European Review, Vol. 25, No. 1, 115.

2016 Academia Europa

doi:10.1017/S1062798716000478

Competing Identities and Turkeys Future

YALE H. FERGUSON
Rutgers University-Newark, New Jersey, USA.
E-mail: yhfergus@gmail.com

One frequent observation about the contemporary world is that the pace of change
appears to be accelerating. Turkey is a case in point, and the same is true of Turkeys
relationships with the Middle East, the European Union, and the wider world. All
have continued to evolve at such an astonishing rate that almost the only constant has
been change itself. Early in the millennium Turkey appeared to have managed the
difcult transition from a long era of military control to a relatively stable elected
government and liberal democratic values. That expectation eroded in subsequent
years under the rule of Prime Minister (now President) Recep Tayyip Erdogan and
his Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), with an unmistakable drift
towards a decidedly illiberal democracy if not outright authoritarianism and
increased violence at home and abroad. At the time of writing (late-July 2016),
Turkey has recently experienced a major military coup, a formal state of emergency
has been declared, and a sweeping crackdown is occurring that affects virtually every
sector of society.

Turkish Politics: From Praetorianism to Illiberal Democracy

A modern historical survey of Turkey might begin with the collapse of the Ottoman
Empire after the First World War and the creation of the Turkish Republic by Mustfa
Kemal Atatrk. Atatrks military government was determined to modernize,
secularize, and industrialize Turkey, and it succeeded in those goals to a remarkable
degree. Turkey joined the Allied cause late in the Second World War, received modest
support from the Marshall Plan, joined the Council of Europe in 1949 and NATO in
1952, and remained a staunch ally of the West throughout the Cold War. The Turkish
military continued to be a strong political force as the country only slowly transi-
tioned to a more democratic system. Intervals of civilian rule involved an unstable
multiparty system, and there were military coups in 1960, 1971, and 1980.
A tectonic shift in Turkish politics seemed to occur when national elections in 2002
brought to power the moderately Islamist AKP, led by its broadly popular team,
Prime Minister Erdogan and his close associate President Abdullah Gul. The Turkish
constitution made it clear that the role of Prime Minister was the primary one and the
President (appointed by Parliament) was to be a largely ceremonial gure. In sum,

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 2 Yale H. Ferguson

Erdogan subsequently won three successive terms as Prime Minister and in 2014
became Turkeys rst directly elected President. A law elevating the presidency to an
elected position was passed in 2007, just in time for Erdogan, who was facing an AKP
internal rule that its leader could only serve three terms. Erdogan quickly announced
his further plan to have the constitution changed to make the President (rather than
the Prime Minister) the countrys most important post, and indeed he has been acting
ever since as though that change has already been made.
Erdogans long tenure in public ofce began with considerable promise. He faced
down a serious threat of a military coup in 2007 and a judicial threat to outlaw the
AKP in 2008. Also in 2008 he forced a number of high military ofcers to retire under
threat of prosecution (the Ergenekon affair) and again in 2010 (the alleged
Sledgehammer plot).
Fears of a radical tilt towards Islam did not materialize, although Erdogan did
reintroduce middle schools for training clerics, permitted children from the age of ten
to attend religious schools, reintroduced optional classes in the Koran and Arabic,
and allowed women to wear headscarves. Women were also granted equal legal
standing in family matters including divorce, and were given pregnancy leave and the
freedom to breastfeed children outside the home. The Kurds received access to
broadcasting media, as well as the right to speak Kurdish in public, and there was
discussion of teaching the Kurdish language in schools. However, surely most
important for Erdogans continuing popularity was the fact that he helped to
inaugurate and then presided over a remarkable period of economic growth and
foreign investment that weathered even the global nancial crisis rather well. That
economic boom helped to create many new jobs, fund a major expansion of the public
welfare system, modernize the countrys infrastructure, and build new schools and
universities across the country.
However, a negative side of Erdogans early years was widespread concerns
about restrictions on political freedom and other violations of human rights. PKK
militants labelled terrorists, some with justication were hunted down and killed.
The separatist Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) suffered relentless persecution, and
intermittent peace talks seemed to make little progress. Turkish law also provided
justication for the prosecution of many non-Kurdish critics of the government under
the rubric of insults to the Turkish nation. Journalists lost their jobs, and many were
jailed, to such an extent that in 2013 Turkey gained the dubious distinction of
imprisoning more journalists than any other country (followed by Iran and China).
Also disturbing was Erdogans initially close and shadowy connection with
Turkish preacher and former imam Fethullah Glen and his Hizmet movement.
Glen has established his organization in exile in the United States (Pennsylvania)
and preaches a message of tolerance and interfaith dialogue, vehement hostility to
Iran, and the desirability of maintaining cordial relations with the United States and
Israel. Nevertheless, many observers have regarded his inuence in Turkey as much
more sinister, pervading the courts and police and intelligence services, and targeting
government opponents. Glenists were believed to have been instrumental in some
of the governments early efforts to retire and prosecute high-ranking secularist

