Turkey

This article was originally posted here on ForeignAffairs.com on Thursday, January 9, 2014.  In 1996, Ergun Ozbudun, a well-known and well-regarded Turkish academic, published an article in the Journal of Democracy called “Turkey: How Far from Consolidation?” Jumping off from the work of the political scientists Guillermo O’Donnell, Adam Przeworski, and Samuel Huntington, Ozbudun sought to examine the challenges to the development of consolidated democracy in Turkey. At the time Ozbudun was writing, Turkey had enjoyed multiparty politics since 1946 and had conducted 12 consecutive free and fair elections, and Turks had internalized democratic norms. But the country could still not be considered a consolidated democracy, a state of affairs in which democracy, has, in Przeworski’s words, “become the only game in town, when no one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions, when all the losers want to do is to try again within the same institutions under which they have lost.” Ozbudun and other analysts of the era identified four primary obstacles: the fragmentation of party politics, the influential role of the military, Islamism and the lack of elite convergence between Islamist politicians and their secular counterparts, and Kurdish nationalism. When, six years after Ozbudun’s article appeared, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power and launched a program of wide-ranging political reforms, observers held out hope that Turkey would overcome its problems. Yet for all the change that has come to the country in the decade since -- including to the normalization of the military’s role, the stabilization of party politics, and improvements in Kurds’ political, economic, and social status -- the Turkish political system remains precisely where it was when Ozbudun put pen to paper. Continue reading here...

AUC Librarian Mark Muehlhaeusler, who launched a new blog called Cairo Booklore, takes a look at Egyptian-Anglophone literature. Hernan del Valle discusses how political deadlock between rebel and government forces is failing to stop lethal Polio outbreaks in Syria. Burak Bekdil, writing for Hurriyet Daily News,  takes issue with the claim that Turkey is a "great Islamic democracy."

I remember sitting in the lobby of the Kempinski hotel in Cairo on a late afternoon in September 2011 chatting with an Egyptian friend and an American colleague when I became distracted and lost the train of the conversation.  I was hearing familiar sounds, but they were totally out of place.  In a few split desperate seconds, I asked myself, “Who?  What? Where?” until I regained my composure and thought, “Oh, that’s right...The Turks are here.”  In Cairo, where I am programmed to hear only Arabic or English, the out-of-place singsong of Turkish threw me momentarily.  This was the eve of what was billed as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s triumphant visit to Egypt and members of Turkey’s press corps were starting to fill up the capital’s hotels.  Huge posters with Erdogan’s visage and interwoven Egyptian and Turkish flags were placed around Cairo’s thoroughfares declaring “With United Hands for the Future.” It was a nice sentiment, but mutual enmity and strategic competition turned out to be the future of Egypt-Turkey relations.  Prime Minister Erdogan’s ongoing criticism of the July 3 coup d’etat and his continuing support for the Muslim Brotherhood are the immediate cause for the Egyptian decision to downgrade relations with Turkey, but this is a spat that has long been in the making. Critics of Prime Minister Erdogan will no doubt add the deterioration of Egypt-Turkey relations to the growing list of baffling statements, positions, and policies he has pursued recently.  Yet, unlike the prime minister’s demagoguery on coed college dormitories, for example, he is not entirely to blame for the Cairo-Ankara row.  The Turks now have difficult relations with every important country in the Middle East, but there are a series of underlying of political and structural issues that presaged the current dispute with the Egyptians.  My dear friend, the inestimable Bassem Sabry, captured what would be the eventual disconnect between Egypt and Turkey when, right after Erdogan left Cairo in 2011, he quipped, “The Turks don’t understand. When we say ‘Yay Ottomans!’ We mean the furniture.” Before the January 25th uprising, ties between the two countries were correct, but hardly warm. Hosni Mubarak did not like Erdogan and one got the distinct sense that the feeling was mutual. The two leaders could not have been more different from each other:  Mubarak was old, exceedingly cautious, staid, and an authoritarian, while Erdogan was young, dynamic, charismatic, and a reformer (until his authoritarian streak emerged).  Mubarak, always suspicious of Islamists, did not much care for even the Turkish variety, which the press often described oddly as “mild.”  Needless to say, Erdogan has little love lost for the professional military class from which Mubarak hailed. Beyond these kinds of personal differences, Erdogan’s active regional foreign policy and willingness to lambaste the Israelis both encroached upon what Mubarak considered to be Egypt’s natural domain and made the Egyptian leader look bad.  Much of the Erdogan mystique in the Middle East rested on the Palestinian issue and the principled stand he took against Israel’s blockade of Gaza—a policy in which Mubarak was, of course, complicit.  The Egyptian intelligence chief, the late Omar Suleiman, also harbored a grudge against the Turks for what he perceived to be Turkish “meddling” in Palestinian affairs, especially the development of relations between Ankara and Hamas.  To Omar Pasha, Turkey-Hamas ties compromised his ability to apply pressure on the organization by giving its leaders a respectable alternative to Syria or Iran.  For Mubarak and Suleiman, the proper place for the Turks in the region was on the sideline.  