© REUTERS/Umit Bektas

After US president Donald Trump doubled tariffs on Turkish steel and aluminum, the already-struggling Turkish lira has plunged to an all-time low against the euro and the dollar, losing around 40 percent of its value since January 2018. The freefall is in part linked to the diplomatic dispute between Turkey and the United States over Andrew Brunson, a pastor who was arrested in Turkey in 2016 and indicted on charges of espionage and links to a terror organization without any evidence presented.

Arguably, the Turkish government has been holding him as a political hostage. That has made Brunson a martyr to some American evangelical groups and thrust his name onto US President Donald Trump’s agenda. Instead of solving this issue diplomatically, both governments headed directly toward escalation. As their row continues to simmer, Europe, and Germany in particular, are in a unique position to ease Turkey’s crisis and restore strained ties—and it is in Berlin’s best interest to help Turkey regain stability.

A major impact of the diplomatic crisis is that it has confirmed international investors’ fears that an all-powerful Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is sacrificing economic considerations for his own domestic political agenda and grip on power. The president has astonished the financial world once again by publicly browbeating the Turkish central bank into lowering interest rates. In fact, he compared high interest rates to treason in a country where tens of thousands have been imprisoned on accusations of the same offense. As a result, investors now seem to be losing any remaining confidence in the country’s success story. Inflation, meanwhile, has ballooned, from under 10 percent in 2016 to double digits every month since January 2017.

The lira’s plunge has also put Turkish banks under severe stress. If Turkish banks and companies fail to clear their short-term foreign debt, not only will the Turkish central bank face significant difficulties, but European (mainly Spanish, French and Italian banks) and American creditors will too.

Turkey’s True Partners

Erdoğan has tried to frame the crisis as one purely triggered by the dispute over Andrew Brunson. He accused Washington of “stabbing its strategic ally Turkey in the back” and threatened to search out alternative allies, for example Russia. Yet although Moscow has already expressed support, Russia cannot replace Europe and the US as Turkey’s key economic and strategic security partner.

Only 1.2 percent of Turkish exports go to Russia, compared to more than 50 percent to EU member states and the US. Also, only 5.6 percent of Turkish imports come from Russia—mostly oil and gas—compared to more than 40 percent coming from the EU and the US. And crucially, more than 50 percent of foreign direct investment to Turkey comes from Europe and the US, while only 6.1 percent comes from Russia.
Nevertheless, caution is needed: political alienation and shifting from one strategic ally to another happens gradually. Although it is a political dilemma to help out an increasingly autocratic government, neither a devastated Turkish economy nor an alienated Turkey as Russia’s ally is in the interest of Germany, Europe, and NATO.

A European response to the economic crisis in Turkey should be initiated by Berlin, as Germany is Turkey’s largest trading partner and has a strong societal relationship to the Turkish people. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has already publicly said that an economically stable Turkey is in her country’s interest. Now, the German government has to follow up on these signals with concrete action.

Troubled Waters

True, stabilizing the Turkish economy will be extremely difficult. On the one hand, any such process lacks an institutional foundation, as Erdoğan will not ask for International Monetary Fund (IMF) support. He has spent a decade praising his own AKP for turning Turkey into an IMF lender just a few years after being a debtor in the aftermath of the 2001 economic crisis. On the other hand, after the European debt crisis, another bailout of banks and companies will domestically not be enforceable in Germany or other European countries.

Then there are the deep political tensions and sharp words that have soured ties between Germany and Turkey. A number of German citizens have been detained in Turkey, and Ankara is still smarting over Germany’s decision to ban AKP politicians from campaigning for votes among Turkish citizens in Germany ahead of the April 2017 constitutional referendum. Erdoğan’s government has also accused Berlin of harboring Turks they believe took part in a failed military coup in July 2016. Erdoğan’s upcoming state visit to Germany has also been marred by controversy.

It is not surprising, then, that Andrea Nahles, leader of Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD)—in government with Chancellor Merkel’s CDU/CSU—came under fire in August for suggesting in an interview with German media that Berlin might have to jump in and help Turkey, regardless of the strained relationship with the Turkish president. And in a survey conducted by the Berlin-based polling institute Civey for the conservative daily Die Welt, more than 70 percent of Germans said they were against any financial support for Turkey.

Staving Off A Bailout

Under these circumstances, Germany and its European partners have to do everything to make a bailout unnecessary. This requires a quick reaction, as the crisis in Turkey is still in early stages without major institutional bankruptcies, yet.

To ensure that German economic assistance will not be perceived as support for President Erdoğan, but as support for the Turkish people, a joint commission with experts from both countries should be established. Including Turkish economists without an AKP background would increase acceptance within the society. The name of the commission should refer to a historic symbol of the German-Turkish friendship, for instance the famous German train station “Haydarpaşa” in Istanbul.

The “Haydarpaşa commission” should jointly identify short-term measures to support Turkey’s economy. It could closely analyze and monitor the debt situation and share information between both countries’ institutions to be able to quickly issue recommendations if a financial meltdown threatens. The commission should draw up some short-term measures to boost imports to Germany and/or the customs union; such a measure would help stabilize the revenues of Turkish companies.

Haydarpaşa should also build on European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) activities, using it as a vehicle for financial investments and high-level policy reform support. To address the need for structural reforms, the commission should also put some focus on research and development corporations, e.g. with a science cooperation, new German companies R&D centers in Turkey, and a cooperation between the Berlin and Istanbul startup clusters. Including Turkish researchers in exile and focusing on the freedom of academic research and teaching could be a way for Berlin to make clear that the Turkish government has to accept freedoms and democratic rights in return for its help.

The joint commission should kick off with the visit of Peter Altmaier, German Minister for Economic Affairs and Energy, to Turkey with a large delegation of approximately 80 businessmen in October. This powerful signal of German support to the Turkish economy should be linked to a strong commitment from Turkey to democratic standards, the rule of law, and freedom.
Deep engagement and commitment from Germany and European partners could be a chance to smooth difficult relations with Turkey. It would build new common ground and send the almost forgotten message to the Turkish civil society that Europe is Turkey’s closest ally, not enemy.

The post Help Turkey! appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

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Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) claimed victory on Sunday night in Turkey’s pivotal elections, securing five more years at the helm of Turkish politics. Following a historic election season, which showcased a resurgent opposition for the first time since Erdoğan’s rise in 2002, the result defied expectations of a serious challenge to AKP supremacy.

The AKP’s long-standing secular rival Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP) believed they had fielded a winner in Muharrem İnce, who drew vast crowds to his campaign rallies and stole Erdoğan’s populist thunder as an everyman. Meanwhile, Meral Akşener of the İYİ Party (“Good Party”) promised to outflank the AKP and its coalition partner led by Devlet Bahçeli, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) from the right, attracting nationalist and conservative votes.

But while pre-election surveys had predicted that İnce would force Erdoğan into a run-off in the presidential contest, Erdoğan defeated his challenger with 52.6 percent of the vote to his opponent’s 30.7 percent. Meanwhile in the parliamentary poll, the AKP-MHP coalition received a combined total of 53.6 percent of the vote (against the opposition “Nation” Alliance’s 22.7 percent), which translates into a comfortable majority in the legislature.

With the presidency in hand, Erdoğan will also hold all levers of the state. His victory places him in command of an empowered executive presidency, approved in a controversial constitutional referendum in April 2017. An opposition-controlled parliament would have been the only check on his powers. Now fortified by a parliamentary majority, President Erdoğan will face very few—if any—obstacles in his quest for complete control over Turkey.

Here are the most important takeaways from the elections.

It’s the Economy…Again and Always

Turkey’s once-booming economy—formerly a major source of Erdoğan’s popularity—is now on the verge of a bust. The lira may have gained in early morning trading the day after the vote (June 25), but the factors that plague the economy still remain.