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 Competing Identities and Turkeys Future 3

military ofcers. In any event, what apparently began as a symbiotic relationship

between two charismatic personalities, in due course, developed into a bitter power
struggle that continues to the present day.
Erdogan won re-election as Prime Minister in 2011, but thereafter he began to
react to successive political challenges in an ever more stridently demagogic and
autocratic manner. He was determined that the AKP would win municipal elections
in March 2014 and that he himself would be elected President in August that same
year. However, the outlook was by no means certain, partly because the Turkish
economic boom was beginning to cool and Turkeys key foreign policy initiatives
appeared to be failing (more on this to follow).
In fact, domestic political tensions worsened severely. In May 2013 there was a
huge public demonstration in Istanbuls Taksim Square against the governments
plan to build a modern shopping complex on Gezi Park. Erdogan refused to have any
sort of dialogue with the protesters and ordered the use of water cannons and tear gas
to clear the square. In what was to become his characteristic public response to
criticism, he blamed all the unrest on a few malcontents and foreign trouble makers,
in this case Israel and its allies.
On 17 December, a major corruption scandal rocked the Erdogan government.
Police arrested some 50 persons under suspicion of bribery, rigging contracts, and
making illegal gold transfers to Iran. Implicated in the scandal were the sons of three
cabinet ministers (who resigned), an AKP mayor, and the manager of the second
largest state lender Hallbank. Prosecutors also sought to detain Erdogans son, who
was accused of having been involved in shady property deals. Erdogan swiftly went
on the offensive by dismissing or reassigning hundreds of police chiefs, ring
a lead prosecutor in the investigation, and having existing law altered to forbid
the government from probing internal corruption. All charges were thus quashed,
and again Erdogan railed against alleged nefarious foreign inuences from Israel
and the United States.
Especially signicant in light of circumstances surrounding the mid-2016 abortive
military coup, was Erdogans shift of political allies in the wake of the scandal.
He stepped up what was already a quiet purge of Glen sympathizers from state
institutions and publicly accused them of a dirty plot and of having created nothing
less than a clandestine parallel state. Erdogan also announced that he was prepared
to support the retrial of hundreds of military ofcers who had earlier been convicted
of plotting against the government, because he believed Glenist-inspired police and
judiciary might have treated them unjustly. This move was, at once, a strike against
his former ally, Glen and his movement, and the extension of an olive branch to his
former foes, old guard secularists in the military. Not long thereafter, Glen broke
his long silence to call for a new Turkish constitution that would protect essential
freedoms and institutions in the country. Erdogan replied that he was considering
closing Glenist schools in Turkey, recommending the same to Pakistan, and
discussing with President Obama the possible extradition of Glen himself from
the United States. The demand for extradition has been repeated several times in
subsequent years, the latest immediately after the 2016 coup attempt.

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 4 Yale H. Ferguson

Despite all the negative publicity, the AKP managed a strong showing in the
30 March 2014 municipal elections, capturing 45% of the overall vote and winning
decisively not only across the conservative Anatolian heartlands but also in Istanbul,
although only narrowly in Ankara. Erdogan resolved to move ahead with a no-holds-
barred campaign for the presidency. In mid-April Turkeys parliament approved
legislation to give the National Intelligence Agency (MIT) wider powers of
surveillance and set prison terms of up to ten years for journalists who leak
condential information. On a single day in June, 2224 judges and prosecutors
were moved to other posts.
Meanwhile, external developments gave a signicant boost to Erdogans and the
AKPs electoral prospects. Turkey secured a 50-year agreement, vehemently opposed
by Iraqs government in Baghdad, to transport oil from Iraqs Kurdestan region via
pipeline directly to the world market. Some anti-Assad forces in Syria morphed into
the extremist ISIS movement, which along its rapid advance, stormed the Turkish
consulate in Mosul and took a number of diplomats and citizens hostage. Turkish
forces eventually liberated the consulate in a daring commando raid. The Kurds were
natural allies against ISIS, so it followed that the Turkish governments peace process
with the PKK seemed to gain some momentum and parliament went so far as to
hint it might eventually support carving out an independent Kurdish state in
northern Iraq.
On 10 August, Erdogan was elected President with 52% of the vote, albeit with a
relatively low voter turnout, probably because the elderly diplomat supported by
opposition parties never seemed to stand a chance. Notably, Erdogan did well not
only in traditional Anatolia but also this time in Kurdish territories, over a Kurdish
candidate, who won less than 10%. Now Erdogan turned to increasing the AKPs
parliamentary majority in the 2015 election to a clear two-thirds, which would allow
for immediate adoption of new legislation to make the president (rather than
the prime minister) the countrys main political gure and indeed create a sort of
super-presidency. For a start, he forced his old friend Gul out and saw to the
appointment of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu as Prime Minister. Although
Gul had been silent at the time, rumours had it that he had privately expressed
concerns to Erdogan about his handling of the 2013 demonstrations and corruption
probe.1 In advance of the campaign, new legislation tightened state control of
the internet.
However, in June 2015, most observers of Turkish politics believed that the
country had stepped back from the brink of authoritarianism, when Erdogans AKP
received only 41% of the vote in national legislative elections, far short of the large
majority that would have allowed them to change the constitution. A major factor
accounting for the result was the strong showing of the Kurdish Peoples Democratic
Party (the HDP), winning 13% of the vote and passing the 10% threshold for holding
any seats in parliament. Erdogans efforts to woo signicant support from the Kurds
had obviously failed, with dire consequences for them, as subsequent events proved.
At this crucial juncture, the several small parties opposed to the AKP missed
a golden opportunity and failed to agree on a coalition government. Erdogan simply

