Is Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan transforming a nation? - The Economic Times Is Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan transforming a nation? By AP | Updated: Jul 21, 2016, 11.54 PM IST "The tarnished souls of the faithless were eaten up, finished and defeated before the souls of the faithful," the president said Wednesday. Budget 2017: Can Arun Jaitley make you & economy happy? Click for our special Budget 2017 coverage ISTANBUL: The stunning sweep of Turkey 's crackdown following an attempted coup last week forces questions about how far President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will go in a tense, conspiracy-fueled country. While the purges may be designed to derail any future insurrections, there are increasing concerns that Erdogan is seizing the moment to transform Turkey, steering it from its secular roots toward a more pious Muslim model and cementing personal power at the expense of democratic ideals. The mass dismissals of Turkish teachers and closure of hundreds of schools allegedly linked to the coup plotters suggest societal shifts are afoot that could empower Erdogan's conservative Islamic base.

And if answers to Turkey's course lie in presidential rhetoric, the coup plotters, and possibly a wider circle of government opponents, can expect little tolerance after an insurrection in which renegade soldiers drove tanks in city streets and fired on civilian protesters. "The tarnished souls of the faithless were eaten up, finished and defeated before the souls of the faithful," the president said Wednesday. "Know that this will not be their first defeat, this is how it will be from now on." Turkey, a NATO ally that describes itself as a bridge between east and west, is truly at a crossroads, embarking on a path whose ultimate consequences may not even be entirely clear to the leader who has dominated the nation of 80 million for more than a decade. For the West, the stakes are high because strategically located Turkey, spanning Asia and Europe, is considered a vital partner in efforts to contain terrorism and regulate mass migration from Syria and other conflict zones. After the failed uprising, Turkey's elected government arrested or dismissed tens of thousands in the military, the courts, education and other sectors _ "everywhere you can think of," one Turkish newspaper columnist wrote _ and declared a three-month state of emergency.

The country, observers say, could veer deeper into the authoritarian conduct that Erdogan has increasingly been accused of, or it could eventually honor pledges to uphold democracy after a temporary suspension of freedoms. Erdogan is taking a hard line, saying he will consider supporters' calls to reinstate the death penalty, a move that would defy international rights conventions and perhaps irrevocably shatter Turkey's hopes of joining Europe as a full partner. Mehmet Simsek , Turkey's deputy prime minister, said the rule of law will be upheld during the state of emergency and "we will use it in a fashion closer to our allies, like France and others." And while Erdogan thanked political opposition parties for opposing the July 15 coup attempt, some analysts believe his triumphalist declarations show he is inclined to target rivals after a coup scare that exposed vulnerabilities in his security. The extent of purges, aimed at supporters of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based cleric and former Erdogan ally blamed for the uprising, raised speculation that the rebellion fallout accelerated plans to overhaul Turkish institutions, accomplishing in days what might have taken years.

"Erdogan has always envisioned remaking Turkish society and undoing what he sees as the excesses of Kemalism," the secular ideology of Turkish national founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, wrote Howard Eissenstat, an associate professor of Middle East history at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. "Now he is doing so with far greater force; this is a revolution. In 1980, the generals staged a successful coup aimed at totally remaking society. It was accompanied by mass detentions, purges of public institutions, and desperate violence. It appears that Erdogan will use the failed coup of 2016 for much the same aims, with much the same result," Eissenstat wrote in an email to The Associated Press. The hostility driving some of the change was on display Sunday at a funeral for a friend of Erdogan's who died in the coup violence. With the president in attendance, a cleric prayed for divine protection from "the malice of the educated" _ an apparent reference to the extensive network of schools run by the followers of Gulen, who has denied involvement in the coup attempt. But the criticism could also apply to other elites, including secularist circles that once controlled Turkey with military support.

Turkey experienced a revolution in 1923 when Ataturk, a war hero who founded the Turkish republic as colonial powers gobbled up former Ottoman territories, abolished the caliphate and its traditions of dress and language, viewed as symbols of stagnation, and turned to the West as a model. Ataturk's face still adorns Turkish banknotes, but Erdogan's Islamist-rooted government has diluted his secular legacy and turned to the Ottoman imperial era for ideas about morality and regional stature. Many Turks critical of Erdogan are keeping a low profile as the post-coup purge unfolds, but the president's supporters appear invigorated. Necati Alkan, a resident of Istanbul's Fatih neighborhood, said: "From now on, we will spread justice in Turkey just like the Ottoman empire did for 600 years." Metin Kadir, a resident of the capital, Ankara, said a state of emergency is the right move and declared: "I hope this country unites and is at peace again. Thank God we live in a country that is a paradise." Stay on top of business news with The Economic Times App. Download it Now!

