What will Turkey do?
Erdoğan's patience could be running out
I thought I’d share some quick observations and thoughts on what is happening now in Israel-Palestine, and Turkey’s place in the wider confrontation.
Turkey’s reaction to the events was initially pretty muted. It coincided with the AK Party’s congress on Saturday, which was supposed to be a victory lap for Erdoğan, and an opportunity to set his agenda for his term (regional elections, the new constitution, the economy.) The event, of course, was overshadowed by Hamas’ attack in southern Israel. Erdoğan called on both sides to de-escalate, knowing of course, that they wouldn’t.
On the following day, Erdoğan was at the opening of an Assyrian church his government built in Istanbul. In his remarks, he said that “the realization of an independent and geographically integrated Palestinian state on the basis of the 1967 borders, with (East) Jerusalem as its capital is a need that cannot be postponed any longer.” That’s been Turkey’s stance for some time. On principle, Erdoğan’s regime is behind the Palestinians without denying Israel’s right to exist.
The mood among pro-government circles was radically different from the president’s stance. Government outlets, pundits, down to the trolls, clearly sympathized with Hamas and the Palestinians and many considered the Hamas operation completely justified. There’s also an increasing number of political celebrities, like the preacher İhsan Şenocak, putting out videos in support of the Palestinians.
Turkey’s left have been expressing solidarity with the Palestinians, albeit without the Islamist synchronization and geopolitical saber-rattling. There is a small group of liberals who feel the need to condemn Hamas’ behavior on humanitarian grounds, but they even they would agree that the attack wasn’t “unprovoked.” Conspiracy theories abound. If you were to hold a poll, my guess would be that a strong majority of Turkey’s citizens would say that Israel probably knew of the attack in advance, but let it happen in order to have a pretext for invading Gaza (similar to popular ideas about the war in Ukraine.)
I also see that there’s some nationalists (Kemalist and/or pan-Turkic) who cheer for the IDF or put down the Palestinians, but that’s a very small group that’s overrepresented in social media platforms like Twitter/X. This is based on anti-Arab and anti-immigration sentiment in Turkey, and vague notions of Israel as a homogeneous, Spartan society. It has very little contact with the reality of Israel-Palestine.
So the vast majority of people in Turkey are sympathetic to the Palestinian cause and disapprove of Israel’s Apartheit regime. As someone who came up in the Islamist tradition, Erdoğan himself is also personally passionate about Palestine. He built his global persona on the 2009 “one-minute” incident in Davos, when he responded forcefully to comments by Israeli President Shimon Peres at a panel in Davos, then stormed off.
All this is going to be important in the coming confrontation.
As far as I can see, people are talking about a wider war between status quo and revisionist powers. The status quo might be what was called the “international liberal order,” or the peace dividend of WWII and the Cold War, depending on how you want to slice it. Essentially, these are Western countries and their allies. On the revisionist side, there’s nationalist/civilizational powers like Russia, China, and Iran. These countries don’t feel like they were at the table when the rules were drawn up. They want a more prominent place in world affairs, and they increasingly think that the way to get it is through some kind of violent confrontation. The clash points are Ukraine, and now Israel-Palestine.
If that wider regional confrontation really happens, where will Turkey stand? Economically, legally and (still) military, it is integrated into the status quo network. Politically - banish any doubt dear reader - it is deeply revisionist. That’s a very strange position to be in, and it’s due to Erdoğan’s unique strategy.
You could think of it as two distinct models of revisionist Islamism.
The Iranian model for change is revolution. You overthrow the civilizational traitors (Kemalists, the Shah) and establish a theocracy. You then fight regional wars to advance the goals of your revolution (it’s not called the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps for nothing). Erdogan’s mentor, Necmettin Erbakan, was an İrancı, literally a “partisan of Iran,” a word used for Islamists who were inspired by the 1979 revolution. Despite his participation in the Kemalist system, Erbakan believed that change had to happen through radical steps. He also saw no reason to conceal his raging anti-Semitism.
Erdoğan stepped out of Erbakan’s shadow and designed a gradualist model. He figured out that you could erode the power of the civilizational traitors, and gradually build your regime inside the husk of theirs. This requires a strong leader who can command the respect of radicals but also puts moderates at ease. Unlike Iran, the core of the movement isn’t military action, it’s commerce. You grow the economy, create a new elite, and make yourself an important (if annoying) part of the status quo. Over time, you replicate Western technology and try to reverse the dependency relationship to the “imperial center.” (Turkey also figured out that it could make itself almost indispensable for European refugee policy.)
In terms of foreign policy, that means that you supplant the status quo over time as well. Only then does military action come in, and only very gradually. As you become more powerful, you carefully increase the size and scope of your territorial holdings. Turkey gradually felt its way into greater bits of Syria and Iraq, made a maritime agreement with Libya, and most recently, aided Azerbaijan in its territorial conflict with Armenia.
How is this relevant now? Well, it means that Erdoğan is deeply sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, but its surprise attack turns Erdoğan’s current schedule upside-down. Erdoğan’s just went through a demanding election, his economy was going through a very tender period, so he launched a relative rapprochement with the West. I think this is in hopes of a Trump win in 2024, which could, if handled right, create interesting opportunities for Turkey to make revisionist touches here and there. A larger war right now, on the other hand, would almost certainly play havoc on energy prices, which would restrict Turkey’s choices now. Speaking on AHaber, Minister of Finance Mehmet Şimşek said that he hopes that the war will be contained and won’t create wider instability. He seemed very anxious about his economic reforms being derailed.
In the abstract, if the war expands, and the West begins to roll back Iranian influence, it could benefit Turkey. I’m sure that even the idea of Israeli planes bombing Damascus is exhilarating to Ankara. The West could accomplish something that the Syrian rebels haven’t been able to in a decade of bloody civil war. There are also other places, from the Caucasus to Iraq and the wider Middle East, where an Iranian decline would be welcome for Turkey. All this would come with great amounts of economic pain, but Turkey’s voters are resilient and very understanding of Erdoğan’s geopolitical priorities. This is the kind of thing that pro-Turkey (and anti-Iran/Russia) voices in Washington, like Michael Doran, have been writing about for some time.
So which will it be? When big unexpected things happen, Erdoğan usually disappears for a few days (or more), develops a plan, then comes back on the scene, guns blazing. In this case, he’ll probably angle for a role as peacemaker and maintain relations with both sides. He will want to de-escalate things. I’m not sure that’ll last long though. As the conflict grows, I think the moral and symbolic weight of the Palestinian issue will overrule other considerations.
I suspect Erdoğan also thinks that Israel knew about the attack in advance, and let it happen to have a pretext. Having waged a relentless war on the PKK and the Gulenists for close to a decade, Erdoğan knows what happens when states face off against non-state actors. He called the 2016 coup attempt a “blessing from God” because it paved the way for his presidential system. Israel’s far-right is likely to use this attack to push for many things they’ve been wanting for a long time, and the West is probably going to have very little to say about that. That’s going to be extremely upsetting to Erdoğan (he’s halfway there already.) He’s not getting any younger, his gradualism needs to lead somewhere satisfying, so he might well decide that this is it.
If this conflict grows, it could put unbearable pressure on Turkey’s long-suffering relationship with the West.