Coup-Weary Turkey: Directionless and Insecure: Burak Bekdil, Gatestone Institute, Aug. 8, 2016— Turkey once boasted of having NATO's second biggest army, equipped with state-of-the-art weapons systems.
Can Turkey Really Turn to Russia?: Semih Idiz, Ak-Monitor, Aug. 2, 2016— Russia appears to be the main beneficiary of the July 15 attempted coup in Turkey.
Turkey’s New Anti-Americanism: New York Times, Aug. 4, 2016— Shaken by a failed coup attempt, Turkey’s government and many of its citizens are desperate for someone to blame.
Regional Implications of the Failed Coup d’État and Purges in Turkey: Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman, BESA, Aug. 1, 2016— The failed coup d’état and subsequent purge in Turkey have rattled both local and distant onlookers.
Erdogan’s Purge Is a Sectarian War: Edward Luttwak, Foreign Policy, Aug. 3, 2016
Erdoğan's Coup Survival: Don't Call It Democracy: IPT News, Aug. 3, 2016
The Erdogan Loyalists and the Syrian Refugees: Suzy Hansen, New York Times, July 20, 2016
Turkey’s Intolerance: National Post, June 21, 2016
COUP-WEARY TURKEY: DIRECTIONLESS AND INSECURE
Burak Bekdil
Gatestone Institute, Aug. 8, 2016
Turkey once boasted of having NATO's second biggest army, equipped with state-of-the-art weapons systems. That powerful army now lacks command: After the failed coup of July 15, more than 8,500 officers and soldiers, including 157 of the 358 generals and admirals in the Turkish military's ranks, were discharged. The top commanders who were purged had made up 44% of the entire command structure. Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said that the military's shipyards and weapons factories will be transferred to civilian authority; military high schools and war academies have been shut; military hospitals will be transferred to health ministry; and the gendarmerie, a key force in anti-terror operations, and the coast guard will be tied to the interior ministry.
Those changes leave behind an army in deep morale shock, with political divisions and polarization. Its ranks are suffering not just trauma but also humiliation. The Turks are lucky their country was not attacked by an enemy (and they are plentiful) at a time like this. Conventional war, however, is not the only threat to Turkey's security. The Turkish army's worst decline in modern history came at a time when it was fighting an asymmetrical war against Kurdish insurgents inside and outside of Turkey and, as part of a U.S.-led international campaign, the Islamic State (ISIS) in neighboring Syria.
The attempted coup not only quickly discredited the Turkish military but also left the country once again directionless in foreign policy. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been slamming his NATO ally, the United States, almost daily. His government big guns have been implying an American hand behind the failed coup by a faction of officers they claim are linked to a U.S.-based Muslim cleric, Fethullah Gulen, once Erdogan's best political ally. "The putschist [Gulen] is already in your country, you are looking after him. This is a known fact," Erdogan said, addressing Washington. "You can never deceive my people. My people know who is involved in this plot, and who is the mastermind."
The White House immediately denied Erdogan's claim. Deputy Press Secretary Eric Schultz said the U.S. was one of the first countries to condemn the failed coup, and noted that a successful one would have put American troops serving in Turkey at risk. "It is entirely false. There is no evidence of that at all," Schultz said. "We feel that talk and speculation along those lines is not particularly constructive." The failed coup has become a Turkish-American dispute — with a military dimension, too.
Erdogan also criticized U.S. General Joseph Votel, who voiced concerns over "the long-term impact" of the coup on the Pentagon's relations with the Turkish military. According to Erdogan, Votel's remarks were evidence that the U.S. military was siding with the coup plotters. The Pentagon's press secretary, Peter Cook, flatly denied that claim: "Any suggestion anyone in the department supported the coup in any way would be absurd." Erdogan probably wants to play the tough guy and is slamming Washington day after day not just to look pretty to millions of anti-American Turks but also to pressure Washington in Turkey's quest to extradite Gulen, presently the biggest snag between the two allies.