FROM AROUND THE WEB Esteemed Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a sincere child of this country - YouTube Esteemed Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a sincere child of this country Want to watch this again later? Sign in to add this video to a playlist. Need to report the video? Sign in to report inappropriate content. Rating is available when the video has been rented. This feature is not available right now. Please try again later. Published on Jul 26, 2016 Excerpt from Mr. Adnan Oktar's Live Conversation on A9TV dated July 18th, 2016 ADNAN OKTAR: I have warned Teacher Erdoğan many times to be cautious of those close to him; I even send a message to him. And my warnings have come true. I warned him both on TV and via a message. Teacher Tayyip is the son, the citizen of our country, he is a modest person. They call him "Sultan" or similar names; he is someone who advocates temperance, moderation. He says, "Where I belong is 6 feet under the ground. I am here to serve my people." It is a shame to give him such a hard time.

In Turkey, the majority of the voters are conservatives; these people have found a conservative leader and are following him. If there was another conservative leader as driven and determined as him, the people would follow him as well. It is not because he is special. What Turkish people seek is to meet on a conservative ground. You cannot force the right to be left, or the left to be right. Since the right-wing needs a leader, people will choose one. Back in the day, that leader was Menderes, and then came Özal, who was followed by Demirel; if there is another person who is just as determined and driven, then vote that leader in. Teacher Tayyip will surely approve of him. If there is such a leader, we will vote him to power. They keep calling Erdoğan "Sultan!" What sultan? Why would he seek to become a sultan? He is a person we all know very well since he grew up among us. But these people speak as if he came from space. Don't you know Teacher Tayyip? You do. You know him well from his time in the Saadet Party and other duties; we know him since his youth. He was also the mayor of Istanbul.

He is known by millions. He does not appear just recently. Why would he seek to become a sultan? He is working hard to protect the right-wing from harm. I would understand your concerns if he was not a person we knew well and then became a President. But he is someone we know since his childhood, so what is your problem? What would he achieve by becoming a sultan? He is already the head of Turkey. You can watch live interviews of Adnan Oktar from A9 TV (english simultaneous interpretation) or from (french simultaneous interpretation) You can reach to Adnan Oktar's works from and Some sites based on Harun Yahya's works; Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey's dominant president - BBC News BBC News Recep Tayyip Erdogan: Turkey's dominant president 21 July 2016 Close share panel Image copyright Adam Berry Not since the days of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the father of the modern Turkish Republic, has any figure dominated the country for as long Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The president's grip on power was seriously challenged by an attempted coup on 15 July.

Yet he was back less than 12 hours later, some say in an even stronger position than before. And he had out-manoeuvred the plotters. To his supporters he has brought Turkey years of economic growth, but to his critics he is an autocratic leader intolerant of dissent who harshly silences anyone who opposes him. And dissenters range from a 16-year-old arrested for insulting the president to a former Miss Turkey who got into trouble for sharing a poem critical of the Turkish president. The failed coup claimed at least 240 lives and, according to his officials, also came close to killing Mr Erdogan, who had been staying at the Aegean holiday resort of Marmaris. Within hours, he appeared on national TV and rallied supporters in Istanbul, declaring he was the "chief commander". But the strain on the president was clear, when he sobbed openly while giving a speech at the funeral of a close friend, shot with his son by soldiers during the attempted coup. Presidential ambitions Mr Erdogan, 62, came to power in 2002, a year after the formation of the AK Party (AKP).

He spent 11 years as Turkey's prime minister before becoming the country's first directly-elected president in August 2014 - a supposedly ceremonial role. He is known to harbour ambitions of creating an executive presidency, to regain some of the powers he relinquished when his tenure as prime minister ended in 2014. While the AKP enjoys a fierce and loyal support among Turkey's conservative, Muslim base, his silencing of critics has caused alarm abroad. Image copyright AFP Image caption Mr Erdogan has not been afraid to take on the army - seen by many as the guardian of the secular constitution Turkish journalists have been investigated and put on trial, foreign journalists have been harassed and deported. And Mr Erdogan's authoritarian approach is not confined to Turkey's borders. His bodyguards harassed reporters in the US, and a German satirist is under investigation in his home country for offending the Turkish president on TV. In June 2015 the AKP suffered a dip in the polls and failed to form a coalition. But the party swept back to power in November with 49% of the vote, in elections overshadowed by the end of a ceasefire with the Kurdish militant PKK.

Erdogan's rise to power Born in 1954, Recep Tayyip Erdogan grew up the son of a coastguard, on Turkey's Black Sea coast. When he was 13, his father decided to move to Istanbul, hoping to give his five children a better upbringing. As a teenager, the young Erdogan sold lemonade and sesame buns on the streets of Istanbul's rougher districts to earn extra cash. He attended an Islamic school before obtaining a degree in management from Istanbul's Marmara University - and playing professional football.

