Turkey’s strategic collapse had, by early 2023, become unavoidable; it had already begun. And rather than attempt any remedial action, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan merely worsened the crisis, hoping to achieve short-term popularity.
However, his apparent paranoia over possible threats to his survival in office meant that he delayed by 48 crucial hours giving the Turkish Armed Forces orders to assist in the disaster relief efforts following the Feb. 6 earthquakes that struck Turkey and Syria.
But that was merely symptomatic of the president’s paralysis. The entire edifice of the country’s economy and strategic position was already crumbling around him, entirely due to his policies.
The economic and social collapse in the country, literally triggered by the concentration of power solely into the hands of Erdogan and his desire to retain power, was about to cause a chain of events that would—regardless of strategic logic and the goodwill of the United States toward Turkey—cause isolation of Turkey and the potential for rash behavior at a national level.
Erdogan had been working toward regaining sufficient popularity to win reelection this year, initially scheduled for June 18 but then brought forward to May 14. Erdogan recognized that delay was not in his favor; his popularity had plummeted, and he needed to stop the slide. He had even eliminated one of his main challengers, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who was convicted in early December 2022 of “insulting election officials,” a contrived new law designed to have Imamoglu convicted of a criminal charge and imprisoned, thereby becoming ineligible to contest the presidential election.
But this action was inconsequential in the evolving disaster in the Turkish economy leading up to the election. As a result, Erdogan was likely to seek a cancellation or postponement of the election and to rule, for want of a better description, by decree.
Justification of such an election cancellation—unless an implausible (for example, rigged) reelection could be staged, convincing no one in the Turkish electorate—could be found in numerous areas. The latest, and most plausible, reason for postponing the elections came with those Feb. 6 earthquakes that devastated southern and central Turkey and northern and western Syria. It was the worst such earthquake in the region in 84 years, devastating to the Turkish and Syrian populations but a political opportunity for Erdogan.
By Feb. 20, some 47,840 people had been reported killed in Turkey by the event, and almost 7,000 in Syria. Estimated property damage was estimated to be $84.1 billion.
The earthquake, if the crisis could be sustained for the coming months, would almost certainly figure in the president’s decision to postpone or cancel elections. He could even take that decision early in order to preempt any possible resumption of “political normalcy” over the ensuing four months or so until the election date.
Erdogan had also been developing plans to create “national security crises” over the Aegean Sea territorial waters controlled by Greece and over the contrived “terrorist actions”—the so-called terrorist bombing in Istanbul on Nov. 13, 2022—which could be blamed on the Kurds. That was enough to trigger a “national security crisis” and a new Turkish invasion of Kurdish-populated sites in northern Syria.
The severity of Erdogan’s position can be seen even in the headline statistics.
The Turkish population, then, has seen a consistent process of decline in income and living standards for the past two decades as the country moved to a credit-based economy that no longer has the power to borrow. Erdogan bargained on a credit-fueled national growth rate, which would be sustained until the Turkish economy had become so large that its debt would have declined proportionately. That did not happen. So what next?
Turkey—Erdogan changed the country’s name in its Latinized form to Türkiye in 2022 as another attempted distraction from domestic problems—faces a substantial economic downturn whether or not Erdogan remains in office. The process has gone too far to avert that collapse. A change of leader in the event that the May 2023 election proceeds could, however, change the economic trajectory to minimize the depth and duration of the crisis. Either way, it would be painful to the Turkish population, which has not bought Erdogan’s continual creation of “villains” on whom to blame the fruits of his economic failures, including the fabricated 2016 “coup attempt” he used to consolidate his control of government.
If Erdogan stays, it would be because he manipulated or postponed the election. Staying would likely cause internal violence and international isolation. The West, which needs a bulwark against Russia, would unlikely expel Turkey from NATO, but some isolation of the country would follow.
The fighter program depends on (initially) a U.S. GE F110 engine (already delivered for the prototype) and British Rolls-Royce engines for the product variants. Russia could step into the program and assist with a replacement engine, but it begs the question of how Ankara would pay for it. By barter and favors?
A new leader would begin to ameliorate Turkey’s economic and security problems, but Erdogan will not allow that to happen, if he has the opportunity to remain under any terms. He emasculated the military progressively since taking office in 2003. But do the Armed Forces have the capacity to resist another Erdogan coup against the electorate?
