Erdogan’s visit to regain lost respect?

Sunanda K Datta-Ray

Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s visit on Sunday should not be affected by the revelation confirming the 1915 massacre of up to 1.5 million Armenians by the collapsing Ottoman Empire, an atrocity widely recognised as the 20th century's first genocide. Turkey has always been in denial on the subject, and New Delhi has never allowed any concern for human rights to interfere with realpolitik.

Narendra Modi will be the Turkish leader’s first foreign host since the April 16 referendum armed him with sweeping powers. It may be relevant in this context that while European Union leaders viewed his victory with some concern, Donald Trump called to congratulate him, together with the leaders of the Palestinian militant movement Hamas, which has been on the US State department’s “designated foreign terrorist organisations” list since 1997. Others who congratulated Erdogan were the rulers of Qatar, Guinea, and Djibouti. Again, this is unlikely to be of any great interest to Modi and his advisers. But the common points between Modi and Erdogan are of interest to others, even if they themselves don’t acknowledge all of them or always. First, there is a certain anomaly about the democratic credentials of the two men, as well as of Trump. Second, Modi and Erdogan are both in search of religious labels for their respective countries. Third, all three are men whose currency is the exercise of power, although this is less easily substantiated by tangible facts.

To take the democratic aspect first, Trump, Modi and Erdogan have none of them emerged as the people’s unquestioned favourites. While Hillary Clinton’s 65,844,610 votes (48.2 per cent) was the third highest of any presidential candidate in American history, Trump trailed behind with only 62,979,636 votes (46.1 per cent). The contrast between vote and result was even more glaring in Modi’s case. Despite his exuberant self-confidence, the Bharatiya Janata Party won only 31 per cent of the votes in 2014 although it captured 283 out of 520 seats. That was the lowest ever vote share for a single party to win a Lok Sabha majority. In contrast, Indira Gandhi’s Congress, which held the previous record for the lowest vote share for a single party, won a similar 283 seats in 1967 but with 40.8 per cent of the votes cast.

Erdogan did indeed obtain popular endorsement of his ambition to become an all-powerful executive president. But the desperately close margin of his victory indicates rampant discontent in a bitterly divided nation. With only 51.5 per cent of voters approving his ambition, and 48.5 per cent opposing it, the ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) and its major ally, the Nationalist Action party (MHP), have obviously slipped in the popularity stakes since the last general election in 2015 when their combined share of vote was 62 per cent.

Although this may not enter their discussions, Modi and Erdogan also share the distinction of leading governments that are trying to bestow a religious label on the nations they rule. In the former case, every move seems to be towards a thinly veiled form of a Hindu rashtra which mixes puja with politics, exalts the cow, bans beef, promotes vegetarianism, treats religious lore as history and temples as national monuments, foists Hindi on the populace and tacitly supports bands of marauding thugs who attack everything their half-baked perception tells them is not desi. Turkey’s transition was apparent when our guide in Istanbul two years ago said his wife had started wearing the hijab because, otherwise, she might not be promoted in her government job.

Just as Erdogan, who was prime minister for 11 years and is in his third year as president, doesn’t admit any Islamist ambitions, Modi is coy about Hindutva. But as mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan was sentenced in 1998 to 10 months in jail for “inciting religious hatred” after reading out verses by an Ottoman Islamist poet at a public event while his Welfare Party was banned for “threatening the Kemalist nature of Turkey, especially [its] secularity.” Released from jail, he started mobilising supporters on an Islamist agenda, and in two years co-founded the AKP, the vehicle of his rise to power. Although many Turks still revere Kemal Ataturk as the first Asian modernist, the April 16 referendum empowers Erdogan to dismantle Ataturk’s secular democratic legacy and lay the foundations of a personal regime with expanded powers that could continue till 2029.

Turkey’s domestic polity is Turkey’s concern, but Indians may well ask about Turkey’s value as an ally. Despite Trump’s greetings, Turkey is no longer quite the lynchpin of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation it once was. Nor do Arabs any longer look up to it with quite the same degree of respect as a modernising Muslim nation. The referendum took place at a time when Turkey faces huge security challenges. Last year’s multiple terror attacks were mostly the handiwork of the so-called Islamic State and Kurdish rebels against whom the Turkish military is waging a brutal war. The massive purge in government and private institutions that followed last July’s abortive coup meant the dismissal and imprisonment of thousands of Turks, including judges, academics and security personnel. Over 100 journalists are said to be behind bars and 15 universities, 1,000 schools, 28 TV channels, 66 newspapers, 19 magazines, 36 radio stations, 26 publishing houses and five news agencies have been shut down. The leading Kurdish Opposition politician is also in jail, while the country is still reeling under emergency rule. Erdogan is as ambivalent on the war in neighbouring Syria and on Bashar alAssad’s future as the European Union is on his pending application. Turkey’s once buoyant economy has been badly disrupted by the resultant instability.

Erdogan probably hopes a visit to India might help to regain some of the international respect he once enjoyed. But he must resist the temptation – common in political adversity – of pandering to extremists to gain popularity. Even apart from Ataturk, his country’s ancient history offers some splendid instances of rewarding ecumenism. Despite being Caliph of Islam, the Ottoman sultan sent a fleet of ships to rescue Jews whom Catholic Spain expelled after Moorish Granada capitulated in 1492. That demonstration of secular enlightenment, which helped Turkey’s commerce and arts, occurred a full 150 years before Britain, which had expelled Jews in 1290, allowed them back again.

Erdogan can gain from applying that liberal precedent to Turkey’s ethnic (especially Kurdish) and other minorities and by not using the referendum verdict to trample on secular democracy. A first step would be to come to terms with history and voluntarily concede a genuinely impartial inquiry into the grim killing of Armenians in 1915.

ERDOGAN probably hopes a visit to India might help to regain some of the international respect he once enjoyed. But he must resist the temptation — common in political adversity — of pandering to extremists to gain popularity. Even apart from Ataturk, his country’s ancient history offers some splendid instances of rewarding ecumenism.