{"id":33214,"date":"2021-06-05T13:01:23","date_gmt":"2021-06-05T18:01:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=33214"},"modified":"2021-06-05T13:01:23","modified_gmt":"2021-06-05T18:01:23","slug":"the-autocrat-dance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2021\/06\/05\/the-autocrat-dance\/","title":{"rendered":"The Autocrat Dance"},"content":{"rendered":"

Metin Gurcan of AL-Monitor<\/strong><\/em> details<\/a> the dance of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now that his supine ally Donald Trump has been decisively rejected by the American electorate:<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0TV interview<\/a>\u00a0June 1, Erdogan conceded that his dialogue with Biden \u201chas not been easy\u201d thus far, unlike his \u201cvery peaceful and easy-going\u201d phone diplomacy with Trump. Referring also to the terms of George W. Bush and Barack Obama, he said he \u201chad never experienced such tension\u201d with the White House, putting the blame on Biden for recognizing the Ottoman-era killings of Armenians as genocide.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, the row over the S-400s remains the most pressing, with Ankara still scrambling to find a solution that would satisfy Washington. It has floated several options, including the\u00a0so-called Crete model<\/a>\u00a0\u2013 a reference to the Greek Cypriots\u2019 controversial purchase of S-300 missiles from Russia in the 1990s, which ended up in storage on Greece\u2019s island of Crete.<\/p>\n

There are signs that Erdogan might propose a new formula to Biden \u2014 to deploy the S-400s under US control at the Incirlik air base in southern Turkey, without any Russian involvement in their operation and maintenance. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu stressed this week that Ankara\u00a0would have \u201c100% control\u201d<\/a>\u00a0over the systems and no Russian military experts would be present in Turkey.<\/p>\n

Ankara\u2019s approach to the issue continues to strike many as superficial. With all that chatter on how Turkey would be the only one pressing the on-and-off button, Ankara has sounded as if it is a vacuum cleaner at stake and not a sophisticated missile system and, no wonder, failed to convince Washington.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I remain fascinated with the backsliding Turkey, which had achieved secular nationhood in the early 20th century, only to return to autocracy in the Islamist Erdogan. He appears to be a fixture in Turkey now, and Turkey is suffering for it – I have not commented on it, as I’m no expert on Turkish affairs, but I cannot help but notice the parallels between autocracies, including the foul-ups attributable to leaders with more ambition that competency – and who think they’ve been touched by the Divine.<\/p>\n

And what of the future?<\/p>\n

Mehmet Kocak<\/a>, a columnist for the pro-government Islamist daily Yeni Akit, for instance, argues that bilateral ties are doomed to deteriorate further, recalling that Biden, in an\u00a0interview before<\/a>\u00a0his election, advocated support for Turkey\u2019s opposition to defeat Erdogan. Despite those remarks, \u201cPresident Erdogan congratulated Joe Biden on his election and offered to open a new chapter in bilateral ties, but that, too, has remained unreciprocated,\u201d he writes. According to such isolationist Islamists, any dialogue with Washington would be futile.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Biden’s clear-eyed view of the importance of democracy will leave Turkey in the cold so long as the leaders of America emerge from Biden’s camp – unless the citizens of Turkey kick out the Islamists who hated Mustafa Kemal for nearly a century. I don’t see that happening, as the Islamist’s advantage over the advocates of a secular government – namely, “In Allah’s name!” – seem insurmountable until those uttering that phrase are shown to be irredeemably corrupt.<\/p>\n

That won’t be happening. Kemal only successfully instituted secular power because the Islamic Ottomans, who ruled Turkey until then, had failed utterly in World War I. A disaster of comparable proportions would be necessary in Turkey today to convince the populace of mistake of permitting the religious to institute religious governmental power.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Metin Gurcan of AL-Monitor details the dance of Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, now that his supine ally Donald Trump has been decisively rejected by the American electorate: In a\u00a0TV interview\u00a0June 1, Erdogan conceded that his dialogue with Biden \u201chas not been easy\u201d thus far, unlike his \u201cvery peaceful and \u2026 Continue reading → <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33214"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33214\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33215,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33214\/revisions\/33215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}