Monday, 14 September 2015 09:11

Turkey's Military Rulers

1509NYT-PICSeptember 11, 2015

THE NEW YORK TIMES

Turkey's Military Rulers

By Halil M. Karaveli

GOTHENBURG, Sweden — Many commentators have interpreted the decision of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, to restart the war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., as designed to undo the results of the June 7 general election. The ruling Justice and Development Party, also known as the A.K.P., was deprived of its majority in Parliament when the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, or H.D.P., surged at the polls.

Published in Staff Publications

Svante E. Cornell and M.K. Kaya

Current Trends in Islamist Ideology

http://hudson.org/research/11601-the-naqshbandi-khalidi-order-and-political-islam-in-turkey

In the past two decades, Turkey has emerged on the global scene. It has enjoyed dramatic economic growth that has catapulted it into the exclusive G20 club of major economies; and under the rule of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP), Turkey has enjoyed unprecedented political stability. For the past fifteen years, the AKP has formed a single-party government, a remarkable feat given Turkey’s tumultuous politics.

Published in Staff Publications

Svante E. Cornell

 

 
 
June 10, 2015
 

Turkey must find a way to manage what amounts to a Kurdish revolution. Will it attempt to meet the Kurds halfway, or take a nationalist turn?


 

TAI

On June 7, Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, experienced his first electoral defeat—and a stinging one at that, his Justice and Development party (AKP) losing ten points and its majority in the parliament. This marks the end of Erdogan’s aspirations to rule Turkey single-handedly under a new, presidential constitution. With this election, the country has avoided slipping into an Islamist-Putinesque strongman rule but still faces many serious challenges. The first is handling Erdogan’s inexorable demise. Erdogan has little hope of reversing his slide, but he will not step aside easily. Turkey will also have to manage what was essentially a Kurdish revolution. The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) more than doubled its support and will have a substantial presence in parliament. Will Turkey meet the Kurdish movement halfway and accommodate its demands, or will it take a nationalist turn and push back against the Kurds, with potentially dire consequences?

In the six months that he served as President, Erdogan essentially conducted a test-run of an executive presidency, but without the constitutional mandate for it. He refused to stay out of the day-to-day politics as the Constitution demands, and he chaired cabinet meetings, as well as campaigning overtly for the AKP. Erdogan wagered everything on a presidential system; clearly, the people did not like what they saw, and he lost. His party no longer has a majority in parliament, and any coalition government, even if it includes the AKP, is certain to reduce his influence in day-to-day affairs, including foreign policy. For four years or more, he will be the President in a parliamentary system. A consummate politician, he may yet reinvent himself, but in all likelihood, all he can really be now is a spoiler. It should be noted that one of Erdogan’s legacies is de-institutionalizing decision-making and concentrating it into his own, personal, informal power. Thus, Erdogan continues to have loyalists across the state bureaucracy, and at least for some time, he will be able to mobilize them to serve his goals.

Ironically, this downfall was his own doing. In early 2014, Erdogan faced a choice: remain Prime Minister, or seek the Presidency. His original plan, devised in 2010, had been to first change the constitution to a presidential system, then have himself elected President. But he spent 2011 consumed by health concerns, including what is assumed to be two cancer operations, and 2012 and 2013 were wasted in the intra-Islamic struggle with the Fethullah Gülen movement. The Gezi Park uprising of summer 2013 and the massive corruption allegations against his government later that year also prevented the launch of a new constitution—not least because parts of the AKP’s own parliamentary group opposed a presidential system. Against this background, the safe option would have been to remain Prime Minister and seek a fourth term. True, AKP by-laws limited office-holders to three terms, but Erdogan could easily have changed them. He remained popular, and could simply have cited a need to respond to popular demands. Had he chosen this route, he would almost certainly have retained his majority, and thus remained Turkey’s unchallenged strongman today. But power was not enough: he wanted absolute power.