Whatever befell the Egyptians during the late Mubarak period, their leaders still maintained the pretension of regional influence and prestige.  They were simply not going to submit to Ankara’s effort to supplant Cairo’s traditional place. Yet Erdogan did not just grate on the Egyptian leadership.  It’s hard to believe now, especially after Mohammed Morsi’s thunderous welcome at the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) 2012  convention, but the Muslim Brothers did not much like Turkey’s Islamists even though the AKP’s political success intrigued them.  The Brotherhood, which regards itself as the granddaddy of Islamist movements, saw the AKP as a bunch of upstart Turks who were a little too liberal and a little too nationalist for its tastes.  Still, the Brothers—and many other Egyptians—were deeply appreciative when Erdogan was the first world leader to call on Hosni Mubarak to listen to his people and step down.  It was only after Mubarak’s fall that the Brothers sought to build a relationship with the Turks who could be an important source of diplomatic, political, and economic support for Egypt and themselves. From the end of 2011 through 2012 and part of 2013, Erdogan was looking like a man in full.  The AKP-friendly press and the prime minister’s supporters were jubilant.  The 21st century was going to be a Turkish century and in the Middle East, newly empowered Islamist movements would look to Ankara for leadership.  Egypt, being the largest Arab country, was central to the way in which the AKP leadership imagined their future.  So caught up in his own mythology as master of both Turkey and the region, the Turkish prime minister grafted his party’s experience onto the Brotherhood and Egypt.  To the extent that Erdogan saw the Muslim Brotherhood as the analogue to his own party, the Turks apparently believed that the Brothers would follow the AKP’s own successful path.  Even after Morsi ran into significant opposition when it became clear that he had no real intention of upholding the principles of the revolution, the Turkish leadership refused to see what was actually happening in Egypt.  Instead, the prime minister and his advisers blamed the United States and the West for the Egyptian president’s troubles because Washington, in particular, could not tolerate the accumulation of Islamist power.  This was, of course, at variance with the vast majority of Morsi’s opponents who accused the United States along with Turkey of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood to the detriment of Egyptian society. Then, of course, came the July 3 coup d’état that ended Egypt’s experiment with Muslim Brotherhood rule.  By now, it should be clear that given Turkey’s history with military interventions and the unhappy experience of Turkish Islamists as a result of the 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997 coups, Erdogan would be critical of Major General Abdel Fattah al Sisi.  Yet “the history of coups” argument is too pat and obvious.  There are more complicated and nuanced reasons for Erdogan’s seemingly pathological ire toward the new Egyptian authorities. The overwhelming Egyptian support for the July 3 coup is a rejection of the “new Turkish model,” which is inextricably linked to Erdogan.  The AKP’s leaders have been careful not to use the word “model” and have from time to time been vocal in their rejection of the term, but privately they believe in it.  They regard Turkey’s experience of political and economic liberalization under the leadership of a popularly elected Islamist party as a template for countries in the Arab world.  When Egyptians came out into the streets en masse on June 30, demanding the end of Mohammed Morsi’s rule and Egypt’s senior command obliged them, it was a significant strategic setback for the AKP’s vision for Turkey’s leadership role.  No wonder then that the Turkish prime minister is angry.  If, after all, the largest Arab country rejects Turkey’s model, Ankara’s prospects for regional leadership are greatly diminished.  And unless Turks can be convinced that the Egyptians have no capacity to determine their future and that al Sisi’s intervention was the result of a Zionist-American manipulation, this setback might have domestic political consequences for Erdogan whose supporters have previously called him “the King of the Arab Street.” The coup also revealed the widely differing worldviews of Turks and Egyptians, at least at this particular moment.  For the Turks, subordinating the General Staff to civilian leaders and making it virtually impossible for them to intervene in the political system is critical in creating an environment more conducive to democratic development (though it’s not sufficient as the Turkish case demonstrates).  Many Egyptians, in contrast, regard the military as a savior that rescued their country from chaos and almost certain collapse.  According to this view, Morsi clearly squandered his electoral mandate during his disastrous tenure in the presidency and he was overthrown with the expressed will of millions upon millions of Egyptians who took to the streets.  The military’s intervention, the argument goes, has given Egyptians another chance to reset politics and realize the democratic goals of Tahrir Square.  Needless to say, this account has lost all context, but it is what large numbers of Egyptians seem to believe rather fervently.  I suspect the Turks are correct—coups are not good for democracy—but the important point here is the significant gap between the way Turks and Egyptians view the world. Observers should not expect Egypt-Turkey relations to improve any time soon.  Sure, Erdogan engages in over-heated rhetoric and the Egyptians hold onto a regional status from a by-gone era, but these are manifestations of a deeper problem.  Prime Minister Erdogan’s narrative is deeply unsettling and politically dangerous to Egypt’s current rulers and the return of the Egyptian military and concomitant effort to destroy the Muslim Brotherhood is the AKP’s nightmare.

