Turkey by HAROLD RHODE Chapter 2
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Ally No More Ally No More Erdoğan’s New Turkish Caliphate and the Rising Jihadist Threat to the West Center for Security Policy Press This book may be reproduced, distributed and transmitted for personal and non-commercial use. Contact the Center for Security Policy for bulk order information. For more information about this book, visit SECUREFREEDOM.ORG Ally No More: Erdoğan’s New Turkish Caliphate and the Rising Jihadist Threat to the West is published in the United States by the Center for Security Policy Press, a division of the Center for Security Policy. ISBN-13: ISBN978-1717071675-10: 1717071678 The Center for Security Policy Washington, D.C. Phone: 202-835-9077 Email: [email protected] For more information, visit SecureFreedom.org Book design by Bravura Books Contents Foreword ................................................................................................... 1 Chapter 1 .................................................................................................... 5 How to Understand Erdoğan & His Neo-Ottoman Strategy to Destroy Ataturk’s Turkey BY HAROLD RHODE Chapter 2 .................................................................................................. 23 Turkey’s Partnership with the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood BY CENTER FOR SECURITY POLICY STAFF Chapter 3 .................................................................................................. 51 Gülen and Erdoğan: Partners on a Brotherhood Mission BY CLARE M. LOPEZ Chapter 4 .................................................................................................. 67 When Thugs Fall Out: Erdoğan, Gülen, and the Turkish Lobby Chapter 5 .................................................................................................. 77 Erdoğan and Europe: The Fox and the Chicken Coop BY CHRISTOPHER C. HULL Chapter 6 .................................................................................................. 89 NATO’s Turkey Challenge BY DANIEL PIPES Chapter 7 .................................................................................................. 97 President Erdoğan’s Economic and Demographic Crises BY DAVID P. GOLDMAN Chapter 8 ............................................................................................... 103 Election 2019: Erdoğan’s Existential War BY BURAK BEKDIL Chapter 9 ............................................................................................... 125 Turkey’s War on Minority Schools BY UZAY BULUT Chapter 10 ............................................................................................. 141 Censorship in Turkey: The Obliteration of Turkey’s Independent Media BY DEBORAH WEISS References ............................................................................................. 155 Index ......................................................................................................... 183 Foreword he ancient land of Turkey is at one of those pivotal points in history when change is occurring at a pace almost too fast to monitor comprehensively, let alone analyze with confidence. During most of the 20th Century, the world, and especially the TWest, became accustomed to a post-Ottoman Empire Turkey that was making strides toward modernization under a succession of administrations committed to the formula for secular governance of a Muslim country laid out by the Turkish Republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. And, when it became necessary from time to time to correct regime deviations from the path laid down by Ataturk, the Turkish Army would step in. Beneath the surface, however, Turkey’s deeply conservative Islamic masses seethed with discontent at the loss of their Ottoman caliphate and relegation of Islam to the mosques. Figures like Syed Nursi drew Muslim students to secretive “study circles,” where Islam’s totalitarian political, military and legal system known as Sharia and the jihad it commands were inculcated into generations of willing young students. The jihadist Sunni cleric, Fethullah Gülen was one of those who, having studied under Nursi, set up his own networks to the same end. By the time a young Recep Tayyip Erdoğan emerged from an Imam Hatip Islamic school in the early 1970s, both he and legions among his age cohort were ready to jettison Ataturk’s secular agenda and bring Turkey back to Islam. The repercussions and future implications of this phenomenon is the focus of a series of splendid essays contained in this, the Center for Security Policy Press’ newest offering. Ally No More: Erdoğan’s New Turkish Caliphate and the Rising Jihadist Threat to the West documents the momentous shift that is now taking place in a Turkey ruled by President Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP). Drawing on the combined insights and scholarship of ten authors, the book comprehensively explores an array of topics that convey just how dramatically things have changed in and with Turkey, a once-trusted NATO ally—and the extent to which they are likely, all other things being equal, to change still more and for the worse in the period ahead. Although a plethora of other recent publications have been devoted to Erdoğan personally, various aspects of Turkish society, or to Turkey’s 1 expanding regional aggression, by drawing on such a wealth of expertise, this book offers a comprehensive assessment of where the Sharia- supremacist regime in Ankara is now, and where it appears to be headed. In particular, as its title makes plain, such developments are of such a momentous character that long-held attitudes toward Turkey must be adapted to the new reality: A course-correction is urgently required in the relationship between the United States and her other NATO allies on the one hand and Turkey on the other. No honest observer of Middle East events can ignore the intensifying and increasingly brazen hostility of Erdoğan’s policies, both domestic and foreign, toward America and other Western nations, including notably the Jewish State. At home, he rules ever-more as a tyrant, trampling Turkey’s constitution and jailing thousands of his supposed enemies. Abroad, alarm is rising over regime rhetoric that threatens Cyprus, Greece, Israel, the Balkans, and France, even as the Turkish military has been rolling over Syrian battlefields, seizing territory from Kurdish militias long allied with and supported by the United States. Meanwhile, Erdoğan and his top officials speak openly of engaging in “jihad” and a revival of the Ottoman Empire under the rule of a new Islamic caliph. Increasingly, the Turkish president and his admirers at home and abroad explicitly describe him as assuming that role. Yet, senior American military and national security officials continue to cling to an image of Turkey as a reliable NATO ally. They have, it seems, yet to face up to the nature, let alone the magnitude of Turkey’s Islamist transformation and, with it, much of the familiar landscape of the Middle East. It is absolutely imperative that the U.S. leadership recognize and address the new paradigm. The Middle East Forum’s Daniel Pipes takes on this challenge directly in his chapter of NATO’s Turkey Challenge. He helpfully includes a list of possible measures Turkey’s erstwhile NATO partners could—and soon must—take in the face of Erdoğan’s apparent determination to destabilize the entire region. Other highlights of Ally No More include: An analysis by long-time Pentagon duty expert and Middle East scholar Harold Rhode that concludes Erdoğan’s entire raison d’etre seems to be the destruction of Ataturk’s legacy and the re-orienting of Turkey’s government and society away from the Western community of nations, characterized by re-Islamization and a power struggle for domination of the Islamic umma. Turkish writer Uzay Bulut and Center for Security Policy (CSP) Senior Fellow Deborah Weiss 2 describe the sharp deterioration in measures of liberal democracy, including education and freedom of speech. Financial analyst and essayist David Goldman examines the difficult economic and demographic challenges facing Turkey in the near future. And Turkish columnist Burak Bekdil’s chapter on upcoming elections cites these and other key societal data that may indicate a more difficult electoral campaign for Erdoğan than generally thought. Were Turkey’s destabilizing activities confined to the Middle East, it would be bad enough. But the effects of the Erdoğan agenda are being felt well beyond the immediate region. As CSP’s Executive Vice President, Christopher Hull, explains in his chapter, Turkey’s already large and growing diaspora population in Western Europe portends deep societal disruption in Germany and elsewhere. Similarly, a pair of authors who have chosen to remain unidentified and CSP Vice President for Research and Analysis Clare Lopez arrive at a similar conclusion in their separate contributions: The malevolent handiwork of the two erstwhile partners in jihad, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Fethullah Gülen, has not been confined to Turkey. Notably, the Gülen Movement has been assiduously working to replicate in the United States the extensive network of schools and business connections that were used to re-Islamize Turkey. Today, Gülen’s influence operations are able to exploit a sizeable infrastructure here in the form of some 160 K-12 charter schools, four universities and dozens of cultural centers. Perhaps the most disturbing chapter of the book, however, is the one written by Center for Security Policy staff concerning the direct collaboration