In August 2014, Turks still gave him the benefit of the doubt: he managed to get elected President with 52 percent of the vote against two opposition candidates. (One of these was the young rising star of Turkish politics, HDP leader Selahattin Demirta?, who managed to get 10 percent of the vote, a breakthrough for a Kurdish candidate.) But by this time Erdogan was losing touch with reality. From 2011 onward, he gradually lost the support of key constituencies. Over time, he alienated Turkey’s liberal intelligentsia and descended into a deadly battle with the Gülen movement. Meanwhile, he parted ways with the more pragmatic and pro-European wing of his own party, led by former President Abdullah Gül, who publicly distanced himself from Erdogan’s rhetoric. Eventually, he also alienated many core party stalwarts that helped create the AKP.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was the Kurds. Erdogan had long courted Kurdish voters; in retrospect, his gambit to open peace talks with the PKK was in great part an attempt to gain the Kurdish vote for his presidential ambitions. But events across the Middle East changed the playing field. The creation of a self-ruling Kurdish region in Syria boosted Kurdish aspirations in Turkey as well. In the presidential election, Erdogan failed to win the Kurdish southeast, but he came in a close second to the HDP candidate Selahattin Demirta?, carrying almost 40 percent of the vote there. Then came the ISIS siege of Kobani. Erdogan refused to allow support for the beleaguered Kurds there, and this led to riots in southeastern Turkey that killed more than a hundred people. Only by bringing tanks onto the streets of Diyarbakir and appealing to PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan to calm tensions was Erdogan able to stabilize the situation.

Kobani convinced the Kurds of Turkey that Erdogan supported ISIS over Syria’s Kurds and was willing to let them be slaughtered. While their allegations are likely exaggerated, there is considerable evidence—as a Bipartisan Policy Center report detailed—that Turkey has turned a blind eye to the rise of ISIS, seeing it as a lesser evil to both Bashar al-Assad’s regime and to the Kurdish PYD. This was too much even for Turkey’s more conservative, Islamist Kurds, who had supported the Islamist AKP over the secular, Kurdish nationalist HDP. Tribal chiefs brought their supporters for massive shows of support for the HDP, and on June 7 the electoral consequences were obvious. The AKP was basically wiped out in the southeast of Turkey, capturing just a sixth of the vote there.

Conversely, the big winner of the 2015 election was the pro-Kurdish HDP, which ran on a platform that sought to attract liberal and leftist Turks as well as its Kurdish base. The HDP swept the southeast, but managed to exceed all expectations and capture a full 13 percent of the vote. If the HDP had failed to clear the 10 percent threshold (which, ironically, was designed specifically to keep Kurdish parties out of parliament), then almost all the seats it won in the southeast would have gone to the AKP, the only other party to have a presence there. That could have handed Erdogan the supermajority he needed to enact a new constitution. Aware of this, and for tactical reasons, hundreds of thousands of Turkish voters determined to deny Erdogan that prize voted for the HDP. This probably amounted to a quarter of the party’s vote.

Thus, going forward, Turkey will face political instability in Ankara while dealing with an assertive and emboldened Kurdish movement. Indeed, the HDP will now use its newly found support to demand answers to the questions it has been raising for several years: What is the Turkish state willing to give the Kurds on the issues that matter most to them: decentralization, education in the mother tongue, and the definition of citizenship, currently tied to the concept of “Turkishness” (whereas the HDP seeks a bi-national re-arrangement of the country)?

The AKP deserves credit for lifting the taboo on discussions of the Kurdish issue, and for gradually liberating language laws, among other things. Yet in the several years that negotiations between the AKP and the PKK have been ongoing, the government has failed to publicly (and allegedly even in negotiations) provide concrete proposals for compromises to meet Kurdish demands. This has led the HDP to conclude that Erdogan has simply been stringing the Kurdish movement along. Yet until now, Erdogan and the AKP could lay claim to represent the many Kurds who voted for it. But now, the HDP enjoys the near-total backing of Turkey’s Kurds, and it is therefore unlikely to accept the current state of affairs much longer. Its leaders will certainly raise their demands in the incoming parliament.

Meanwhile, the first challenge for this parliament will be to form a government. A coalition excluding the AKP is unlikely, because it would have to include two polar opposites: the Kurdish nationalist HDP and the Turkish nationalist MHP. As for the AKP, it could form a government with either of the two, or with the center-left Republican People’s Party. Thus, the AKP faces the choice of partnering with fundamentally different political movements.