I first arrived in Turkey on a chilly, gray afternoon in early October 1992.  I had been living in Jerusalem studying Arabic and Hebrew—this was during my Arab-Israeli conflict stage—when the guy with whom I was sharing a flat suggested that we backpack through Turkey during the month that Israel was essentially closed for Jewish holidays.  When we landed in Istanbul, we pulled out a used Lonely Planet, and somehow managed to communicate—Mark, who is now a professor of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech, spoke pretty good German, which helped a bit—to a taxi driver that we wanted to go to the Orient Hostel in Sultanahmet.  We knew nothing about the place, just that it was cheap and sounded decent.  Wistful for my early twenties, whenever I find myself in Sultanahmet, which is pretty rare these days, I take a stroll past the place. That trip has stayed with me like none other.  From the Sumela monastery near Trabzon, the Alps-like hills near Uzungol, the grit of Erzurum, the haunting ruins of Ani, and the Kurdish wedding we unexpectedly attended in Dogubeyazit, to the weirdly severe and austere architecture of Ankara, the amazing caves of Cappadocia, the long walk through the Ilhara Valley, and finally the warm, soft waves of the Mediterranean in the seaside village of Side, I fell for Turkey.  What had started out as a goof turned into a new area of inquiry and interest.  Until then for me Turkey was a country run by a guy named Turgut Ozal of whom President George H. W. Bush seemed to be particularly fond.  It was a big Muslim country that had been the colonial power in the Middle East for 500 years or so, but my interest lay with the Arab world, specifically Palestinians, and their conflict with the Israelis. After I returned to Jerusalem from Turkey toting a Fenerbahce jersey and a large Turkish flag as souvenirs, I began to read about Turkish history and politics.  Books by Bernard Lewis, Kemal Karpat, and Feroz Ahmad were my formal introductions to the country.  It was almost exactly seven years after my backpacking adventure, when the Turkish General Staff succeeded in ending the country’s first experiment with Islamist-led government, that gave me an insight that led to my dissertation and later my first book. I suppose that for as long as I have been working on the Middle East professionally, people might have assumed that I am, and always have been, an Egypt obsessive, but it was Turkey that had an earlier impact on my intellectual development. Besides piquing my curiosity, one of the things that stuck with me all these years was the uncommon kindness of everyone I/we met during those four weeks on the road.  Turks looked after us, made sure we got on the correct bus, took the right dolmus, and helped us find hotels/hostels in out-of-the-way places.  One memorable moment came when Mark and I sat down at a local restaurant the afternoon we arrived in Dogubeyazit.  As we stuffed ourselves silly, a bunch of large men, dressed in black and toting military rifles, sat down next to us.  They looked at us and we looked at them.  We discovered through their broken English that they were Turkish soldiers of some sort (we assumed they were special forces operators) who were fighting the PKK in the nearby mountains.  They made it clear to us—in the nicest way possible for guys with large guns—that we should not leave our hotel after dark.  We appreciated the heads-up and were a bit freaked out that we stupidly stumbled into a war zone, and grabbed the first bus out of town the next morning, to where I do not remember.  Another time when a bus never showed up in a small town where we spent the night, a guy took pity on the two yabanci and drove us to a town where he knew we could find transportation to our next destination.  He refused our efforts to pay him for his trouble. The warm feelings toward Turkey and Turks that I developed in the early 1990s  were only reinforced some years later when my wife and I lived in Ankara for an extended period of time.  I am sorry to say, however, that they have begun to wane. Turkey is endlessly fascinating, but it is no longer fun.  I cherish my friendships with Turks and value my professional relationship with a long list of Turkish academics, journalists, and business leaders, but there is no denying any longer the fact that the environment for someone like me has become downright hostile. For the better part of the last three years, it seems that every time I write about Turkey, I am subjected to a stream of disturbing and conspiracy-laden criticism that almost always concludes that my arguments about Turkey’s eroding strategic position in the Middle East or the illiberal turn in its domestic politics are not a function of research and careful analysis. Rather, to Turkish officials, journalists, a few academics, and a slew of Twitter trolls, my work reflects my Jewish faith and thus some kind of special attachment to Israel and the Israel lobby that compels me to compromise my professional integrity to smear Turkey for the benefit of the Netanyahu government. Anyone who has spent any time reading my work would know that this is fantasy.  They would also know that I welcome substantive critiques on the merits of my arguments.  In the interest of full disclosure, I am indeed Jewish, though my religion has never been a factor in my work.  