Image copyright EPA 1970s-1980s - Active in Islamist circles, member of Necmettin Erbakan's Welfare Party 1994-1998 - Mayor of Istanbul, until military officers made power grab 1998 - Welfare Party banned, Erdogan jailed for four months for inciting religious hatred Aug 2001 - Founds Islamist-rooted AKP (Justice and Development Party) with ally Abdullah Gul 2002-2003 - AKP wins solid majority in parliamentary election, Erdogan appointed prime minister Aug 2014 - Becomes president after first-ever direct elections for head of state July 2016 - Survives attempted coup by factions within the military Challenging the military Image copyright Reuters Image caption Mr Erdogan has denied wanting to impose Islamic values In the decades before the AKP's rise to power, the military intervened in politics four times to curb Islamist influence. And Recep Tayyip Erdogan has for years embraced Islamist-rooted politics. When he became mayor of Istanbul in 1994 he stood as candidate for the pro-Islamist Welfare Party.

He went to jail for four months in 1999 for religious incitement after he publicly read a nationalist poem including the lines: "The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers." When he became prime minister in 2002 as head of the AKP, he asserted civilian supremacy over the army. In 2013 he triumphed over the military elite when senior officers were among a large group of people convicted of plotting to overthrow him in what was known as the "Ergenekon" case. Those convictions were later quashed . Critics have accused Mr Erdogan of using the judiciary to silence political opponents, and there have been many allegations of trumped-up charges. But his supporters applauded him for taking on previously untouchable establishment figures, who saw themselves as guardians of the state created by Ataturk. Gezi Park protests Image copyright AP Image caption In June 2013 Mr Erdogan survived a challenge from opposition demonstrators in Istanbul Mr Erdogan also unleashed the power of the state to crush mass protests in Istanbul in June 2013, focused on Gezi Park, a green area earmarked for a huge building project.

The protests spread to other cities, swelled by many secularist Turks suspicious of the AKP's Islamist leanings. A major corruption scandal battered his government in December 2013, involving numerous arrests, including the sons of three cabinet ministers. Mr Erdogan raged against "plotters" based outside Turkey, condemning supporters of cleric Fethullah Gulen, a former ally turned rival in self-imposed exile in the US. He also lashed out against social media, vowing to "wipe out" Twitter. Muslim revival Image copyright Reuters Image caption Some secularist critics bristle at the sight of Mr Erdogan's wife Emine (left) in a headscarf Mr Erdogan has denied wanting to impose Islamic values, saying he is committed to secularism. But he supports Turks' right to express their religious beliefs more openly. That message goes down particularly well in rural and small-town Anatolia - the AKP's traditional heartland. Some supporters nicknamed him "Sultan" - harking back to the Ottoman Empire. In October 2013 Turkey lifted rules banning women from wearing headscarves in the country's state institutions - with the exception of the judiciary, military and police - ending a decades-old restriction.

Critics also pointed to Mr Erdogan's failed bid to criminalise adultery, and his attempts to introduce "alcohol-free zones" , as evidence of his alleged Islamist intentions. Palatial ambitions Mr Erdogan's political opponents saw a lavish new presidential palace as a symbol of his alleged authoritarian tendencies. Perched on a hill on the outskirts of Ankara, the 1,000-room Ak Saray (White Palace) is bigger than the White House or the Kremlin and ended up costing even more than the original £385m ($615m) price tag. Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Much controversy has surrounded Mr Erdogan's sprawling presidential palace in Ankara Mr Erdogan owes much of his political success in the past decade to economic stability , with an average annual growth rate of 4.5%. Turkey has developed into a manufacturing and export powerhouse. The AKP government kept inflation under control - no mean feat, as there were years in the 1990s when it soared above 100%. But in 2014 the economy began flagging - growth fell to 2.9% and unemployment rose above 10%.

On the international stage he has bitterly condemned Israel - previously a strong ally of Turkey - over its treatment of the Palestinians. Although there is now a rapprochement, the policy not only galvanised his Islamic base, but also made him a hugely popular leader across the Middle East. He has backed Syria's opposition in its fight against Bashar al-Assad's government in Damascus. But his tentative peace overtures to the Kurds in south-eastern Turkey soured when he refused to help Syrian Kurds battling Islamic State militants just across the border. Image copyright EPA Erdogan’s Grand Vision: Rise and Decline | World Affairs Journal Erdogan’s Grand Vision: Rise and Decline Hillel Fradkin and Lewis Libby “A great nation, a great power”—the recent Fourth General Congress of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party proclaimed this ambitious goal for 2023, the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the Turkish Republic. The Congress celebrated Erdogan’s leadership and reelected him as party chairman. With his party’s backing, and through a prospective new constitution that will create a powerful “presidential system,” Erdogan expects to preside over the anniversary celebrations as president of a transformed Turkey that dominates the Middle East.