A key area is interest rates. The president does not want to raise them, because doing so would conflict with his method of growth. A reduction in rates brings him lower borrowing costs, which in turn makes it easier to borrow capital to channel towards his mega-projects, such as Istanbul’s “third” Yavuz Sultan Selim bridge, or the city’s massive new airport, which will be six times the size of London’s Heathrow. These projects may deliver tangible, short-term results, but they do not contribute to sustainable growth.

In fact, they have already put the economy in danger of overheating. The lira has depreciated 20 percent since the start of this year, and will soon start tumbling again. As inflation rises further into double-digits, the cost of living will continue to skyrocket. The current account deficit is $60 billion per annum, and foreign debt is almost $453 billion.

With an economy that runs on borrowing and investments, Turkey needs foreign money to repay this debt. But reserves are running low. In the first five months of 2018, foreigners only bought $118 million  worth of Turkish equities and government bonds—a 97 percent drop compared to the same period last year. The volume of inward foreign direct investment (FDI) has also sunk to its lowest level in a decade.

Much will depend on whom Erdoğan appoints to oversee Turkey’s economy—and whether that person changes the country’s economic direction. Turkey needs higher-interest rates to cool off its “overheated” economy and to transition into a production-oriented economy that prioritizes agricultural development and long-term investment. And the backsliding in Turkey’s democracy needs to stop: This is crucial if the leadership wants to regain the confidence of financial markets and attract vital foreign funding. But if Erdoğan strengthens his grip on monetary policy—as he said he would ahead of the vote—the future looks bleak.

Erdoğan at the Mercy of Nationalists

The AKP’s support has actually decreased since the last election. Its share of the vote went down to 42.4 percent from the 49.5 percent it received in November 2015.

As a result, Erdoğan can now  command a parliamentary majority only through a coalition with the MHP (unless he moves to form a coalition with any of the other opposition parties, which is very unlikely). In a way, the ultra-nationalist Bahçeli is the real winner of these elections. Expected to win less than 8 percent ahead of the vote and having barely held any rallies, his party won over 11 percent. The president will now need Bahçeli’s support to make sure parliament does not become a stumbling block, which means the MHP leader will be at the center of Turkish politics for the foreseeable future. Erdoğan, however, has argued for years that coalition governments are unstable governments, so it remains to be seen whether he will move to capsize this equilibrium.

The Opposition: A Mixed Success

In contrast to the CHP’s previous performances, İnce’s campaign contained elements that made him more popular within conservative circles. For the first time, the party and its top candidate stopped operating as representatives of the strictly secular and the metropolitan elite. As a result, İnce managed to score 30.5 percent, breaking through the CHP’s recent average of 25 percent. This is an important achievement.

Still, not everything went his way. İnce failed to draw the support of those who had voted “no” in the referendum, including a critical percentage of AKP supporters who were feeling “Erdoğan fatigue” and were ready to break away from Turkey’s long-time leader. The results show that many of these disgruntled voters shifted their allegiance to Erdoğan’s coalition partner, the MHP, but did not cross over to support the “other” side.

Once labeled the dark-horse of the race, Akşener also underperformed. Her party, an off-shoot of the MHP, was expected to collect support from traditional MHP voters unhappy with their party’s partnership with the AKP. Analysts also expected that her right-wing credentials would make her attractive to disillusioned AKP voters. But she only scored 7 percent in the presidential race and 10 percent in the parliamentary poll, down from the anticipated 12 percent and 13-17 percent ahead of the vote, respectively.

In the end, an electoral season that lasted just seven weeks—Erdoğan had surprisingly brought the election forward by eighteen months—was not enough for these two relatively unknown figures to win over the factions within the “Erdoğan camp” unhappy with the status quo and ready for change.

With Erdoğan dominating the airwaves, manipulating the power of incumbency as well as the resources of the state, İnce and Akşener faced an uneven playing field that stacked the odds heavily against them. Television is a powerful medium in politics, especially in Turkey. According to a study released ahead of the vote, 50 percent of AKP and MHP supporters either do not have internet access or do not use it on a daily basis. These voters live in a bubble tightly sealed with Erdoğan’s cult of personality. As long as this repressive environment persists, outreach will be difficult.

Where Do We Go from Here?

The elections showed that Turkey remains a polarized society, almost divided in half. And Erdoğan’s reliance on the nationalists suggests that the president is unlikely to push for “reconciliation” with the opposition and pull the country together. His nationalist partners have spoken against moving forward on the Kurdish peace process, supported extending the state of emergency imposed after the failed coup attempt of July 2016, and traditionally been reluctant to improve relations with the West.

However, even with Erdoğan on top, the spirit of democracy is not dead. The parliament now includes seven parties, representing almost every political movement. It is Turkey’s most diverse legislature in decades. This is the result of energetic opposition campaigns that united the center-left with the center-right, the Kurds with the nationalists, and the secular with the more religiously-minded. Driving attendance by the millions, these campaigns symbolized the undying resolve of those who want a return to liberal democracy.

The anti-Erdoğan camp needs to continue to harness this yearning, and keep the president on the back foot. For the next round is just around the corner—local elections are due in March 2019.

The post How Erdoğan Won Again appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

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Much has been made of the importance of Turkey’s elections in a month’s time—and for good reason. For the first time, Turks will vote for president and parliament on the same day. And for the first time, the winner of the presidential election will enjoy extensive executive powers.

In January 2017, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling AKP party won a vote in parliament to transform the largely ceremonial presidency into a powerful executive one. Then in April 2017, the Turkish electorate approved the change, albeit by a narrow margin (51-49 percent), in a referendum tainted both by accusations of ballot-stuffing and by the Yes camp’s abuse of state resources and domination of the media. The new powerful presidency will go into effect after the June 24 vote—if Erdoğan wins, he will have the power to appoint unelected vice-presidents, place judges in the highest judicial board, and issue legally binding decrees.

In a sense, the elections can be considered the last chance to derail one-man rule in Turkey.

Until recently, Erdoğan had categorically ruled out an early ballot, so he surprised voters and opponents alike when he called snap elections a year and a half ahead of schedule. It was a hasty move likely meant to blindside the opposition parties, who for the most part hadn’t even chosen their presidential candidates. It also serves to secure his power amid growing discontent over Turkey’s growing economic crisis. Inflation is soaring, the Turkish Lira has fallen to a record low, and national debt is ballooning. Erdoğan risks losing more votes if the trend continues.

Another key factor is Turkey’s involvement in Syria and Iraq, where Ankara has intervened to fight so-called Islamic State militants and Kurdish paramilitaries. In March, Turkish forces took control of the Syrian border-town Afrin, a Kurdish enclave. This drew condemnation from Germany, among other countries, but was widely popular among Turkish nationalists and led to growing support for Erdoğan’s coalition with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP. The president wanted to cash in on that popularity at the ballot box, and the sooner the better.

Strange Bedfellows

The upcoming elections are extraordinary, even for a country with a political history as troubled and tumultuous as Turkey’s. For starters, one of the main opposition leaders, the presidential candidate of the left-wing pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş, is the first presidential candidate in Turkish history to be running for office while in prison. The former co-leader of the HDP was arrested in November 2016 for alleged links to Kurdish militants.

Demirtaş and his supporters have denounced the upcoming elections as the most unfair in Turkish history. Erdoğan’s AKP controls most of the media in Turkey, and his rivals practically don’t exist in these government-controlled news outlets. Erdoğan, meanwhile, is not only omnipresent on the national public broadcaster TRT, but also on most private TV stations. Then there is the state of emergency that was introduced right after the 2016 coup attempt and has enabled the arrest of thousands of opposition figures and supposed conspirators; it was just extended for the seventh time, making it even harder for the opposition to campaign freely.

