I started this year in a positive tone; observed the relative calm in Turkish society in region of upheaval and expressed my wish that provokations cease at home and beyond our borders, allowing peaceful co-existence to take hold once again. (See: "2020-Unprovoked", 20 Aralık-December 2019.)Since then, President Erdoğan has started showing worrying signs of returning to his old domineering self. It is certain he is not aware of the potential harm to his country and himself.
Erdoğan's momentous parting of ways with Gülen and his resistance to US policies had diminished objections to his administration, even though the changes he brought to the country's political system still rankled with the Kemalists. Erdoğan set about rooting out Gülen cult adherents in the government, military, police, judiciary, press, in short, almost everywhere he and his party had been instrumental in placing them. But not everywhere- most disturbingly, not the party, the very same party that had once been one with Gülen! The net result was that the small fries got prosecuted and the big cheeses didn't even bother to retreat discreetly into the wings.
Then on Jan. 28th 2020, on Haber Global TV, ex-Chief of Staff Ret. Gen. İlker Başbuğ came up with a statement that
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| Ex-Chief of Staff İlker Başbuğ. (Image from the media.) |
One would expect that a wisened Erdoğan would find an ally in Başbuğ, opposing the common enemy Gülen, but President Erdoğan's reaction was quite the opposite. He threw all presidential reserve and dignity aside and hurled invective at Başbuğ, with a vocabulary very reminiscent of Gülen's press, which Eroğan had in the meantime closed down! Going further, he instructed said parliamentarians to sue Başbuğ. (And they followed suit!) He accused Başbuğ of attempting to violate the immunity of the members of parliament, which rings hollow when one considers Selahattin Demirtaş, chairman of the HDP, is in prison for his party's separatist agenda.
Opposition CHP did the right thing (something it does not always do) and stood by the general. What followed was a war of words between Erdoğan and CHP's Kılıçdaroğlu, who accused each other of being pro-Gülen.
Anyone capable of evaluating objectively already knows both are right! Erdoğan and his AKP were once allied with Gülen- Erdoğan has enough honesty not to deny it, but seems reluctant to pursue persecutions beyond a certain point. Kılıçdaroğlu and his CHP have often coveted US support, which meant looking favourably on Gülen, the US tool in playing the religious card. The public watches the show like a cockfight.
Meanwhile, without even noticing, we have found ourselves engaged in war with the Syrian government. On February 10th 2020, five Turkish soldiers posted in Syria were killed, apparently by Syrian government forces. There was immediate retaliation and our government boasted about how many more Syrians were killed. Erdoğan kept talking revenge, ignoring the fact that we are in Syrian territory uninvited. Erdoğan's administration has persistently resisted contacting the Damascus government, preferring to use Russia as an intermediary.
We were supposed to be there to keep the PYD/YPG from creating a Kurdish state. Turkey sees the PYD/YPG as the PKK under a different name, and any state formed by them would be a permanent threat. (Turkey also fights DAESH , a.k.a. ISIS or ISIL, which is the excuse for the US presence in Syria- though it is all but certain that DAESH was custom-created by the US for just this purpose. The US considers PYD/YPG as allies in the fight against DAESH, so what springs to mind is that DAESH was created so that PYD/YPG could defeat it, and claim the land- Syria's land.)
Another reason for Turkey's presence in Syria is to keep safe areas within Syria for refugees escaping the fighting, and thereby avoid having to let them stream through the border.
All of that seems to be forgotten now; the close friendship with Putin has soured and Erdoğan's language has begun to remind the neo-Ottoman invective of the party's pro-Gülen days. (See: "War Drums of a Non-Militarist Government", 18 Eylül-September 2012.) Now it's all about what a demon President Assad is, and how necessary it is to remove him. It is interesting that these shifts- a sudden switch of objectives in Syria, defensiveness regarding alleged pro-Gülen MP's- came after Erdoğan's visit to the US in November 2019. That may or may not be significant, but US Special Representative for Syria James Jeffrey's flash visit to Turkey certainly is; flying in right after the loss of five Turkish soldiers by Syrian fire, Jeffrey immediately assured us of US support, going as far as to steal our hearts with some broken Turkish. A haranguing, aggressive Erdoğan spouting neo-Ottoman rhetoric is obviously more to the liking of the US than a disobedient one that concentrates on the interests of his own country. The preference is for the kind of Erdoğan that had partnered with Gülen, in fact!
With all the talk about Gülen, accusations and counter-accusations about who is pro-Gülen and who isn't, it is mistifying to see these leaders even talking to a US representative, let alone be guests of the US President. With even the coup attempt of July 15th, 2016 ascribed to Gülen, clearly a US tool and resident in the US, there were grounds for expelling the US ambassador and raising a great international fuss. Conducting continuous manhunts in Turkey while doing nothing more than mumbling on the international scene begs some questions: how serious is anybody about trying to purge the country of Gülen's influence?
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| Two presidents and two first ladies in Washington, in November 2019. Why are we even talking to them? (Image from the media.) |
The Gülen cult was insturmental in the Islamizing and de-nationalizing of Turkey during the first decade of AKP rule. This new Turkey was being lulled into subservience, wrapped in a neo-Ottoman dream, to serve as tool for US designs in the Middle East. If we equate Gülen with AKP before Erdoğan's shift in 2013, the Gezi riots would be the greatest public reaction to Gülen, if not to him personally, but to what he represents. Now that Erdoğan too has become Gülen's sworn enemy, it would be most natural for him to make a truce with that movement. Indeed, many officials in authority at the time who attempted the stifle the movement, including the governor of Istanbul of the day, have since been disgraced as Gülen cult members, and the police who confonted the rioters were later vigorously purged for the same reason. Now Erdoğan seems eager to re-write a painfully obvious piece of history and present Gülen as the mastermind behind Gezi, and has recently equated the movement with treason! I believe this is authoritative Erdoğan's way of discouraging any future uprising against himself, but is very ill-advised considering what a large portion of the population
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| Gezi was Ataturk's nation resisting AKP's Islamism, and was spontaneous. (Image from the media.) |
At this juncture, we have an increasingly authoritative President offending half the population and whipping up the passions of the other half, as he was once in the habit of doing, we have men engaged in combat and dying in Syria against that country's government (and cheered on by the US), more men, also dying, in Libya propping the government there, and a straining economy! Fathers and mothers who have resigned themselves to losing their sons in the fight against seperatism, whether inside Turkey against the PKK or south of the border against PYD/YPG, might not be so accomodating when it comes to sacrifices in distant deserts. The taste for Ottoman glory goes only so far.
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| Fallen in combat against the Syrian Government, inside Syria. (Image from the media.)
Note added on February 2nd 2020: The morning after pubication of this article, the media reported that 33 Turkish soldiers had fallen in an air attack by Syria. The Turkish Armed Forces retaliated in force and reported putting hundreds of soldiers of the Syrian "regime" out of action. Today the operation was given a name: "Spring Shield". It is continuing at the time of publication.
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