey project director, moderated the conversation. Panelists included Robert Wexler of the S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace, Kadir Üstün of the SETA Foundation, and Brookings Nonresident Senior Fellow Ömer Taşpınar.

Join the conversation on Twitter using #PresErdogan

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• President Erdoğan: Turkey’s Election and the Future

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• Uncorrected Transcript (.pdf)

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• 20140904_erdogan_turkey_transcript

I have been writing for years about the Armenian Genocide. The issue is of great emotional as much as ethical and historical significance to me. But for reasons I will explain for the first time, 1915 is also a very personal matter for me. No, not because I suddenly discovered I am of Armenian descent, but mainly because 1915 is the main reason my career took a turn toward academia rather than diplomacy.

I did not join the Foreign Service because I was detained almost 20 years ago, when I was a 25-year-old tour guide. The reason? I dared to answer a couple of questions about 1915 from a group of American tourists visiting the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations in Ankara. That day changed my life. I'm not naïve; I knew answering their question in public would be risky. And I would have probably refrained from doing so had they not asked me first whether there is freedom of speech in Turkey. Trying to make light of it, I quipped: "Yes, there is freedom of speech, but freedom after speech can get tricky." I did not know my joke would turn into self-fulfilling prophecy.

Shortly after explaining to my group why the term “genocide” is problematic for Turkish officialdom, I was arrested by guards in the museum, taken to a police station and interrogated for five hours. This unexpected encounter with Turkish law enforcement convinced me about a couple of things. First, I realized how difficult life in Turkey would be if I were of Armenian descent. "Are you Armenian?" was the first question I was asked in the police station. When I said "No," the police officer laughed and said I was not the first Turkish traitor they had interrogated. To this day, I wonder how life in Turkey would be if my name was Onik instead of Ömer.

Second, I was also convinced that I no longer wanted to become a diplomat. As a diplomat, I knew you turn into a defense attorney for your country. I also knew that in the larger scheme of things, what happened to me that day was not tragic or even very consequential. But the idea of defending a country that arrests a tour guide for speaking about what happened 100 years ago turned me off intellectually and emotionally. All of a sudden, Turkey's predicament had gained a disturbingly personal dimension in my eyes and thoughts. I remember having a conversation the night I was arrested with my father, a Turkish diplomat himself and in disbelief about my lack of situational awareness. "Do you think you think you live in Sweden?" he asked me with sarcasm and some anger. Anyway, the case was closed for me. I now had a police detention record. And this was enough to disqualify me from the Foreign Ministry exam.

Since the Turkish Foreign Service had now lost a brilliant (!) future diplomat, I turned my gaze to academia and decided to continue my seditious activities in the United States by writing a dissertation on Turkey's identity problem. My focus was on the interplay between Kemalism, the official ideology of the republic and the Kurdish question and political Islam. Ever since I started working in academia and think-tanks, I made an involuntary reputation for myself as a public intellectual with pro-Kurdish, pro-Islamic, pro-Armenian tendencies. I guess that's a small price to pay for trying to be a liberal in today's Turkey. The alternative would have been a life in Turkish diplomacy talking about the "so-called Armenian Genocide,” the separatist-terrorist organization called the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and various "coup" attempts against the sacred Turkish state during the Gezi protests and the corruption investigations.

At the end of day, my arrest 20 years ago was a blessing in disguise. I'm happy my Armenian journey took me where I am.

This article was originally published in Today's Zaman.

When Süleyman Demirel died last week I asked myself why such a permanent giant of Turkish politics failed to change the country during his 40 years of active politics. Why is it that genuine political change in Turkey proved to be so elusive during the long decades of Demirel's public service? The answer has partly to do with the fact that Demirel was synonymous with the establishment. Establishment parties in Turkey have, time and again, proven unable to change the political system.

During most of the Cold War—and particularly during the 1980s and 1990s—Turkey had, for lack of a better word, a Kemalist consensus, and those outside the consensus, especially the Islamists and the Kurds were essentially excluded from politics.

