Turkey’s Erdogan says he is not a dictator & What is to be done?

Crosstalk: Victorious Erdogan

Turkish President Erdogan got what he has long coveted – a popular mandate to legitimize his towering presence in the country’s politics and social life. His critics call him a modern Sultan. Does Erdogan’s victory only divide the country more?

CrossTalking with Guney Yildiz, Bill Park, and Martin Jay.

Turkey’s Erdogan says he is not a dictator & What is to be done? Gregory Copley @defense & Foreign Affairs

Turkey’s Erdogan says he is not a dictator & What is to be done? Gregory Copley @defense & Foreign Affairs

Analysis. By GIS/Defense & Foreign Affairs Staff. Turkey’s April 16, 2017, manipulated referendum granting dictatorial powers to the President may be the most significant and transformative change in Eurasia, the Middle East, and parts of Africa since the collapse of the USSR in 1990-91, despite the fact that Turkey’s economy is itself in decline and its population divided to the point of civil war.

The transformation of Turkey from a parliamentary system, with the Government functioning under a Prime Minister, to an executive presidency has ended the Westernized democracy envisaged by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, introduced by the Grand National Assembly on March 3, 1924.

[See: “Turkey’s President Plans to Unleash New Flow of Illegals into Europe” in Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy, 3-2017, and Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis of March 30, 2017,for a details of the changes.]

Pres. Reçep Tayyip Erdoğan has now embarked on a revival of Ottomanism and a Turk-centric caliphate which is being cloaked, to a degree, by modern trappings. Assessments by the International Strategic Studies Association, publisher of GIS and Defense & Foreign Affairs Special Analysis, indicate that the process by which Pres. Erdoğan reached this point was carefully scripted, including the manipulated “false coup” of July 15-16, 2016, which gave the impetus for him to purge the system and society of many of his opponents. The growing politicization of all legal and security elements in Turkey enabled him then to strongly structure the way in which the April 16, 2017, referendum would take place.

What is significant is that, even with all of the fraud (much of which was documented as it occurred by international observers) which accompanied the referendum, Mr Erdoğan was only able to scrape through his “victory”. That victory, however, has polarized Turkish society, and may presage a decade or more of internal conflict, or, indeed, some genuine attempts at a new military coup if sufficient cohesion remains in the Turkish Armed Forces.

Take-aways from the referendum include: …”