And yet, Erdoğan and the AKP can’t be sure of a win. Polls reveal that Turkish society is more divided than ever. Frustration is growing, especially among young people. More than four million first-time voters will be participating in the election—Erdoğan likes to call them the “AKP-generation”—but enthusiasm among his younger followers is dwindling.

Meanwhile, the state of emergency and difficult campaign conditions have produced unusual partnerships. The so-called “Alliance for Democracy” has been formed, an unprecedented coalition between the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP), the largest opposition party and a long-standing rival of Erdoğan’s AKP, the Islamist “Felicity Party” (SP), formed by Erdoğan’s old allies, the rather insignificant Democrat Party (DP), which has not managed to overcome the 10 percent parliamentary threshold in Turkey since its founding in 2007, and the “Good Party” (İyi Parti), a liberal-conservative and nationalist group led by Meral Aksener, a former interior minister and the first woman in Turkish history to run for president. Her party, only formed seven months ago, has gained popularity so fast that some observers believe it’s another reason for the early elections.

Not much unites these parties other than their disdain for President Erdoğan and their calls for more freedom of speech. In fact, these unlikely allies were only able to form a coalition because of a new law that Erdoğan himself recently introduced to allow his AKP to join up with the far-right MHP.

Choppy Waters

The unusually strong opposition might make things harder than expected for Erdoğan. According to recent polls, he might not reach the necessary 50 percent plus one vote that he needs for a straight win. A run-off ballot on July 8 seems increasingly likely.

It remains unclear which opposition candidate would compete in a run-off against Erdoğan for the presidential post. Will it be CHP’s candidate Muharrem Ince, a party veteran known for his sharp anti-Erdoğan rhetoric? Or İyi Parti’s Meral Aksener, whose success stems from the fact that she is religious and conservative but also secular enough to not wear a headscarf. What Ince and Aksener have in common is that they are both fairly unpopular with Kurdish voters, who could tip the scales. Enter Selahattin Demirtaş, the jailed Kurdish presidential candidate. The other opposition parties have excluded him and his pro-Kurdish HDP from their alliance, but they will need his support in order to spoil Erdoğan’s plans.

In the end, Erdoğan’s financial and political advantage will more likely than not help him win these elections, too. But the campaign period has already changed the political landscape of the country in unprecedented ways.

The post Turkey’s Crossroads appeared first on Berlin Policy Journal - Blog.

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It was a long time coming: On June 7, the German government agreed to the withdrawal of 260 soldiers, six reconnaissance carriers and a refueling aircraft from the Incirlik airbase in southern Turkey. The move marked the culmination of a drawn-out spat over a ban on German lawmakers visiting troops participating in a US-led military coalition against the so-called Islamic State (IS). German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen said the troops would be re-deployed to Jordan’s al-Azraq base at the end of the month and that the transfer would be complete by mid-July.

It was the most recent low in bilateral relations that have been laden with tension for months. This time around, however, the timing may be detrimental for Turkey: as campaigning heats up in Germany ahead of the September 24 federal elections against the backdrop of an increasingly intolerant electorate, Ankara risks losing its top economic partner.

Banned from Incirlik, Again

A delegation of German lawmakers had previously been barred from entering the airbase in June 2016, shortly after the Bundestag passed a resolution referring to the massacre of Armenians at the hands of the Ottomans as “genocide.” Ankara eventually authorized the visit in October 2016, but according to Defense Ministry officials, six lawmakers’ entry permits were still pending in March.

Ankara did not issue an official statement on why it considered it necessary to block the parliamentarians’ entry into Incirlik. It only stated that the visit was not considered appropriate at the time and that, if Germany wanted to regain access to the airbase, it had to abandon its hawkish approach toward Turkey. Martin Schäfer, a spokesman for the German Foreign Office, was told through private channels that the steps were taken in retaliation against Berlin’s criticism of Ankara and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The sides have been clashing over a series of issues for months. Germany has been critical of Erdoğan’s crackdown after the failed military coup of July 2016 and has offered asylum to Turkish journalists, intellectuals, and military personnel that have fled the country since. Berlin also accused Turkey of operating an extensive network of spies on German soil in pursuit of supporters of Fethullah Gülen – a US-based cleric Erdoğan claimed was the mastermind behind the coup attempt. The fact that local authorities withheld permission for Turkish ministers to campaign in Germany in the run-up to the April constitutional referendum on granting Erdoğan sweeping new powers introduced further friction. More recently, tensions escalated over the arrest of German-Turkish journalists Deniz Yücel and Meşale Tolu on charges of disseminating terrorist propaganda in Turkey, as well as Erdoğan’s accusation that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was employing “Nazi methods” against Turkish “brother citizens and ministers” in Germany.

In what seems to have become its standard way of dealing with crises, the Turkish side did not try to de-escalate tensions with its NATO ally, instead remaining defiant. Ankara said it might have been possible for German parliamentarians to gain entry to Incirlik, but only after meeting a series of steep demands: retracting the resolution on the Armenian “genocide,” banning Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) activities in Germany, and returning Turkish asylum seekers that allegedly supported the coup.

Unless Berlin was ready to deliver on these points, Turkish pro-government newspaper Yeni Şafak stated, German Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel would return empty-handed from a trip intended to resolve the matter. Gabriel’s Turkish counterpart Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also remarked that Turkey would not “beg” for German troops to stay and that they “[are] welcome to do whatever they want.”

Consider the Economy

There are many reasons why such intransigence is misguided. Even an interest in preserving Turkey’s economic relations with Germany should be enough to prompt Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) to dial down its tone.

Germany has been the top destination for Turkish exports for the past ten years. In 2016, Turkey’s exports to Germany were valued at $14 billion – roughly 10 percent of the value of its total exports. Furthermore, trade relations are dynamic, having almost quadrupled since the end of the Cold War. Although Turkey’s trade volume has shrunk in the last few years, exports to Germany have consistently made up 9 percent of its overall export volume.

In the first three months of 2017, foreign direct investment (FDI) from the EU accounted for more than three-quarters of investments flowing into Turkey. Germany currently ranks among the top four countries investing in Turkey after the Netherlands, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Of the 1,120 Turkish companies founded in 2016 through European FDI, 400 were funded by Germany. In the first quarter of this year, German investments flowed into 68 Turkish companies, or one-third of all companies founded during the period with FDI from the EU.

Frustrated Electorate

Erdoğan is well aware of Turkey’s strategic importance. The country is being used as a base for NATO’s Middle East operations and is instrumental in stemming the flow of refugees into Europe as part of an agreement with Brussels, which many have argued has given Turkey a dangerous degree of leverage in bilateral relations. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is adamant on keeping the deal intact, which has strengthened Erdoğan’s assessment that Europe is wary of escalating the refugee crisis by risking a permanent rupture with Turkey.

The window for reconciliation may be closing, however. In an ARD-DeutschlandTrend survey conducted in February, 83 percent of German citizens said that Germany should confront Turkey more decisively. When asked whether they viewed Turkey as a reliable partner four months later, only 3 percent of respondents said yes, and 57 percent said that the chances of strengthening German-Turkish relations in the coming months were weak. In the run-up to the general election, the German electorate seems to have a low tolerance for Turkey’s transgressions – which may result in a more combative stance by German politicians eyeing political gains at home.

Several politicians have already expressed their frustration over the Incirlik issue. Claudia Roth, a member of the opposition Green Party and one of the vice-presidents of the Bundestag, referred to the ban as a “political provocation” and a new escalation in German-Turkish relations. Christine Lambrecht, the Social Democrats’ (SPD) chief whip in the Bundestag, described the showdown as “a slap in the face” for those trying to engage in dialogue with Turkey.