I have Israeli friends and I also have three Mexico-born second cousins who, by dint of their American mother’s second marriage to an Israeli national, spent part of their lives growing up in greater Tel Aviv.  One is now a successful artist in Mexico City, another teaches English literature at the University of Georgia, and the other lives near Haifa with his wife and children.  I have also spoken to AIPAC groups. It is easy to dismiss the fairly regular attacks on me and my identity as nonsense and the unfortunate price I pay for working on controversial topics, but it has gone well beyond the bounds of civil discourse and belies Turkish claims to being an inclusive and tolerant society.  I do not know how many times I have heard how the Ottoman Empire accepted the Jews of Spain during the Inquisition and how the remnant of that community remains and thrives in Istanbul and Izmir.  Yet that was a long time ago and from what I understand, Turkish Jews are leaving for the United States, Canada, Europe, and Israel because they no longer feel welcome in their own home. There is no direct evidence that the Justice and Development Party or government officials are engaged in an effort to smear crudely and delegitimize critics of Turkish policy, but they have certainly created an environment in which it has become the norm.  In my own case, it began when I wrote a piece in May 2011 for Foreign Policy.com titled, “Arab Spring, Turkish Fall,” in which I observed that for a variety of structural, historical, and political factors, Turkey was unlikely to lead the Middle East in ways that Ankara and its cheerleaders in the West assumed.  Almost immediately I began hearing from friends who relayed to me inquiries from journalists and people in official circles in Ankara asking if I had written such a critical piece because I am Jewish.  Of course, my religious background did not matter when I wrote “Cheering an Islamist Victory” for the Boston Globe in July 2007 after AKP garnered 47 percent of the popular vote in that year’s national elections.  More recently, a Turkish journalist named Kahraman Haliscelik who works for Turkish Radio and Television (TRT) in New York City wondered on Twitter why I was no longer a “friend of Turkey,” suggesting that I was working on behalf of Israel. Until now, I have chosen to ignore these creepy slurs.  Why bother giving this kind of stuff credence? Yet in the last six months, something has changed.  Turkish political discourse is darker and the attacks on foreign observers of Turkish politics have become relentless.  During the Gezi Park protests, the thuggish mayor of Ankara, Melih Gokcek, accused a BBC reporter of Turkish origin of being a traitor because she was reporting on the brutal crackdown on demonstrators in his city.  Recently, a Dutch journalist named Bram Vermeulen, was informed that his press card was not renewed and that he would not be permitted back into Turkey after his current visa expires, apparently in revenge for his reporting on Turkey’s recent tumult.  The Gezi Park protests represent an important point of departure for the AKP establishments and its supporters. Rather than a cause for introspection about why so many Turks—though not a majority by any means—are angry at their government, the ruling party and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan cynically framed the narrative in a way that places blame for Turkey’s political turbulence on outsiders seeking to bring the country to its knees.  The fact that they have been successful speaks to the continuing trauma of the post-WWI period when foreigners—the British, Greeks, French, and Italians—did actually seek to carve up Anatolia.  As a result, a depressingly large number of Turks blamed CNN, the BBC, the “interest rate lobby,” “Zionists,” the American Enterprise Institute, and Michael Rubin for the events surrounding Gezi. In reality the outrage on the streets of Istanbul and Ankara this past summer had nothing to do with foreigners, but that did not stop a veritable army of AKP’s followers, government ministers, and a variety of bootlickers from questioning the integrity of those of us who were telling the world what was happening around them.  Among the worst was Nasuhi Gungor, the head of TRT’s Turkish-language service.  Gungor poses as a journalist, but is little more than a propagandist for the Justice and Development Party.  When I was dodging teargas on Istiklal Cadessi on the night of June 15, 2013, he tweeted: “@stevenacook is a [sic] islamophobic zionist hanging around Istiklal. If anybody identify him be careful about provocations!” This was clearly an effort to intimidate me.  It did not have the desired effect, but it unleashed what seemed like thousands of Twitter trolls hurling the worst kind of invective.  Another pathetic and disturbing display came from Edibe Sozen, a former AKP deputy and professor of sociology at Marmara University.  Over Twitter she conveyed an unrelenting paranoia wanting to know why I was in Turkey, who sent me, and what my mission was. Perhaps the most grotesque distortion of what it means to be a journalist in contemporary Turkey came more recently in the pro-AKP newspaper Yeni Safak thanks to someone named Yakup Kocaman.  