But what would be the shape of Erdogan’s golden age? Would Turkey be a moderating influence on political Islam, in particular on the Muslim Brotherhood parties now dominant in much of the new Middle East? Will Erdogan make the country a unique Islamic liberal democracy that will reconcile the Muslim world to the West? Or is he presiding, as a growing number of observers fear, over an Islamist transformation of Turkey that would put it at odds with the West as it consolidates a “neo-Ottoman” regime? Those who worry about such an outcome find a portent in his remarks—well noted in Turkey but not elsewhere—at his party’s recent Congress. There, Erdogan urged the youth of Turkey to look not only to 2023, but to 2071 as well. This is a date that is unlikely to be meaningful for Westerners, but is evocative for many Turks. 2071 will mark one thousand years since the Battle of Manzikert. There, the Seljuk Turks—a tribe originally from Central Asia—decisively defeated the leading Christian power of that era, the Byzantine Empire, and thereby stunned the medieval world.

At the battle’s end, the Seljuk leader stepped on the Christian emperor’s throat to mark Christendom’s humiliation. The Seljuk victory began a string of events that allowed the Seljuk Turks to capture the lands of modern Turkey and create an empire that would stretch across much of Palestine, Iraq, Syria, and Iran. In evoking Manzikert, Erdogan recalled for today’s Turks the glories of their aggressive warrior ancestors who had set out to conquer non-Muslim lands and, along the way, fought off the hated Shias of their day to dominate much of the Middle East. Manzikert is thus not an image of a peaceful and prosperous liberal state that sways others by its example of tolerance, virtue, and goodwill. Rather it indicates that as part of his vision of Turkish power and glory, Erdogan seeks to reverse the broad legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who founded modern Turkey in 1923. The recent AKP Congress aimed to celebrate Erdogan as a new and powerful kind of leader—now prime minister, later president—of Turkey, one ready to abandon Ataturk’s secular state structures and Western orientation. The warrior Ataturk warned against the allure of military victories; the politician Erdogan invokes them.

There is little disagreement among Turks about Erdogan’s character. He is famously self-confident and proud, even arrogant—qualities that have helped to make him a charismatic figure for many and an object of suspicion for others. He came of political age within the Turkish Islamist movement, which had long struggled to achieve influence within Turkey’s secular political order. In the early 1990s, the young Erdogan was an Islamist politician in Istanbul, rising to become a successful mayor of the city who addressed practical problems of sanitation, water, and traffic congestion. He was then a junior member of an earlier Islamist party that had ruled briefly but was overthrown by a secular, military-led coup in 1998 that constituted yet another defeat for the Islamist movement. Erdogan himself was jailed for the offense of citing a militant Islamist poem. Then, in 2001, he formed the Justice and Development Party, known ever since by its Turkish acronym AKP. His rise since has been spectacular. His party has won three successive parliamentary victories (in 2002, 2007, and 2011) with ever-increasing margins—an unprecedented political achievement in Turkey’s republican history.

During this period Turkey’s economic growth has been extraordinary by historic standards. Ever mindful of the obstacles that his Islamist roots faced in Turkey’s secular order, Erdogan has worked over his last decade in power steadily—but also cautiously, especially early on—to eliminate Ataturk-inspired restrictions on Islam and to undercut the old judicial and military order that guarded against the Islamization of Turkey. In this, too, he has been spectacularly successful, surmounting the obstacles that had stymied his early Islamist movement mentors. But was his success in this regard simply a continuation of his earlier Islamist commitments? Many in the West were initially inclined to say no. For Erdogan’s early political reforms were advanced not in the name of Islam, but in the name of an essential and necessary “democratic” reform of the abiding authoritarian features of the Turkish state, and were proffered as the means to satisfy EU requirements for membership. As a result, many admirers of Erdogan argued that he had abandoned the Islamist convictions of his youth and now merely aimed to liberate traditionally religious Turks from the constraints and even discrimination to which they were subject under Ataturk’s secular order.

More generally, Erdogan was deemed to have found the way to reconcile democracy with Islam and so overcome the conflicts thought to bedevil Muslim progress, including economic progress, in the modern world. This earned him great respect well beyond the world of Turkish politics. President Obama declared that Erdogan was one of five world leaders with whom he felt the closest relations. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton deferred to Erdogan’s leadership in the Middle East, stating in 2011, at the early stage of the Syrian crisis, that the United States would follow Turkey’s lead. Erdogan basked in this praise, calling the 2011 AKP election triumph a victory not just for Turkey, but for its Ottoman heritage. Indeed, as far back as October 2009, his foreign minister had explicitly invoked Turkey’s former imperial grandeur: “As in the sixteenth century, when the Ottoman Balkans were rising, we will once again make the Balkans, the Caucasus, and the Middle East, together with Turkey, the center of world politics in the future. That is the goal of Turkish foreign policy and we will achieve it.” But for this and other reasons, Erdogan’s critics doubt his commitment to democracy.