Merkel, meanwhile, has opted for a more conciliatory approach, describing the incident as “unfortunate.” Even von der Leyen, instead of condemning an act that many defense ministers would consider an unacceptable violation of trust between partners, placed emphasis on the fact that the lawmakers were still permitted to enter the NATO base in Konya. Others argued that this could hardly be framed as a success.

Watch Out for Caveats

Therein lies the crux of the matter: as the leader of a country that urgently requires Turkey’s cooperation, the chancellor is limited in the degree of aggression she can display. Perhaps to her frustration, she is unable to project herself as Erdoğan’s opponent. But in light of her effort to win a fourth term in office, Merkel cannot afford to seem feeble, either, making her more likely to engage in subtle gestures of resistance. The fact that Germany headed the list of countries that declined Erdoğan’s invitation to host next year’s NATO summit in Istanbul is a case in point.

To be sure, Germany will not do anything to jeopardize the refugee deal. But Turkey may feel the brunt of the fallout with Germany in the economic realm: a continued impasse could result in less FDI from Germany due to a lack of trust in the country, a market that is less willing to buy Turkish products, and more difficult negotiations on upgrading the customs union with the EU.

In order to keep the channels for economic collaboration open, Erdoğan would be well-advised to tone down his rhetoric. Instead of vitriolic attacks, what is needed is a recalibration of foreign policy that takes into consideration the economic realities on the ground. Failure in this regard – at a time when German politicians are sensitive toward anti-Turkish sentiment amongst voters – may forge a political climate that is less conducive to cooperation and therefore detrimental to Turkey’s economic interests.

The good news is that the Turkish public will likely be on board: according to a recent study by Germany’s Konrad Adenauer Foundation, Turkish citizens identified Germany as the most reliable in a group of countries that included its neighbors, the United States, and China. Interestingly, trust in Germany was strongest in the western Black Sea region and the northeastern province of Anatolia, despite their overwhelming support for Erdoğan’s AKP in recent elections and the constitutional referendum.

It could be considered a relief that, when time is running out, Erdoğan has the domestic support he needs to take the necessary steps to change track. One can only hope that Turkey’s increasingly powerful president will reconsider his stance and act accordingly.

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© REUTERS/Yasin Bulbul/Presidential Palace/Handout

When Kemal Atatürk founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the new nation was meant to be a beacon of secular democracy in the Middle East. But even at the country’s foundation, the seed of its current predicament was already planted: in the countryside, far from the urban centers and their Westernized elite, an undercurrent of Islamic piety remained. In the 1990s, Necmettin Erbakan seized on this opportunity and re-introduced overtly religious discourse to Turkish politics. His political successor, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is now on the cusp of dismantling the country’s representative government entirely.

But the upcoming referendum will not decide the future of the country – this was already decided in December 2013. After the 19^th National Education Council, the country’s educational system underwent a number of momentous changes, ensuring that future generations of Turkish citizens would be more religious and less inclined to question the country’s leadership. The leaders of Erdogan’s Justice and Development party (AKP) thus successfully laid the groundwork for bringing their policy goals within reach.

Erdogan’s goal – the dismantling of the Kemalist secular state and its replacement with a sort of Anatolian caliphate – was already clear then. Now, he will formalize his intentions through the institution of a presidential system that would end the tradition of parliamentary democracy in the country, originally introduced in 1908 by the Unionist or Young Turk regime. In its place, the AKP leadership wants to institute a pseudo-Ottoman system of absolute rule.

Eliminating a “Bureaucratic Oligarchy”

Talk of introducing a presidential system to Turkey has been around since the 1970s, when Erbakan first introduced the Turkish public to this political concept; over the subsequent decades, Turgut Özal and then Süleyman Demirel kept this discourse alive. In the 21^st century, Erdogan revived this discussion to great effect, and in all likelihood next month’s popular referendum will end with his becoming an absolute president, effectively banishing Atatürk’s legacy to the dustbin of history. The “Yes” camp will probably garner between 60 and 75 percent of the popular vote, an outcome that AKP critics believe would bring an end to Turkish democracy.

But Erdogan supporters and apologist alike argue that the creation of a presidential system would merely end an undemocratic bureaucracy, one they claim has been stifling public life for the past two centuries. The AKP MP for Istanbul, Metin Külünk, spelled out the issue in early January in the Islamist newspaper Diriliş Postası. Külünk delved deep into Ottoman history and explained that the so-called “Charter of Alliance” (or Sened-i ittifak), established in 1808, had instituted a bureaucratic apparatus that since has taken over the country, adding that the constitutional change would “break the back of [this] bureaucratic oligarchy.”

It is no accident that Turkey’s Islamists re-discovered the Sened-i ittifak. Historian Rıfat Önsoy declared in 1986 that “the Charter of Alliance is a document that aimed to limit the autocracy and absolutism [of the Ottoman Sultan] … it was a historic stage in [the development of] Turkish democracy.” In other words, Turkish intellectuals and politicians adhering to Kemalist principles and democratic values have traditionally viewed the “Charter of Alliance” as a positive development that would lead ultimately to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey, where Atatürk’s reforms were to liberate the population from the shackles of Islam and its restrictions.

A New Atatürk

The crackdown on freedom of expression and the persecution of journalists, writers, and academics have convinced Erdogan and AKP critics that the upcoming referendum on constitutional changes would transform Turkey into a veritable dictatorship along Islamic lines. Erdogan himself, on the other hand, declared last December that no such threat exists, saying “There is no such problem in my country. Those who want can talk as they want, live as they believe, dress as they want, [and] can drink and eat as they want, all these things are being done. We have not introduced any kind of prohibition. Turkey has never been a country of prohibitions.” Critics, both domestic and foreign, regard such a statement as a blatant lie regarding the current state of affairs in the country.

And in fact, pious Muslims and AKP supporters may wholeheartedly agree with their leader – but see that as a state of affairs in need of revision. During the Kemalist era, wide swathes of Turkey’s population regarded the lenient and permissive attitude in the country as an affront, hindering their personal and public experience of faith. Rather than greet the Kemalist Revolution as a liberation allowing them to “enjoy this world and its delights to the fullest,” these pious Turks felt Atatürk was leading the nation astray. They welcome the post-Kemalist reality in the New Turkey as heralding a hitherto unknown freedom, namely the freedom to live in accordance with the rules and regulations laid down by the Prophet.

The upcoming referendum will afford these pious men and women the opportunity to exercise real democracy, as the envisioned “presidential system” will see “the people elect the figure of an Absolute President, without the intermediary of a ‘bureaucratic oligarchy’ or an elected Chamber of Parliament.“ In this way, Erdogan will assume the reins of power from the people as a “gift from God,” allowing him to replace the figure of Atatürk in the hearts and minds of the Turkish people.

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© REUTERS/Giorgos Moutafis

Burns cover the face and body of nine-year-old Amina. They’re from when a bomb fell on her house in Aleppo, Syria. Leila, 10, still has nightmares of Islamic State fighters entering her Yazidi village in Sinjar in Northern Iraq. Busra, 16, has tried to commit suicide twice already. She can’t stand living in a camp on this Greek island anymore. She misses her brother back in Syria.

The three girls don’t know each other, but they have something in common – they live in fear of being deported. And they are living in limbo.

Along with their families, the girls are among the more than 21,000 people that arrived to Lesbos after March 2015, when the European Union and Ankara sealed a deal to send migrants back to Turkey, preventing them from traveling onward to the mainland or Western Europe.

