ERDOĞAN’S
COUP: PURGING DOMESTIC CRITICS, GAINING EXTERNAL ALLIES
“President RECEP TAYYIP ERDOĞAN prepared a
list of targets for arrest even before the coup (sic) was launched”, EUROPEAN Commission
official on TURKEY (quoted in FT, 7/19/2016).
THE
COUP IN TURKEY WAS MADE TO ORDER.
A group of military officers and
police officials were set-up to seize power by senior intelligence operatives
in the ERDOĞAN regime. They were allowed to drop a few bombs, seize bridges and
buildings before they were encircled, rounded-up and arrested using a list of
targets for arrest prepared even before the so-called coup. In the midst of
this fake coup, the ‘vacationing’ ERDOĞAN flies into ISTANBUL unharmed, of
course, because his vacation resort was bombed after he had left. He seizes the
mass media, denounces the coup, rouses the Muslim masses and sets about on a
mass purge of TURKISH society, concentrating on the civil service, teachers and
administrators, the military, the courts and judges. Indeed every institution
capable of independent action or reputedly critical of ERDOĞAN is closed. After
a week over 60,000 people had been purged.
Why did ERDOĞAN purge TURKISH
society?
What policies will follow ERDOĞAN’S
power grab?
PRELUDE
TO THE COUP
Over the past 5 years ERDOĞAN has
suffered a series of political, economic and diplomatic failures and defeats,
seriously undermining his dictatorial and territorial ambitions. His air force
shot down a RUSSIAN military jet operating within SYRIAN territory. The images
of TURKISH jihadi mercenaries murdering a RUSSIAN pilot as he parachuted to
safety, as well as a member of the RUSSIAN rescue party, caused the RUSSIAN
government to halt the multi-billion-dollar RUSSIAN tourism industry in TURKEY
and cancel lucrative business deals. He broke relations with ISRAEL, which
undercut a lucrative gas and oil offshore contract. His support for ISIS and
other violent Salafist mercenary groups operating in IRAQ and SYRIA provoked a
rupture with SYRIA and IRAN. His subsequent effort to disavow TURKEY’S links
with ISIS led to a series of horrific terror bombings by jihadi cells implanted
in the country. TURKEY’S diplomatic position in EGYPT deteriorated as ERDOĞAN
sought to maintain his ties with the MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD after it had been
ousted from power by a US sponsored EGYPTIAN military coup.
Domestically, ERDOĞAN alienated
the secular KEMALIST military and civilian political-economic elite via trumped
up trials and media purges. ERDOĞAN’S heavy-handed assault on liberal and
leftist protestors over environmental issues increased Western concern. His
brutal handling of the labor protests following the 2014 SOMA coalmine
disaster, when over 300 workers were killed, further isolated him.
ERDOĞAN’S war on the KURDISH independence
movements in TURKEY, IRAQ and especially in SYRIA, where they were allied with
the US against the jihadi terrorist ISIS, added to domestic unrest and
international isolation.
In order to consolidate his
executive power, ERDOĞAN had first allied with the extensive GULENIST-ISLAMIST networks
in TURKEY in order to undermine the KEMALISTS and then he turned around to
purge his former allies.
Faced with enemies and
adversaries at home and overseas, ERDOĞAN decided on a dual strategy of improving
his ties abroad, especially his links with RUSSIA and ISRAEL while launching a
total war on domestic critics.
FABRICATED
COUP AND THE PERMANENT PURGE
ERDOĞAN’S intelligence operatives
within the military command encouraged or even provoked his critics in the
General Staff, who were fed up with his bungling and disastrous policies, to
mount a coup. They gave the rebellious military sufficient space and resources to
provide a semblance of authority while retaining strategic control over the air
force and key ground troops. They may have feigned sympathy to the launching of
a premature uprising …doomed to defeat. Once the heavily infiltrated rebel
units moved, the entire ERDOĞAN operation struck. Hapless conscripts thought
they had been called out for military exercises, only to find themselves
encircled, arrested and even lynched. The dissidents were isolated, their
advances paralyzed, their leaders incapacitated. ERDOĞAN’S loyalist within the
TURKISH Air Force flew the triumphant president into the ‘liberated’ ISTANBUL
International airport to the cheers of his adoring civilian supporters.