A year ago, an AKP-HDP coalition would have seemed likely—but that was before Kobani and Erdogan’s sharp nationalist turn. It should be noted that in recent months, a rift opened between Erdogan and the AKP government on the Kurdish peace talks: Erdogan criticized them, while the government appeared determined to continue. Thus, an AKP-HDP coalition glued together by the prospect of a real peace deal is conceivable, but only if the AKP is able to sideline Erdogan from the party. This is a possibility in the longer term, and would be good for Turkish stability. However, most of the AKP parliamentarians are still personally loyal to Erdogan. That is likely to change over time—Erdogan is already described as a liability to the party—but that process will probably take months rather than weeks.

The alternative is a coalition with the right-wing MHP. On paper, this coalition makes the most sense: the AKP and MHP share a similar base, the difference being largely the diverging emphasis between religion and Turkish nationalism. Once Erdogan let the military back in from the cold to fight his rivals in the Gülen movement, he moved in an increasingly nationalist direction. It may thus be more natural for the AKP, especially if Erdogan initially remains informally in charge of the party, to make common cause with the MHP and the military to check and roll back Kurdish nationalism. That, in turn, could prove very dangerous: the riots over Kobani showed just how much of a tinderbox southeastern Turkey is.

The third and final option might seem the most unlikely: an AKP coalition with its very antithesis, the secularist CHP, once created by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. This appears the favorite option of Turkey’s business community. However, it is difficult to see the denominators that could provide a base for a lasting governing coalition. Such an arrangement, like all options on the table, runs the risk of being short-lived; bets are already on regarding how long it will take until early elections are held.

The conventional wisdom is that the Turkish military has been sidelined from politics, but lately, it has reared its head on the Kurdish issue in a public way unseen since the 1990s. The General Staff in August 2014 publicly expressed its displeasure over the peace process; in the case of Kobani, it vociferously resisted any assistance to the beleaguered Kurds. This augured what Halil Karaveli calledan “anti-Kurdish alliance of Erdogan and the generals.” Throughout modern Turkish history, the military has tended to fill any vacuum left by politicians; the crumbling of the AKP’s single-party government could generate exactly that type of vacuum. No one should be surprised if, behind the scenes, the military gradually begins to take on a stronger role, particularly concerning foreign and security policy, and especially the Kurdish issue. Such a role, indeed, might complicate any prospects of an arrangement with the HDP.

Turkey has escaped the prospect of dictatorship, but it will still have to pay the price for Erdogan’s polarizing politics, which have exacerbated ethnic, sectarian and ideological divisions in society. The President himself has been cut down to size, but it remains to be seen how the dynamics between Erdogan and his party develop. Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu was largely sidelined during the electoral campaign; it remains to be seen if he will be able and willing to challenge Erdogan and pull the AKP out from under his shadow. With international markets already concerned about Turkey’s highly leveraged and fragile economy, Turkish leaders will have to tread carefully to avoid political and financial instability. The question is whether they are up to the task.

Svante E. Cornell is director of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program, a Joint Center affiliated with Johns Hopkins University–SAIS and the Institute for Security and Development Policy in Stockholm. He is the publisher of the biweekly Turkey Analyst.

 

Published in Staff Publications

Aliza Marcus [2]Halil Karaveli [3]

 
 
March 27, 2015
 

Imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan’s recent calls [5] for the Kurdish militants to end the armed struggle [6] inside Turkey seemed designed to show that they were on the brink of a peace deal. It didn’t work. The likelihood of a formal peace settlement has never been worse, and for now this may suit both the PKK and the Turkish government.

Published in Staff Publications
Sunday, 08 February 2015 20:32

Understanding Turkey's Tilt

RTETurkey has never been an easy ally for the United States.The key question for American policymakers is whether dealing with Turkey today is fundamentally different than it has been in the past. In the Journal of International Security Affairs, Svante E. Cornell argues Turkey has indeed changed in ways that cause fundamental harm to the U.S.-Turkey alliance. Click here to download.

