The Dispatch Podcast - Explainer: Turkey Today

Episode Date: June 6, 2023

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan recently secured another election victory, leaving many in the West to question the country's diplomatic future. Dispatch Reporter Charlotte Lawson speaks with Eric Edelman, former U.S. ambassador to Turkey, Finland, and under secretary of defense for policy, to explain what's happening under the country's longest serving leader. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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to his rule yet. I'm very excited to be joined by Eric Edelman, former ambassador to Turkey and Fenland and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Currently, he's working as the counselor at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Overall, he's a well of knowledge on all things foreign policy and defense policy. So I hope you enjoy our conversations much as I did. Eric, thank you for joining us on the dispatch podcast today. Thanks for having me, Charlotte. It's good to be with you. Good to see you too. I wanted to start off by asking you for a quick overview of last week's presidential elections in Turkey for our listeners who aren't familiar to this topic.

Who are the candidates? And why did some people consider this the best chance to unseat the incumbent, Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Well, the incumbent was President Rejip Tayyip Erdogan, who has been the de facto leader of Turkey for the past 20 years, first as prime minister from 2003 until Turkey adopted an executive presidency that he introduced with a referendum in 2017, about which there are many questions in terms of how true the vote was. There does seem to have been a fair amount of election chicanery with that referendum, which passed by a relatively narrow margin. The reason why people thought Erdogan was vulnerable was he has been in place for 20 years,

which is enormously long time, longer than Camille Pasha Aditurk, who was the founder of the modern Republic of Turkey. and he has thoroughly mismanaged the economy. Inflation hit 80 to 85% back in November. It was running around 40 to 45% at the time of the election. In February, there was a massive earthquake in Turkey, as you know well. And the government response, AFAD, the official Turkish agency that is responsible for emergency response. essentially our Turkey's version of our FEMA, botched the response, very slow to respond.

Erdogan was slow to send the military in to secure areas hard hit by the earthquake. So there was a lot of looting and lawlessness in those areas. There were also major questions about $44 billion worth of tax revenue that had been set aside since 1999's large Istanbul earthquake for earthquake-proofing. structures in Turkey. And, you know, people were wondering, where did that money go? And it went into the pockets of Erdogan's cronies in the construction industry, which obviously damaged Erdogan's standing. There also was the increasing resentment because of Turkey's difficult economic conditions against the very large Syrian and other refugee population on Turkey's territory. I mean, numbers range

from 3.6 to 4.1 million refugees on Turkey's territory, a lot of hostility towards them from Turks. And Erdogan has been very personally associated with Turkey's Syria policy, first attempting to conciliate Bashar al-Assad, then joining in the opposition to him during the Syrian Civil War, and most recently trying to curry favor with him, all the while inserting Turkey into Syria's civil war on behalf of sort of groups associated with jihadism and fighting against Syrian Kurdish groups that have an affiliation with the PKK that's been waging a very bloody insurgency against the Turkish government since the early 1980s. So he looked very vulnerable. Unfortunately, the opposition, the joint opposition, which raised, I mean, it was

the so-called Table of Six, it was six opposition parties, the People's Republican Party, the old Adaturk Party, along with some splinter groups from the Nationalist Party, the Nationalist Party that is associated with Erdogan's governing coalition, as well as a couple of splinter parties from Erdogan's own Justice and Development Party, formed a united opposition. Unfortunately, the head of the CHP, Kemal Kilich Starolu, imposed himself essentially as the opposition candidate, even though he was the opposition candidate who polled least well in trial heats against Erdogan, much less well, for instance, than against Ekram Imamolu, the popular mayor of Istanbul, who was operating under a threat of legal action by the Erdogan

government that might have eliminated him from consideration had these pretty much bogus charges of insulting government officials actually been, you know, been brought to trial. So that, you know, that was the setup. But, you know, in the end, Erdogan overcame all of these obstacles and was reelected with about a 52 to 48 percent margin. Yeah. And a piece that you wrote for the dispatch that came out actually a day before the election, you predicted not only Erdogan's victory, but also his margin of victory. But at one time, polls actually had him trailing by about 10 points, given the reasons you mentioned Turkey's economy, the fallout from February's earthquakes. I'm curious what he did to kind of shift the tides and ultimately push himself over that 50% threshold.