The first wave of democratization in the post-Cold War era in Turkey came from the Islamists—specifically, from the Justice and Development Party (AKP). In 2002, when the AKP came to power, it decided that accession to the European Union should be its main goal and that that effort could serve as tool to undermine the political power of the Turkish military, which still lurked behind the scenes. So, incredibly, the AKP, an Islamist party, decided to bring about a post-Kemalist system by pushing for membership in the EU's essentially liberal, democratic project. This strategy explains why Turkish liberals supported the AKP and could hope that the Islamists would push the system in a liberal direction.

But then something tragic happened. The AKP became the establishment. After the military was essentially defeated as a political force, the AKP ceased to be an anti-establishment party. Rather, it became a party that started to use the privileges of power, and itself began its own networks of patronage clientelism, and became a victim of this entity called the state. The AKP became the state.

I think similar dynamics were at play in Demirel's political career. Demirel, too, started his career by challenging the establishment but ended up becoming one of the most permanent politicians identified with the state. His ability to change the system vanished the minute he became the system. The real puzzle is the failure of establishment political parties to challenge the system. It would have been wonderful for a center-right party or a center-left party to have taken Turkey to the post-Kemalist phase, to a post-military, pro-EU and progressive phase. But the mainstream political parties have failed. The establishment of Turkey has failed. The Kemalist order in Turkey has failed. And together with that order, Demirel failed.

There is reason to think that, in Turkey, only anti-establishment parties can actually improve the system. The old AKP was an anti-establishment party. Now we're in a situation where the second wave of democratization may also come from an anti-establishment party, this one mostly representing the Kurds. The most democratic, the most liberal, the most progressive narrative heard in Turkish politics today comes from Selahattin Demirtaş, co-leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) -- not the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), not the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), and not the AKP.

What gives me hope about the HDP is that, even when it enters Parliament—and even if a miracle happens and it enters a coalition government—it will never become the state. By definition, the HDP is a Kurdish political party. The Islamists were able to become the state because Turkey is 99 percent Muslim and people could basically establish a sense of supremacy based on Muslim identity. The Kurds will never be able to represent the majority. They will never be able to become the state. They have vested and permanent interest in the rule of law—indeed their very survival depends on it. Their survival depends on minority rights and on checks and balances. This stark fact gives me hope about the HDP and its agenda.

This piece was originally published by Today's Zaman.

You were probably just thinking to yourself that the civil war in Syria isn’t complicated enough, that there aren’t enough warring parties, and that the constantly shifting sides have become predictable and tired. Well, don’t despair, there are now rumors emerging out of Turkey that may introduce enough new dimensions to the conflict to keep you confused well into the next decade.

The Turkish press is reporting that the Turkish government may be about to invade Syria along a 70-mile stretch of Turkey’s border with Syria to create a 20-mile deep safe zone. This issue is currently the subject of heated speculation and controversy in Ankara, making it quite difficult to figure out what is really happening.

But beyond the fevered speculation, why would Turkey want to invade Syria anyway?

Syria has long been a threatening mess, but neither Turkey nor anyone else has exactly been lining up to send their national armies into Syria. Sure, foreign fighters are plentiful in Syria and all of the regional powers, as well as the United States and Russia, have supported proxies there. But even after more than four years of bloody, destabilizing warfare, national armies have avoided it like the plague. The reason is quite simple: The complicated Syrian civil war has quagmire written all over it. As hard as it is to send a foreign army into Syria, it would be harder still to get it out.

In Turkey, particularly, the idea of military intervention into Syria remains very unpopular among the populace. The possibility that intervention might backfire and unleash Islamic State (or ISIS) terrorism within Turkey, or even reignite the bloody Kurdish insurgency in Turkey’s southeast, remains an ever-present fear.

Now, however, the theory goes that Syrian Kurdish advances against ISIS have caused such concern in Turkey that the Kurds will create some sort of state or autonomous region along Turkey’s southern border. To prevent that outcome, the Turkish government, we are told, is finally willing to intervene in Syria.

