Recep Tayyip Erdoan is on track to become the longest serving head of state in Turkey’s modern history, only second to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, its founder and secular modernizer. Erdogan is a reverse Ataturk. His play has been as long-term and deliberate. In his career he has endured a prison term for his political convictions and his religious beliefs, as well as a health crisis, collapse in a car, failed coup, Kurdish insurgency, war in Syria, millions refugees, an almost constant attack by Euro-American LGBT activists, another war across seas in Ukraine, and a rivalry between France and Greece.
Erdogan’s Turkey has many similarities to the U.K. or the U.S. The powerful, financially stable, secular and cosmopolitan Istanbul is the equivalent of London, while the impoverished and conservative east is the equivalent of the middle of England or the heartland of America. Erdogan was the very first populist, in the modern sense, long before Orban and Modi. He was a quasi-Caesarian Messiah for his people: the poor, the pious and the salt of earth.
He was accused of quoting Aristotle about truth, appropriating classic literature and Homer to represent Turkish (Trojan), history when he rebelled against his own political formation. “Like Anatolia’s points, the Dardanelles are adorned with precious traces from the past of mankind and our own history. The city of Aristotle is Assos, and the city that Homer named Troy, is also among them. “Turkey is more than just the map-based borders.”
Erdogan’s foreign policy aimed to emulate the Ottoman Empire in its role as protector of faith throughout Eurasia, and pivotal power between two continents. He failed to achieve much in the first area, resulting in him getting into a lot of trouble he could’ve avoided. For example, his support for Islamists against secular Arab dictators in his former Ottoman homelands.
Ahmet Davutoglu was one of Eurasia’s most brilliant minds, and he was allowed to chart Turkey’s grand strategy as the inheritor of a centuries-old empire, in a manner we do not see in the West. In this cause, Turkey maintained an equidist realist distance in the NATO proxy conflict with Russia over Ukraine and kept its distance from E.U. In that cause, Turkey maintained a realist equidistance in the NATO proxy war with Russia over Ukraine, kept its distance between E.U. While threatening to invade Greece, they played Russia and the E.U. against each other.
In doing so, Erdogan showed something that has been lost in the management West: the willingness to use power (and a certain distorted sense of justice and history) above the economy. Conservatives are not interested in using power or caring about history. They also don’t care much about defending patrimony. Power has its own logic. It creates reality.
Hannah Lucinda Smith, in the times wrote: “We thought Erdogan would not invade Syria – until he did. We didn’t think he would build a Taksim mosque — until he actually did. His promises to convert Hagia Sophia into mosques were dismissed as mere populist bluster. Erdogan, the politician, has been resembling an old-style Turkish Nationalist in recent years. He has aligned himself with the extreme right and restarted the fight against Kurdish militants. He is stirring up old grievances between Greece and Cyprus.”
Erdogan, by sheer willpower, has opposed the LGBT movement within his country. “Secular woman look in horror at their shrouded fellow countrywomen, and see their President as an existential danger…He and his clergy denounce LGBT people.”
Erdogan has used his power to reshape Turkey’s relationship with the rest the world. He has increased Turkish influence in Syria, northern Iraq, and shifted Turkey, a NATO member, towards China, Iran and Russia. His power grab has also caused discontent among feminists and leftists as well as the secular middle-class. Erdogan has made Turkey the largest prison in the world for journalists. Other prisoners include novelists and photographers. Since 2015, Turkey has prohibited gay and transgender parades; Wikipedia is blocked since 2017.
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Erdogan is a tyrant in the Middle East. Most Euro-Americans are unfamiliar with his way of living, culture, or worldview. As cities in the West are being ravaged by targeted big-corporate activism and lawlessness, as democracy is losing meaning because of the continuity provided by the Praetorian deep-state and civil service throughout the Anglosphere, and as universities produce anti-Western radicals one must ask the simple question: why is Erdogan popular and winning? What is it that he does in Turkey that we find impossible?
The Turkish economy, according to all analyses, is not very good, yet the people continue to vote for him. This confuses rational pollsters. The once powerful army and civil services, which were a constant bane to populist democracy are now neutralized and purged. They have been replaced by patriotic and competent Turks who are religious and educated from deep Anatolia. Hagia Sofia is once again a place of Muslim worship and not a secular museum.
Erdogan received a gift from the forgotten. He returned to them what they had lost, more than just money and honor. In turn, he placed them in power positions, strengthening his own rule. Recep Tayyip Erdoan is the proverbial Carlylean ‘great man of history’ His name and policies may be taboo to sophisticated circles and he might be worshipped or despised, but it doesn’t matter. He changed the destiny and identity of his country.