On October 21 he published a front page story alleging that David Ignatius, the Council on Foreign Relations, Raytheon and I fabricated a story about Turkey blowing an Israeli spy ring in Iran because Raytheon was unhappy that it lost a contract with the Turkish military for air supply defense missiles to a Chinese firm. And, also I am a “neocon,” which in current Turkish discourse is a synonym for “Jew.” The only one doing any fabricating was Kocaman.  There is no record that Kocaman ever called my office, called the communications department at CFR, spoke to anyone in the executive office at CFR, or even bothered to read what my co-author, Michael Koplow, and I actually wrote about David Ignatius’s explosive allegations in the Washington Post on October 16. In the interest of full disclosure, in my ten years at CFR, I have met David Ignatius a handful of times during which it became clear that we don’t agree on very much about the Middle East, I do not know anyone from Raytheon, and CFR is a non-partisan, non-profit, independent membership organization and think tank.  It is important to point out that Kocaman is making serious allegations against an organization that has hosted President Abdullah Gul, Prime Minister Erdogan, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, Deputy Prime Minister for the Economy Ali Babacan, Minister for EU Affairs Egemen Bagis, and various AKP parliamentarians. Kocaman is clearly a fraud, but of course, this did not stop other parts of the Turkish press.  Ferhat Unlu of Sabah followed Kocaman with his own rambling article blowing the cover on Turkey’s “opponents” in Washington.  This would not be worth much in the way of comment, but for the fact that while actual professional journalists in Turkey—of which there are many—cower in the corner for fear of being fired for criticizing the government, people like Gungor, Kocaman, Unlu, and Haliscelik  frame the terms of debate.  Needless to say, this is unhealthy for Turkey’s democratic development. Turks are fond of saying that “good friends speak bitterly to good friends.”  It’s a very nice aphorism, but it is not true.  Turks only like it one way.  If you dare offer a critique of Turkish politics, supporters of the government will attack you, your professional ethics, your employer, and your very identity.  A sad state of affairs.      

Mai Shams El-Din looks at clashes between the military and the Muslim Brotherhood from the angle of al-Azhar, where the student body supports the Brotherhood but the leadership allies with the state. Where would the 2 million Syrian refugees, along with the 5 million Syrians who have been internally displaced, fit in the United States? This interactive shows the extent of the humanitarian crisis in Syria. Zachary Keck tells readers why Turkey is buying Chinese missile systems.

Samia Errazzouki examines Morocco’s new cabinet, and argues that authoritarian politics remains the dominant trend in the country. Maya Gebeily discusses the irony of Saudi Arabia’s decision to sit out its turn on the UN Security Council. Syria Deeply does a Q&A with analyst Gokhan Bacik, exploring the question of whether Turkey’s stance on Syria is shifting.

I co-authored this piece with my friend and colleague, Michael Koplow, author of the blog Ottomans and Zionists. Ehud Barak’s political instincts have never been great, but his security instincts are generally top-notch. So when he warned in 2010 that any intelligence information shared with Turkey might be passed on to Iran, his fears may not have been completely unfounded. David Ignatius reported yesterday that in 2012, Turkey deliberately blew the cover of ten Iranians who were working as Israeli agents and exposed their identities to the Iranian government. Ignatius also wrote that in the wake of the incident, which was obviously a large intelligence setback for efforts to halt Iran’s nuclear program, the United States did not protest directly to Turkey and instead walled off intelligence issues from broader policymaking. There are lots of questions that Ignatius’s report raises, and it will take some time to parse them out and figure out the answers. First and foremost is the report completely accurate? This is a very big deal if true, and it casts increasingly cool U.S. behavior toward Turkey over the past year in a more interesting light, yet it also makes it puzzling to figure out how something like this was kept quiet. Likewise, it is tough to see how and why the United States would separate intelligence issues from larger policy issues in the wake of such a huge betrayal of an important U.S. intelligence ally. Especially when such duplicity amounts to a purposeful blow to joint American-Israeli aims to slow down Iran’s nuclear program. Next, who are the sources for this story, and why leak the story now? If this new information came from the United States, then it indicates that someone has finally had it with Turkey turning a blind eye to (if not actively enabling) a growing al Qaeda presence in Syria, and anger over Turkey’s deal to buy a missile defense system from a Chinese firm already under sanctions rather than from NATO. The flip side to this is that if it is a U.S. government source fed up with Turkish behavior, it also does not cast the United States in a great light given the lack of an official reaction following Turkey’s exposure of Israeli