They note that in his early career he openly advocated for the political empowerment of Islamic law and likened democracy to a train that one can choose to leave at any time. They note, too, that his government has not only expanded the sphere for ordinary expressions of Islam—for example, the wearing of headscarves—but has at the same time contracted the universe of other liberties. Indeed, his critics, especially journalists and even sitting members of Parliament, often find themselves sued or in jail. They whisper of a growing culture of fear that grips Erdogan’s foes. In addition to the threats to freedom of expression, concerns about the nature of Erdogan’s governance and his future plans have generally focused on three important domestic arenas. First, his slow, artful, implacable, and legally high-handed prosecutorial attacks on the old military leadership, long-time guardian of the Ataturk-envisioned secular order. These have been characterized by very long pre-trial detentions and the use of possibly forged evidence, practices that have generated criticism from the EU, which was generally sympathetic to the desire to rein in the military.

Second, Erdogan’s steady promotion of Islam throughout Turkey’s bureaucracies and particularly in schools to raise what he called a “new religious generation” and promote a more religious Turkey. Third, his attempt to solve Turkey’s longstanding problem with its large Kurdish minority’s demands for respect and cultural freedom not by structural reforms but by appeals to “common Islamic values.” Yet in the last year Kurdish terrorism inside Turkey has reached a level of violence not seen for over a decade. The state has lost control of much of southeastern Turkey, the Kurdish heartland. Roughly half of the Kurds are secular, and while others share traditional tribal values, Erdogan’s appeal to Islamic solidarity has not mitigated what they regard as a history of mistreatment. Kurdish demands for equal rights or even autonomy are particularly troubling, because Kurds are becoming more assertive throughout the region, particularly in neighboring Iraq, and because Kurds in Turkey are nearly one-fifth of the Turkish population and also a fast-growing group. By some estimates, in roughly two decades there will be more Kurds than Turks born in Turkey.

Erdogan speaks openly of this demographic challenge, but is left to urging Turks to repopulate and trying to build relations with foreign Kurds, especially in Iraq, to stave off external support for the militants in Turkey. Meanwhile, the Turkish military resists taking on the ugly task of restoring order, in no small measure because of the assault Erdogan has launched against its leadership. In short, Erdogan’s response to domestic troubles has raised new concerns while failing to convince his critics of the sincerity of his “democratic” ways. They remain convinced that he favors an Islamist agenda. But for all Erdogan’s domestic problems, his grasp has most outstripped his reach in foreign affairs. Here, too, his agenda and failures seem to reflect a fundamentally Islamist vision, albeit one that he may be in the process of redefining. Under Ataturk, Turkey insulated itself from troubled Middle Eastern politics and Islam’s anti-modern pull by associating with Europe and the West. Almost from the beginning of his rule, whatever the symbolism he offered the West, Erdogan has turned this legacy inside out, emphasizing Muslim solidarity and engagement with the Middle East as Turkey’s true destiny.

Erdogan’s new direction was partially embodied in the AKP’s now famous, if often ridiculed, policy of “zero problems with neighbors.” Under this approach, Turkey would embrace not only the Sunni-led states of Turkey’s former imperial realm, but also the broader Islamic world. This included most notably Shiite-led Iran and Alawite-led Syria, the two neighbors most identified with ideological hostility to the West. Erdogan has met with mixed results in the Sunni realm, and disastrous rebuffs elsewhere. Erdogan’s reorientation of Turkish foreign policy led to an early embrace of forces hostile to Israel. Previously, Turkey had maintained close relations with Israel and a distance from the Palestinian “movement.” As early as 2004, Erdogan had declared his sympathies with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, even though it was opposed by the more secular and nationalist Palestinian Authority, led by Western favorites Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad. In 2006, after Hamas won the Palestinian elections, Erdogan welcomed its senior leadership to Turkey in a celebratory fashion. With his shift came a steadily increasing rhetorical assault on Israel’s Palestinian policies.

