A key country between Europe and Asia, Turkey has been ruled by Recep Tayyip Erdogan for more than 20 years.
Introduction
A key country between Europe and Asia, Turkey has been ruled by Recep Tayyip Erdogan for more than 20 years.
Domestically, despite the 2022 agreement with the PKK, the situation remains complex with the Kurds and, more generally, with ethnic and religious minorities, and the rule of law is increasingly under threat, as judges and journalists observe on a daily basis.
In its traditional sphere of influence in the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East, Turkey is developing a suspicious imperialism, the latest developments of which in Syria are more than worrying.
Finally, as NATO's second largest army after the United States, Turkey wishes to develop an ambitious diplomatic role on the world stage, which often requires it to overcome numerous contradictions.
Speakers
Bülent Kenes, Turkish journalist, Executive Director of the European Centre for Populism Studies
Let me begin by briefly situating my remarks in a broader historical perspective, because without that context it is difficult to make sense of Turkey’s current trajectory.
Turkey has never, at any point in its history, possessed a fully consolidated democracy or a genuine rule of law. When we speak of “Turkish democracy,” what we most often mean is an uneven and fragile process of democratisation. This process has been shaped more by external pressures than by internal dynamics. From the Ottoman period to the present day, democracy, the rule of law, transparency, accountability, and fundamental rights and freedoms—such as freedom of the press and expression and equality before the law—have largely come onto the agenda as a result of external conditions, demands, and international pressures.
The fact that these processes have not been autochthonous or authentic has led to their failure to be internalised by broad segments of the political, administrative, and economic elites—most notably the security elites.
On the contrary, these values have often encountered open or implicit opposition. Indeed, since the declaration of constitutional monarchy in 1876, these fragile democratisation initiatives have been interrupted repeatedly; these interruptions have most often taken the form of military interventions and coups. Military interventions, with the support not only of state and business elites but also of significant segments of society, have constructed a tutelary order capable of continuously intervening in politics and social life.
Although it may appear as a major contradiction, I cannot refrain from pointing to a striking fact. Despite all these coups and interruptions, Turkey long preserved—at least at the level of discourse and appearance—a Western and European orientation. The Turks’ orientation toward the West is not historically a new phenomenon. It is almost an inclination embedded in their genetic code. Beginning from very early periods in history, the migrations of Turkic tribes were predominantly westward; their conquests and areas of expansion likewise primarily targeted the European geography. Over the past two centuries, the source of inspiration in the search for reform, prosperity, modernisation, and democratisation has again been the West.
So much so that until very recently, in textbooks and in political and social discourse, “Westernisation” was used almost interchangeably with “modernisation.” In short, what I would like to say is this: both in positive and negative terms, until the very recent past, Turkey’s fundamental orientation has essentially been toward the West.
At this point, I would like to note that these introductory assessments I have shared so far are, in fact, largely a repetition of arguments I have made previously. Indeed, I articulated these same arguments at a panel held in the House of Commons in 2009, moderated by Jeremy Corbyn, and subsequently at another panel organised as part of the Liberal Democrat Conference in Birmingham in March 2010. While I sincerely hope that these observations still retain their validity within a broad historical framework, it is nevertheless necessary to state clearly that today we are facing a qualitatively different Turkey—one whose strategic, political, and normative orientations have largely shifted away from the West and toward the Middle East and the East.
In 2001, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan founded the AKP together with figures drawn from a relatively broad political spectrum, publicly conveying the message that they had “taken off the shirt of political Islam.” During the party’s first two terms in power, liberal and democratic reforms of a kind rarely seen in Turkey’s political history were implemented. This process brought Turkey closer to the West and was crowned in 2005 with the formal launch of accession negotiations with the European Union.
The momentum generated by the EU accession perspective accelerated reforms; the economy was revitalised, foreign direct investment increased, and a strong sense of hope for the future emerged, particularly among younger generations. Let us recall those years: Turkey was being described internationally as a “rising star.” To be sure, structural problems such as the Kurdish issue, Alevi rights, the situation of non-Muslim minorities, and the headscarf question had not been fully resolved; nevertheless, for the first time in a long while, the country gave the impression that it was moving in the right direction.
