Turkey's Eroded Democratic Credentials

Turkey has come a long way in the last twenty years from its early 20th Century tilt toward European social attitudes, its economic leaning toward Europe with its long-term aspirations to join the European Union, and its diminishing of the political-ideological-religious influence of the Islam of the Ottoman Empire over Turkish public life and government agencies. Kemal Ataturk was a military social missionary, and the Turkish military had inherited a mission to ensure that religion would never again rule the country, that it would remain a secular government.

Ataturk's secular Turkey advanced mightily, became an influence in Europe as a crossing between Europe and Asia, but it had its problems, chief among them the refusal to take responsibility for the slaughter of Armenians during World War I, and Turkey's oppression of the Kurds living within its territory. But Turkey was recognized as a hybrid between the world of Islam and that of Europe, a cosmopolitan country capable of transcending and yet reflecting both. And one whose human rights record was slowly improving.

And then, along came the Justice and Development Islamist party of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and bit by bit one election after another, at a time when Turkey was enjoying great prosperity and moving ever closer to European values, the religious-cultural-social clock began to turn back. The new Turkey under the new style of government in a geography where Islamism, a purer type of Islam reflecting its 7th Century roots reverted back to the values of the Ottoman Empire.

The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, unveils the presidential palace prior to an official ceremony for Republic Day in Turkey

Photograph: Kayhan Ozer/EPA

President Erdogan dismantled the Turkish military's long-held efforts to maintain Ataturk's secular tradition by charging its top generals with plotting to overthrow the government, sentencing them to life imprisonment. Since 2002 when the Justice and Development party first came to power, Erdogan has slowly transformed Turkey into his personal version of the Ottoman Empire with himself as caliph, and rampant corruption endowing largess on his close colleagues and his son.

He had a sensationally costly palace built for himself, a man who plans to rule Turkey in perpetuity; first running the course as its Prime Minister, then switching to the presidency until he alters the constitution to enable himself to be forever in the ruling post. When popular protests against his royal reign surfaced in the streets of the capital, they were summarily put down, with water cannons and truncheons.

The palace has been built inside Ataturk Forest Farm on the outskirts of Ankara

Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

When he was embarrassed by the scandalous revelations of gross corruption through his minions, and the links tying his son to undercutting sanctions against Iran as a member of NATO, he conducted a wholesale arrest of police, lawyers, reporters, and members of the military, claiming they were plotting against him, and that all allegations of corruption were false, despite evidence to the contrary, including a taped telephone conversation with his son alluding to illegal funds in his possession.

He is now resurrecting the Ottoman Empire with himself as its head: "We were born and raised on the land that is the legacy of the Ottoman Empire", he states, hearking back to the days of Turkey as a world power, a condition he aspires to now with himself at the helm. Schoolchildren are to be taught the language of the Empire, to fit comfortably in the future he foresees for Turkey. And, like Iran, a country Turkey is friendly with, despite their polarized views over Syria, Turkey supports terrorism.

Hamas was invited to open an office in Turkey, and its leader is greeted as an honoured guest, just as the aspirations of Hamas are honoured. When Egypt banished the Muslim Brotherhood after the removal of Mohammad Morsi as president, Turkey was outraged, and responded by increasing its alliance with the Brotherhood. Its support of Sunni terrorist jihadi groups now operating in Syria has been documented.

That this is a country that is a member of NATO has become an absurdity. Turkey's interests are now so far removed from those of the Western countries who make up the NATO membership that its presence as a member is inexplicable, and certainly outdated. Turkey as it is currently constituted is as trustworthy to the alliance as would be membership offered to Iran.

Turkey, under secular rule, had a firm relationship of trust and mutual reliance with the State of Israel for many years. Under Erdogan that relationship has melted away as he has taken up the Palestinian 'cause' through his support for the terrorist group Hamas. Erdogan has charged Israel with crimes against humanity in the excess of his zeal to denounce the Zionist entity and cut off former ties with the Jewish state.

On the other hand, because of Erdogan's behaviour, bizarre in the extreme for a republic that advertises itself as democratic, the man has been increasingly isolated, held in suspicion by both the legitimate rulers of the Middle East and the Western democracies that Turkey has been accustomed to courting. What's more, the robust economy that Erdogan inherited has begun to stumble, so it will be interesting to see how solid his autocratic hold on power remains, in the next few years.