intelligence assets. If the leak came from the Israeli side, then the timing is strange since there would have been little reason to hold this information until now, as Israeli-Turkish relations were at their absolute low point. The only plausible reason for Israel to leak this now would be if it came from someone who is disenchanted with Bibi Netanyahu’s efforts to patch things up with Turkey, as these allegations are deeply embarrassing in light of the Mavi Marmara apology. Questions aside, and assuming that the veracity of the report– and so far no American or Israeli official has publicly denied it – the bigger picture here is not the future of Israel-Turkey ties, but how the United States views Turkey. It is important to remember that from its earliest days the Obama administration sought to rebuild and strengthen ties with Ankara during a particularly difficult period that coincided with the American occupation of Iraq and the return of PKK terrorism. The Turks got a presidential visit and speech to the Grand National Assembly, Obama punted on his promise to recognize the Armenian genocide, and more broadly brought a new energy and urgency to a partnership that American officials hoped would work to achieve common goals in a swath of the globe from the Balkans to Central Asia. What started off well-enough quickly ran into trouble. By the spring of 2010, the Turks had negotiated a separate nuclear deal with Iran (and the Brazilians) that the administration claimed it had not authorized and voted against additional UN Security Council sanctions on Tehran.  Then the Mavi Marmara incident happened, further complicating Washington’s relations with both Ankara and Jerusalem.  A “reset” of sorts occurred on the sidelines of the September 2010 G-20 summit in Toronto with a meeting in which President Obama and Prime Minister Erdogan talked tough with each other and cleared the air, setting the stage for what Turkish officials like to describe as a “golden age” in relations.  Even so, despite the apparent mutual respect—even friendship—between President Obama and Prime Minister Erdogan, there was a sense that the Turks did not share interests and goals as much as advertised.  For example, there was Erdogan’s visit to Tehran in June 2010 when he implicitly justified Iran’s nuclear program. There were also difficult negotiations over a NATO early warning radar system on Turkish territory and after Ankara finally agreed, last minute needless wrangling over Israeli access to the data from the system . More recently, Turkey has spurned its NATO allies in order to build a missile defense system with China.  Ankara has also been enormously unhelpful on Syria, even working at cross-purposes against current U.S. aims.  The Turks have complicated efforts to solve the political crisis in Egypt by insisting that deposed President Mohammed Morsi be returned to office and thus only further destabilizing Egyptian politics.  In addition, these new revelations (along with ongoing efforts to get around sanctions on Iranian oil and gas) make it clear that Turkey has been actively assisting Iran in flouting American attempts to set back Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The state-owned Halk Bank was, until recently, involved in clearing financial transactions for Iranian counterparts, though Istanbul’s gold traders continue to do a robust business with Iran. And this all comes on top of the general fallout that has ensued as a result of Turkey doing everything in its power to take shots at Israel (which, no matter if some Turkish analysts want to argue that Ankara is more strategically valuable to the U.S. than Jerusalem, is a critical U.S. ally), whether it be absurdly blaming Israel for the coup in Egypt or preventing Israel from participating in NATO forums. Considering Turkey’s record, how can the Obama administration continue to tout Turkey as a “model partner” or even treat it as an ally? Not a single one of its goals for Turkey—anchoring Turkey in NATO and the West; advancing U.S. national security goals such as non-proliferation, counter-terrorism, and promoting democracy; and holding Turkey out a “model” of a secular democracy—have been met. Ignatius’s recent revelation, if true, undermine the first two goals. As for the third, Erdogan’s continuing harsh crackdown on protesters resulting from last summer’s Gezi Park demonstrations, pressure on journalists, efforts to intimidate civil society organizations, and other efforts to silence critics makes Turkey a negative example for countries struggling to build more just and open societies. We have crossed the line of reasonable disagreement and arrived at a point where Turkey is very clearly and very actively working to subvert American aims in the Middle East on a host of issues. That Erdogan and/or his intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, were willing to undermine a broad Western effort to stop Iran’s nuclear development for no other reason than to stick it to Israel should be a wake-up call as to whether the current Turkish government can be trusted as a partner on anything.

Zeinobia from the Egyptian Chronicles argues that Sisi is the new Pharaoh. Hamza Hamouchene asks, “Is Algeria an Anti-Imperialist State?” Nuray Mert gives her opinion on the reasons for lack of democracy in Turkey.