You know, I think the result demonstrates, you know, Turkey's deep divisions as a nation. It is a deeply divided society. Erdogan has never really gotten more than 52% of the vote in any given election, although he's dominated elections, but he's dominated it by developing a very devoted base of voters, essentially a coalition of, of, voters, the dispossessed really in Turkey, the poor, rural, pious Turks who live in central Anatolia, you know, I compared it in my dispatch piece to sort of American flyover country and who feel that they're looked down upon by the Turkish elite, which dominates in major urban areas like Ankara and Istanbul and Izmir and others. And it is a globalized elite that has benefited from its connections to Turkey's, you know, extensive foreign trade, while others have, you know, not benefited as much. So he starts with that very strong base. He's also, you know, as much as one can decry his authoritarian tendencies and the kind of, the kind of

violent rhetoric that he espouses, occasionally anti-Semitic rhetoric, very frequently anti-American rhetoric, which was very much on display. This, by far, of all of his campaigns, was the most virulently anti-American campaign, explicitly anti-American campaign. He ran, not quite as bad as his interior minister, Minister Soilu, but still pretty bad. And he's a very effective campaigner. You know, he, he has made himself a kind of perfect vessel for the grievances of this base of voters that he has. And in the end of the day, Turkish voters, I think, by a narrow, very narrow majority, would prefer to live with the devil they know than the devil they don't know. He was very successful at painting his opponent, Kilejhtarolu, who, as I mentioned, was the

weakest of the candidates who might have been brought to bear against him. Killedjdorlu was a kind of colorless bureaucrat, you know, former government bureaucrat, suffered of also being an oliv, which is a minority in Turkey, but 20%. Erdogan was not shy about making, you know, appeals to the vast Sunni majority of Turks. And he was very successful in painting Kilich Dorolu as a tool of the PKK, in part because the legitimate legal Turkish political party, the HDP, agreed tacitly to support Kilich de Rulu, which Erdogan turned to his advantage in the election campaign. Yeah, I wanted to ask you specifically about the Kurdish vote because I actually reported from Diabuk, or a Kurdish majority city in eastern Turkey on election day. And there was a lot of fear over potential political retaliation by Erdogan, given their tacit support for the opposition

in the election. Do you think that this election and its fallout could lead to more repression of Kurdish activists, politicians, political parties? Well, sadly, I think the answer is yes. I mean, I think one has to go back and remember that Erdogan, in an earlier, in a political incarnation, had actually promoted a opening to the Kurdish population and promised a solution to the Kurdish issue, which has royal Turkish politics, you know, for 40, over 40 years. And he was negotiating, you know, with Ojalon, the leader of the PKK, who's in prison in Turkey in Istanbul, and promised an opening until essentially he lost the – he came close to losing. He lost a majority, a governing parliamentary majority in June 2015. at which point you had a hung parliament that couldn't form a majority. And he undermined the efforts of his then prime minister, Amit Abutolu, to forge a grand coalition, which might have actually been able to get a grip on the Kurdish issue

and resolve it, and went back to the polls and won a majority with the nationalist party. The price of which, though, was to adopt very anti-Kurdish rhetoric, anti-PKK, but not just anti-PKK, anti-KKK, anti-Kurdish rhetoric. And as you know, there was a violent reaction to that among Kurdish youth in southeastern Turkey, notably including in Diabur, where you were. And it led to, it didn't get a lot of press coverage in the United States, but it led to violent repression by the gendarmer and the Turkish army and the destruction of urban centers in the number of Kurdish majority cities in the southeast,

particularly the opera. A lot of that's been rebuilt, I understand, but it has thoroughly poisoned the Akepe's relations with Kurdish voters. And he is now, you know, I think stuck in a very nationalist kind of posture. I mean, he has pulled together a kind of Islamo-national. populism, that is the key to his maintaining this very narrow majority in Turkish politics. And so I don't think there's much scope anymore for any kind of outreach to the Kurds. And if I were a Kurd in the Ubekir, I'd be worried as well. There's also the question of Turkey's Syrian refugee population that you mentioned earlier. Both Erdogan and the opposition candidate made promises throughout the campaign to deport

Turkey's Syrian refugee population if they prevailed in the elections. Do you think that the possibility of mass deportations back to Syria is looming? And do you think that Erdogan might try to pursue detente with the Assad regime to make that happen? Well, Kilesdorolu, because the first round election votes showed increased vote for the MHP, the Nationalist Action Party that is a coalition partner of Erdogan's. concluded that he needed to negate the kind of anti-Kurdish campaign that Erdogan had run against him by appearing to be as nationalist or more nationalist than Erdogan. And the target that he used to go after that was people who don't vote, which was Syrian refugees.