But there is another dimension to Erdogan's ire: He wants to mend fences with Moscow. Turkey's relations with Russia were frozen after Nov. 24, when Turkey, citing a brief violation of its airspace along Turkey's border with Syria, shot down a Russian military aircraft. Russia's President Vladimir Putting ordered punishing economic sanctions, imposed a travel ban on Russian tourists visiting Turkey and suspended all government-to-government relations. Unable to ignore the damage, a repentant Erdogan conveyed regrets to Putin; the regrets were accepted and the two leaders are scheduled to meet on August 9, when the Turks hope that relations with Russia will be entirely normalized.
Normalization, unfortunately, will not come at the price of Turkish "regrets" alone. For full normalization, Turkey will have to digest the Russian-Iranian-Syrian line in Syria's civil war — a pact which Turkey has loudly detested ever since civil war erupted in Syria in 2011. This will be another foreign policy failure for Erdogan and an embarrassing U-turn. But the more Ankara feels distant to Washington, the more it will want to feel closer to Moscow.
Meanwhile, after the coup attempt, Turkey's troubled relations with the European Union turned even more troubled. European Commission head Jean-Claude Juncker said that the EU's deal with Turkey on halting the flow of migrants toward the bloc may collapse. "The risk is big. The success so far of the pact is fragile. President Erdogan has already hinted several times that he wants to scrap it," Juncker said. It is not just the migrant deal that may entirely suspend Turkey as a candidate country for the EU.
As Western leaders call on Erdogan to respect civil liberties and democracy, Erdogan insists he will consider reinstating the death penalty. "The people have the opinion that these terrorists [coup-plotters] should be killed," Erdogan said in interview with CNN. "Why should I keep them and feed them in prisons for years to come? That's what the people say … as the president, I will approve any decision to come out of the parliament." Such a move would kill Turkey's accession process entirely. Federica Mogherini, EU's foreign policy chief, warned that if Turkey reintroduces the death penalty, it will not be joining the European Union. "Let me be very clear on one thing," she said; "… No country can become an EU member state if it introduces [the] death penalty."
The attempted coup not only destabilized NATO's second largest army and exposed it to the risk of serious operational vulnerabilities; it also left Turkey at risk of engaging in potentially dangerous liaisons with playmates of different kind — Russia and Iran & Co. — at least for now.
CAN TURKEY REALLY TURN TO RUSSIA?
Semih Idiz
Al-Monitor, Aug. 2, 2016
Russia appears to be the main beneficiary of the July 15 attempted coup in Turkey. Moscow clearly sees a strategic opportunity for itself given the sharp increase in anti-American and anti-European sentiments in Turkey, which are being fanned by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Erdogan supporters, and many Turks opposed to Erdogan, are convinced of a US finger in the attempt to topple Erdogan. The fact that Fethullah Gulen — the Islamic cleric accused of masterminding the coup — resides freely in Pennsylvania, and the belief that the United States is dragging its feet over Ankara’s demand for Gulen’s extradition, has raised anti-American feelings among Turks to a fever pitch.
This belief has also increased calls for Turkey to seek strategic partnerships with Russia and to replace ties with the United States, NATO and the European Union. These calls are clearly being monitored closely in Moscow. Eyes will therefore be focused on Erdogan’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow on Aug. 9. The current political climate between the two countries is also conducive to deepening ties. Ankara and Moscow are presently reconciling after half a year of tensions following the downing of a Russian fighter jet by Turkey in November while it was on a mission against forces opposing Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The pilot of the jet was shot dead in his parachute by anti-Assad fighters supported by Ankara, which increased Russian fury against Turkey at the time. Despite Turkey’s insistence that the jet had strayed into its airspace, which Russia still denies, Erdogan apologized to Putin in a letter he sent in June over the incident, in which he referred to Russia as a “friend and strategic partner.” Turkey’s economic losses due to the embargoes imposed by Moscow after the downing of the jet and the fact that this incident seriously diminished Turkey’s hand in Syria forced Erdogan in the end to seek reconciliation.
