Few indications that Turkey's growing instability will slow anytime soon
Source: Foreign Policy Magazine
The past few years have seen Turkey slide dangerously away from democracy under a government overstepping its bounds with increasing frequency. Additionally, the country faces a host of security issues, some of its own making and others not as much, that pose an additional threat to Turkey’s future stability.
Neither of these show any indication that they will improve at any point in the near future, and the road ahead for Turkey looksincreasingly unstable.
Despite the fact that Turkey’s efforts to assist with the civil conflict in Syria could be described as reluctant and limited cooperation at best, the country now risks becoming an even greater element of the conflict rather than the solution.
Chief among concerns regarding the future of Turkey is the eroding state of Turkish democracy, and the fast disappearance of many essential freedoms and human rights in the country.
The past few years have brought about heavy restrictions on the freedom of expression of the press, academics and the general citizenry. Those in dissent against the government have been frequently grouped under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s liberal use of the ‘terrorist’ label. There is a glaring lack of judicial independence, as many of these actions have come under the orders of courts that function essentially as a means through which Erdogan and the ruling-party AKP to pursue their political motives. Erdogan seeks to further enable these motives by potentially changing the constitution to expand the scope of presidential power.
In sum, the state of democracy in Turkey is collapsing, and quickly. Given that all of the above show no signs of slowing, I envision the situation only getting worse in this regard, particularly considering the absence of any meaningful condemnation from the international community, as the United States and the EU have their own agendas with Turkey surrounding ISIS and the refugee crisis. Furthermore, it has become clear that President Erdogan and the AKP-led government are engaging in a power grab to retain and expand the strength of the party and its leader. Given that this goal is far from complete -- with heavy pockets of resistance from both the Kurdish minority and the Turkish majority, and a state of security that is very weak at present – I expect the erosion of democracy to continue.
These security threats are also cause for significant concern about Turkey’s future stability. The first few months of 2016 alone has seen Turkey’s biggest cities fall victim to multiple terrorist attacks, killing more than 80 people and injuring over 270. The most recent was asuicide car bombing in Ankara on March 13 which killed 37 people and injured nearly 130 more.
Many of these attacks were carried out by members or lone followers of the Islamic State (ISIS), which, despite the current regression of its territorial claims in Syria and Iraq, poses a significant threat to Turkey as the group attempts to gain followers in the country and send current members over Turkey’s weakly enforced border with Syria.
Many of the attacks, however, have been carried out by members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), the armed wing of the Kurdish minority resistance, as well as other Kurdish militias, such as the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons (TAK). Both are recognized by the European Union and the United States as a terrorist organization. While attacks by the PKK have targeted primarily military or police targets, the attacks represent the dangerous escalation of conflict between the PKK and the Turkish government. The TAK, on the other hand, has claimed responsibility for multiple attacks in recent months that have some of Turkey’s largest, and some of the deadliest among civilians.
Ever since the breakdown of a peace talks this past summer, Turkish security forces have been engaged in a de facto civil war with the PKK and other armed militias representing the Kurdish minority. Conflict between the PKK and Turkish government is nothing new: the two sides have been engaged in an on-again, off-again war for decades. But the nature of the present conflict between the Turkish government and the Kurdish minority is different. In past conflicts with the PKK, there never existed united Kurdish force, as moderate Kurds on both ends of the political spectrum tended to vote with the secular, social-democratic Republican People’s Party or Erdogan’s pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP). A large swath of the Kurdish population, then, was not against the government, which limited its fighting for the most part to the PKK, which, in addition to being the armed wing of Kurdish resistance, represented the more nationalist agenda of Kurdish political opinion.
Today, however, as Erdogan began to isolate the Kurds due to spillover of the Syrian civil war and Erdogan’s response to the rise in power of Syria’s Kurdish population, the Kurds have become a more unified political force under the Kurdish-nationalist People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which has brought together Kurds from across the political spectrum. The result is that in the current fight against the PKK, Erdogan has begun to paint with a more broad brush when describing the Kurdish minority – often blurring the line between the non-violent HDP and the PKK, and labeling any opposition to government as grounds for the ‘terrorist’ label. In sum, today’s fight against the PKK has symbolically (and sometimes in practice as well) become a fight against the whole, more united Kurdish minority.
In the distant future, however, I don’t envision Turkey absolutely collapsing in the way that its neighbor Syria has, and I do believe the trend that we have seen as of late under President Erdogan and the AKP will bottom out and eventually reverse course. To begin with, Turkey has tremendous strategic importance to the United States and much of Europe in a way that I believe necessitates a response, from their perspective, before Turkey would ever collapse beyond the point of no return, if that were to ever be a possibility. Turkey has served for much of the last two decades as a bridge (or a buffer, some may say instead) between many of the world’s stressed geopolitical fault lines between the West and the Middle East, for everything from foreign policy objectives to relative cultural differences. Specifically, Turkey has served as the reliable partner whose stability has been counted on in attempting to address the many issues facing other states in the Middle East. The United States and Europe, more than they realize at the moment as they take an ISIS-first approach to foreign policy in the Middle East, need Turkey.
I don’t believe, however, that the main reason Turkey does not collapse will be because of the intervention of some Western savior that sees Turkey’s stability as a geopolitical necessity. I believe, instead, that many of Turkey’s issues today are not intrinsic to the country, but in large part a symptom of the leadership of President Erdogan and the AKP under his lead. As explained, the escalation of conflict with the Kurdish minority has been in large part due to polarization under Erdogan’s strengthened stance against the Kurds, his having pulled out from peace talks with Kurdish rebel groups, and the sometimes indiscriminate way in which government forces attempt to shut down their armed resistance. Also, the erosion of democracy has not been well-received by Turkey’s population, nor has Erdogan’s government’s inability to deal any effective blows in the fight against terrorism. My hope, then, and my prediction, is that if the state of Turkey ever approaches a point where impending collapse is a possibility, a change in government will occur before anything exceedingly drastic were to occur.
I do believe, however, that the process will be a long and arduous one. While I do not see Turkey devolving to the point of collapse, I should reiterate that in the near future at least, I do not see any indication of Turkey improving. But while Turkey will endure even greater struggle ahead than they are experiencing now, I don’t envision the blows they must weather as fatal.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2015/10/turkey-isis-russia-pkk/408988/
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/feb/29/syria-turkey-suicide-bombings-ankara
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/18/how-the-kurds-became-syrias-new-power-brokers/
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/02/19/meet-the-obscure-kurdish-fighters-taking-responsibility-for-the-the-ankara-bombing/
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/18/erdogans-war-turkey-terrorism-kurds-pkk-isis/