After the Gaza war of 2008–2009, Erdogan publicly insulted Israeli President Shimon Peres at the Davos Conference, calling him a “killer.” In 2010, he conspired to provoke the “flotilla” incident, which aimed to delegitimize Israel’s maritime embargo of Gaza. More recently, he called Israel a terrorist state and threatens to escalate this schism with Israel. Erdogan’s hostility to Israel and sympathy with its terrorist enemies has not only proven popular in domestic politics, but is also broadly consistent with his eager embrace of Sunni Islamism and especially the Muslim Brotherhood, as became clear in the position he took on the “Arab Spring.” As authoritarian rulers fell in Tunisia and Egypt, Erdogan was quick to embrace as comrades the Muslim Brotherhood parties that moved into the power vacuum. Having first opposed a Western intervention in Libya, he soon claimed a leadership role in that conflict. In his so-called “victory tour” of the Arab Spring countries in mid-2011, Erdogan was received as a rock star. But Erdogan’s ambitious vision of reaching out to and leading the Middle East even beyond its Sunni core soon ran into natural contradictions.

Iran, in particular, as it sought nuclear weapons, domination of Turkey’s neighbor Iraq, and regional leadership, could be seen as a natural state rival of Turkey. Yet Erdogan, in accord with his ideas about his—and Turkey’s—grand status in the region, undertook at crucial moments to undermine Western initiatives to stop Iran’s nuclear weapons program and opposed sanctions against the mullahs’ regime. As the Arab Spring reached into Syria, Erdogan initially positioned himself to defend Syrian Alawite dictator Bashar al-Assad. Erdogan prematurely announced Assad’s agreement to reform, only to be given the back of Assad’s hand as the Damascus regime turned increasingly violent and the Alawite-Shiite alliance hardened. As the conflict has deepened, Erdogan’s interests have been repeatedly thwarted and his proposals pushed aside, to his embarrassment and disadvantage. Erdogan tried to retake a leading role by hosting the Syrian National Council, a body claiming to represent the internal opposition against Assad, but also known to be dominated by the Syrian Muslim Brotherhood. That body has now been displaced by a new coalition of Syrian opposition forces that has been internationally recognized.

At the same time, Iran mocks Erdogan as a tool of the West and Israel, and Assad’s forces and Turkey’s exchange artillery fire. Seen in the light of these regional problems, Erdogan’s evocation of the Battle of Manzikert during the AKP’s Fourth Party Congress this past fall takes on an additional coloration. While Manzikert was a great triumph over that era’s leading Christian power, the Christians were not the primary focus of Seljuk Turk policy. Instead, the Sunni Seljuks were mainly focused on their primary religious and temporal enemies, the main Shiite and Arab power of the time, the Egyptian-based Fatimid Caliphate (in the eleventh century, Iran was not yet Shiite and was part of the Seljuk Turk empire). Indeed, not long before Manzikert, the Seljuks had readily accepted a truce with the Christians so they could attack the Fatimid-controlled city of Aleppo, in today’s Syria. Thus, the historical symbolism of Erdogan’s speech may have artfully highlighted for Turks an age-old agenda, one held by modern Turkey’s ancestors and now by Erdogan.

Turkey must outstrip the growing influence of today’s leading Shia power, Iran; beat back the Christian world; and surmount the incipient military and economic power of Egypt, the historic champion of the Arabs. As in the distant past, the most immediate obstacle to these ambitions is the Shiite power Iran and its allies; and Syria is once again a front in that conflict. An early sign of this policy shift against Iran came in the spring of 2012, when Erdogan described his party’s historic mission in a way that excluded Shiite Iran: “On the historic march of our holy nation, the AK Party signals the birth of a global power and the mission for a new world order. This is the centenary of our exit from the Middle East . . . whatever we lost between 1911 and 1923, whatever lands we withdrew from, from 2011 to 2023 we shall once again meet our brothers in those lands.” At the party Congress a few months later, Erdogan may have invoked Manzikert to signal that he would not just distance Turkey from its Shiite challengers, but actively oppose them.

The Syrian crisis, then, has exposed weaknesses in Erdogan’s early claims and weighs heavily on his reputation, at home as well as abroad. By a large majority, the Turkish public is now dissatisfied with and opposed to Erdogan’s Syrian policies. The critiques come not only from opposition parties, but from within previously supportive groups. Indeed, Erdogan finds himself and his grand design for Turkey confronted not only by Syria’s tyrant, but by an alliance made up of Russia, Iran, and the latter’s allies in this matter, Hezbollah and the Shiite government of Iraq. He finds himself dependent upon others—the United States, NATO, even the head of the Iraqi Kurdish Regional Government—for assistance. Before he had belittled the relative importance of the US and others in the region; now he complains sourly about their lack of activity and welcomes their support. In response to Syrian attacks on Turkey, Erdogan called for emergency meetings of NATO, invoking provisions for common defense. He is now receiving on Turkish soil US-made Patriot missile batteries manned by American, Dutch, and German troops.