The failed coup has also increased Russia’s importance for quarters close to Erdogan. Calls from pro-Erdogan circles for Turkey to seek strategic partnerships with Russia and to develop a strategic Eurasian dimension to replace ties with the United States, NATO and the EU are clearly being monitored closely in Moscow with satisfaction. With more strategic foresight than the United States and Europe, Russia played its cards right as the coup attempt was underway and was the first country to immediately condemn this attempt unequivocally. “We thank the Russian authorities, particularly President Putin. We have received unconditional support from Russia, unlike other countries,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told news channel Haberturk TV.
Turkey is angry with Europe over its “wait and see” stance during and after the coup attempt. The general view is that Europe’s dislike of Erdogan prevented it from providing unequivocal support for the democratically elected president and government of Turkey. Europe’s critical position on the massive crackdown against alleged coup plotters and sympathizers in Turkey and its reactions to Erdogan’s support for the death penalty for the coup plotters is adding more grist to the anti-Western mill in Turkey.
An unsubstantiated report by the Iranian Fars News Agency, on the other hand, also put Russia in a favorable light with Erdogan supporters. Quoting various Arab sources, Fars said Moscow had alerted Erdogan hours ahead of the coup, enabling him to take the necessary precautions for his safety.
In the meantime, Ankara is pinning the blame for the downing of the Russian jet fighter on a maverick pilot who allegedly was part of the coup plot, thus providing another indication of how fast things are moving in Turkish-Russian ties. The fact that Erdogan was calling on NATO, during its recent Warsaw summit, to prevent the “Black Sea from turning into a Russian lake” appears a distant echo now. There are indications, however, that while Moscow believes it has the upper hand against Ankara now, and will try and secure maximum advantages for itself as it responds to positive overtures from Turkey, it will still play hard to get.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave an early sign of this after the failed coup attempt when he openly declared that the future of Turkish-Russian ties would still depend on Turkey’s position on Syria. "Much will depend on how we will cooperate on the settlement of the Syrian crisis," Lavrov said, according to TASS. “During discussions of the Syrian crisis, we provided many facts that prove that Turkish territory is used for providing supplies to terrorists and sending militants to Syria. These facts remain on the table," he added.
However, given Russia’s growing conflict with the West, which Moscow believes is trying to encircle it militarily, many doubt that Putin will want to squander the opportunity to turn Turkey away from the West. The Russian daily Pravda spelled it out plainly in a recent editorial: “Russia should not trust Erdogan, but one may have no doubt about the fact that the Turkish president is now trying to improve Turkey's relations with Russia. This makes Turkey Russia's ally in the endeavor to split the consolidated position of the West.”…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
New York Times, Aug. 4, 2016
Shaken by a failed coup attempt, Turkey’s government and many of its citizens are desperate for someone to blame. Instead of undertaking a thorough investigation of the facts, though, they have accused the United States of complicity in the insurrection. This has ignited a new wave of anti-Americanism that, combined with a sweeping government crackdown against enemies real and imagined, poses a serious risk to NATO, relations with the United States and Turkey’s long-term stability.
The main culprit behind the July 15 coup, according to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and other Turkish leaders, is Fethullah Gulen, a Muslim cleric who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999 and has denied any involvement in the attempted overthrow. But the pro-government press, political leaders and ordinary citizens across all segments of society are also pointing fingers at Washington, which has denied any involvement.
When Gen. Joseph Votel, the top American commander in the Middle East, told a security conference last week of his concerns about the effect of the purge on Turkish officers, including some who worked with the Americans and are now jailed, Mr. Erdogan faulted him for taking “the side of the coup plotters.” On Tuesday, Mr. Erdogan kept at it, giving a speech in which he said that in standing by the putschists, the West supported “terrorism.”
