Europe and America’s response to the putsch has
fuelled anti-Western sentiment
THE aftermath of the attempted coup in
Turkey on July 15th has been fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
Pro-government newspapers have alleged that CIA agents directed the coup from
an island in the Sea of Marmara; that a retired American general wired billions
of dollars to rogue Turkish soldiers; and that the United States directed
Turkish forces to kill President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. An Islamist daily
recently called Germany an enemy state, and pictured its chancellor, Angela
Merkel, in a Nazi uniform.
The surge in anti-Western sentiment is widely shared.
One poll found that 84% of Turks believe that the coup-plotters received help
from abroad; more than 70% suspect America of having a hand. Mr Erdogan and his
ministers have accused the West of double standards, and warn of a serious
deterioration in ties unless the United States extradites Fethullah Gulen, the
Pennsylvania-based Islamist cleric whom they blame for orchestrating the coup.
A senior American official complains that using Mr Gulen as the only yardstick
for bilateral ties puts the relationship at risk. Mr Erdogan does not seem to
care.
In part, Western governments have themselves to blame.
With the exception of America and Germany, many were slow to condemn the coup
attempt, fuelling suspicions that they were waiting to see how it would play
out. In response to the purge of government institutions that followed,
Austria’s chancellor urged the European Union to suspend membership talks with
Turkey. Germany’s top court banned Mr Erdogan from addressing a rally in
Cologne by video link. To date, no EU head of state has travelled to Turkey to
express solidarity with the victims. A visit to Ankara by America’s
vice-president, Joe Biden, due on August 24th, is seen as too little, too late.
“The United States should have shown stronger political support earlier,” says
Unal Cevikoz, a former Turkish ambassador to Britain.
Turkish politicians, including those opposed to the
ruling Justice and Development (AK) party, accuse the West of being more
critical of the government’s response to the coup than of the carnage that
accompanied the putsch. Some Western diplomats acknowledge a failure to come to
grips with the scale of the violence, which left some 270 dead, and with
widespread support for the purges. “There is no understanding in Europe that
things would have been much worse if the coup had succeeded,” says one. “For
the Turks, this was a test of loyalty, and Europe failed it.”
Yet Europe is right to fear that the crackdown on
suspected Gulen sympathisers has spun out of control. Over 80,000 people have
been arrested, sacked or suspended, including soldiers, judges, teachers,
police, businessmen and even football officials. Nearly 100 journalists have
been detained and more than a hundred media outlets shut down; ordinary
criminals have been set free to make room for political cases. Many of those
purged appear to have only tenuous links to the Gulenists. But concerns about
repression fall on deaf ears, writes Sinan Ulgen, a former Turkish diplomat.
The West, he says, “has eroded its ability to gain influence in Turkey at a
time when this leverage is possibly more important than ever.”
Popular resentment against the West and the Gulenists
has accomplished what Mr Erdogan had failed to in recent years: rally a large
majority of Turks to his side. Since late June, the president’s approval rating
has jumped from 47% to a record 68%. A mass gathering addressed by Mr Erdogan
earlier this month attracted over a million people, as well as the leaders of
two of the three biggest opposition parties. The main pro-Kurdish
party was left out.
In Mr Erdogan’s view, only one outside power has
adequately backed his government: Russia. Before meeting Vladimir Putin in St
Petersburg on August 9th, the Turkish leader praised him for wasting no time in
offering his support. Unlike Western officials, Mr Erdogan pointedly remarked,
“Putin did not criticise me on the number of people from the military or civil
service who had been dismissed”.
Such plaudits, along with Mr Erdogan’s show of
contrition for Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet last November, are honey to Mr
Putin’s ears. Yet much as the Russian leader might want to exploit the rift
between Turkey and the West, his dalliance with Mr Erdogan has its limits. Mr
Putin might offer Turkey some support against the Gulenists in Central Asia,
where the movement runs a network of schools, says Soner Cagaptay of the
Washington Institute, a think-tank. But the two countries will remain divided
over the crucial issue of Syria, where they are still backing opposite sides in
the country’s civil war.
For now, says a Western diplomat, NATO need not fear
that Turkey will stray far from the alliance. But, he continues, Mr Putin will
continue to pit Turkey against America and the EU: “He can play that game
better than anyone else.” For a decade, Turkey’s once pro-European government
has been drifting away from the West. After the ambivalent American and
European responses to the coup, that drift is accelerating.
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