London—I am wiling away time at Heathrow before my onward flight to DC.  I’ve just come in from Hyderabad, the last stop on my Indian odyssey.  The city is a very interesting place.  Hyderabad was never under Britain’s direct rule and the “Princely State of Hyderabad” only became part of the Indian Union in 1948, a year after India’s independence.  Owing to the fact that Hyderabad was under Muslim rule until it was incorporated into India— a little less than half the city’s population of anywhere between 8-9 million people are Muslim—Hyderabad has strong connections to major cities in the Islamic  world including Mecca, Medina, Istanbul, Jerusalem, and Cairo.  I had not realized that there was an Egypt connection, but apparently more than a few Hyderabadi imams have been trained at al Azhar. Yet the interest in Egypt went beyond purely religious grounds. After almost three weeks, the conversations with my Indian interlocutors began to take on a familiar pattern starting with Syria and the prospects for American intervention, from there to Palestine and Israel, and winding up with Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.  Every now and again, someone who was aware of my deep and abiding interest in Egyptian political history would throw in a question about Egypt, but his or her interest was a polite and passing one.  Not so in Hyderabad.  There was a keen understanding about current developments in Cairo there.  The conversation started out typically enough with a query about why the United States allegedly supported the July 3rd coup.  I explained that many Egyptians were convinced that the United States was a patron of the Muslim Brothers rather than the officers.  There was also profound disbelief on the Indian side when I explained that under the high-stakes political circumstances in Egypt, Washington actually had very little influence over Major-General Abdel Fattah al Sisi. Speaking of al Sisi, my Hyderabadi friends believed that he and his fellow officers made a grave mistake by moving against Mohammed Morsi on July 3rd.  In an argument that quite a few observers have made previously, the Hyderabadis believed that if the military wanted to undermine the Brothers, it should have allowed them to stand for elections, which they were sure to lose.  In a withering critique of the Muslim Brotherhood and Mohammed Morsi, my interlocutors described a group that is arrogant, undemocratic, and in too much of a hurry to transform the country.  Like many others, my Indian friends discounted the Brothers’ efforts to make it difficult for anyone to contest future elections, which is an important factor in the chain of events that led many Egyptians to call for the military’s intervention.  In any event, those in Hyderabad did not have any more insight into what was going to happen in Egypt than anyone else, but they were confident that the Brothers would make a comeback, if only because al Sisi and company have made them martyrs. The other major topic of discussion among some of the Hyderabadis with whom I spoke was Turkey.  I am not sure if they read my bio and were engaging me on the issues that I know best, but like the discussion of Egypt, these guys were up-to-date on Turkey.  Not surprisingly, they regarded Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as the most successful leader in the Muslim world. Yet they wondered if he could maintain his stature.  After all, they pointed out, a primary reason for Erdogan’s success has been Turkey’s economic success.  Yet as the Turkish economy slows (growth in 2012 slowed to 2.2% down from 8.5% in 2011, and is expected to improve only slightly in 2013) they suggested that the Erdogan mystique might be in trouble. I could not have said it better myself. DC bound….

Daniel Lakin discusses how the Arab Spring has all but prevented any clear leader from emerging in the Middle East. Gershom Gorenberg argues that the United States can help in Syria’s crisis by supplying money and visas to refugees. Bulent Kenes, writing for Today’s Zaman, claims that Turkey lacks one of the fundamental aspects of a democracy: tolerance for diversity.

Over this past weekend one of my Economist-devouring, Washington Post-reading, New York Times-gobbling buddies who does not work in the field of foreign affairs asked me, “Hey, what’s up with Erdogan and the Turks?”  I’ve been asked this question so many times this summer by so many people that I have lost count.  It’s been a long summer in Turkey, starting in May with the Gezi Park protests that revealed a depth of anger toward Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which seemed to surprise the Turkish leadership.  Then in early August there were the Ergenekon verdicts, which brought to a close a five year investigation and trial in an alleged plot to undermine Erdogan and his government.  The trials may be over (excluding appeals), but the controversy around Ergenekon continues.  In between these two bookends have been the deteriorating situation in Syria, the coup in Egypt, a slowing economy, and the beginning of a peace process with the Kurdistan Workers Party.  The combined pressure of all of the events seems to have gotten to the prime minister who has been bullying domestic critics, engaging in conspiracies about “interest rate lobbies” intent on bringing down the Turkish economy, and generally finger-pointing at everyone but himself for the difficulties Turkey now confronts at home and abroad. As the Gezi Park-inspired protests have faded somewhat, the July 3 military intervention in Egypt that brought down Mohammed Morsi seems to be the issue that is currently consuming Prime Minister Erdogan.  In language that was once reserved only for Israelis, the Turkish political elite is lashing out at the Egyptians.  Prime Minister Erdogan is alone among world leaders in advocating forcefully on behalf of the Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi. He has blamed the coup on the Israelis and the Gulf countries while wrecking Ankara’s ties with Egypt as well as blowing Turkish soft power. It would be a logical fallacy to suggest that because Erdogan is virtually alone (the Ecuadoreans recalled their ambassador in Cairo over the coup) in this issue that he is thus wrong, but the Turkish leader tends to have trouble with context, though more about that down below.  Regime mouthpieces like Taha Ozhan of the unofficially AKP-affiliated advocacy organization/think tank, SETA Foundation, have gone so far as to link Major General Abdelfattah al Sisi with Bashar al Assad in some sort of new axis of evil.  