Turkey – the dark centre of a troubled world

Istanbul was attacked again on Tuesday because it is the hub of a host of intractable crises

More than any other country, Turkey shows that geography is destiny. Anatolia and the Bosphorus jointly embrace so many great junctions of the world that listing them all is a challenge. Europe and Asia, the Middle East and the Western world, the Black Sea and the Mediterranean – and therefore Russia and the southern half of the planet – all converge in Turkey. No wonder that Istanbul Ataturk airport, the target of three suicide bombers on Tuesday, should also be a global hub, handling more than 60 million passengers last year.

When the genial intellectual Ahmet Davutoğlu served as foreign minister in Ankara, he would remind visitors that however you drew the map of the world, Turkey would always be at the centre.

But there is a dark side to being in the middle of everything: Turkey is also the hub of the world’s most intractable problems. Migration, terrorism, the West’s tormented relations with Islam, the quest for peace in the Middle East, the future of the European Union – even Russia’s confrontation with Nato – all of them meet in Turkey. Somewhat to his surprise, William Hague found that the capital he visited most often as foreign secretary was Ankara.

It has never been more pivotal than today. The fact that Turkey is one of his prime targets shows that even Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, leader of the self-styled Islamic State, is determined to shape events there.

In previous centuries, Western powers had a simple method of securing their own influence: set out to rule or dominate the Anatolian land mass themselves. One of the lesserknown aspects of the Sykes-Picot agreement – concluded by Britain and France a century ago – was to carve up present-day Turkey, giving the Bosphorus to Russia, and transferring much of eastern Anatolia to Paris.

Later, the Treaty of Sevres of 1920 aimed to reduce Turkey to a powerless rump state, confined to the central Anatolian plateau, while the Bosphorus and everything else of strategic value would be divided between the victors of the First World War, along with their Greek, Armenian and Kurdish friends. Without Kemal Ataturk and his ferocious fightback, this would have been Turkey’s fate.

Now that Europe is no longer out to divide and conquer Anatolia, our leaders have to work in harmony with Ankara. And that task has rarely been more difficult. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan revels in being as prickly, bombastic and grandiose as possible. When he was at daggers drawn with Vladimir Putin after the destruction of a Russian warplane last November, diplomats would privately stress the remarkable similarity of the two protagonists.

The irony is that under the little matter of Turkey’s constitution, Mr Erdoğan is only a ceremonial head of state. In reality, he runs everything and his latest all-consuming goal is to rewrite the constitution to create an imperial presidency, tailored for himself. Those politicians who stand in the way and exhibit the faintest flicker of independence – like the unfortunate Mr Davutoğlu – are ruthlessly cast aside.

And woe betide anyone, Turkish blogger or German satirist, who dares insult His Excellency. With righteous fury, Mr Erdoğan will pursue those who mock him to the ends of the earth. Thus Angela Merkel was reduced to allowing Germany’s public prosecutor to examine whether a comedian should be punished for having insulted Mr Erdoğan on television.

This episode was intensely revealing about how European leaders view the sultan in Ankara. They genuinely feared that Mr Erdoğan might overturn the migration deal with the European Union, changing millions of lives, because he had been mocked by one 35-year-old German comedian.

There are signs that even Mr Erdoğan recognises that he has taken his act too far. This week, he made up with Mr Putin and apologised for the destruction of the Russian plane. Earlier, he agreed to restore normal diplomatic relations with Israel. So far, Turkey is keeping its side of the migration deal with the EU.

But no one should be in any doubt that in diplomacy, as in geography, all roads eventually converge on Mr Erdoğan’s new palace.