Well, maybe. But, in our view, the reason that Turkey might now finally be contemplating such a step says more about changes in the domestic and international standing of the Turkish government than about the course of events in Syria.

Domestically, the outcome of the Turkish election of June 7 has seriously scrambled Turkish politics. After nearly 13 years in power, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) lost its absolute majority in parliament. The AKP, which still holds a plurality of seats in parliament, has 45 days to form a government with at least one of the minority parties. But it seems clear that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has very little interest in coalition government. The leaders of the two main opposition parties, the nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the center-left Republican Peoples Party (CHP), have both demanded the re-opening of corruption cases against the AKP. Erdoğan may fear that those corruption cases may eventually touch even his family.

Erdoğan would undoubtedly prefer an early election to subjecting his party or even his family to the indignities of prying prosecutors. But to achieve a better outcome than the AKP managed in June, he needs to demonstrate to the population the pitfalls of weak, coalition governments. As the possibility of intervention in Syria increases, as the markets spooks on the prospects of war, and even if a few bombs were to go off in the Kurdish areas, the growing sense of national insecurity would only serve to make Erdoğan’s case that the country needs the firm hand of one-party leadership. With a big enough victory, it might even serve to bring back prospects of constitutional change to increase the powers of the presidency. At that point, an early election would be worth having.

Insecurity works

Internationally, Turkey may be driven by the sense the White House now prefers their Kurdish partners in Syria to Turkey. The Turkish government is extremely angry about the emerging alliance between the United States and the Syrian Kurds, especially the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD), a Syrian affiliate of the Turkish Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). They attribute Kurdish success against ISIS to the American willingness to support Syrian Kurdish forces with air power and supplies. In the Turkish view, the PYD is simply a branch of the PKK, which both Turkey and the United States have branded a terrorist group. Allowing the PYD to unite the Kurdish areas of Syria would therefore represent an existential threat to Turkey.  

By threatening to intervene in Syria, the Turkish government seeks to change a U.S. policy that it finds potentially very damaging to Turkish interests. As Erdoğan no doubt reminded Vice President Biden when they talked the other day, Turkey has the ability to have a far greater impact on the fight against ISIS than the Kurds do. (The Turkish government might tell their domestic audiences that a prospective intervention in Syria is to stop the Kurds, but they will tell international audiences that it is to fight ISIS.)

Interestingly, to achieve both these international and domestic advantages, it is not necessary or even wise to actually go through with the intervention. Domestically, all that is necessary is to convince the population that the situation is sufficiently insecure to require firm, one-party leadership. Internationally, it just requires using the prospect of intervention to gain U.S. attention and convince the U.S. government to reduce its support of the PYD. At the current moment, the prospect of intervention is very useful for the Turkish government. Actual intervention, with all of the attendant risks of quagmire, is significantly less appealing.

So that means that it is probably not strictly necessary to spend your time trying to understand how the myriad factions within Syria will respond to the presence of the Turkish military on Syrian soil. On the bright side, you now have some really good reasons to enter into the nearly as confusing realm of Turkish domestic politics. Maybe start with our Turkish election series.

For another take on this issue, see the post from Kemal Kirisci and Sinan Ekim. 

How to reconcile the approaches of Turkey and the United States over Syria? Both countries seek to depose President Assad while defeating ISIL, and also while reducing the terrible humanitarian plight of the Syrian people which has, among other effects, sent nearly two million refugees onto Turkish soil. But Ankara, wary of its own Kurdish population and particularly the militant PKK, which espouses violence in the pursuit of potential independence, is extremely reluctant to see Syrian Kurds armed and otherwise assisted by Washington. Alas, the Syrian Kurds, mostly aligned with the PKK, appear to be the only element of the so-called moderate opposition gaining any real traction, or showing any real military competence, within Syria. To lose the ability to work closely with them may, among other things, call into serious doubt Washington’s aspirations to help Syrian moderates mount a campaign against Raqqa, the capital of the region now controlled by ISIL. What a mess.

