Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu returns to Ataturk airport after Dutch withdraw travel permission from his attendance at a rally in Rotterdam, March 12,2017. Depo Photos/Press Association. All rights reserved.In 1852, John Russell was using his political sabbatical to make the case for the approaching Crimean War with Russia. To add spice to his writings, he revealed that the Russian Tsar described the Ottoman Empire as the ‘Sick Man of Europe’. In the same year, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, Marx articulated one of his most quoted aperçues: history repeats itself; first as tragedy, then as farce.
The devil you know?
Forward one-and-a-half century or so, and the repetition of history as farce is unmissable. Turkey is once again the sick man of Europe. It is causing a serious headache for Europe and adding a new dimension to the geo-political rivalry between Russia and the west. The root cause is strikingly similar: an authoritarian Ottoman/Turkish state structure bent on crushing political dissent from below instead of reforming itself. In both cases, Europe appeased the Ottoman/Turkish rulers on the grounds that the devil you know is better than turmoil.
The chickens, however, eventually come to roost! The Sick Man of Europe, personified by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made it clear that a ‘strong Turkey’ at the gates of Europe is possible only under a dictatorial regime. But this ambition poses serious threats to Europe. The first consists of a new wave of out-migrants and asylum-seekers escaping regime brutality in the country. The second relates to state-led mobilisation and espionage activities among the ‘Turkish’ diaspora in Europe, with increasing evidence of polarisation within already fractured migrant communities. The third is escalating xenophobia in the rhetoric of Turkish officials, who have been attempting to humiliate European officials and treating European governments and institutions with contempt.
