MEHMED the Conqueror (1444-1481) the Ottoman ruler who toppled Byzantium, Suleiman the Magnificent (1520-1566) the Sultan of Turkey’s golden age, Selim the Grim (1512-1520) who captured the caliphate from the Egyptian Mamluks in 1517, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (1923-1938) who won Turkey’s War of Independence in 1921 and went on to secularise the country, are the great historic rulers of Turkey.
Will its current President, Recip Tayyip Erdogan, join this august list? Maybe. Longevity often accompanies greatness. Now entering his 23rd year in power, Erdogan has ruled longer by a stretch than any other Turkish leader in the modern era.
Cogitating on President Erdogan’s place in history may seem untimely given the recent civil unrest in Turkey which escalated in March to levels not seen since the Gezi Park protests in 2013. Mass demonstrations of up to 2million people followed the arrest of Turkey’s most popular opposition figure, Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, on March 19. The arrest took place days before he was about to become the Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate for the next presidential elections in 2028.
Demonstrations in Istanbul and across Turkey have been met with rubber bullets, water cannon and tear gas. Thousands were arrested including journalists, domestic and foreign. BBC correspondent Mark Lowen has been deported. The charges against Imamoglu allege corruption and terrorism. There appear to be no specifics at this stage. Nevertheless, he is being held in pre-trial detention. The government’s claim that the judiciary is independent is not believed.
Against this background, why have Western politicians, normally so keen to moralise, been mute in response to Erdogan’s apparent crackdown on Turkey’s democratic freedoms?
The first reason could be hypocrisy. In recent times Europe has not been a shining example of democratic values. On March 31, Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Rally Party and favourite to win the presidential elections in 2027, was banned from standing for political office for five years.
A similarly contentious constitutional court ruling has seen the cancellation of elections in Romania in a runoff where opinion polls seemed to favour the right-wing candidate Calin Georgescu. He was accused of being a Putin supporter.
Last week the German BfV (Das Bundesant fur Verfassungsschutz: the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution) presented a 1,100-page report which concluded that Alice Weidel’s AfD party was an extremist right-wing organisation. Laughably the Ministry of the Interior said the report was independent.
However, hypocrisy has rarely inhibited Europe’s morally condescending politicians. The limp response of the West may have more to do with how smart Erdogan has been in making Turkey and himself indispensable to its interests. The Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline (TANAP) is an essential source of energy to a Europe already hobbled by high prices. Strategically located, Turkey is also a corridor link to the Asian market. As Erdogan has stated, ‘Turkey is the gateway to the east for Europe, and the gateway to Europe for the east. We have a bridging function that Europe shouldn’t underestimate.’
Moreover, Turkey has the largest army in Nato’s European ranks – more troops than Germany, France and the Netherland combined – so is an essential component of the EU’s defence against Russia. Perhaps most importantly Turkey is a front-line state to potential jihadist troublemakers such as ISIS in Syria. Erdogan has also held back over three million Syrian refugees who might otherwise flock to Europe.
He has nevertheless demonstrated that he is not a compliant partner to be taken for granted. His choice of S-400 Russian missiles over Western alternatives infuriated the US. The West knows that it must tread carefully to keep him onside. Interestingly, during President Donald Trump’s first term of office his son-in-law Jared Kushner engaged in fruitful backdoor diplomacy with Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak.
Russia too is wary of offending Turkey. Despite Turkey’s membership of Nato, Putin and Erdogan are the best of frenemies. Indeed, it was Putin that tipped off Erdogan in 2016 about the planned coup against him by elements of the Turkish Army. Part of Erdogan’s genius is his ability to remain friendly with all sides. As recently as March 29 Erdogan spoke with President Masoud Pezeshkian of Iran to discuss enhancement of relations between their two countries.
In what some have termed a neo-Ottoman strategy, Erdogan has extended Turkey’s regional influence. Warm relations have been established with former Ottoman territories in the Balkans. Neither has he ignored the Turkic-speaking diaspora in the east. Comprising 100million people, it stretches to the vast oblast of Sakha (Yakutia), whose capital Yakutsk is over 4,000 miles from Istanbul. Turkic-speaking Uzbekistan is a natural ally. So too Turkmenistan which through Erdogan’s good offices exports its vast gas reserves to the EU via Turkish pipelines.