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 Competing Identities and Turkeys Future 5

waited while they dithered and squabbled, and then, as was the Presidents legal right,
boldly scheduled a new legislative election for 1 November. That election returned a
58% majority for the AKP, thus allowing the AKP almost free rein, although still not
quite enough to change the constitution. Erdogan quickly made it clear that he
nevertheless intended to act as though he had already been elevated to supreme
authority and packed the AKPs council with his closest supporters. The November
election also saw a reduction in support for the Kurdish HDP, which barely cleared
the 10% required to remain in parliament. All of these developments can best be
explained by an acute sense of crises at home and abroad that Erdogan himself had at
least partially engineered.

Turkey at the Nexus of Two Regions and the Wider World

In mid-2012, Thomas Friedman, a New York Times journalist with special expertise
in the Middle East, was able to comment:
For many years, strategists have debated whether Turkey would be a bridge or
a gully between predominately Christian Europe and the Arab/Muslim Middle
East It turns out that Turkey these days is neither Its an island of relative
stability between two great geopolitical systems that are cracking apart: the
euro zone and the Arab state system.2

Friedmans assessment about Turkeys relative stability was accurate enough at the
time, but unfortunately is no longer correct. In addition to rising domestic tensions
exacerbated by the Erdogan governments autocratic course, Turkeys external
relationships have nearly all come to grief. The countrys location at the nexus of two
regions and the wider world has proved to be less of an advantage than a liability, as
neighbouring turmoil has literally spilled across Turkeys porous borders, and
incidents of terrorist violence from different sources are ever more frequent in major
cities as well as elsewhere in the country.
The general outlook seemed much more promising at the beginning of
Erdogans AKP rule. The government pledged to westernize in appropriate ways
while maintaining Turkeys distinctive Islamic heritage, to move ahead determinedly
towards membership in the EU, and to honour the countrys longstanding obliga-
tions to NATO (the size of Turkeys military is second only to that of the US in the
alliance). President Barack Obama visited Turkey in 2009 and praised the Erdogan
government as a brilliant example of moderate Islam and democratic progress.
Turkey sent troops to join the NATO campaign in Afghanistan and allowed an
American-designed radar system and missile interceptor to be positioned on Turkish
territory. Ankara insisted, rather unconvincingly, that the missile shield was not
aimed at Iran and that information the system gathered would not nd its way
back to Israel.
However, Turkeys Western allies were irritated by the governments early
diplomatic stances towards Iran and Israel. Turkey opposed sanctions against Iran,
arguing that the threat of that countrys nuclear programme was overrated, and the
Erdogan government hatched with Brazil an abortive plan for a complicated swap of