While he has made periodic shows of military force, he has clearly pulled back to the edge of history, allowing Saudi Arabia and Iran to move into the foreground, respectively, by arming the Syrian rebels and the Syrian tyrant. In short, concrete successes in foreign policy have eluded Erdogan’s grandiose claims. The region’s vast troubles seem impervious to his remedies. Turkish elites—both from the opposition and among many who had been supporting him—have noticed the gap between rhetoric and reality; and Erdogan now finds himself mocked in the Turkish press for his frustrations. For the moment, Erdogan’s public pronouncements betray no doubts about his vision and capacities. Rather, he remains self-confident, assertive, and even aggressive. In December 2012, as earlier this fall, he returned to the theme of Manzikert, praising those who will raise a generation that “will reach the level of our Ottoman and Seljuk ancestors by the year 2071.” He recently repeated his intent to change the “separation of powers” of the Turkish state that, in his view, limits the capacity of the government to go forward with important projects. Some fear that would make Erdogan more powerful than an Ottoman sultan.

Given the AKP’s strength within Turkey, only a possible split in his party may derail Erdogan from his course. But it may well be asked why others, especially non-Turks, should follow him when his results so far have been at best ambiguous. Many of his growing number of domestic opponents now believe that Erdogan’s initial decision to put Turkey “back into” the Middle East, and his inclination to see the future in Islamist terms, threatens rather than enhances Turkey’s strengths. Ataturk’s Western orientation launched Turkish progress; Erdogan’s creeping Islamization may sap that forward movement without successfully wooing Middle Eastern states into a neo-Ottoman network. For now as ever, despite Islamists’ faith in Muslim solidarity and Muslim virtue, ferocious rivalries and inflexible dogma still rule the day. Rather than the solution, Islamism itself may prove to be a key problem, as it congeals around bitterly hostile Shiite and Sunni “camps.” But even the leading role in the Sunni camp, bedrock of his bid for influence, is not assured for Erdogan. As Egyptian ambitions revive, the Muslim Brotherhood party there will lay claim to the natural leadership of Arab countries as well as the Islamist movement.

Arab states do not readily welcome a return of Ottoman days. Even in the darkest days after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, for example, Iraq’s new leaders rejected Turkey’s help to secure Iraq’s borders against extremist insurgents. In the West, much of the early enthusiasm for Erdogan’s “Turkish Model” now seems premature and quixotic. Erdogan has often proven to be a hindrance to important Western concerns, such as limiting Iran’s nuclear program and terrorist reach and defusing Arab-Israeli problems by pushing for responsible Palestinian behavior. He has played little role in guiding the Arab Spring toward outcomes favorable to democratic interests or for that matter guiding it at all. As for the heralded bridge he was to build between modernity and Middle East realities, so far it touches neither shore. Nor has deferring so publicly to Erdogan’s leadership served the West well. The US may see Erdogan as a mediator between Islamism and the West, but the region sees his Islamist leanings and regular practice of flouting our interests. When the US defers to policies such as those that have topped the Erdogan agenda, other powers in the region conclude not unreasonably that America has either limited interest in the Middle East or limited capabilities.

Either way, American prestige and the capacity to shape events plummets. It may be that for all the specific policy failures he has suffered, Erdogan is playing a long game that is justified by what he sees as the gradual withdrawal of the US from the region. Perhaps this was subtly in the background of his insistence on offering young Turks the metaphor of the Battle of Manzikert. Manzikert began a process that ultimately led to the downfall of the Christian Byzantine empire, but not because Christian losses on the battlefield were great. Rather, the Byzantine’s downfall came from internal dissention and weaknesses that followed from the loss and continued for decades. Byzantine aristocracies fought among themselves for power, rather than attending to the strength of the empire in its dangerous world. They overspent and cheapened their currency. So long unrivaled, they abandoned the strengths, unity, and dedication that had been the foundation of their hard-won standing. The Byzantine emperor Romanos also paid a high personal price for misjudging the Turks. Having lost at Manzikert, he faced years of civil war within Byzantium. Ultimately, he was overthrown, brutally blinded, and exiled.

Publicly humiliated, he spent his last days in the Anatolian heartland riding on a donkey with a rotten face. Hillel Fradkin is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. Lewis Libby is a senior vice president at the Hudson Institute. OG Image: Turkey's President Erdogan Calls Women Who Work 'Half Persons' - NBC News advertisement Women who choose careers over motherhood are trailblazers in some parts of the world. But in Turkey they're "deficient" — at least according to the nation's president. Recep Tayyip Erdogan's declaration that such women were "half persons" is the latest in a series of remarks by the leader of a key U.S. ally that has sparked outrage and fear among liberals and human rights activists, who allege he's leading the country down a path to conservative Islam. "A woman who abstains from maternity by saying 'I am working' means that she is actually denying her femininity," Erdogan said in a widely reported speech in Istanbul on Sunday. Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan during his address at Sabahattin Zaim University in Istanbul on Sunday.