(Image: Thierry Ehrmann, used under license.)

Journal of International Security Affairs, Winter 2014.

Published in Staff Publications
Page 4 of 5

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News

  • New Article Series on Changing Geopolitics of Central Asia and the Caucasus
    Wednesday, 24 November 2021 11:53

    Eurasia

  • CACI Initiative on Religion and the Secular State in Central Asia and the Caucasus
    Sunday, 24 January 2021 13:53

    In 2016, the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program launched an initiative on documenting the interrelationship of religion and the secular state in the region. This initiative departed from the fact that little systematic reserch had been undertaken on the subject thus far. While there was and remains much commentary and criticism of religious policy in the region, there was no comprehensive analysis available on the interrelationship of religion and the state in any regional state, let alone the region as a whole. The result of this initiative has been the publication of six Silk Road Papers studying the matter in regional states, with more to come. In addition, work is ongoing on a volume putting the regional situation in the context of the Muslim world as a whole.

     

    Case Studies

    Each study below can be freely downloaded in PDF format.

    az-formula-SRSP

    Azerbaijan's Formula: Secular Governance and Civil Nationhood
    By Svante E. Cornell, Halil Karaveli, and Boris Ajeganov
    November 2016   




    2018-04-Kazakhstan-SecularismReligion and the Secular State in Kazakhstan
    By Svante E. Cornell, S. Frederick Starr and Julian Tucker
    April 2018

     

     

     

    1806-UZ-coverReligion and the Secular State in Uzbekistan
    Svante E. Cornell and Jacob Zenn
    June 2018

     

     

     

    2006-Engvall-coverReligion and the Secular State in Kyrgyzstan
    Johan Engvall
    June 2020

     Event video online

     

    2006-Clement-coverReligion and the Secular State in Turkmenistan
    Victoria Clement
    June 2020

    Event video online

     

     

     

    Articles and Analyses

    Svante E. Cornell, "Religion and the State in Central Asia," in Ilan Berman, ed., Wars of Ideas: Theology, Interpretation and Power in the Muslim World, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021.

    Svante E. Cornell, "Central Asia: Where Did Islamic Radicalization Go?" in Religion, Conflict and Stability in the Former Soviet Union, eds. Katya Migacheva and Bryan Frederick, Arlington, VA: RAND Corporation, 2018.

  • Basic Principles for the Rehabilitation of Azerbaijan's Post-Conflict Territories
    Wednesday, 07 October 2020 09:01

    Rehab-coverIn 2010, the CACI-SRSP Joint Center cooperated with Eldar Ismailov and Nazim Muzaffarli of the Institute for Strategic Studies of the Caucasus to produce a study of the methodology and process for the rehabilitation of the occupied territories in Azerbaijan. The study was written in the hope that it would prove useful in the aftermath of a negotiated solution to the conflict.

    Such a resolution nevertheless did not materialize. At present, however, it appears that some of these territories are returning to Azerbaijani control as a result of the military conflict that began in late September, 2020. While it is regrettable that this did not come to pass as a result of negotiations, it is clear that the challenge of rehabilitating territories is as pressing today as it would be in the event of a peaceful resolution - if not more, given the likelihood that such a solution would have included a time-table and provided the Government of Azerbaijan and international institutions time for planning.

    It is clear that the study is a product of a different time, as much has changed since 2010. We fully expcect many updates and revisions to be needed should the recommendations in this study be implemented today. That said, we believe the methodoloy of the study and its conclusions remain relevant and would therefore like to call attention to this important study, published in English, Russian and Azerbaijani versions.

    Click to download:

    BASIC PRINCIPLES FOR THE REHABILITATION OF AZERBAIJAN’S POST-CONFLICT TERRITORIES

     

  • Resources on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict
    Monday, 05 October 2020 08:19

    Resources on the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict

     

    The Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program have a long track record of covering the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict. This page presents the key resources and most recent analysis. 

