Erdogan: Turkish Hero or Villain?

If normal life is challenging, political life is even more slippery. Power, which often comes with fame and fortune, the adulation and fawning of our fellows, is probably the highest goal of the most ambitious. But like all things it comes with a stiff price, affecting health and relationships, with the inevitable low that comes […]

If normal life is challenging, political life is even more slippery. Power, which often comes with fame and fortune, the adulation and fawning of our fellows, is probably the highest goal of the most ambitious. But like all things it comes with a stiff price, affecting health and relationships, with the inevitable low that comes with its loss. No matter how high and for how long, the mightiest are usually brought back to Earth. Or as someone said, nearly all political careers, usually end up in failure.
This reflection is induced by the attempt to understand the fortunes and failings of one of the most successful politicians of modern times. He comes from a country of legendary sultans, who built an extensive empire on three continents(Asia, Europe and Africa) by keeping millions of soldiers on the march. All the profits and frills from its far-flung provinces were brought to their palaces pleasure gardens on the shores of the Bosphorus, where they lived a life of unimaginable luxury. They had the world at their feet, but few of the Ottoman Sultans lived to ripe old age. Power typically devolved on them in infancy, when an older relative was dispatched by assassins and they were consumed by debauchery or killed by their twenties.
Some western commentators have taken to comparing Turkish president and political supremo, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to the old style Sultans, with cartoons depicting him in rich flowing robes and a turban. True, he walks with the swagger of a born royal and even in a three-piece suit, his normal attire, he has a commanding presence. His “ white palace”, Ak Saray, perched on a hill on the outskirts of Ankara, the capital, has 1,000 rooms and is bigger than the White House or Kremlin.
But the man has very humble background and amazing common touch. His father worked as a coastguard on Turkey’s Black Sea. As a teenager, young Erdogan sold lemonade and sesame buns on the streets of Istanbul’s rougher districts to earn extra cash. He managed to attend university, but gravitated to playing professional football. It was his meeting with Necmettin Erbakan, the country’s first Islamist party leader and prime minister, while still a student, that altered the course of his life.
Erbakan was quickly toppled by the military, which like other Turkish elite, was suspicious of his Islamic agenda. By then mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan was also jailed by the military for four months for reading a poem in public, which was considered religiously inciting. It included the lines: “ The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers”. The real soldiers did not like it and after removing Erbakan and his group from power in 1998, his Welfare Party was banned from politics.
The elderly Erbakan accepted his forced retirement, but the more skillful and assertive Erdogan defied the military by launching a new party, the AKP, which was like the Welfare party in all but name. Appealing to Turkey’s silent Islamic majority, the AKP soon won a solid block in parliament in 2003.  Erdogan became and remained Prime Minister for eleven years. In 2014 he switched to the office of president, but close observers say he has been trying to change that ceremonial office into an executive one.
He has forced out from the party many colleagues that showed discomfort with his push for absolute power. First it was Abdullah Gul, who preceded him as Prime Minister on AKP platform, and from whom he took over as president of the republic. Lately, it was the turn of Ahmet Dovutoglu, who was replaced as Prime Minister by someone more likely to allow Erdogan have his way.
Even his critics acknowledge that Erdogan has done great things in 13 years in power and counting. He owes much of his political success to a decade of economic stability, during which annual growth surged to an average of 4.5%. Under his watch, Turkey has developed into a manufacturing and export powerhouse and a viable candidate of the European Union. His success at the polls stems from delivering on economic prosperity and social well being.
Having won over the middle class and the poor, he boldly took on the Turkish elite, especially the military, that had hitherto wielded veto power on who governed the country. In 2013 Erdogan triumphed over the military, when 17 senior officers were among journalists and secularist politicians jailed for life, convicted of plotting to overthrow the AKP government. Hundreds of officers were detained between 2011-13 and the heads of Turkey’s Army, Navy and Air Force were forced to resign in disgrace. 
On the international scene, ordinary Turks seem to love what someone has called Erdogan’s “combative charisma.” He deals with world, and especially European, leaders in a way that emphasizes that Turkey is no more “ the sick man of Europe”, but either an equal partner or no partner at all. This has redefined Middle Eastern politics, where Ottoman power was rolled back after the First World War, and no country seemed able to stand up to Israel. In one memorable moment during an Aljazeera panel debate, the Turkish president calmly walked out of his Israeli counterpart Shimon Peres, when the later was unapologetic about his country’s murderous policies.
Erdogan’s imperious ways, delightful when applied to the powerful and the arrogant, can seem heavy handed when used on weaker opponents at home. He has had constant brushes with critical journalists. He has used allegations of tax evasion and other misdemeanors to tame media outlets or shut them down. In April this year, Turkey’s biggest newspaper, Zaman, was forced to change management to one more friendly to the president.  Most of the assault on the media was done with the permission of the courts, but that does not change its consequences.
The Zaman intervention seemed part of Erdogan’s falling out with the Gulen movement, led by Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic preacher based in the US, who had been his ally. The newspaper was part of the movement’s vast business empire, that included schools, hospitals and media, in and outside Turkey. Since AKP and the Gulenist appeal to the same Islamic base, this split may well become Erdogan’s Achilles heel.
Right now he seems to stride the Turkish stage like the proverbial colossus, able to get whatever he wants from his party or a faithful electorate. Except for two years in Opposition, he has been a permanent fixture since 1994, Mayor of Istanbul, Prime Minister, President with ceremonial powers and now, many reckon, at the point of changing the rules to assume full control.
It seems pointless to ask men of power to avoid overreach. Like us ordinary mortals, they have their date with destiny. Very often the crunch time happens somewhere near the summit of unstoppable success. It seems Erdogan is close to that point, but no one it seems can help him realise this, not even himself.