According to the conditions of the EU-Turkey deal, the European Union will have to give Turkey another 3 billion euros on top of the 3 billion originally agreed – money to be spent on improving refugees’ living conditions in the country. The pact also involved a complex exchange agreement: For every Syrian refugee sent back to Turkey from the Greek islands, another Syrian refugee will be resettled directly from Turkey to an EU country. In return, the EU would liberalize visa requirements for Turkish nationals.

Nine months later, both sides have struggled to stick to the deal.

The influx of migrants has indeed slowed considerably compared to 2015. Last month, 2,000 migrants arrived on all of the Greek islands, around a third less than the previous two months. In November 2015, around 100,000 people from Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, North Africa and elsewhere arrived.

But thousands keep arriving in Greece. Most didn’t have a choice, as half of their families were already in Europe. And others were so destitute that they took the chance anyway. In the camps, many – like Amina, the nine-year-old burn victim – need serious medical attention. According to the UNHCR’s latest data, only a small fraction of the refugees living in Turkey has actually been relocated to Europe – just 4,000 so far.

Is Turkey “Safe”?

It’s difficult to consider Turkey a “safe country,” either. Its asylum-system is barely three years old, and its infrastructure cannot serve three million refugees. Turkey still denies full refugee status to non-Europeans. And the failed coup six months ago has led to a sweeping crackdown and a purge, with thousands arrested, fired and persecuted. The EU Parliament recently voted to freeze Turkey’s EU accession talks “due to concerns about the human rights violations.” The vote was non-binding, but it sent a clear signal to Ankara.

It’s another sign that discourse between the EU and Turkey has turned sour. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to threaten to tear up the deal and send three million migrants streaming toward the Greek islands if the EU doesn’t pay the rest of the 6 billion euros it promised, and if visa-free travel isn’t granted soon.

But even with the six billion euros, refugees’ living conditions in Turkey are still difficult. Those who make it out of camps face discrimination, high rents, and low-paid jobs. For them, Europe still seems like the only viable choice on the horizon.

Meanwhile, the number of asylum-seekers in the region keeps increasing. Turkey is already hosting more than three million refugees. With the help of Russia, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces have been destroying the rebel stronghold of East Aleppo. In Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Taliban’s power has been growing. Libya is in chaos. Egypt’s economy is teetering on the brink of collapse, too, raising the possibility of the Arab world’s most populous state becoming a new source of refugees.

Stricter controls in the Balkans have shut down the main route for migrants. But the number of those now trying to reach Europe via the Mediterranean and Italy, a much deadlier route, has been rising. Conditions in various African countries are deteriorating quickly, spurring a new wave of migrants.

So far, only 754 asylum-seekers have been deported to Turkey. Human rights organizations like Amnesty International and UNHCR interviewed deportees after they arrived to Turkey and found that many weren’t even allowed by the Greek authorities to apply for asylum. The media recently highlighted the cases of two men, a homosexual Syrian and a Christian Syrian likely to face persecution in the Middle East, who were scheduled for deportation to Turkey.

More EU Help Needed

Greece is struggling under the weight of a massive backlog of asylum cases, and also under EU pressure to increase deportations. Asylum cases are taking far too long to process. Greek immigration agencies are understaffed and overworked: Only 700 people are working on asylum applications that require days of interviews, investigations and paperwork. The cash-strapped Greek government can’t hire more asylum application processors, either, due to the conditions on the international loans that are keeping the country afloat.

The backlog has now reached around 60,000 applications, not including the appeals of asylums seekers whose applications are rejected. The Greek Ministry of Immigration has asked for EU help, and Brussels promised 400 staffers. But only 36 have arrived so far. The Belgian staff left two weeks ago, fearing for their safety after shots were fired in one of the refugee camps.

Amid the turmoil, refugees are growing increasingly restive. Around 40,000 are living in tents as the rainy days and cold nights of the Greek winter approach. Last week on Lesbos, an Iraqi woman and a child from Iraq died after their gas canister used for cooking and heat exploded.

People on Lesbos often cite a Greek proverb when they hear their leaders claiming the EU’s deal with Turkey is solving the worst refugee crisis since the Second World War: it’s like hiding the dust under the carpet.

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Source: YouGov; polls conducted July 20-27, 2016

Europe’s relationship with Turkey has certainly not been easy over the past few years. As the Turkish government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has drifted further and further away from liberal, secular democracy, it has become harder to cooperate on matters of regional security and economic policy without appearing to endorse policies that run counter to fundamental values of the European Union. Meanwhile, from Turkey’s point of view, the EU has been a capricious and unreliable partner, its interest in the country’s eventual accession seeming to wax and wane according to its needs.

A series of recent spats – including the Jan Böhmermann affair, in which the Turkish president pressed legal charges against a German satirist over a lurid parody poem – have strained the relationship even further, and domestic developments within Turkey, especially the 2013 Gezi Park protests and the recent coup attempt and its aftermath, have called the country’s internal stability into serious question. And of course, all of this is happening at a time when the EU needs Turkey more than it has in decades: the continuing civil war in Syria and the resulting refugee crisis, along with the threat posed by the so-called Islamic State, have made Turkey Europe’s indispensable partner, a state of affairs Erdogan has used to push for greater economic integration and relaxed visa requirements for Turkish citizens.

When, back in 2007, the German Marshall Fund’s Transatlantic Trends poll asked whether Turkey’s becoming a member of the EU was likely or unlikely and what effect it would have on the union, a majority of Europeans said it was likely to happen, while a plurality said it would be neither good nor bad. In Turkey, on the other hand, a large plurality said accession would be good thing, but an even larger majority said it was unlikely to happen. Europeans were convinced they would have to accept a new member state, like it or not – and Turkey, to paraphrase Groucho Marx, just wanted into the club that wouldn’t have it as a member.

Since then, Europeans’ enthusiasm for Turkish accession has diminished considerably. A poll conducted by YouGov in late July showed overwhelming majorities in every state surveyed, from 67 percent in Britain to 86 percent in Germany, against Turkey joining the EU. Eight percent in Britain and France were in favor of Turkish accession, while in other EU member states the number was even lower.

This may be due in part to simple expansion fatigue – with the eurocrisis still not entirely over, Europeans may want a breather before attempting to absorb another economy into an already fractured and heterogeneous common market. To a certain extend the poll data bears this out: in Britain, 67 percent said Turkey should not join the EU, but 61 percent said the same of Israel and 60 percent said the same of Morocco. In France, where 74 percent were against Turkish accession, equal numbers were against Israel and Morocco joining, and two-thirds were against membership for Albania and Kazakhstan. In fact, of all the accession prospects investigated, including Croatia, Serbia, and Ukraine, the only one that enjoyed broad support was Iceland.

Germans, however, seemed particularly hostile to the idea of Turkish EU membership – which may come as a surprise, as Germany is home to the largest community of Turks outside of Turkey itself, with estimates of the total population ranging from 2.5 to 4 million.

That familiarity may be the problem. In an increasingly tense security environment, many Germans are beginning to wonder about the Turkish community’s loyalties, and discussions of the proper response to Islamist terror attacks have, as elsewhere, begun to converge with discussions of immigration and integration. A recently leaked German government report accuses President Erdogan of supporting radical Islamist groups and sees Turkey as a staging ground for extremist groups; and Chancellor Merkel has come under fire for calling on Germans of Turkish origin to “develop a high degree of loyalty” to Germany, a statement other politicians felt was unnecessarily divisive.

According to a July ARD-DeutschlandTREND survey, 90 percent of Germans feel that Turkey is not a trustworthy partner, compared to 72 percent who feel that way about Russia; majorities said they could trust France, Great Britain, and even the United States, chlorinated chicken and the NSA be damned.