    In 2017, Palgrave published the first book-length study of the International Politics of the Armenia-Azerbaijan Conflict, edited by Svante Cornell. The book concluded by arguing that if international efforts to resolve the conflict are not stepped up, “the ‘four-day’ war of April 2016 will appear a minor skirmish compared to what is sure to follow”.

    In 2015, CACI & SRSP released the Silk Road Paper  “A Western Strategy for the South Caucasus”, which included a full page of recommendations for the U.S. and EU on the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflict. These are reproduced below:

    ------------------

    Develop a substantial and prolonged Western initiative on the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict.

    o This initiative must be led by the United States, in close consultation with its European partners – primarily the EU Commission and External Action Service, and France. Barring some process to reinvigorate the Minsk Process – a doubtful proposition given Western-Russian relations in the foreseeable future – Western leaders must be prepared to bypass that process, utilizing it where appropriate but focusing their initiative on developing direct negotiations between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders.

    o The U.S. and its European partners must abandon the practice of relying solely on the Minsk Group co-chairs to resolve the Karabakh conflict. These diplomats have contributed greatly to formulating a workable framework agreement. However, strong and sustained U.S. Government leadership from the top level is needed to complement or, failing that, to replace the Minsk Process. In practice, this means the expressed support of the President, involvement of the White House, and leadership manifested in the appointment of a distinguished citizen as Special Envoy for the resolution of the conflict.

    o The EU must take a more clearly defined and substantial role in the process, by integrating to the highest degree possible the French co-chairmanship of the Minsk Group with EU institutions. While Washington will need to take the lead on the political side, it would be natural for the EU to take the lead in organizing an international development program for the currently occupied Azerbaijani provinces and Karabakh itself. That effort, too, would need to be led by a senior EU figure.

    --------------------------------------------

    In 2011, CACI & SRSP helped launch an extensive study of the steps needed for the post-conflict rehabilitation of Azerbaijan's occupied territories, in cooperation with Eldar Ismailov and Nazim Muzaffarli of the Institute for Strategic Studies of the Caucasus. The monograph "Basic Principles for the Rehabilitation of Azerbaijan's Post-Conflict Territories" can be accessed here

     

    More background resources:

    Svante E. Cornell, "Can America Stop a Wider War Between Armenia and Azerbaijan?", The National Interest, October 2020

    Brenda Shaffer and Svante E. Cornell, Occupied Elsewhere: Selective Policies on Occupation, Foundation For Defense of Democracies, January 2020. 

    Brenda Shaffer and Svante E. Cornell, "The U.S. Needs to Declare War on Proxies", Foreign Policy, January 27, 2020

    Svante E. Cornell, “The Raucous Caucasus”, American Interest, May 2017

    Svante E. Cornell, Small Nations and Great Powers: A Study of Ethnopolitical Conflict in the Caucasus, RoutledgeCurzon, 2001.

    Svante E. Cornell, The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict, Uppsala University, 1999

    More recent analysis:

    Turkey Seeks to Counter Russia in the Black Sea-Caucasus Region,” Turkey Analyst, 10/5/20, Emil Avdaliani

    Turkey’s Commitment to Azerbaijan’s Defense Shows the Limits of Ankara’s Tilt to Moscow,” Turkey Analyst, 9/25/20, Turan Suleymanov & Bahruz Babayev

     “Cross-Border Escalation between Armenia and Azerbaijan,” Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 9/25/20, Natalia Konarzewska

    Russia and Turkey: Behind the Armenia-Azerbaijan Clashes?”, Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 8/31/20, Avinoam Idan

    Armenia and the U.S.: Time for New Thinking?”, Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 10/2/19, Eduard Abrahamyan.

    Why Washington Must Re-Engage the CaucasusCentral Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 7/8/19, Stephen Blank

    Azerbaijan’s Defense Industry Reform”, Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 5/7/19, Tamerlan Vahabov.

    Military Procurements on Armenia's and Azerbaijan's Defense Agendas”, Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 3/27/19, Ilgar Gurbanov

    Armenia's New Government Struggles with Domestic and External Opposition,” Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 3/20/19, Armen Grigorian.

    Bolton's Caucasian Tour and Russia's Reaction”, Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, 12/17/18, Eduard Abrahamyan.