And he promised to expel them all within one year, which was something he would never have been able to the liver on had he been elected. Erdogan has been a little less explicit about what he's going to do. He's promised he's going to, you know, return the refugees to Syria or elsewhere, but he has not been as explicit as Kilich Terola was about what the time frame will be, how he will do it, etc. I fully expect, among other things, he will use the large refugee population to extract more funds from the EU, he has sold that horse to the EU multiple times, and there are already indications that he will do it again, because folks in the European Union are quite concerned that he might turn the tap on and let lots of these refugees flow into the EU through Greece,

which he's done before. He's instrumentalized and weaponized the refugee flows to extract, extort money really from from Europe for you know a period of years so I don't doubt that he will do that again there have been as you mentioned there have been these outreach efforts to Assad it's not clear how much they've yielded so far I'm sure he would like to create conditions in which he can force the Syrian refugees back perhaps into some of those territories that Turkish forces now occupy in northeastern Syria. How much you'll be able to do in that direction, I think we'll just have to wait and see. It's not completely clear. Not long ago, I saw someone go through a sudden loss, and it was a stark reminder of how

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organizations, the levers of state power, that this couldn't be considered a fair election. Do you think that it was at least free when it came to election day itself? Well, look, I'm glad you raised that issue because I should have mentioned it myself earlier. You know, above and beyond everything you and I have been discussing about the election and why it turned out the way it did, the deck was stacked against Killich Terolulu or any opposition candidate from the outset. The OSCE and Council of Europe Parliamentary Assembly Joint Election Monitoring Delegation that was in Turkey for the first round of the vote on May 14th issued a report and said that there was some, in that round, some chicanery at different ballot boxes, but I think

they judged, and seemingly the opposition judged as well, that it was not sufficient to change the outcome in any meaningful way. There were some 2,000 ballot boxes about which there were questions about the propriety of the count and, you know, the transparency of it. That was true in the second round as well. You had lots of instances of election monitors being tossed out of polling places, ballot box, you know, ballots being opened before people had cast them that appeared to have, you know, been pre-stamped with Erdogan's name. I mean, you had all these, you know, instances on social media documenting some of these, you know, pretty unsavory election practices. My judgment is that none of that was sufficient, again, to change the

outcome. But the factors you mentioned, the dominance of the media, there was one Turkish media state outlet that, you know, had in the run up to the election, Erdogan had 32 hours of coverage and Kilaj Sorolu had about 32 minutes. So, you know, the media, which is now thoroughly dominated by Erdogan, is, you know, thoroughly stacked. against those people. And it seemed like Erdogan was also able, at least temporarily, to kind of dull the pain of Turkey's economic crisis. I'm curious now that the election is over if he has a plan for actually averting economic collapse.

Well, one thing Erdogan has done, I mean, he's managed to stave off despite years of what is, you know, generously described in most media accounts as, including my piece in the dispatch, as unorthodox economic policies. Actually, I think the best way to describe it is crazy economic policies that completely fly in the face of almost all, you know, serious economic thinking, which is his insistence that the best way to combat inflation is low interest rates, which is illogical on the face of it. It's led to this highly, you know, loose monetary policy and inflationary, you know, economy. But it's also been politically very useful for him, among other things, because it's a

guaranteed flow of very cheap credit for Turkish voters who make up his constituency. And it's one of the sources of his ongoing popularity. He's also been in between electoral cycles pretty careful about the government budget, which has then allowed him to kind of open up the, you know, slu-skates of public spending to essentially throw money at voters when it's time to go to the polls. And he did that this time, certainly. There were promises of housing subsidies. there were a 45% increase in the pay for government employees a couple of weeks before the election. You know, it was a pretty naked display of the economic power of incumbency to win elections. But as you point out, this has now left him with a major economic crisis that he has to deal with,

which includes the fact that he's got about $220 billion of external financing. requirements to meet. A central bank whose foreign exchange reserves have been thoroughly run down in efforts to prop up the lira, which has been depreciating because of the inflation. And it's not quite clear how he's going to square this circle. I don't think he was able to weather some of this before the election because the Russians forgave Turkey gas payments that gas was flowing Russian gas flowing into Turkey. Turks didn't have to pay for it. Erdogan, there were some Turkish gas fines that were pumping into the economy. And Erdogan said he was going to give all this gas out to free, you know, to Turkish consumers. In fact, they got their bills that said

zero just before the election. You know, what a coincidence. Go figure. But he now, you know, he's got to pay the piper now. And so I don't think the Russians. Russians can bail them out. They're not, you know, given the straightened circumstances, the Russian economy, I don't think the Russians have enough money to bail him out. He's been making amends with his neighbors in the Gulf, who have been on the opposite side of the Syrian Civil War with him for over a decade. He's clearly trying to mend fences there.