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 6 Yale H. Ferguson

nuclear materials as a solution to the Iranian impasse. As for Israel, Turkey

proclaimed that it would not attend any NATO meeting where Israel was even an
observer. The Erdogan government actively supported the Palestinian cause and
attempted in vain to bring competing Palestinian factions together. In 2010, relations
with Israel went into crisis when several Turkish activists were killed by Israeli forces
that boarded a ship sent from Turkey to break Israels blockade of Gaza.
A central objective of Erdogans early foreign policy was to revive neo-Ottoman
inuence in the Near and Middle East. To this end, Turkey greatly increased
its diplomatic representation in the region, but (as we have noted) there has been
more inuence of the region on Turkey than the other way around. At one point,
then-Foreign Minister Davutoglu had to downscale Turkeys ambitions to having
zero problems with neighbours, which in that particular regional neighbourhood
has also proved to be an impossible goal.
Turkish problems multiplied with the Arab Spring, which the Erdogan
government welcomed with some (possibly insufcient) caution. Turkey established
a supportive relationship with the Morsi/Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt
and was sharply critical of its overthrow by the military under General Abdel Farrah
el-Sisi. El-Sisis reply was to expel the Turkish ambassador. Relations with the
Shia-backed al-Maliki government in Iraq were bedevilled by the Kurdish oil issue.
Regarding Syria, Turkey as it had initially done in Libya opposed any form of
Western intervention, and in the Syrian case attempted to broker some sort of
settlement that would allow the ghting to stop and Assad to step down. Perhaps the
West should have listened to Turkey with regard to Libya. In any event, the US and
its European allies commended Ankaras constructive (albeit unsuccessful) efforts in
Syrian negotiations and its willingness to shelter what would soon become a ood
of Syrian refugees.
In fact, Assad clung to power, the civil war only intensied, some of the rebel forces
radicalized and joined ISIS, and Syrian refugees just kept coming and coming. An
estimated 130,000 crossed the border during the single weekend of 2122 September
2014. Over the following months, Syrian and Iraqi refugees from escalating violence
and fearsome ISIS advances joined other migrants from Afghanistan and elsewhere
seeking a better economic life and presented the EU with a full-blown migration crisis
(discussed further below). Not only Turkey, but also Greece, Macedonia, and target
destination countries were all nding it extremely difcult to cope.
Until Turkey belatedly made more serious efforts to secure the border, Kurdish
ghters and Islamic extremists also regularly crossed over to join their kindred in
Syria and Iraq. The Islamic extremists also laid the foundations for a new ISIS terror
underground in Turkey. We earlier mentioned that the seizure by ISIS of the Turkish
consulate in Mosul and its later liberation by Turkish forces helped boost Erdogans
popularity during his presidential campaign. However, when ISIS forces closed in on
the town of Kobani on the Turkish border, the conict entered a new stage that began
to poison Erdogans recently improved relationship with the Kurds, which had
boosted his support in the August presidential elections. Kobani is a predominately
Kurdish town then defended by Syrian Kurdish militias that Erdogan regards as

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 Competing Identities and Turkeys Future 7

extensions of PKK terrorists. He closed the border to Kurdish volunteers and refused
to allow Turkish troops to cross to help defend the city. In the end, Kobani was only
rescued by a US airdrop of supplies and weapons, which Erdogan strongly criticized.
Kurds regarded his stance as a betrayal, and violent Kurdish protests broke out in
several Turkish cities. The United States too was more than disappointed by
Ankaras initial unwillingness to allow US and NATO forces to use the Turkish
military base at Incirlik and also to help train and equip moderate Syrian forces.
Erdogan unsuccessfully conditioned any such assistance on the establishment of
a no-y buffer zone along Turkeys border with Syria.
In July 2015, Ankara nally allowed US planes to operate against ISIS from the
Incirlik base. That same month Erdogan renewed his active war against PKK
terrorism, almost certainly, in part, as payback for the drop in Kurdish support for
the AKP in the June elections. Meanwhile, the Kurdish forces in Syria (some of
whom the Turkish air force was bombarding) and in Iraq had proved themselves to be
indispensable ghters against the radical Islamicists. At the same time, rivalry and
sometimes violent inghting among Kurdish factions undermined their effectiveness
and forestalled any immediate advance towards an independent Kurdistan. One
observer put it: The alphabet barely has enough letters to cover the acronyms of
all their quarrelsome factions.3 Still lacking was any agreed strategy by Assads
opponents to unseat him if indeed any alternative was likely to be better when
Russias direct military intervention in Syria in September strengthened Assad and
upset all calculations. Turkish forces shot down a Russian ghter accused of violating
Turkish airspace on 24 November, Putin and Erdogan exchanged angry words, and
Russia imposed economic sanctions.
The months in Turkey preceding the July 2016 coup attempt witnessed a marked
increase in terrorist violence and political manoeuvring by the Erdogan government
at home and abroad. There were serious terrorist attacks in Ankara and Istanbul and
several smaller cities as well. In Ankara, the government alleged that ISIS was behind
an October attack on a Kurdish peace march that killed 102 persons and injured 250,
and the PKK claimed responsibility for attacks in February and March. Istanbul had
not only an ISIS-inspired suicide bombing in January, in a tourist area near the Blue
Mosque, but also 42 killed and 239 wounded at Istanbuls Atatrk Airport on
28 June. In early May, Erdogan replaced Prime Minister Davutoglu with another
close associate Binali Yildirim, reportedly because Davutoglu had favoured resuming
dialogue with the Kurds and expressed private concerns about Erdogans drive for a
super-presidency.4 Then, in remarkable diplomatic reversals on a single day
(27 June), Erdogan normalized diplomatic relations with Israel and apologized to
Putin for Turkeys earlier downing of the Russian military jet. Russia quickly
responded by restoring tourism ties, and both countries agreed to coordinate their
policies with regard to Syria. This apparently gave the Assad regime further cause to
hope for its survival, although some reports had it that Russia was reconsidering its
unwavering support for Assad.5
On 15 June, Turkey was suddenly confronted by what was to prove to be an
abortive and fairly inept coup attempt by a large faction of the Turkish military.