During this period, Turkey’s international standing increased markedly. Within the framework of the “zero problems with neighbours” policy, more constructive relations were being developed with Cyprus, in the Aegean, and with neighbouring countries, while Turkey positioned itself as an actor exporting stability to both nearby and distant regions through its roles as mediator and facilitator. Despite highly alarming developments that coincided with this period—such as the liquidation of major media groups like Uzan, Sabah, and Çukurova, and the transfer of their media assets, along with other companies, to circles close to the government—the overall picture continued to foster the perception that the country was on a broadly positive trajectory.
Indeed, this process culminated in the AKP receiving the support of nearly 50 percent of the electorate in the June 2011 elections. However, looking back today, I think we must openly acknowledge the following reality: we were seriously late in recognizing that this very process was, in fact, laying the groundwork that would, in a very short time, enable Erdoğan to establish a one-man regime.
This delay was not limited to liberal and social democratic intellectuals, academics, and journalists in Turkey. The same blindness was largely present among political and institutional actors in the West as well. Democratic circles, both in Turkey and internationally, had been swept up by the powerful aura created by the discourse of democratisation and reform. This atmosphere made it more difficult to assess developments with critical distance.
Yet, when we look back from where we stand today, we can clearly see that the foundational stones of the authoritarian Erdoğan regime that now dominates Turkey were laid precisely during this period. Reforms pursued under the banner of democratisation produced genuine advances on the one hand, while on the other hand enabling the gradual dismantling of institutional checks and balances by the ruling power. Unfortunately, we failed to identify this dual process—that is, the simultaneous progression of reform and the concentration of power—in a timely and sufficiently forceful manner.
At that time, I too—and I must say this today with complete candour—was among those who believed that the Turkish case demonstrated the possibility of Islam and democracy complying and coexisting. I argued that Turkey, as a Muslim, secular, democratic, and pluralistic state governed by the rule of law, could serve as a unique bridge between the West and the East, thanks both to its geopolitical position and its socio-cultural permeability.
In particular, I maintained that Turkey could assume an exceptional carrier role in transferring the norms, values, and institutions of the European Union to the Balkans, the Caucasus, the Broader Middle East, and Africa. I believed that the walls of prejudice that many European countries have struggled to overcome in these regions due to their colonial pasts could be more easily breached through an actor like Turkey, which was relatively less burdened in this respect.
I strongly emphasised that Turkey—inasmuch as it oriented itself toward the West and the European Union and thereby became a source of inspiration for Muslim societies—should be supported as a bridge for carrying European values into these regions. Frankly, this was not only my perception at the time; it was also largely shared by many domestic and international intellectual circles.
For instance, frequently cited indices produced by organisations such as Freedom House, Transparency International, Reporters Without Borders, and Amnesty International, as well as comparative academic studies, also clearly reinforced this positive perception of Turkey at the time. Turkey was widely viewed as a rising country in terms of its democratic performance.
However, looking back today, I believe that the real rupture occurred with the June 2011 elections. At that point, we can see that Erdoğan—under the influence of radical Islamist theological reference circles, particularly figures such as Hayrettin Karaman—effectively abandoned the claim he had publicly made in 2001 that he had “taken off the shirt of political Islam.” In a sense, he returned to the very radical Islamist position he had claimed to have left behind; there was, so to speak, a reversion to radical Islamist “factory settings.”
From 2011 onward, Erdoğan abandoned the role of a democratic and libertarian leader. If we recall his oft-quoted remark from the 1990s—“Democracy is like a tram; you ride it, and you get off when you reach the appropriate stop”—it would not be an exaggeration to say that in 2011 Erdoğan decided he had reached the “appropriate stop” and stepped off the democracy tram.
Nor can we ignore the structural conditions that made this choice possible. By that time, the military’s tutelary role over politics had largely been dismantled. Following the 2010 referendum, the judiciary was removed from military tutelage but had, this time, largely come under the influence of Erdoğan and the AKP. A strong pro-Erdoğan hegemony had been established in the media and in what was presented as civil society. Business circles close to Erdoğan had, over the previous decade, accumulated extraordinary economic and political power. And the nearly 50 percent of the vote secured in the 2011 elections effectively opened up an unobstructed highway before Erdoğan.