In the end, however, Egypt’s present tribulations are, according to Ozhan, the fault of the United States.  What is new?  On the face of it, Ozhan’s missive should not be taken seriously, but for the fact that it reflects the dominant political thinking within the AKP.  There are any number of shills who are all too willing to explain away the convulsions in and around Turkey as some sort of “Zionist-provocateur, interest rate lobby, American conspiracy against Muslim democrats,” rather than a serious examination of the pressures, interests, and issues that have led to a range of dramatic developments in the Middle East recently. The Turks, it seems, are the last Orientalists. So why have the Turks reacted this way?  Someone recently suggested—I can’t remember where—that perhaps Erdogan’s overwrought response to Egypt, which seems to serve no purpose other than alienating yet another major Middle Eastern country, was the result of an allegedly undisclosed health problem. This is the same kind of silliness some people used to explain Vice President Dick Cheney’s behavior during the Bush years.  Allegedly the vice president’s heart condition made him do it.  A more analytically sound argument for the behavior of the Turkish prime minister and his minions revolves around three issues: 1)      It should not be a surprise that Prime Minister Erdogan would react strongly and negatively to a coup d’état.  Turkey’s history of military interventions is hardly worth repeating, but suffice it to say that in the coups of 1960, 1971, 1980, and 1997 political forces representing pious Muslims suffered.  The Turkish military was responsible for the development of a political system that was geared specifically to prevent the accumulation of Kurdish, Islamist, and at one time communist political power.  The result was that many, especially in the West, saw the Turkish armed forces as a “moderating force” that ensured what people considered a democratic system.  To Islamists, however, the military enforced a Jacobin-like secularism that repressed them because they took their religion seriously and wanted to live in a truly secular system where government did not control religion, but rather protected religious rights.  Even as Erdogan has become the sun around which Turkish politics revolves, bringing the military to heel, presiding over an economic boom, and bringing new prestige and influence to Turkey, he remains deeply concerned about the next coup even if circumstances suggest it is unlikely to happen.  Against the backdrop of the Turkish Republic’s history, Erdogan could not possibly let al Sisi’s coup go.  He is correct that there is nothing democratic about the Egyptian military’s actions, but the Turkish prime minister seems to have willfully overlooked the fact that Mohammed Morsi and the Muslim Brothers hardly distinguished themselves as democrats over the course of the last year.  It was clear from what the Brotherhood-dominated Shura Council was doing that Morsi and the Guidance Office were seeking to institutionalize the power of their organization with little regard for the principles of democratic politics.  Erdogan simply refuses to see the Egyptian dilemma or recognize that the Brothers had no intention of forging a democratic system. 2)      As I have written elsewhere on any number of occasions, Tayyip Erdogan is an extraordinary politician.  He has an innate capability to connect with the average Turk and the vital center of the electorate.  Sure he’s been in power for a decade and seems isolated from society, but he is still the guy from Kasımpaşa.  When Erdogan rails against interest rate lobbies, blames foreign hands, blasts Gulf leaders, assails Egyptian generals, and ostentatiously weeps over Palestinian blood, he is connecting with his constituency.  Everything the prime minister does is directly related to domestic politics so it does not matter that his rhetoric contributes to the erosion of Turkey’s strategic position in the region, because this type of rhetoric resonates deeply.  The domestic turbulence as a result of the Gezi protests, in particular, has given Erdogan an opportunity to play on Turkish sensitivities about the predatory role of external powers.  These ideas crystallized—for good reason—in the immediate post WWI era, but remain potent almost a century later.  The tough rhetoric also insulates Erdogan from setbacks because he has framed the terms of debate in a way that no matter what happens to the economy, it is not his or his government’s fault, but rather the responsibility of foreign bankers.  In an unintended way, Turkey’s troubles may actually help Erdogan politically. 3)      Erdogan’s visceral response to what has happened to Morsi is a function of the Turkish leader’s own (more successful) efforts to do what the former Egyptian president tried.  If you strip away the lore of a politically and economically liberalizing Turkey, the AKP has done what the Egyptian armed forces did not permit the Muslim Brotherhood to do.  The Justice and Development Party has consolidated its power and in the process has made it exceedingly difficult to challenge the party in the formal political arena.  The party’s members and their allies have used the last decade to exploit economic opportunities that are recycled through the political system, further institutionalizing the power of the party.  Coming on the heels of the Gezi protests, Erdogan cannot allow anyone to draw parallels, however abstract, between the dynamics that led to the coup in Egypt and the political-economic circumstances that prevail in Turkey.  This is not to suggest that Turkey is ripe for a coup or even that the Turkish military could pull one off, but rather that the illiberal drift in Turkish politics renders the country’s political environment more like Egypt than, say, any of Ankara’s Western partners. The end result is a Turkey that is more insular, less democratic, and pricklier than at any time during Erdogan’s tenure.  In other words, the new Turkey looks a lot like the old one.

Presenting the Rouhani Meter, taken after the Egyptian Morsi Meter, which evaluates the new Iranian president’s first one hundred days in office. Mada Masr’s overview of the criteria for the composition of the committee tasked with amending Egypt’s 2012 constitution. A list of the nineteen concluding verdicts of the Ergenekon case handed down in Istanbul on August 5, 2013.