Meanwhile, the pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak accused the C.I.A.; Gen. John Campbell of the Army, formerly a NATO commander in Afghanistan; and Henri Barkey, who runs the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center, of being behind the insurrection. The evidence against Mr. Barkey? When the coup erupted, he was on an island near Istanbul holding a workshop for academics. The paper called it a “secret meeting” and said he made several telephone calls, hardly a suspicious activity. It also ran a headline claiming the United States had tried to assassinate Mr. Erdogan that night.
It makes no sense that the United States would seek to destabilize a NATO ally whose cooperation is crucial to alliance security as well as to the fight against the Islamic State, especially when much of the region is in chaos. While it is understandable that the Turks are rattled by the coup attempt, in which Mr. Erdogan said 237 people died, they are playing a duplicitous and cynical game. Mr. Erdogan has faulted Western nations for not condemning the coup firmly enough, but his real beef seems to be that they have expressed alarm over his use of the crisis to purge some 66,000 people from the military, government ministries, schools and universities. That is far more than could possibly be justified, and so sweeping as to radically upend the character and competency of those institutions.
American officials assume, with good reason, that Mr. Erdogan is ratcheting up his criticism to press Washington to comply with his demand that Mr. Gulen, a former ally who broke with him a few years ago, be extradited to Turkey. Turkey has given the administration documents but no formal legal request for extradition, and so far the Americans see no evidence that Mr. Gulen was culpable. The Turks need to be reminded that Mr. Gulen has a legal right to be in the United States, and that the Justice Department would have to go through a rigorous process before deciding whether he could be handed over, especially to a country where due process is increasingly unlikely and torture is reportedly used against detainees.
Turkey’s real job is to get to the bottom of who orchestrated the coup and why. But that requires setting aside conspiracy theories in favor of unbiased fact-gathering. The expectation in Washington is that tensions over Mr. Gulen will worsen, and could draw Turkey closer to Russia. Still, American officials say the Turks have given private assurances, including to Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, when he visited Ankara on Monday, that they will continue to cooperate in the fight against ISIS. So far the assurances are holding.
Over the long term, the United States and NATO have a more profound problem on their hands: What to do with a vital ally that is veering far from democratic norms? American officials say they have begun to study options, including whether NATO might one day have to decide on some kind of consequences, so far unspecified, for antidemocratic behavior. Even the mention of possible action by NATO would be likely to infuriate Mr. Erdogan. But it is hard to see how Turkey can be a trusted ally if it embraces principles and practices so at odds with the West, or how the country can ensure its own continued development and security without NATO as an anchor.
REGIONAL IMPLICATIONS OF THE FAILED
COUP D’ÉTAT AND PURGES IN TURKEY
Col. (res.) Dr. Eran Lerman
BESA, Aug. 1, 2016
The failed coup d’état and subsequent purge in Turkey have rattled both local and distant onlookers. To begin with, the self-mutilation of the second-largest army in NATO can hardly be of benefit to anyone but those who seek to destabilize the region (and Europe). As the anti-IS alliance gathered this week in the US to weigh its next steps, and with the decisive battle of Mosul looming on the immediate horizon, the effective absence of Turkey from the battlefield is keenly felt – as is the decision by Erdoğan to disable all operations from Incirlik AFB.
Tensions between Turkey and the US have been rising for a while, as the Obama administration came reluctantly to the conclusion that the Kurdish forces in northern Syria (and their brethren in Iraq) are the most committed fighting force in the war on Baghdadi's "Caliphate". Just as opportunities to reduce IS seem to be taking shape, and an extra impetus is needed in any case after the horror in Nice, Turkey appears to be signaling that this objective is scarcely on Erdoğan's radar – despite the Istanbul Airport massacre and the rising cost for Turkey of past tolerance of IS practices. Moreover, Erdoğan's aggressive and persistent demand that Gulen be extradited – a demand with which the US is unlikely to comply – is adding fuel to the fire. Given what is at stake, it will be necessary for some European players to suppress their outrage at Erdoğan's overreactions and focus on securing his cooperation with a strategically important campaign at a decisive moment in the war against IS.