We had hoped that this highway would be used to advance further democratic reforms, to strengthen the European Union accession perspective, and to move decisively toward full EU membership for Turkey. Instead, Erdoğan chose the opposite direction. He viewed both the concentration of power at his hands and the Arab Uprisings unfolding at the same time as an opportunity to construct a strongman role positioning himself at the centre not only of Turkey but of the entire Islamic world. The hubris produced by this accumulation of power further reinforced this perception.
From 2011 onward, Erdoğan began openly taking steps to establish a one-man regime—first within his party, and then across the country. Democratic circles that had supported him during his first two terms, and even in the 2011 elections, began to realize that Erdoğan had abandoned the EU perspective and the democratization agenda, yet they hesitated to withdraw their support. At this point, I and the newspaper I founded, Today’s Zaman, together with Taraf, constituted notable exceptions.
My newspaper and I had strongly supported Erdoğan during his reformist phase—his efforts toward democratisation, EU membership, the “zero problems with neighbours” policy, and integration into the global economy. Of course, we had many criticisms; however, those criticisms did not outweigh the elements we believed deserved support. Yet as Erdoğan increasingly diverged from the democratic path after 2011, our criticisms also intensified. Before long, we found ourselves struggling to keep up with the volume of developments that warranted criticism, while being unable to identify almost anything left to support.
During this period, Erdoğan’s rhetoric and actions completely detached from the language and conduct expected of a leader of a country aspiring to EU membership. In relation to Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, and especially Syria, he moved away from a trajectory compatible with democratic leadership and instead adopted a sectarian, radical Islamist, jihadist, and proxy-war-based strategy characteristic of the Middle East. In Syria and Iraq, he did not refrain from supporting radical Islamist terror organisations—or from attempting to create them where they did not already exist. In doing so, he placed Turkey at the very centre of regional proxy wars.
Media reports have since reflected that al-Qaeda and ISIS-like jihadist terror organisations received covert or overt support. Turkey was transformed into a transit corridor for global jihadist networks; militants were trained, the wounded were treated, and thousands of trucks carrying weapons, ammunition, and logistical supplies were sent across the border. To finance these illegal and illegitimate activities, corruption and irregularities reached unprecedented levels.
The excessively harsh response to the Gezi Park protests in June 2013 crystallised the repressive character of the Erdoğan regime with striking clarity. Legitimate, environmental, and peaceful demands were portrayed as a coup attempt. This was followed by the December 2013 corruption investigations. Erdoğan suppressed these proceedings—based on concrete evidence—through force and pressure, branding them as a “coup.” The judiciary was instrumentalised, and anyone perceived as an opponent was turned into a target.
My newspaper and I, too, were subjected to dozens of investigations, detentions, and lawsuits during this period. I, as editor-in-chief, began spending several days a week at police stations, prosecutors’ offices, or courtrooms.
Finally, following the controversial July 15, 2016 coup attempt, Erdoğan found the opportunity to construct—at lightning speed—the one-man regime he had been aiming for from the very beginning. More than fifteen universities, thousands of schools, and approximately 200 media outlets were shut down by a single decree. Hundreds of thousands of public servants, members of the judiciary, and academics were dismissed from their positions; terror investigations were launched against millions of people; and hundreds of thousands were detained or imprisoned. Dozens of elected Kurdish mayors have been imprisoned, with government-appointed so-called “trustees” installed in their place. Erdoğan’s political rivals—including former presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu—have also been imprisoned. Today, the regime treats the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the founding party of the Turkish Republic, as if it were a terrorist organisation. This system of repression not only persists but has become a defining feature of the current political order.
In short, what has unfolded since 2011 shows us the following: the authoritarian regime in Turkey was not established overnight. On the contrary, it was built step by step by Erdoğan, often in full view of all of us, eventually resulting in a populist authoritarian regime that later served as a source of inspiration and a model for populist radical-right figures across Europe such as Viktor Orbán in Hungary.