As for China, Erdogan, apart from its huge infrastructure investments in ports and rail, has relied heavily on its loans to weather the financial storms of recent years. Turkey, at the geopolitical fulcrum of the world, is wanted as a friend by all major powers. Erdogan has played this hand to perfection.
Neither can the extraordinary economic achievements of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party be ignored. When he came to power in 2002, Turkey’s GDP per capita was US$3,583. It has now more than quadrupled to US$16,876. Over the same period the EU’s GDP per capita has doubled. Ranked against European countries it is the seventh largest economy – just behind the Netherlands but above Switzerland.
Although Erdogan has won elections by appealing over the heads of the educated urban elites to the conservative religious rural and suburban populations, Turkey has not morphed, like Iran, into a backward Islamic state. The shift toward Islamic values has been relatively modest.
Since 2002, Hatip (cleric training schools) quadrupled in number, Kemal Atatürk’s ban on headscarves in public institutions was gradually lifted, sale of alcohol near mosques was banned and the number of mosques increased from 77,500 to 90,000. But polls show that Islamic religiosity has risen only from 85 to 89 per cent. Most controversially to Western eyes was the conversion of Hagia Sophia back into a mosque in 2020; but given the gormless tourist masses who deadened the atmosphere of a great religious building turned museum, it was a change which I applaud.
Notwithstanding these changes, modern Westernised urban life is vibrant. Istanbul has no fewer than seven museums of modern art. In recent years Turkey has begun to establish a much-lauded food culture. Since 2022, its top restaurants have garnered 14 Michelin stars; Istanbul’s Beyoglu districts hums with a nightlife populated by clubs such as Room Pera, Tekyon and Cheeky Club. Westernised lifestyles, largely unchecked by Islam prudery, extend to the seaside region of Bodrum and Izmir Province.
Tourist arrivals in Turkey have increased from 12.5million in 2002 to 62.2million in 2024. Erdogan built the infrastructure to make this possible. Commissioned in 2014, Istanbul airport started operations just four years later. The vast edifice quickly became Europe’s second-busiest airport after Heathrow and, in the Middle East, is second only to Dubai. Turkish Airlines, often listed at the top of customer satisfaction surveys, has grown in parallel. It has not only become the tenth largest airline in the world by revenue but also the most profitable with a net income of US$6.9billion.
Under Erdogan, industry as a percentage of GDP has increased from 19 per cent to 28 per cent. Through its customs union with the EU, Turkey has become its largest trading partner. Industrial conglomerates such as Koc Industries, Turkey’s first Fortune Global 500 company, have flourished, and technology companies have grown rapidly.
Will Erdogan outlast his detractors to stay in power until he seeks office again in 2028? A former professional footballer, he seems healthy. And at 71 years of age, he is a whippersnapper compared with President Trump.
The army, historically an intervening arbiter in times of civil unrest, was brought under control by Erdogan after the failed coup of 2016. Some 50,000 soldiers were purged. One presumes that Erdogan is now safe from this quarter.
Much may rest on whether Erdogan can turn around Turkey’s current economic malaise. After pursuing a growth-at-all-costs strategy at the start of the decade, which led to an inflation rate of 85.5 per cent per annum in 2022, the reversion to a more orthodox monetary policy under Finance Minister Mehmet Simsek has brought inflation down to 42 per cent this year. Despite this, the IMF still expects economic growth to be a creditable 3.1 per cent this year. It is a trend which, if continued, augurs well for Erdogan’s re-election hopes in 2028. Given his track record it would be unwise to bet against him.
Obviously it is too early to gauge how history will see Erdogan. By any standard he is already a major figure in Turkish history. Western liberals of course will never see him as anything other than a politician who started as a democrat and ended as a dictator. But perhaps Erdogan should not be judged by these measures.
Just as Turkey spans the divide between east and west, a Christian Europe and an Islamic middle east, so Erdogan is a hybrid between democracy and authoritarianism. It is a difficult balancing act. But if Erdogan can ride this horse until the end of the next presidential term in 2033, by which time he will be 79 and will have been in power for more than 30 years, he may well have earned the epithet ‘Great’. No ruler achieved this title without being ruthless. Erdogan would be no exception.