But the Saudis and the Emirates are usually pretty careful about where they put their money. And although they did put some money into Turkey as part of this sort of, you know, making up of differences between the Gulf Arabs and Erdogan, they also tend to demand pretty orthodox economic policies for the recipients of their largesse. So, I mean, look at Egypt as an example of that. So he's going to have to figure out how he does this. He has said he's not going to change his position on interest rates, and he's going to double down on it, but there's already at least some, at least one indicator that for at least

some period of time, he may recur to some more traditional economic approaches. And that's been the, as I'm sure you're aware, the rumors that Mehmet Shimshk, who's a former finance minister, deputy prime minister, is being asked to come back into the government by Erdogan to take charge of the economic portfolio. And press reports suggest that Shimshack is demanding as you know as part of taking that on the authority to raise interest rates you know and I'm I don't doubt that Erdogan will actually do that for a while but I think it'd be very foolish to think he'll do it forever because I think as soon as the economy is stabilized he will revert to type shimshack will be shipped off someone else will be put in his place and he'll go back to

what he clearly believes are the correct you know policies to keep him in our office. And for my final question, I just wanted to ask about this election's ramifications for how Turkey engages with the U.S. and with the West more broadly. I guess in other words, why Erdogan's free election should matter for the Americans listening to this podcast. Well, Turkey's been a problematic and difficult U.S. and NATO ally for the better part of Erdogan's time in office, but particularly in the last, you know, several years, which has included his purchase of a Russian S-400 air and missile defense system, which is not compatible with or interoperable with NATO standards and NATO equipment. It led the U.S. government to make a

very painful decision, which was to kick Turkey out of the F-35 program. the new fifth-generation fighter that the U.S. is building, some components of which were being built in Turkey as part of Turkey's original partnership in the program, very costly for U.S. defense industry and for the Pentagon. You know, definitely set the program back, but U.S. government took the decision to do that correctly, in my view. he's also, you know, blocked Finland and Sweden's succession into NATO for quite a while. And he finally relented this spring about Finland because he really had no case against the Finns. He has some pretexts, I would say, rather than reasons, you know, to do with Sweden.

Hopefully he'll relent and let Sweden in, but I think what we're going to have is an unreliable partner with whom we're going to have to be very transactional in the future. And when he lets Sweden in, he's going to extract the price, whether it's a bilateral meeting with President Biden or whether it's some steps to be taken on the proposed sale of F-16s, a fourth-generation fighter to Turkey to upgrade their existing fleet of F-16. I'm sure it'll extract some price for it. And we just have to be prepared to pay a long game in Turkey. It remains an important country given its location. It sits right at the cusp of NATO and the Middle East. It's a Black Sea state. Turkey's played an important role in negotiating the Black Sea grain deal,

which is allowed food materials from Ukraine, which are very important. for feeding Egypt and sub-Saharan Africa and countries in East Asia as well. So, you know, he is going to continue to, you know, unfortunately be able to play a role that we need to pay attention to, but I think we just need to do it with open eyes and try and do it a way that doesn't reinforce the authoritarian system he's imposing. I think we should be very, you know, open and frank about our criticisms of human rights violations and particularly the lack of rule of law in Turkey.

It's rule by law rather than rule of law. But, you know, we're going to be in for a very bumpy, difficult ride. It's going to take a lot of effort by U.S. diplomats to keep the relationship from blowing up into periodic crises, which I'm sure we'll have from time to time. Well, on that note, Eric, I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me. I look forward to hopefully discussing these topics again soon. And I would encourage our listeners to read your work in the dispatch and elsewhere. Thank you so much.

Well, thank you, Charlotte. And let me return to compliment. I think dispatch readers would be very well advised to read your reporting from Turkey, which has been excellent as well. Thank you so much. Thank you.