If Europe is going to continue working closely with Turkey, work needs to be done to rebuild this trust. Turkish accession to the EU may be a moot point at the moment, but its membership in the European community – small C – remains essential.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – September/October 2016 issue.

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Turkey’s drift away from the West has not been one-sided, says commentator SINAN ÜLGEN – Europe and the United States share the blame. The aftermath of the recent coup attempt could be an opportunity to reconcile.

© REUTERS/Handout/Kayhan Ozer

After the failed coup, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is more unpopular than ever in the West – but reconciled with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Are we witnessing a Turkish strategic pivot? No, I do not read it as such; otherwise we would be in a very different world. Despite everything that has happened, Turkey remains anchored in the West – in political, security, and economic terms. The establishment of a strategic partnership with Russia is somewhat far-fetched. Realistically, there is little that Moscow could offer Turkey to replace its relationship with the West, whether economically or viewed from a security perspective. So there really is a limit as to how strong, how potent this message of rapprochement with Russia can be.
However, it is useful for Ankara to be able to demonstrate to the West that Turkey could potentially have other options ­– as at the recent St. Petersburg summit between Erdogan and Putin.
And it’s noteworthy for a different reason, too. Putin is the second head of state Erdogan met with after the failed coup; the first one was the president of Kazakhstan, Nursultan Nazarbayev. This underlines the stark reality that there has been a total lack of sympathy and empathy in the West after the attempted coup in Turkey. The Erdogan-Putin meeting was mostly about pragmatic topics of bilateral cooperation, the lifting of Russian sanctions, tourism, and so on.

The tension between Russia and Turkey after a Russian fighter jet was shot down worried NATO greatly, and a rapprochement is to be welcomed in that sense. But you think the West should have done more to reassure Erdogan? It is not just about Erdogan. I think the West should do more to reassure Turkey that it is part of the Western camp. Itʼs one thing to assure Erdogan. But the more important message is to Turkey, because at the end of the day, Turkey is much bigger than Erdogan. This is where the gap is; even people who are not necessarily pro-government believe that the West has not done enough to demonstrate that Turkey has and should continue to have a Western orientation.

Indeed, there haven’t been that many Western visits to Ankara lately … US Vice President Joe Biden visited at the end of August. Before that there’s been one visit by a junior UK minister and one by the state secretary of the German Foreign Office, Markus Ederer – not quite the level expected by Ankara. I think the West would be in a more credible position had it not only supported the government, but also parliament. If European leaders do not want to be seen with Erdogan, at least they could have sent parliamentary delegations.

Is it too late for that now? No, not at all. Parliamentary delegations would go beyond the government and embrace parliament, which was bombed on the night of the coup. It shouldnʼt be too difficult to organize these trips in support of parliamentary democracy in Turkey. In fact, it would be politically relatively easy for Western politicians. And if the West wants to remain credible and retain the moral high ground in order to be able to criticize some of the governmentʼs post-coup measures, it can only do so if it also clearly takes a principled position and is critical of the coup attempt. If it does not do so, then the criticism will continue to fall on deaf ears because then the West will be – legitimately, I believe – considered hypocritical. If you don’t stand for a rightfully elected government, then whatever you say after that tends to be weakened.

NATO has sometimes been more able to cooperate with Turkey than the EU. Does this also apply in this post-failed coup situation? You are absolutely right: Turkey is in a different place in NATO by virtue of the fact that it is a NATO member. But the NATO relationship is quite difficult right now because of the souring of the relationship with the US. There is a widespread belief in Turkey, and that goes far beyond the government, that the US was behind the coup, or at least the US knew about it in advance and didnʼt tell the Turkish government. This has implications also for NATO. Then there is the fact that almost half of all Turkish generals have already been sacked, and some of these people had NATO positions. The head of the Third Army Corps, which is part of the NATO Rapid Response Corps, has been implicated in the coup. So obviously there is quite a bit of volatility around the NATO relationship today. What that means longterm is difficult to say right now.
The reluctance of the West to engage with Turkey right now of course has to do with the way Erdogan has been fighting the coup and the measures he has put in place in the aftermath. And there is skepticism regarding the alleged role of the Gülen movement; Ankara’s accusations sound a bit overdone to Western ears. You’re right. One of the difficulties today is this wide perception gap inside Turkey and outside about the role, the power, the influence of the Gülen movement. Today in Turkey many people believe that the Gülenists were behind the coup. Every day you have a former Gülenist appearing on TV, explaining to the Turkish public how he and his fellows infiltrated state institutions and military …

… which reminds one of the Stalinist show trials, when the accused had to declare that yes, they had been part of a huge conspiracy … Yes, but it is a fact that this is the atmosphere that Turkish people get exposed to every day in the media. It is also something that the government firmly believes, especially Erdogan. In that sense there is quite a gap between how Turkey views the Gülen movement and how the rest of the world views it. And this is already creating complications, in terms of Turkeyʼs relationship with the rest of the world, particularly the US where Gülen resides. Ankara has already started the process to have him extradited to Turkey. But it wonʼt stop there, because this movement is present, I think, in around 160 countries in the world, which means that Turkey will now have to make an effort to essentially press those governments to go after the Gülenistsʼ infrastructure in all of those countries, which includes schools, fundraising front organizations, and so on. This will be a long-term, complicated, and, in a way, unwelcome burden on Turkeyʼs foreign policy.

Gülen and Erdogan were very close allies once … That’s absolutely right. After the failed coup President Erdogan issued an apology for having failed to understand the true nature of this movement. But of course, in any normal country, this wouldn’t suffice to explain and justify a political alliance that lasted a decade. I doubt more will happen in the case of Turkey, but the apology was certainly a start.

How likely is it that the coup has basically been remote-controlled by the Gülen movement in the US? I think it is still quite likely, and I base this on the timing of the coup. Because the only explanation for the timing of the coup that makes sense is that most of the Gülenists in the military were going to be purged in August at the military council. Thatʼs the only explanation in terms of the timing of the coup. So I think it certainly was very much a Gülen-led coup.

What do you expect to happen next? Will Erdogan take this chance to establish himself as an autocratic ruler? Right now we are living through extraordinary times: a state of emergency has been declared, and therefore some of the measures the government is taking are not subject to the usual checks and balances. The government said it wants to end the state of emergency in three months, so that will be a critical test of how soon Turkey will normalize – if they are able to lift the state of emergency within three months, then that means that the checks and balances will return, which would work against further infringements of rights. So for the time being, I am reserving judgment as to how things will unfold.

How could the gap you describe be narrowed, especially with the EU? The Turkish government’s strong anti-Western rhetoric has become a real obstacle to its efforts to get its message across in the West at a time when this is urgently needed. I think the Turkish government is making legitimate arguments, for instance against the teaching of Gülenist thought in schools, but because of its past combative, non-cooperative rhetoric toward the West it has difficulty now convincing the West about the nature of its arguments. Now the government is trying to find a middle road to get this message across.

What has to happen on the Western side? The West should start with reassuring Turkey. Then it can build a moral platform to criticize some of the developments, but it has to start with reassurance.

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – September/October 2016 issue.

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The extent of political purges in Turkey after the failed coup confronts the EU with thorny questions. Brussels should use the current tenuous signs of social reconciliation to re-engage with the reform process.

“Just in: Erdogan fired everyone in Turkey,” wrote the Lebanese-Iraqi blogger Karl Sharro jokingly a few days after Turkey’s failed coup attempt on July 15. Since then, however, Sharro’s joke has become a bitter reality for thousands of Turkish civil servants. Nearly 150 generals and admirals and 6,000 soldiers were arrested in the days following the attempted coup on allegations of involvement. Subsequently, thousands of judges and public prosecutors were fired, and more than 8,000 state officials were suspended – among them at least eighty governors and inspectors.