When we turn to the security dimension, it is necessary to recall one point very clearly: NATO’s purpose of establishment and its raison d’être are defined with great clarity in the Alliance’s founding documents. Yet today, as is also clearly reflected in international indices, where does Turkey under the Erdoğan regime stand within this framework? The issue has long since gone beyond the question of whether Turkey is a reliable partner for transatlantic security. When the founding principles are taken as the benchmark, Turkey under Erdoğan’s rule—through the policies it pursues, the threats it generates, and its destabilising actions—has drifted into the position of an actor against which protection is required and, when necessary, resistance must be mounted.
One of the most striking examples of this was observed during the NATO accession processes of Sweden and Finland. In this period, the Erdoğan regime acted almost like a “Trojan horse” for Russia within NATO, choosing to use the NATO platform not to strengthen the Alliance’s collective security, but as a tool of pressure. Even more troublingly, NATO was turned into a platform for exporting authoritarianism and repression to western democracies.
During this process, a series of legal and political changes introduced in Sweden solely to satisfy Erdoğan have caused damage to Swedish democracy—damage that remains the subject of serious debate. This picture shows us very clearly that long before Trump, Erdoğan had repeatedly demonstrated that he is a leader whose commitments as an ally cannot be trusted. What we are witnessing today is not an aberration, but the natural outcome of a trajectory that has been unfolding for a long time.
There is, of course, much more that could be said to illustrate just how repressive and autocratic the Erdoğan regime has become today—from the systematic weaponisation of the judiciary and the near-total eradication of freedom of expression and press, to transnational repression and large-scale international disinformation operations; from support for jihadist terror networks to efforts aimed at influencing and infiltrating Western democracies through so-called Muslim- or migrant-origin political parties, PONGOs,(Party Operated Non-Governmental Organisations) and GONGOs (Government-Operated Non-Governmental Organisations).
Taken together, these developments show that Erdoğan has not only dismantled the achievements of the first nine years of AKP rule—years that did see meaningful progress—but has pushed Turkey into a far worse condition in terms of democracy, fundamental rights and freedoms, transparency, accountability, checks and balances, and the rule of law.
If Turkey’s current credentials were assessed today, it would not qualify for NATO membership. It would not have been accepted as a founding member of the Council of Europe, given its systematic disregard for European Court of Human Rights rulings. Nor would it ever be considered a credible EU candidate, particularly in light of steps such as its withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention.
It is deeply painful to observe that in recent years virtually no meaningful actor—including the European Union—has continued to invest seriously in democracy, the rule of law, or human rights and fundamental freedoms in Turkey. On the contrary, Erdoğan has benefited from substantial internal and external support that has allowed him to further entrench his autocratic rule and make it increasingly resilient to any democratising pressure. Taking advantage of this permissive environment, he has moved beyond mere regime consolidation toward overt dynastic ambitions, openly preparing his son, Bilal Erdoğan, as a potential successor.
Sir Graham Watson, chair, Liberal International British Group
I was for a period, around the turn of the century, particularly in the run-up to the opening of Turkey's candidacy in 2005 a champion of Turkey's membership of the European Union.
And the reason I was a champion is that Turkey has always had, fundamentally a Western orientation.
You can go back to the 1830s, when liberals in the United Kingdom were fighting for democratic reforms, and find that Sultan Mahmoud II was starting to reform Turkey. There were big reforms in 1839. You can go back to the turn of the last century, in the early 1900s, when we had a great Liberal government under Campbell Bannerman, and you can find the Young Turks movement in Turkey forcing the introduction of constitutional reforms in that country.
In the 1950s, Turkey was a multi-party democracy, and, even despite the regular intervention of the military, the attitude was one of Western integration, involvement in NATO, and so forth. And so, it seems to me that we have a lot in common, and a lot of shared values, and a lot we can work together for. In recent years, we saw an opening at the beginning of this century for Turkey becoming a member of the European Union. Sadly, it did not happen.
Why did it not happen? Well, I blame, first of all, the Christian Democrats, who were the majority party in the European Union, and particularly the German Christian Democrats, who failed to see that what the AK party represented at that time was not fundamentally different from what the Christian Democrats represented in Germany.
They were religious people broadly. But they were socially progressive and the Germans failed to recognise that Islamic Democrats could be essentially the same as Christian Democrats.