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 8 Yale H. Ferguson

It was put down or perhaps more accurately, collapsed in less than a single day.
Some 230 persons died, including 145 civilians who had ooded into the streets in
protest, in response to President Erdogans videoed appeal for popular support. All
opposition parties, Turkish media (including a few remaining somewhat independent
voices), and a wide range of world leaders (President Obama among them), quickly
and unequivocally condemned the coup. The plotters missed capturing Erdogan at
his holiday retreat; seized the chief of the general staff General Hulusi Akar, who
refused to declare martial law; unsuccessfully bombed the police and intelligence
services and satellite broadcasting service in Ankara; and indeed almost seemed to
invite resistance by commencing the coup at ten in the evening when the streets were
already crowded.6
At this writing, the full extent of the plot, the precise actors and motives behind it,
and reason for the timing are still not entirely clear. Erdogan himself lost no time in
blaming it directly on the Glenist parallel state and the United States, a verdict
that subsequently seems to be accepted by most Turkish citizens regardless of their
attitude towards their President or other political issues.7 Erdogan repeated his
earlier demand that the US allow Glens extradition and implied that the Obama
administrations insistence upon hard evidence was itself evidence of US complicity.
Be that as it may, Erdogan declared that This uprising is a gift from God to us
because it will be a reason to cleanse our army.8 It was soon apparent that his
government had been diligently preparing extensive lists of its presumed opponents
within the military and well beyond, into virtually every sector of Turkish society,
which were immediately utilized in the crackdown after the failed coup. Indeed,
one plausible explanation for the hasty nature and timing for the coup is that it was to
pre-empt a wave of arrests that many expected to happen later in the summer.9
Erdogans post-coup crackdown has been swift and sweeping, targeting more than
60,000 persons, and it should be stressed that all this comes on top of previous moves
against the police, prosecutors, judges, media, and journalists. The government
arrested some 100 generals and admirals and about 10,000 military in all; red 9000
police ofcers; suspended 21,000 private school teachers; suspended 2745 judges; red
21,710 ministry of education ofcials; red 1500 (that is, all) university deans; added
100 broadcast media, newspapers, and magazines to the many banned earlier;
rounded up an unspecied number of journalists beyond the unprecedented number
jailed earlier; and suspended 1500 ministry of nance ofcials.10 What had evolved
into an illiberal democracy in Turkey has now further evolved ironically in the name
of protecting democracy into an unapologetically authoritarian regime reecting
Erdogans cult of personality.

Turkey and the European Union

Although Turkey rst applied for full EEC (later EU) membership in 1987, formal
negotiations about Turkish accession did not begin until 2005 and almost immedi-
ately encountered serious roadblocks. For instance, Frances then-President Nicolas
Sarkozy expressed his opposition to Turkish membership, and Germanys Chancellor

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 Competing Identities and Turkeys Future 9

