When disgruntled low-level elements within Turkey’s military decided to stage a coup July 15 against 62-year-old Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it was doomed to fail without capturing the Islamist Turkish leader. Watching Erdogan purge the military of secular officers loyal to Turkey’s post-Ottoman reformist leader Mustafa Kemel Ataturk, replace the independent judiciary with Islamist-prone judges and persecute Turkey’s free press, patriotic military officers decided it was time for a change. Watching in Brussels, European Union leaders, especially European Union President Jean-Claude Juncker and European Council President Donald Tusk, witness a glaring example of why Turkey does not fit EU democratic standards. Erdogan’s been pressing the EU to get full Schengen, passport free, travel rights, allowing Turkish citizens to enjoy full EU benefits.
Erdogan blamed the failed coup on 75-year-old exiled Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, living a remote part of Pennsylvania’s Pocono Mountains. Blaming the spiritually-minded humanitarian Gulen takes focus off Erdogan’s repressive tactics, transforming Turkey’s parliamentary government into an imperial presidency, consolidating power into only his hands. Erdogan began his rise to power March 13, 2003 as prime minister, eventually morphing the position to consolidate power into president Aug. 28, 2014. Since then, Erdogan has purged the Turkish government of almost everyone potentially opposed to his power grab. Erdoggan couldn’t completely purge the military until now, seizing the opportunity to detain, arrest, incarcerate, charge with treason and vaporize thousands of enlisted personnel not remotely connected with the failed July 15 coup.
U.S. and EU officials must now take inventory of a key NATO member and so-called ally in the fight against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria [ISIS]. Erdogan ignores criticism of Turkey’s lax policy of allowing would be Islamic radicals, from all corners of the globe to cross the Turkish border to join ISIS and other Islamic terror groups. When Erdogan approved downing a Russian SU-24 fighter Jet Nov. 24, 2015, Russian President Vladimir Putin exposed Erdogan’s dirty-little-secret: His son, Bilal Erdogan, runs an illicit oil business buying cheap ISIS oil, running it into Turkey. Erdogan called on Putin to show proof but never denied the charges. As a backer of the Saudi-funded proxy war to topple Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, Erdogan seized on the Syrian war to prosecute Turkey’s age-old war against the Kurds. Erdogan showed no real interest in fighting ISIS or any other radical Islamic group.
Killing at least 161 civilians, not including assailants, injuring 1,440, detaining 2,839 members of the Turkish military, Erodgan’s put the peddle-to-the-metal with mass arrests, incarceration, kangaroo courts and indiscriminate liquidations of anyone, in the military or out, remotely connected with the July 15 coup. Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yidirim called the failed coup “a black mark on Turkish democracy,” promising perpetrators “will receive every punishment they deserve.” Erdogan promised anyone remotely connected to the putsch will face the full force of Turkish law. While Erdogan enjoys the backing of NATO, the EU looks carefully at Erdogan’s post-coup actions. Purging some 2,745 judges across Turkey with any ties to Gulen. Detaining 10 members of Turkey’s High Court, arrest warrants were issued to 48 members of Turkey administrative court, including 148 members of the appeals court.
During the coup, a military tribunal issued a statement justifying the coup. “To reinstall the constitutional order, democracy, human rights and freedoms, to ensure that the rule of law was once again reigns in the country, for law and order to be reinstated,” stating precisely why low-and-mid-level military officers staged the coup. U.S. and EU officials have to stop pretending that Turkey’s a Western-style democracy, recognizing the reality Erdogan’s Stalin-like crackdown turns Turkey back to the dark days of the Ottoman Empire. Erdogan’s government denies the Ottoman’s well-documented genocide of some 1.5 million Armenians, before, during and after WWI. When Germany’s Bundestag voted June 2 to recognize the Armenian genocide, Erdogan threatened to break off diplomatic relations with Germany, despite trying feverishly to gain EU admission.
Yesterday’s coup mirrors years of growing repression on Turkey’s military, judiciary and free press under Erdogan. “They have pointed the people’s guns against the people. The president, who 52 percent of the people brought to power, is in-charge. This government brought to power by the people in charge,” Erdogan said on national TV. Without rocking the boat, U.S. and EU officials need to look carefully at Erdogan’s post-coup crackdown, transforming Turkey’s relatively free institutions to a tool of Erdogan’s new imperial powers. Beyond the coup, Erdogan plays a dirty game in the Syria conflict, going after the U.S.’s only reliable ally in the fight against ISIS, the Kurds, while, simultaneously, making underhanded deals with ISIS and other Islamic terror groups. Erdogan’s crackdown speaks volumes of where he plans to take Turkey—and it’s not toward Western-style democracy.
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