There are no easy answers here, but there may in fact be a plausible path forward—a strategy that, if Washington were to adopt it, could assuage many Turkish concerns and lead to gradual progress in the campaign to put real military pressure on both ISIL and the Assad regime.

The first element of the new strategy begins with a more realistic framing of the military goals of the international coalition opposing both Assad and ISIL. Washington must take the lead on this. The starting point is to begin with a vision for the future of Syria based on confederation.

Declaring such a goal could help reconcile, or at least “deconflict,” American and Turkish views on the conflict. By now, it must be clear that aspiring to a strong successor government to the Assad regime is to hope for a miracle. Even if such a government could be constructed on paper, what army is going to give it authority? The current Syrian army is too tainted by Assad’s barbarism; the various militias in the country are too fractured and weak; ISIL itself must be defeated, so its fighters cannot be part of any solution. One reason Turkey does not trust the United States now in the conflict is that Washington’s stated goals are so out of kilter with the means it is willing to devote to the effort. A confederal model for Syria, though still ambitious, could help reduce the chasm between ends and means, making the strategy more credible.

A weak central government, tying together various separate sectors of the country that are governed and protected by their own autonomous institutions, makes much more sense. Confederation doesn’t mean the partitioning of Syria. In fact, a confederal solution is probably the best way to avoid disintegration. Such a concept could, among its other virtues, provide an outlet for Assad (he could go into internal exile in the future Alawite sector of the country). It could cap any aspirations among Kurds for self-rule well short of the possible goal of independence—the latter being something that Ankara would find fundamentally unacceptable. It could also provide a viable path forward for Russia—as principal protector of the Alawite sector in a future peacekeeping mission, after an eventual negotiated settlement.

As for the specific matter of the Kurds, additional steps are needed. The PKK needs to commit not to employ violence against Turkey any longer—not now, not in the future. But it can be given a new role, for those of its fighters seeking to stand up for their own people in a responsible way: as part of the Kurdish opposition within Syria. The PKK can be allowed safe passage into northern Syria, where its fighters can join the PYD militia there. They can help take on ISIL in support of the campaign now being envisioned against Raqqa as well as other missions. In return for the PKK’s demilitarization in Turkish territories, Ankara should immediately restart negotiations with the organization and this time quickly deliver on its promises of reforms.

There is one more key piece to this: American special forces would need to deploy on the ground too, building further on the very modest but welcome decision to several dozen Americans into Northern Syria. The Kurdish zone in Syria is reasonably well-established, so the risks associated with this move are likely manageable. The special forces would help further recruit, train, equip and advise these fighters as they work with nearby Arab units to prepare the next steps in the war. In addition to strengthening the Kurdish forces, the Americans would help monitor the custodianship of any weapons that were delivered to these units to help ensure they were not taken back into Turkey. The American commitment would have to be open-ended, until the conflict could be brought to a reasonable settlement. But it would not be large.

None of this is easy or particularly appealing. But neither is any dimension of the Syrian war. Right now, it is a war we are collectively losing. We need a new path forward, and the starting point has to be one that Turkey and the United States can truly rally together behind.

Event Information

As Turkey prepares for highly-contested elections on November 1, concerns are growing about the country’s politics, economy, security, and foreign policy. Just a few years ago Turkey was recognized as a model of democracy and beacon of stability and economic growth in a challenging region. However, more recently, Turkey’s economy has lost its dynamism, its leaders’ commitment to democratic principles seems to be eroding, and doubts are emerging about the country’s interests and engagement in the region. Even more disturbing, as the conflicts in Syria and Iraq continue unabated and massive refugee flows spill over into Europe, violent Islamic extremism has now surfaced in Turkey. With the government and opposition trading accusations, the horrific, recent bombing attack in Ankara has further polarized an already deeply-divided and anxious country.