The media and educational institutions were not spared, either: the broadcasting licenses of 24 radio and TV stations were revoked, and 21,000 private school teachers and over 1,500 university deans were suspended with immediate effect. These political purges in the state apparatus are not merely a direct reaction to the coup: they coincide with previous attempts on the part of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) to centralize power. Many observers are now crying foul, charging the government with using the coup to weaken or eliminate the political opposition.

Erdogan’s purges are a challenge for the EU, which now faces with the same questions in Turkey that it has in Hungary, Poland, Russia, and Egypt: How far can divergences about a once shared, agreed, and ordered set of values be accepted without undermining the order itself? What are the consequences of unifying just for the sake of unity – and striking dirty deals instead of cooperation based on shared values?

A Carte Blanche to Persecute?

President Erdogan’s declaration of a three-month state of emergency not only allows him to rule by decree, but also confers onto him the power to impose curfews, forbid demonstrations, and massively reduce the freedom of the press.
Already, the time a suspect can be held in custody without charge has been extended from four to thirty days. This has raised concerns, but alone does not constitute an end the rule of law in Turkey – the declaration of a state of emergency is clearly regulated in article 120 of the constitution. The true cause for concern lies in the wide scope the Turkish constitution leaves for interpretation when it comes to executive power. Potential justifications for a state of emergency include, according to the constitution, “widespread acts of violence aimed at the destruction of the free democratic order” and a “serious deterioration of public order because of acts of violence.” What is problematic is that it is President Erdogan himself who decides when such conditions are met. As a result he has it within his power to continue the state of emergency until he has destroyed the challenge posed to him by his adversary Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen’s movement. This raises concerns that the government had been handed a carte blanche to go also after dissidents without any connections to Gülen.

Worryingly, Turkish authorities have so far been vague about how long the state of emergency will last. They have also not provided a convincing justification of the necessity to compromise the separation of powers, though temporarily, to the extent that the state of emergency does. The interpretation of when the threat to “democracy, rule of law, and rights and freedom of the population” identified by Erdogan has been resolved is still up to the president himself. Indeed, Erdogan already announced that the state of emergency might have to be prolonged the day after it was declared.

The expected reform of the security forces may also further centralize power in the hands of the president. Billed as a means of coup-proofing the military, the reform will significantly increase civilian control. The military police, police, and coast guard will be subordinate to the minister of the interior, and the land, air, and naval forces to the defense minister. The chief of staff will no longer report to the prime minister, but rather directly to the president.

These reforms have long been pushed by the EU. Unfortunately, in today’s post-coup context, they are unlikely to have their intended democratizing impact. Instead, their effect will likely be to guarantee the submission of Turkey’s security institutions through a “divide and rule” system that would pit different security agencies against each other. Indeed, it is difficult not to suspect that the actual aim of the reform is for Erdogan to simply acquire more personal power – and a further step to secure his long-lasting gains for a constitutional change towards an executive presidency.

A Fragile Civil Peace

Erdogan’s rhetoric against the putschists and their alleged supporters abroad has been unmistakably aggressive. At the same time, however, there have also been gestures of reconciliation between the government and the parliamentary opposition. Indeed, following the coup attempt, all opposition parties condemned it in a joint declaration, and then decided unanimously to establish a commission of inquiry.

This unprecedented unity among the ranks of the opposition springs from their common opposition to the Gülen movement, which is much stronger than their opposition to the AKP. This is particularly true of the pro-Kurd Peoplesʼ Democratic Party (HDP), whose leaders explicitly blamed Gülen and his followers in the judiciary and military for sabotaging the peace process between the government and the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Before the coup attempt, the Turkish parliament had voted to strip HDP MPs of their legal immunity; now the issue has been moved to the back burner, the judicial officers and magistrates involved in this reform have been removed from office, and several generals entrusted with army operations against the Kurdistan Workersʼ Party (PKK), including Adem Huduti, were among those arrested.

When the leaders of the opposition parties Republican Peopleʼs Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) visited Erdogan’s palace together for consultations for the first time, it was a clear sign of reconciliation. In return, Erdogan withdrew his charges against them, authorized their supporters to hold demonstrations in Taksim Square for the first time since 2013, and showed notable restraint on the topic of constitutional change. In an interview with Al-Jazeera, he stressed that Turkey “will remain inside a democratic parliamentary system, we will never step back from it.”

The reactivation of retired Kemalist generals, furthermore, could be explained by sheer need for experienced staff within the military, which has been under enormous strain because of the detentions. Together with a new, comparably soft approach to critical – but not pro-Gülen – media, however, the move is more evidence that the government’s focus on Gülen as enemy number one it creating space for a rapprochement with conservative-nationalistic and secular forces.

Few observers, however, share the hope that the current civil peace will translate into a durable political and social reconciliation. The mistrust between different political and ethnic groups runs deep. Lynching incidents, violent attacks against members of the Alevi minority, and allegations of torture have contributed to this. Among the Kurdish population in the southwest of the country, there are increasing concerns that arbitrary restrictions might return under the aegis of the state of emergency. Further, many saw the role played by the mosques in mobilizing popular support for the government during and after the coup attempt as one more worrisome sign that religion and politics are growing more closely interlinked under Erdogan.

People linked to the Gülen movement – whether by fact or rumor – are expecting particularly dark days ahead. For a few years the government has been working to massively roll back the influence of the movement in the media and educational institutions, going so far as to close and expropriate institutions including the Zaman daily newspaper and the Fatih University in Istanbul. Even the internationally known think tank International Strategic Research Organization (USAK) was recently closed by decree because of its alleged link to Gülen – an accusation that the institute’s leadership forcefully denies. Future careers in government or elsewhere could well be closed off for graduates and employees of these institutions, as was the case after the military coup of 1997. A wave of migration abroad is to be expected; the same goes for many young secular-liberal Turks, as they consider the alliance among the conservatives – be they Kemalist, religious, or nationalist – as hardly promising for their future.

Up Against the Wall

For the moment, the question of whether President Erdogan will share political power in Turkey – and with whom – is impossible to answer. What is clear is that the attempted coup and the reaction to it have triggered the most difficult crisis so far between Turkey and its Western allies just as Turkey has become one of the most strategically important NATO allies, as well as an EU partner that behaved “more European than many EU member states” during the refugee crisis in the words of Peter Altmaier, chief of staff at the German chancellery.

Turkey’s location between the Black and the Mediterranean Seas makes it a key state in two ways. Turkey’s air and naval forces are active in the fight against terrorism along with piracy and arms and human trafficking in the Mediterranean. And Turkish soldiers are helping train Iraqi security forces for operations against ISIS and participating in numerous NATO- and UN-led missions – at present, over 500 are deployed in Afghanistan as part of the “Resolute Support” mission to train and support Afghan security forces.

Amid the thaw in Russian-Turkish relations and domestic security needs, Ankara might also pursue a more open policy when it comes to both Damascus and Bagdad. Turkey’s current rapprochement with Moscow, however, coincides with reshuffles within the security establishment in favor of those more inclined to nonaligned and Eurasian perspectives – and Ankara’s rapid loss of trust in Washington.

High-level US representatives have repeatedly and sharply criticized the direction in which Turkey’s domestic affairs are developing. President Barack Obama recently even refused to meet Erdogan personally during the Warsaw NATO summit. For his part, Erdogan has condemned the reticence of most Western states during the Egyptian coup that brought the military to power in 2013. And the fact that until now Turkey’s NATO allies have never publicly condemned any of the four sometimes brutal phases of military rule in Turkey since the country’s 1952 NATO accession has done little to build Erdogan’s trust in its allies commitment to Turkish democracy. If Erdogan is looking like the main winner from the coup attempt at home, the foreign party that has gained the most is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Not only was Putin the first to call Erdogan the night of the coup, he was also the first to invite him to a personal meeting afterwards.