ERDOĞAN immediately decreed a
massive purge – in the name of the fatherland. A real coup had indeed taken
place – ERDOĞAN’S total power grab. The entire political, military, judicial
and police system was stripped of personnel within hours. There were over
20,000 arrests, beatings and disappearances. There were calls to re-introduce
the death penalty.
ERDOĞAN’S power grab eliminated
key US assets among the GULENIST and eliminated independent Supreme Court
officials and secular republican officials. The president was free to rebuild
an entire civil, governmental and military apparatus with his own loyalists.
His control over the media and the educational institutions was total.
RULE
UNDER ERDOĢAN
ERDOĞAN’S pre-emptive coup, purge
and power grab will result in a monolithic state which ERDOĢAN will shape into
his long-sought version of an Islamist regime. The new regime announced a
‘State of Emergency’, which places all TURKS under strict compliance with ERDOĞAN’S
policies.
ERDOĞAN’S “New Order” will launch
large-scale operations against the KURDS, with no respect for the SYRIAN or IRAQI
national borders. ERDOĞAN will ensure compliance with Islamist decrees designed
to enforce conformity. He will succeed in imposing a dictatorial ‘Presidential’
regime. And parliament, if necessary will be bypassed; his ‘electoral’ mandate
will be ensured.
In the immediate aftermath, mass
detentions will strengthen the state – and ERDOĞAN’S generals, allied religious
authorities and street thugs will call the shots.
Unleashing force and violence
against his domestic enemies, however, may lead to internal disputes among the
new predators over the spoils of victory. The economic elite may accept the New
Order, but only if and when ERDOĞAN tones down his rhetorical attacks on the US
and the EU.
ERDOĞAN has yet to develop a
strategy on replacing the purged (‘GULENIST’) professionals within the civilian
economy and public bureaucracy – especially the schools and judiciary. The
impetuous reversals of his reckless policy of confrontation with RUSSIA, SYRIA,
ISRAEL, IRAN, IRAQ and the KURDS are likely to generate new layers of
discontent, especially among his current military commanders.
ERDOĞAN’S New Order arises from
the breakdown of civil society and long-term alliances. He may remain in power
in ANKARA but he will be viewed as more of a local political thug than a
partner among the regional big powers.
ERDOĞAN’S external allies will
exploit his isolation and radical bombast to forge lucrative alliances. ISRAEL
will push for favorable gas and oil deals; RUSSIA will insist that ERDOĞAN
abandons his ISIS allies. The US will demand he cease attacks on the KURDS. The
EU will use the ongoing purge and re-institution of the death penalty to
finally declare TURKEY unfit to join the EUROPEAN UNION. Bankers and foreign
investors will wait for ERDOĞAN to stop his rampage over the financial sector
and ‘get serious’ about the economy.
ERDOĞAN’S
DREAM OF LIFETIME RULER SHIP PRESIDING OVER AN ISLAMIC NEO-OTTOMAN CALIPHATE,
buttressed by street mobs,
praetorian guards and crony capitalists makes for an unstable and unruly TURKEY.
ERDOĞAN’S military loyalists have their own rivalries and ambitions. Now that ERDOĞAN
has established his ‘military road to power’, he has set a clear precedent for
other ‘ERDOĞAN’S’ to take the same route.
In the short-run ERDOĞAN needs to
restart the economy, stabilize the political system and establish a semblance
of international order.
ERDOĞAN cannot and probably will
not prolong tensions with the US over the GULEN affair. GULEN will remain in PENNSYLVANIA,
in the CIA’s ‘regime change’ pocket. Meanwhile, he has eliminated most of the GULENIST
agents capable of working with the US as a fifth-column. The question is
whether he now moves back to his role as a ‘valued’ NATO junior partner, or if
he will launch an intensified war against the US’s strategic KURDISH allies?
ERDOĞAN’S ties with RUSSIA are
precarious. There is no reason for the RUSSIANS to trust him. He has fallen
somewhere between the need for reconciliation with RUSSIA and the desire to
continue his proxy war against the government of SYRIA.
In the end ERDOĞAN may have
secured power and undertaken a vast domestic purge of his enemies, but he has
lost the regional war while bearing the consequences of millions of war refugees
and a deeply entrenched jihadi terrorist threat within TURKEY.
The original source of this
article is Global Research
Copyright © Prof. James Petras,
Global Research, 2016