On November 2, the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings will host a discussion on the Turkish elections. Panelists will discuss how recent events might influence voters what the election results might portend for Turkey’s strategic orientation. Panelists will include Ömer Taşpınar of the National War College and Brookings; Gönül Tol of the Middle East Institute; Kadir Üstün of the SETA Foundation; and Robert Wexler of S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace. Brookings Turkey Project Director and TÜSİAD Senior Fellow Kemal Kirişci will moderate the discussion.

After the program, panelists will take questions from the audience.

Transcript

• Transcript (.pdf)

Event Materials

• 20151102_turkey_elections_transcript

This weekend’s election results in Turkey were a surprise to the vast majority of Turkish pollsters and pundits, myself included. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) won nearly 50 percent of the popular vote. The party can now form a single-party government, even if it doesn’t have the supermajority necessary to remake the Turkish constitution. What happened?

As with much in life, the result does make sense in hindsight. Prior to the June 7 election, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP leadership had supported a Kurdish peace process, in part in the hope of gaining Kurdish votes. In that election, however, not only did the AKP fail to win new Kurdish votes, but support for the Nationalist Action Party (MHP)—a far-right Turkish nationalist party—swelled, apparently out of frustration among nationalist Turks with the AKP-led peace process with the Kurds. In other words, the AKP had the worst of both worlds.

Erdoğan and the AKP leadership, recognizing the political problem this posed for them, allowed the peace process to collapse amid mounting instability driven by the Syrian civil war. This, combined with disillusionment with the MHP leadership due to their perceived unwillingness to form a coalition government, drove about two million MHP voters to the AKP this weekend. The exodus shows, in a sense, what close substitutes the two parties can be among a more nationalist voting bloc.

The controlled chaos that resulted from the collapse of the peace process—combined with the escalating refugee crisis, the fear of ISIS attacks, and the struggling economy—helped the government politically. Voters evidently recalled that it had been the AKP that brought the country out of the very tough times of the 1990s.  

In contrast, the opposition parties seem to lack leadership and appear to promise only internal squabbles and indecisiveness. Craving security and stability, voters have now turned to the one party that appears to have the strength to provide it. In that sense, Erdoğan’s nationalist gambit—which was actually a well-conceived series of political maneuvers—worked. Even some one million conservative Kurdish voters returned to the AKP.

These voters perhaps did not notice the irony that the government had also engineered the instability they feared. In part, this success derives from government’s control over the media. These elections may have been free, in the sense that Turkish voters can cast a ballot for the candidates they want. But they were not fair. The state maintained tight control over traditional and social media alike. Freedom House and the Committee to Protect Journalists, among others, have cast doubt on Turkey’s press freedom credentials. Real opposition voices are difficult for media publish or voters to see on television. Thus, for example, Selahattin Demirtaş, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) and the most charismatic opposition politician in Turkey, had essentially no air time during the campaign.

There are some important upsides to the election results. For one, HDP again passed the 10 percent threshold to remain in parliament. That will help mitigate—though hardly erase—the polarization that grips the country, and will hopefully make government reconsider its abandonment of the Kurdish peace process.

More significantly, the AKP does not have what it needs to convert Turkey’s government structure into a presidential system, which would be a bad move for the country. The election results will undoubtedly revitalize Erdoğan’s push for a presidential regime in Turkey. But that requires changing the constitution, and the AKP did not achieve the supermajority that it would need to do that on its own.

Critically, changing to a presidential system will require some support from the opposition and even more importantly popular support via a referendum. As political strategists around the world have learned, people tend not to vote on the actual referendum item, per se, but based on more general opinions of their leadership. So to win a referendum on the presidential system, Erdoğan and his AKP colleagues would need to show improvements in the economy, in the security situation, on the Kurdish issue, on Syrian refugees, and on national stability more generally. Instability in Turkey, particularly the renewal of violence in the Kurdish region, will deter investment and deepen the economic slump throughout the country.

With its new majority, AKP leaders are now in a position of strength to negotiate with the HDP over Kurdish issues. The refugee crisis also means the government also has more leverage with the EU. If it chooses to use its strength to reach positive agreements on those fronts, the outcomes could be very good for the Turkish people.

