Police close a road leading to the headquarters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party, (HDP), in Ankara, Turkey, Friday, Nov. 4, 2016. Picture by Burhan Ozbilici AP/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Beginning this century with a new political party, AKP, and a new philosophy, Turkey started asking itself: why do we not abandon this cold war mentality? Why not have a zero-problem foreign policy with our neighbours? We may not support Iran but we refuse to see it as a threat. We have Syria on our borders and we need to encourage it to join the ‘modern’ world. The world of realpolitik has offered a harsh reminder that reengaging with your neighbours when you sit on such a regional fault-line is not easy. Turkey is now reengaging with Russia and Iran, two of Syria’s key backers which it had tried ineffectually to topple after 2011, to the extent of allowing jihadis more than a little freedom until the later, in the form of ISIS, launched two frontal attacks on the Turkish state.
The road is now open to an executive presidency of the kind not available in the current constitution.
But it is the failed coup attempt of last July which has, more than any aspect of the country’s foreign policy, offered a stark reminder that the new political philosophy of a decade ago was not producing the modernisation and stability that many inside and outside the country had hoped for. Ruling by decree, the Turkish president jails those he holds in contempt, be they judges, university teachers, generals or Kurdish MPs. Having just put behind bars the most popular Kurdish leader among non-Kurdish Turkish citizens as well as in international public opinion (the ‘Kurdish Obama’), Salahettin Demirtas and his fellow MPs of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party HDP, the road is now open to an executive presidency of the kind not available in the current constitution.