As a result of that, Turkey was spurned by the European Union, and Erdogan started to go off in a different direction. And that different direction took us down a path which we all know well now, but which has taken Turkey quite a long way from democracy.
We are in a situation now, where Turkey could potentially fit within the European Union's Global Gateway programme, it could potentially fit within the European Union's Black Sea Synergy Programme, and it is failing to do any of these because it is choosing not to.
It's not that it is choosing to go closer to the BRICS countries, or to the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, in a decisive move away from Europe. But it appears to lack strategic direction in its world affairs, to treat countries as neighbours rather than allies, and in the case of Russia, it gets the same back in return.
Where are we now? We're in a situation where we have a Cyprus presidency of the European Union for six months, a presidency which has declared itself open to greater cooperation with Turkey, for example, but not only, in finding a solution to the problems which have gone on for far too long on the island of Cyprus, and don't require great imagination to overcome.
We've seen no sign that Turkey is willing to be open to any initiatives. What we've seen instead is a fusion of Islamist and Nationalist discourse in Turkey and a personalisation of foreign policy, in particular, in the way that Trump seems to be personalising America's foreign policy. It's not been a logical progression.
Where are we now? Where does that leave us, or take us?
Well, there is much that could be done. Turkey could help with Europe's security in a world of changing priorities, for example, and thereby enhance its own.
Indeed, recent moves have seen some indications that it will. Turkey has an ageing fleet of F-16s. It's already agreed to replace some of those with Typhoons that it's buying from the United Kingdom.
From where I sit in Edinburgh, there are at least 1,000 jobs within a couple of miles dependent on that kind of cooperation. Turkey is also talking to Germany about possible cooperation on Eurofighters, and so on.
But we are seeing not only a lack of commitment, or an apparent lack of commitment by Turkey, but also a lack, or apparent lack of interest on the European Union side. We ought to be seeing a European Union committed to trying to find areas of joint investment with Turkey, in areas of common interest, like Cyprus and the Black Sea.
We ought to be able to find, or hope to find, a European Union more interested in visa liberalisation or engagement of Turkey in a reformed customs union, which is now needed. Or perhaps in engagement of Turkey within the SAFE framework of defence and military procurement.
We in the United Kingdom cannot criticise this. The United Kingdom itself is not involved in this programme, though thankfully Canada is. People like Mark Carney are talking seriously about what middle powers could be doing and achieving together.
One can conceive of Turkey - under a different government, admittedly - as being one of those middle powers working together to try to stabilise international affairs, to try to return to a world rules-based order.
It might yet happen. In March of 2024, the opposition CHP won the local elections. Of course, this led to Mr. Ekrem Imamoglu being arrested; but that in turn it led to great protests at that time.
Erdogan cannot go on forever, and at some point the opposition will win. And I think we need to be looking at what could happen then. I think it quite ridiculous that Ekrem İmamoğlu has been accused of being a British spy by President Erdogan. As Imamoglu himself said, he might as well be accused of being the person responsible for the burning down of Rome. But we live in the political culture that is currently in Turkey.
I do see opportunities in the near future for much greater cooperation between the European Union and Turkey, and between the United Kingdom and Turkey. But of course, it does require Turkey to return to a democratic path so that we can build a trust-based cooperative relationship, which Turkey needs just as much as the European Union and Britain and the other parts of Western Europe.
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Turkey closed the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus to warships, thereby denying Russia full naval control in the Black Sea.
There are still other areas where we can see this kind of co-operation happening, if we can find the political courage, the institutional creativity and the renewed commitment to democratic development on both sides.
The situation at the moment in Turkey for Democrats is grim. Far too many of our friends are still behind bars in prison. Far too many of our friends in the media are not allowed to publish or are in jail for publishing things critical of the regime. But I am still somehow optimistic that we might see a change in the next 10 years, and the chance to build, once again, a much greater cooperation.
The Liberal Democrat International Security working group presented their policy paper 157 at Spring Conference 2024 and members attending approved.
It can be seen here:
https://www.libdems.org.uk/conference/papers/spring-2024/liberal-values-in-a-dangerous-world
There can be a perception that developing countries undergoing rapid industrialisation are not greatly interested in action against climate change, seeing it as something that threatens their drive to prosperity.