Yasin Bulbul / Pool via AP "A woman who refuses maternity and gives up housekeeping faces the threats of losing her freedom. She is lacking and is a half [a person] no matter how successful she is in the business world," he said according to excepts of the speech translated by the Hurriyet Daily News newspaper. On May 30, Erdogan — who was prime minister for 11 years before becoming president in 2014 — said Muslim families should not engage in birth control or family planning. He has come out against cesareans, equated birth control with treason, and opined that women should avoid laughing in public — all the while using his strong Muslim faith to justify his ideas. "We will multiply our descendants. They talk about population planning, birth control. No Muslim family can have such an approach," Erdogan said in a televised speech on May 30. "Nobody can interfere in God's work." Erdogan's conservative worldview clashes with a vocal but beleaguered liberal minority that is struggling to hold fast to Turkey's secular foundations as envisioned by the country's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

Prominent Turkish author Elif Shafak called Erdogan's comments "totally unacceptable, wrong and alarming," and said they represent a dangerous pattern on the part of the president and his Justice and Development party (AKP). Elif Shafak. Miles Willis / Getty Images, file "Turkey's AKP government has, over the years, increased their statements against women," she told NBC News via email. "They are openly questioning secularism. If secularism is destroyed and a religious order is introduced, there is no doubt in my mind that we women have much more to lose than men." The country, an essential Western partner in containing the Syrian civil war and the flood of refugees that it has unleashed, was seeing a "systematic backlash against women's rights and liberties," Shafak added. Sayek Boke, a member of parliament from opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), cast her net wider, saying that Erdogan's comments weren't only about women. "His discriminatory discourse against women's identity is actually a reflection of his radical views," she said. "This is part of the larger plan of transforming the society into a more Islamist direction.

Creating a new 'norm' for women is indeed an essential part of this transformation." “If we do not speak up now, tomorrow we might lose even the rights that we take for granted today” But while Shafak, Boke and others might be appalled by Erdogan's views on women and their place in modern Turkey, the president's comments resonate with the country's largely conservative majority, according to Turkish-British researcher and commentator Ziya Meral. Meral added that Erdogan is shoring up his conservative and nationalist base in order to push major constitutional changes to create a presidential system of government. These changes will require a strong majority and motivated support base. "This patriarchal conservative language is still Erdogan continuing to appeal to his conservative voters knowing all too well that statements like this will attract attention and negative response from secular Turks," he said. So Erdogan mainly wants to consolidate his power around himself and the party, he said. That is not to say the president isn't conservative socially — he is, Meral added. Take Erdogan's Cabinet. "The only woman on the Cabinet is relegated to family and social affairs [ministry], while the rest are all men," he said.

The result was a Cabinet that is "diverse in the sense that it is men with mustaches versus men without mustaches." Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, center background, chairs the new government's first Cabinet meeting at the Presidential Palace in Ankara on May 25. Presidential Press Service / via AP, file While Erdogan's comments on the role of women in society and family planning alarm Turks like Shafak, they reveal what Erdogan and the ruling party see as "a national security issue and existential threat," according to Fadi Hakura, a Turkey expert and associate fellow at London-based Chatham House think tank. While ethnic Turks had on average a birth rate of 2.1 percent, the country's Kurdish minority — which makes up about 15 to 30 percent population — has around twice that, he said. "He sees if current trends continue within a few decades Kurds could become the majority in Turkey," Hakura said. With Turkey's economy moving from an agricultural economy to a more industrial one, and its population migrating in greater numbers to cities, it is only natural that birth rates are falling as they have around the world, he said.

Related: Turkey Strikes Kurdish Rebels in Iraq After Deadly Bombing This demographic bubble terrifies nationalist Turks like Erdogan who fear greater Kurdish power and influence could lead to the country eventually splitting up along ethnic lines, according to Hakura. Kurdish militants have been fighting an intermittent decades-long insurgency in the southeast of the country but a cease-fire declared three years ago brought some calm. In July, the truce with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) fell apart. Whatever is motivating him, Erdogan's comments have caught the attention of observers beyond his own country. Women have historically had many freedoms and played a big role in the work force in Turkey, said Hillary Margolis, a researcher on Europe and Central Asia focused on women's rights for Human Rights Watch. Kurds gather in Diyarbakir, Turkey, on March 21. Murat Bay / AP, file "To have a leader who is frankly sexist making a lot of anti-female comments along the way for years now is quite concerning," she said.

"If we look at them beyond the comments about reproductive health, reproductive rights — it is about equality." For Shafak, Erdogan's latest comments were a call to action: "If we do not speak up now, tomorrow we might lose even the rights that we take for granted today." F. Brinley Bruton

Question: Racip Erdogan is a leader (at 2011) of what nation?
Answer: Turkey