Meanwhile, relations between Turkey and the Sunni Arab "forces of stability" in the region, mainly Saudi Arabia and Egypt, are fast going from bad to worse. On July 16, Egypt refused to enable the UNSC to lend unanimous support to the democratically elected government in Ankara, questioning the UN's ability to declare who is a democrat and who is not. This was Sisi's way of settling a score. For three years, day in and day out, Erdoğan and his party – which see themselves as patrons of the Muslim Brotherhood across the region – have been questioning the Egyptian regime's political and moral legitimacy. The Egyptians and the Saudis could hardly contain their glee when news of the coup first emerged; or their disappointment when Erdoğan prevailed. Such reactions will poison relations for some time to come. Erdoğan has already openly stated that he considers Sisi to be the same as the conspirators (the "putschists"). (This ignores the fact that the Egyptian military, unlike Turkey's hapless crew, came in only after millions had taken to the Egyptian streets demanding Mursi's ouster.)
All this turmoil provides Iran, which was quick to lend political support to Erdoğan, with ample opportunity for mischief. As the lines of battle are drawn across the region, most violently in Syria and Yemen, the Iranian regime looks upon Saudi Arabia and her allies as an enemy camp in active contention. Iran can thus be expected to use this opportunity to try to draw Turkey closer.
To accomplish this goal, Iran might attempt to delineate a common ground in seeking to diminish the Kurdish role in the IS war. At the same time, it will likely seek to enhance the profile of its proxies in Iraq, thus making the US and the West more dependent on Iran's contribution to the common cause. Presumably, given the tone already taken by John Kerry and others in Washington, this will end up eroding even further any motivation on the part of the Obama administration to keep up the necessary pressure against Iran's ongoing missile projects and support for terror – even if there are elements within the administration who feel strongly that Iran remains an active threat to world peace and to US interests.
None of this serves the interests of Israel, the US, or Europe. There is little that can be done as the storm rages other than to keep channels of communication open and watch attentively for signs of Iranian fishing expeditions in Ankara or elsewhere. There can be no stop, however, to the anti-IS campaign, even if the emphasis for air support would need to shift once again to Jordan (indirectly backed by Israel's strategic presence). The campaign cannot be held hostage to Erdoğan's political agenda.
As passions abate, Turkey will emerge from crisis mode and remember that it still needs to be a member of the community of trading nations, a useful NATO ally, and a team player in the eastern Mediterranean. Sophisticated methods will need to be found to communicate to the AKP and its triumphant leader that their future does not lie with Iranian schemes to split the Sunni world and gain regional dominance for the Shi'a. To stay stable, Turkey will have to rebuild her alliance with the stabilizing elements whose help will be needed if Turkey and the region are to go back to business. It was the rise to relative prosperity that built up Erdoğan's base of popular support. Alienation from the West is not the way to sustain it.
Erdogan’s Purge Is a Sectarian War: Edward Luttwak, Foreign Policy, Aug. 3, 2016—Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish Republic that replaced the Islamic Ottoman Empire, died in 1938, but Turks still define themselves as pro- or anti-Ataturk — though women need not say anything because their headscarves, or lack thereof, proclaim their allegiance.
Erdoğan's Coup Survival: Don't Call It Democracy: IPT News, Aug. 3, 2016— Nihad Awad, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) executive director, is in Turkey this week. It isn't clear why, but Awad is taking advantage of his travels to post upbeat photographs celebrating that country's recent failed military coup.
The Erdogan Loyalists and the Syrian Refugees: Suzy Hansen, New York Times, July 20, 2016—In an old part of Istanbul, in a district named Fatih for the Muslim conqueror, tucked inside ancient Byzantine walls in a neighborhood known as Karagumruk, there is a narrow barbershop with pistachio green and glittery countertops called Golden Scissors.
Turkey’s Intolerance: National Post, June 21, 2016—Turkey’s assault on a small group gathered for a Pride parade on Sunday, may reflect real security concerns in a country that has suffered a spate of terrorist bombings, but it also demonstrates the growing intolerance of an increasingly autocratic government.
