Turkey’s Big Bluff
How to beat Erdogan at his own blackmail game
TURKISH President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a Putin-like autocrat, is seizing on last week’s coup attempt to further solidify his one-man hold on power and turn once-secular Turkey into a country ruled by Islamic principles.
And now he’s threatening to torpedo our war against the Islamic State.
Erdogan wants the United States to extradite his political rival, Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of having a role in the failed coup and who happens to live in Pennsylvania.
Meanwhile, back in Turkey, tens of thousands of army troops, cops, judges, junior government officials, independent organizations and members of the press have been rounded up. There’s little evidence all these people participated in last week’s clumsy attempt by some members of the army to overthrow him, but Erdogan is determined to purge the country of all opponents.
Topping that list is Gulen, an Islamic cleric who’s lived since 1999 at a compound in the Poconos after being granted asylum. Erdogan is accusing Gulen of orchestrating the failed coup — never mind that Gulen denounced the coup early on and denies any connection.
And Erdogan has an ace up his sleeve: The Incirlik airbase in Turkey is central to NATO’s air war against ISIS. It’s been shut since Saturday, and on Monday there were reports of major Turkish operations against remaining antiErdogan plotters there. Incirlik, for now, is off limits for stationed US troops.
Turkey has yet to file an official extradition request, but Erdogan has been hinting that if we cough up Gulen, we’ll get back our access to the Incirlik base — or, as Prime Minister Binali Yildirim put it Monday, not doing so would “question our friendship.”
Should we? And who’s Gulen, anyway?
He has established a vast chain of charter schools in Turkey and elsewhere, including in the United States. His followers are deeply engrained in Turkey’s judiciary, police and the business community — making him part of the “deep state” that Erdogan is so paranoid about.
And he was once Erdogan’s clos- est ally. Both wanted to deepen Islam’s involvement in the country’s political and social life, reversing the secularism of the founder of modern Turkey, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. (Persecution by the thensecular Turkish government won Gulen US asylum in 1999.)
After Erdogan’s rise to power in 2003, Gulen, now in Pennsylvania, remained a political ally, using his vast network of followers and funds to promote Erdogan’s goals. But as Erdogan turned increasingly authoritarian (and, some say, after Gulen criticized Ankara’s overreaction to the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident that led to a break with Israel — fences that were only recently mended), the alliance ended.
Erdogan started accusing Gulen of running a “deep state” — a network of influential power brokers undermining the elected government. He arrested Turkish Gulenists and demanded the United States extradite the preacher on various charges. In an attempt to strip his permanent-resident status and send him over for trial in Turkey, Erdogan in 2014 had Turkey file criminal-conspiracy charges against Gulen. This year, a judge in Scranton, Pa., dismissed a lawsuit filed by Turkey against Gulen.
But last week’s disastrous coup attempt changed the game. Now Erdogan has an opportunity to realize his dream of becoming a modern-day Islamic caliph. Getting rid of Gulen is central to that plan. Erdogan’s supporters and Turkey’s numerous conspiracy theorists are already saying Gulen’s presence on US soil is proof America was behind the coup attempt.
No wonder Erdogan is willing to threaten ceasing his cooperation in the war against ISIS unless America hands Gulen over: This is personal.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s reaction thus far has been prudent: He demanded unassailable evidence before handing Gulen over. But that’s not enough.
America has indicated we’ll stand behind Erdogan’s “democratically elected government.” And, yes, Erdogan’s been repeatedly elected — but now we must demand a return to true democracy.
Kerry can counter Erdogan’s Incerlik gambit with some conditions of our own: You want Gulen? Start cooperating, fully and unconditionally, in the war against the Islamist terrorists who threaten us all (terrorists you’d been tacitly supporting until very recently).
And end your war on Turkey’s freedoms, rather than intensify it. Prove, for example, your courts are independent, and reverse the arbitrary suspension of 3,000 judges and prosecutors since the coup.
Oh, Kerry may want to add in his behind-the-scenes negotiations: If you even dare to again hint that you’d kick us out of Incirlik, we’d relocate and take our troops to Kurdish Iraq.
In other words, we must do the un-Kerry.