To actually win a referendum on the presidential system, Erdoğan would have to work to depolarize his country. While the presidential system itself would not be good for Turkey, the process of getting there might be.

Terrorist attacks with high casualties usually create a sense of national solidarity and patriotic reaction in societies that fall victim to such heinous acts. Not in Turkey, however. Despite a growing number of terrorist attacks by the so-called Islamic State on Turkish soil in the last 12 months, the country remains as polarized as ever under strongman President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

In fact, for two reasons, jihadist terrorism is exacerbating the division. First, Turkey's domestic polarization already has an Islamist-versus-secularist dimension. Most secularists hold Erdogan responsible for having created domestic political conditions that turn a blind eye to jihadist activities within Turkey.

It must also be said that polarization between secularists and Islamists in Turkey often fails to capture the complexity of Turkish politics, where not all secularists are democrats and not all Islamists are autocrats. In fact, there was a time when Erdogan was hailed as the great democratic reformer against the old secularist establishment under the guardianship of the military.

Yet, in the last five years, the religiosity and conservatism of the ruling Justice and Development Party, also known by its Turkish acronym AKP, on issues ranging from gender equality to public education has fueled the perception of rapid Islamization. Erdogan's anti-Western foreign policy discourse -- and the fact that Ankara has been strongly supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood in the wake of the Arab Spring -- exacerbates the secular-versus-Islamist divide in Turkish society.

Erdogan doesn't fully support the eradication of jihadist groups in Syria.

The days Erdogan represented the great hope of a Turkish model where Islam, secularism, democracy and pro-Western orientation came together are long gone. Despite all this, it is sociologically more accurate to analyze the polarization in Turkey as one between democracy and autocracy rather than one of Islam versus secularism.

The second reason why ISIS terrorism is exacerbating Turkey's polarization is related to foreign policy. A significant segment of Turkish society believes Erdogan's Syria policy has ended up strengthening ISIS. In an attempt to facilitate Syrian President Bashar Assad's overthrow, the AKP turned a blind eye to the flow of foreign volunteers transiting Turkey to join extremist groups in Syria. Until last year, Ankara often allowed Islamists to openly organize and procure equipment and supplies on the Turkish side of the Syria border.

Making things worse is the widely held belief that Turkey's National Intelligence Organization, or MİT, facilitated the supply of weapons to extremist Islamist elements amongst the Syrian rebels. Most of the links were with organizations such as Jabhat al-Nusra, Ahrar al-Sham and Islamist extremists from Syria's Turkish-speaking Turkmen minority.

He is trying to present the PKK as enemy number one.

Turkey's support for Islamist groups in Syria had another rationale in addition to facilitating the downfall of the Assad regime: the emerging Kurdish threat in the north of the country. Syria's Kurds are closely linked with Turkey's Kurdish nemesis, the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which has been conducting an insurgency for greater rights for Turkey's Kurds since 1984.

On the one hand, Ankara has hardened its stance against ISIS by opening the airbase at Incirlik in southern Turkey for use by the U.S-led coalition targeting the organization with air strikes. However, Erdogan doesn't fully support the eradication of jihadist groups in Syria. The reason is simple: the Arab and Turkmen Islamist groups are the main bulwark against the expansion of the de facto autonomous Kurdish enclave in northern Syria. The AKP is concerned that the expansion and consolidation of a Kurdish state in Syria would both strengthen the PKK and further fuel similar aspirations amongst Turkey's own Kurds.

Will the most recent ISIS terrorist attack in Istanbul change anything in Turkey's main threat perception? When will the Turkish government finally realize that the jihadist threat in the country needs to be prioritized? If you listen to Erdogan's remarks, you will quickly realize that the real enemy he wants to fight is still the PKK. He tries hard after each ISIS attack to create a "generic" threat of terrorism in which all groups are bundled up together without any clear references to ISIS. He is trying to present the PKK as enemy number one.

Only after a peace process with Kurds will Turkey be able to understand that ISIS is an existential threat to national security.