Angela Merkel declared that Turkey should be content with some form of privileged
partnership rather than full membership. France and Austria also both took the
position that they would have to hold a national referendum on any decision to admit
Turkey. In 1995, however, the EU did agree to enter into a customs union with
Turkey.
Today, Turkish full membership in most respects still seems a distant, if not
impossible, goal. That it may now become even more impossible can be illustrated by
the shifting British position. As late as 2014, then-Prime Minister David Cameron
proclaimed that allowing Turkey to join was vital for our economy, vital for
our security and vital for our diplomacy. But when the Brexit campaign revealed
deep-seated fears about increased immigration, Cameron stated: There is no
prospect of Turkey joining the EU in decades. You cannot nd an expert on the
subject who thinks it is going to happen, because its not going to happen.11 All EU
member states must agree on admitting new members, and 35 so-called chapters or
policy areas must be satised, of which only one has so far been resolved. Of course,
in the almost 30 years since Turkey initially applied for membership, Europes
international organization has itself changed drastically: its substantial transforma-
tion from the EEC to the EU; its enlargement to 28 member states; the adoption of a
single Euro currency (by most members); the Greek debt crisis (and threatened
Grexit) that precipitated what has proved to be a persistent concern about the
viability of the euro; a ood of refugees/migrants from the Middle East and elsewhere
that has caused a partial collapse of the EU security regime; and most recently Brexit.
There have been three traditional issues impeding Turkish membership: rst,
whether Turkeys history, politics and predominately Muslim culture are sufciently
European, including for those Turks already in or likely to come to Europe. The
second issue has been Cyprus; and the third, the status of Turkeys politics (degree of
democracy) and human rights, including treatment of the Kurds. Let us quickly
review the rst two of these three issues and return to the third in the context of the
new migrant crisis, ongoing turmoil in the Middle East, and the Turkish coup.
The issue of Turkish immigration (NB. distinct from immigration via Turkey) has
seemed to be less and less signicant until perhaps very recently. Most of the one
million or so Turks in Europe came years ago and are now relatively well-established
in their host communities. Later migrants from North Africa and the Middle East are
more of an economic burden tempered, in any event, by Europes urgent need
for labour, to support an aging native population. Moreover, non-Turks (frankly)
present more of a security threat. Moreover, the overall bettering of Turkeys
economy versus nagging economic problems in Europe have resulted in more Turks
returning home than leaving, so that net immigration has essentially been zero. That
said, the situation could change should Turkeys economy continue to slow and
with increased political instability in the country.
Turkey occupied a third of Cyprus after supporters of union with Greece staged
an abortive coup in 1974. The Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus declared its
independence in 1983, and Cyprus became a full EU member in 1984. Turkey refused
to attend any EU meeting chaired by Cyprus and kept commercial trafc from

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 10 Yale H. Ferguson

Cyprus from entering Turkish ports or airspace, a blatant violation of the 1995
customs union with Europe. TurkeyCyprus peace talks have been off and on for
many years, but seemed to gain traction early in 2014. One reason for optimism was
the discovery of enormous oil and natural gas reserves in the eastern Mediterranean
and the possibility of routing Cyprus oil and gas via an underground pipeline
to Turkey, which would be benecial to Turkey, not least because of uncertainties
surrounding supplies from Russia. To date Erdogan has personally supported
UN-brokered talks between Greek Cypriot and Turkish Cypriot leaders that
started in 2015, and they were just beginning to address the hardest problems of
territorial exchanges and Turkish military withdrawals when the military coup
in Turkey occurred.12
The coup also put into additional peril an already shaky agreement between the
EU and the Erdogan government with regard to immigration and refugees. When
the EU Commissioner for Enlargement visited Turkey in 2012 with a mission
of restarting accession talks, he came bearing the possibility of easing or even
eliminating visa restrictions on Turkish citizens. In late 2013, the EU and Turkey did,
in fact, sign an agreement relating to illegal migration and visa-free travel that
was ratied by the European Parliament in June 2014. Under the agreement, EU
governments would be able to send back illegal immigrants who arrive from Turkey,
with the expectation that they would be readmitted there. In return, the EU pledged
to consider the matter of visa-free entry for Turks expeditiously.
So matters stood, when in autumn 2015 Europe suddenly experienced an
enormous ow of refugees and migrants from the Middle East and beyond
(e.g. Afghanistan), many of them coming via Turkey to Greece. The crisis resulted in
a further emergency agreement under which the EU made several key promises:
refugees arriving in Greece would be returned to Turkey to have their papers
reviewed, Turkey would receive upwards of 3 billion to help support the proper
accommodation of refugees in Turkey, the EU would push ahead with a genuine
resolve to abolish short-term visas for Turkish citizens, and the EU would (yet again)
revive substantive negotiations about Turkeys full EU membership. The agreement
was highly controversial, partly because it came on top of Merkels call (which fell on
many an unreceptive ear) for EU countries to accept vastly increased numbers of
refugees. Also of concern was the huge cost of the programme and the fact that
implementing it would require the EU formally to declare Turkey to be a safe
country for refugees. Although only a small proportion of the funds promised have as
yet been dispatched, the agreement has in some respects been reasonably successful.
At least the Balkan route from Turkey to Greece now appears to be largely closed.
Not only have many refugees been allowed to remain in Turkey, but Greece has been
reluctant to deport any more than absolutely necessary and especially since the
unsettled conditions that have persisted after the coup. Greek refugee camps are now
themselves gravely overcrowded.
The fate of all aspects of the agreement, including continued funding for Turkey,
after the coup, remains uncertain at the time of writing. Although most European
governments joined the United States in condemning the threat that the coup posed