On the European side, the aftermath of the coup has not led to a boost in solidarity between the EU and Turkey against the threat of military rule, but rather to vehement finger pointing and sanction threats. The vast majority of the political elites of Western Europe see Turkey today as a democracy in name only, one that superficially fulfils the Copenhagen criteria while in fact constantly undermining them, especially where freedom of opinion and separation of powers are concerned.

For the EU, the coup attempt came at the worst possible time, not least because it gives Ankara a strong moral position to politicize some of the EU accession criteria without formally withdrawing its application to join. In Turkey, for example, it is now heard that the EU cannot forbid Turkey from re-instituting the death penalty while at the same time pursuing a free trade deal with the US, which has failed to outlaw it. This argument might not attract followers in Brussels, but it certainly does find support in significant segments of Turkish society. From this point of view, what stands in the way of a Turkish accession is not Ankara’s demolition of the rule of law, but rather the allegedly racist and anti-Islamic reservations of Europeans. The EU’s ambivalent response to the coup attempt only helped these assumptions gain traction.

No one can have any interest in a formal breakdown of the accession negotiations – with the exception of a few countries with which NATO and the EU have had problematic relations for some time, and anti-Western and antiliberal movements in both Turkey and Europe. The negative effects of such a breakdown would include enormous political costs, among them a significant reduction in the desirability of EU membership for both current and potential future member states. This would hit especially hard coming immediately after Britain’s vote to leave the union, and in the middle of a still-heated debate about how to share the burden of the refugee crisis.

One might argue that the EU’s major failure in its handling of Turkey was its abandonment of its own ambition to use the accession process as an instrument for democracy promotion and transformation after 2004 – though it is now often forgotten in Turkey that it was the EU that pressed the military to withdraw from politics at the end of the 1990s, and that since 2002 the EU has encouraged several steps the AKP has taken to ensure civilian control over the armed forces. In March 2013, former Speaker of the Parliament Bülent Arinc stated that, in the eyes of the AKP, the EU’s assistance in taming the military was an important incentive for supporting the accession process.

With that goal attained, however, neither side seems to have much enthusiasm for further integration. EU members signal little interest in a deeper relationship with Turkey outside of border control, refugee resettlement, and combating terrorism; Ankara, meanwhile, is mostly interested in securing foreign investment, opening markets for energy transport, and attracting tourism. Politicians from both camps are continuously stressing their mutual need – but the fact that the relationship is no longer one of deliberate choice is clear in calls from Western politicians to reduce EU pre-accession assistance at the very moment when a state of emergency threatens to dramatically roll back pro-European civil society.

Rather than pursue a head-in-the-sand strategy, it would be much more productive for EU member states to separate the discussion of pressing themes, such as European border security and the fight against terrorism, from the debate on what the Turkish accession process can still achieve from an EU perspective – is it a farce, a pledge, or a long-term goal? In order for the latter to succeed, however, it is above all necessary to take the current signs of societal reconciliation – tenuous though they may be – seriously and see them as an opportunity to actively tune in to Turkey’s transformation process once again

Read more in the Berlin Policy Journal App – September/October 2016 issue.

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© REUTERS/Hannibal Hanschke

Turkey can’t stay out of the headlines in Germany. Last week the German parliament debated a resolution calling the 1915 massacre of more than a million Armenians in the Ottoman Empire “genocide.” The Bundestag vote was actually supposed to have taken place a year ago – on the centenary of the tragic events – but was shelved for fear of damaging relations with Ankara. Today that relationship is even more fraught, with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s eleventh-hour deal to stop the flow of refugees to the EU hinging on President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s cooperation, who rules Turkey ever more autocratically.

Merkel may have seen the symbolic resolution as a way of answering her manifold critics, who have accused her of abandoning democratic values and cozying up to Erdogan. Merkel’s Christian Democrats, together with their Social Democratic coalition partners and the opposition Greens, sponsored the bill that drew noisy protests not only from official Ankara but also from Germany’s sizable Turkish community.

When Merkel called Binali Yildirim to congratulate him on his new post as Turkey’s prime minister, he used the opportunity to lambaste the upcoming resolution, Der Spiegel reported. Aydan Özoguz, the German government’s commissioner on integration and of Turkish descent, complained to ARD TV that the vote would “shut doors” rather than open them.

In the June 2 parliamentary debate, which really wasn’t one, one speaker after another backed the bill, arguing that Germany, as Turkey’s ally in World War I, carried indirect responsibility for the fate of the Armenians. “We submitted this bill not because we feel morally superior or want to meddle in others’ affairs, but because this is also part of German history,” said Greens leader Cem Özdemir, the son of Turkish immigrants. The Left Party’s Gregor Gysi rattled off a list of countries that had already passed similar resolutions and skewered Merkel, Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel, and Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier for skipping the vote. The resolution passed almost unanimously, with one “nay” and one abstention.

“Idiotic Politicians”

The international news cycle briefly churned over the story as Erdogan recalled his ambassador to Berlin and a top German diplomat was called into the Foreign Ministry in Ankara. Vice News discarded decorum and got straight to the point: “Turkey is super pissed.”

The reaction in pro-government Turkish media was furious. The Star newspaper ran a picture of Merkel with her name printed above her mouth in the shape of a Hitler mustache. “Germany surrenders to populism” was the headline of an editorial in Daily Sabah. “Exploiting the memory of Ottoman Armenians was a welcome distraction for German politicians,” the editors wrote. Merkel would now have to “clean up after her country’s idiotic politicians.”

The first official responses were more muted. Yildirim relativized the Bundestag resolution by pointing out that only 250 of 650 MPs had turned out for the vote. “No one should expect a full worsening of our relationship with Germany because of this kind of a decision,” he said, according to Hürriyet Daily News.

Erdogan, traveling in Africa, told Turkish media that the genocide bill was of “no importance.” He said that Turkey was the target of a German conspiracy and wondered aloud why Merkel couldn’t control her own party in parliament. “Acting in anger is unworthy of us,” Daily Sabah quoted Erdogan as saying. He appeared to separate his bilateral beef with Germany from the refugee deal, which was agreed in March between the EU and Turkey.

The Turkish president also questioned the timing of the Bundestag resolution. In a poll commissioned by ARD, 46 percent of Germans seemed to agree with him, saying they couldn’t understand why German politicians were occupying themselves with the mass killings of Armenians 100 years ago. But 74 percent still supported the wording of the bill, and 91 percent said they didn’t consider Turkey “a trustworthy partner,” up 12 points from April.

If the Armenian resolution was a ploy to distance Merkel from Erdogan, then nobody appears to have consulted Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen. According to Der Spiegel, von der Leyen now has to fret about a planned expansion of Germany’s presence at Incirlik Air Base and the NATO naval patrols fighting human traffickers off Turkey’s coast.

With their Armenian genocide bill passed, Bundestag MPs have inadvertently drawn attention to another forgotten atrocity: the mass killings of the Herero and Nama peoples in German Southwest Africa, present-day Namibia, at the beginning of the 20th century. “A recognition of German colonial crimes must follow if we don’t want to strengthen the accusation that this is actually cheap Turkey-bashing,” historian Jürgen Zimmerer wrote in Die Tageszeitung (taz).

The satirical Heute Show picked  up on the subject, lampooning German MPs who in the past have rejected recognizing a “genocide” of the Herero and Nama peoples because of possible reparation claims. “At least for the Turks it’s about honor, while the Germans just want to save money,” said comic Christine Prayon.

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