Under such circumstances, Turkish society will remain deeply polarized between Islamists, secularists, Turkish nationalists and Kurdish rebels. Terrorist attacks, such as the one in Istanbul this week and the one in Ankara in July that killed more than 100 people, will only exacerbate these divisions.

Finally, it is important to note that the Turkish obsession with the Kurdish threat has also created a major impasse in Turkish-American relations in Syria. Unlike Ankara, Washington's top priority in Syria is to defeat ISIS. The fact that U.S. strategy consists of using proxy forces such as Syrian Kurds against ISIS further complicates the situation.

There will be no real progress in Turkey's fight against ISIS unless there is a much more serious strategy to get Ankara to focus on peace with the PKK. Only after a peace process with Kurds will Turkey be able to understand that ISIS is an existential threat to national security.

This piece was originally posted by The Huffington Post.

Event Information

The failed coup in Turkey on July 15 to 16, organized by factions within the Turkish military in an attempt to overthrow the government of President Erdoğan, represents both a victory and a new trial for Turkish democracy. Although the Turkish citizenry brought the country back from the brink of anarchy and civil war, many analysts see last week’s events as a consequence of the political instability and discord that has been mounting for years as Erdoğan has consolidated powers, marginalized the opposition, and redefined Turkey’s democracy. How will the president react in the aftermath of the coup? Will the democratic backsliding intensify, or can the thwarted coup offer new opportunity for reconciling the deeply-polarized nation?

The upheaval and political instability in Turkey also holds significant implications for Turkey’s foreign policy and the fate of a neighboring region already in turmoil from the war in Syria and insecurity in Iraq. The West desperately needs a stable, democratic, and predictable partner in its NATO-ally Turkey to address the many challenges besetting the region and to fight the Islamic State (or ISIS). How will recent events affect regional stability and Turkey’s cooperation with the West on security issues, including the resettlement of Syrian refugees? What does the failed coup mean for the coalition against ISIS engagement in Syria?

On July 20, the Foreign Policy program (FP) at Brookings hosted a panel discussion to consider these questions and other domestic and international consequences of the coup attempt in Turkey. Brookings Senior Fellow and Director of the Center on the United States and Europe Fiona Hill introduced and moderated a wide-ranging conversation featuring FP Senior Fellows Shadi Hamid, Kemal Kirişci, Michael O'Hanlon, and Ömer Taşpınar.

After the discussion, the speakers took questions from the audience.

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Abstract

An individual-based computational model of smallpox epidemics in a two-town county is presented and used to develop strategies for bioterror containment. A powerful and feasible combination of preemptive and reactive vaccination and isolation strategies is developed which achieves epidemic quenching while minimizing risks of adverse side effects. Calibration of the model to historical data is described. Various model extensions and applications to other public health problems are noted.

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Published version of the CSED October 2007 Working Paper

ABSTRACT

Background

In classical mathematical epidemiology, individuals do not adapt their contact behavior during epidemics. They do not endogenously engage, for example, in social distancing based on fear. Yet, adaptive behavior is well-documented in true epidemics. We explore the effect of including such behavior in models of epidemic dynamics.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Using both nonlinear dynamical systems and agent-based computation, we model two interacting contagion processes: one of disease and one of fear of the disease. Individuals can “contract” fear through contact with individuals who are infected with the disease (the sick), infected with fear only (the scared), and infected with both fear and disease (the sick and scared). Scared individuals–whether sick or not–may remove themselves from circulation with some probability, which affects the contact dynamic, and thus the disease epidemic proper. If we allow individuals to recover from fear and return to circulation, the coupled dynamics become quite rich, and can include multiple waves of infection. We also study flight as a behavioral response.

Conclusions/Significance

In a spatially extended setting, even relatively small levels of fear-inspired flight can have a dramatic impact on spatio-temporal epidemic dynamics. Self-isolation and spatial flight are only two of many possible actions that fear-infected individuals may take. Our main point is that behavioral adaptation of some sort must be considered.”

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