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 Competing Identities and Turkeys Future 11

to democratic processes, they were equally quick to urge restraint in its aftermath and
were particularly concerned about the sweeping nature of Erdogans purge and
declaration of a three-month state of emergency. Merkel warned specically about
Erdogans threat to reinstate the death penalty, something that Turkey had pointedly
abolished in 2004 to enhance its bid for EU membership.13 The European Commis-
sion had previously emphasized that Turkey had failed to complete the 72 conditions
legally required before visa-free travel could be granted and highlighted the harshness
of Turkeys new anti-terror laws. At the end of July, Erdogan expressed his outrage
that the German government did not allow him to address a pro-democracy rally in
Cologne by video-link. The Turkish Foreign Minister stated that his country might
renounce the new agreement about refugees if Europe did not promptly full its
pledge regarding visa-free travel. In his words: It can be at the beginning of or the
middle of October but we expect a xed date. Merkels spokesman replied that
Germany would not be blackmailed and it was up to Turkey to meet the EU
legal requirements.14 Another consideration lurking in the background is a recent
comment by Erdogan that Turkey intended to provide a pathway for Syrian refugees
to become Turkish citizens.

Conclusion: Competing Identities and Turkeys Future

At the outset of this conclusions section, I should stress several central points that
are absolutely essential for understanding identities. Identities are anything but
static rather they are continually evolving. Moreover, and perhaps this is most
important, identities are typically constructed to a substantial extent and multiple in
nature thus, every person and social institution has several or even many identities.
Few of those identities are mutually exclusive, although some of them may compete.
Which identity or identities will prevail (at least for a time) depends on contexts
that are also continually shifting. Let us keep the evolving, constructed, sometimes
competing, and contextual nature of identities in mind as we proceed.
Roger Cohen, another journalist with long familiarity with the Middle East,
commented (ironically) before the July 15 military coup:
Pity the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in his labyrinth. Its a large
labyrinth. As he drifts from room to room and there are about a 1000 of them in his
new Ankara palace Erdogan no doubt has time to reect on Turkeys travails and
perhaps ponder how events can escape the control of even the most megalomanical
ruler. Heres a sobering thought: Erdogan, the would-be leader of the Sunni world,
after 13 years in power, alone in his vast palace with his neo-Ottoman dream in shreds
and Turkish society polarized to the point of violence.15

Consider the identities surfacing in Cohens perceptive remarks: Erdogan as a cult

personality with leadership aspirations beyond his own country, the Sunni world
(itself badly fragmented), and neo-Ottoman (empire). There are many other identities
in modern Turkey that overlap, blend and/or conict.
In my view, the gold standard in the analysis of Turkish identities is the work of
anthropologist Jenny White, particularly (to date) in the 2014 edition of her book on

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 12 Yale H. Ferguson

Muslim Nationalism and the New Turks and her early-2015 article on The Turkish
complex.16 In her book, White analysed what she saw as a polarization in Turkish
society that she attributed fundamentally to a weakening of Kemalist state project
and the increasing inability of the state to control the denition of Turkishness and
thereby shape the identity of Turkish youth.17 In the absence of an ofcial state
denition of Turkishness, there are any number of identities that come to the fore in
various contexts.
One of the identities is Muslim, which has been of central interest to analysts but
has often been misunderstood. White believes the key factor here has been the
growing prosperity of small and medium-sized businesses in the provinces, which
have helped initiate a Muslim cultural renaissance in fashion, lifestyle, leisure
activities, novels, media, and music. The new wealth also supported overtly Islamic
politicians and their programs in the 1980s and 1990s and created an opening for
the AKP. It is important, in her view, that: Although led by openly pious Muslim
politicians, AKP claims not to be Islamic but, rather, a center-right conservative
party that serves a broad and varied constituency across Turkey.18 As we previously
observed, a radical tilt towards Islam has not yet come to pass, which indeed is one of
the reasons the ISIS increasing presence has not (as yet) found fertile ground.
Other minority identities are Kurds and Alevis. Kurds constitute about 20% of
Turkeys population and live mainly in the poor east and southeast regions of the
country near Iran, Iraq and Syria, in which countries there are many other Kurds.
Hence the great fear of all four countries that an independent Kurdistan might sooner
or later materialize, despite internecine conicts among countless Kurdish factions.
Alevis probably are about 1525% of the population of Turkey, although some of
these are also Kurds. The Alevi combine some Shia religious practices with some
Islamic features, and overall the result is a more secular and liberal lifestyle than
Sunni Muslims. There were communal massacres of Alevis in Turkey in the late 1930s
and late 1970s. Part of the problem has been a tendency of some Alevis to be
associated with socialist or left-wing politics. Interesting and possibly signicant
given the anarchic situation in Syria, the Alevi are ideologically close to the Alawhite
minority in Syria, to which group the ruling Assad family is also related. There
are also about 100,000 Christians in Turkey, albeit a relatively small group identity
in a country of 80 million.
Another important, yet still rather amorphous identity has formed as a result of
the profound modernization that Turkey has undergone in the early 21st century and
its exposure to currents in the region, like the abortive Arab spring, and to an
increasingly globalized world. This new identity is a sort of cosmopolitanism that
directly confronts Erdogans illiberal democracy. White captures all this so well in her
comments about the Gezi Park protests. She writes:

[A] sizable new constituency has emerged as yet with no name, no platform, no
leader [Gezi was] the rst time in Turkish history that such masses of people many
with contradictory or competing interests [came] together without any ideological
or party organization. They cross class boundaries and bridge left/right, conservative/
liberal, pious/secular. The protests are an urban movement, but since almost 80% of

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 Competing Identities and Turkeys Future 13

Turkey is now urban, with Istanbul alone making up 20% of the countrys
population, the protests are arguably a national phenomenon. [C]entral is their
demand that an elected government must also protect the rights of the people who
did not vote for them, the rights of minorities or people whose ideas or lifestyle
the winners might not agree with.

However, White also observes that many people particularly women and youth
who came out into the streets have little say in Turkeys formal political life.19
The existence of such a complex range of identities that are, at once, to some extent
separate, overlapping, and conicting and also poorly anchored in national political
parties and institutions helps us understand why Turkish politics is as shifting and
explosive as it is. White stresses in her article that all of this goes far beyond the
Islam-secularism dichotomy, which she believes is no longer a useful diagnostic
(if it ever was).
We are seeing instead a recurrent cycle of conceptual patterns and associated
roles those of bigman, seless hero, and traitor that have long characterized and
destabilized Turkish political culture. These roles and their interactions are driven not
simply by competing ideologies, but by on-the-ground rivalry between network
hierarchies and a general fear of social chaos.20

At the end of the day, Erdogans remarkable survival in his ever-larger bigman role
and the continued primacy of the AKP can best be attributed to the threat of rising
social chaos in the country and Turkeys acutely anarchic regional neighbourhood.
The crowds that came out in defence of democracy during the attempted coup were
really defending Erdogan and his autocratic ways. Votes have been counted with
reasonable honesty in successive elections, but the narrow majorities returned for
Erdogan and the AKP have produced anything but a real democracy. Contrary views
have been excoriated as traitorous and those who have dared to express them have
been jailed or forced into silence or exile. Erdogan has directed his wrath and
repressive measures against large numbers of military, police, Glenists, judges,
prosecutors, teachers/professors/university administrations, journalists and the
media in short signicant numbers of Turkish citizens in most walks of life, not
to mention his persistent frictions with the EU, the US, NATO and several neigh-
bouring states. Are diplomatic photo opportunities with the likes of Putin and
(less likely) Netanyahu adding all that much external support? Erdogans is truly a
cult of personality that has pulled together a diverse movement that one senses is as
fragile as it is amorphous. What once looked like such a bright future for Turkey and
the AKP is now a much gloomier prospect.

Acknowledgements
This article is a substantially revised and updated version of my talk on the Keynote
Social Science Panel at the 27th Annual Conference of the Academia Europaea,
710 September 2015, Darmstadt, Germany. This version also draws heavily
on my two earlier articles on Turkey in this journal: Turkey and the EU:
A Changed Context, European Review, Vol. 21, No. 3 (July 2013), 362371.

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 14 Yale H. Ferguson

doi 10.1017/S106279871300032X; and Turkey and the EU: The Context Changes
Again, European Review, Vol. 24, No. 3, 365380. doi: 10.1017/S1062798716000107.
Readers are asked to consult the previous articles for full documentation/references,
especially pertaining to events in Turkey prior to 2016.

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 Competing Identities and Turkeys Future 15

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About the Author

Yale H. Ferguson is Professorial Fellow in the Rutgers University graduate Division
of Global Affairs at Rutgers University-Newark and Emeritus Distinguished
Professor of Global and International Affairs. He is also Honorary Professor at the
University of Salzburg. His publications include 12 books and over 60 articles and
book chapters, including (with Richard W. Mansbach) Globalization: The Return of
Borders to a Borderless World? and A World of Polities; Remapping Global Politics.
Professor Ferguson is a Foreign Member of Academia Europaea and serves
as Political Science Liaison on its Social Science Committee.

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