Bad timing for Mr. Erdogan, good for Turkey

Bad timing for Mr. Erdogan, good for Turkey

By Claude Salhani

A smart politician knows when to back down from a fight, especially one he knows he cannot possibly win. Knowing when to sound the retreat in an honorable manner is a sign of strength, not weakness. However, in the case of the Turkish prime minister, his capitulation to protestors who forced the government to backtrack on earlier plans to develop a park in Istanbul into a shopping center, could not come in a worse time for himself, his party and for the coalition of allies backing the armed resistance in Syria. The reason for this is in the timing of the events. For Turkey, however, the timing could not have been better.

Why?

First, regarding the prime minister’s strong headedness over the Gezi Park affair. I would be tempted to say that the prime minister lost a lot of political mileage over that incident that dragged itself out over the period of close to two weeks and during which time the prime minister was ridiculed in front of the entire planet’s television cameras.

Then, almost as an afterthought, he decides to send in the police to clear the park of protesters in a face-saving exercise. Big mistake.

It is not unthinkable that this little incident may have cost the prime minister his political career.

The reason is that he threatened and threatened, and huffed and puffed but never blew the house down. You simply don’t do that in politics and live another term to tell stories about it around the fireplace. My money right now would be on the high probability that the elders of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, as it is known by its Turkish acronym, are holding off the record, back room meeting, trying to decide if Mr. Erdogan still has a political heartbeat, or has he suffered the political equivalent of a massive stroke.

The other reason Mr. Erdogan looks weak is that so far he has failed to respond – other than verbally, and perhaps covertly – to Syria’s acts of aggressions committed to date against his country.

Last June the Syrians fired an anti-aircraft missile at a Turkish Air Force fighter jet that had strayed into Syrian air space. Other than threats of strong-handed retaliation, there has been no (visible) reply to that event.

In another major incident in May of 2013, two powerful car bombs exploded in the Turkish town of Reyhanli, close to its border with Syria. The Turkish government accused the Syrian government and its intelligence services of being responsible for this attack which left 40 killed and more than 100 wounded.

And in between those two events there have been a multitude of scattered shootings by Syrian forces loyal to President Bashar Assad, as well as a number of mortars and artillery shells fired by force loyal to Assad at Turkish targets.

In the two years during which the civil war has raged in neighboring Syria, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has time and again threatened to take firm action and yet has failed to do so. This will be seen by his opponents and particularly by his adversaries whom they have no trouble hitting back and then some, such as his former chum Bashar in Syria as a great sign of weakness. The Istanbul Gezii Park affair could be the final nail in Erdogan’s political coffin. As one analyst familiar with the situation in Turkey said of Mr. Erdogan, “He has become a paper tiger.”

Unless.

Unless the Turkish prime minister is far more astute than anyone gives him credit for and that in the two years during which the war next door in Syria had been raging the Turkish prime minister has fired back using covert rather than overt methods.

The Istanbul park incident, however, will remain a political blemish on his career. The good news here is that Turkey, as a nation, as a modern democratic country, is standing up to the government and has demonstrated to the rest of Europe that indeed it belongs to the European Union without any reservation. Both Mustapha Kemal and Robert Schuman would be proud of the Turkish people today. Time for Europe to reciprocate. And who knows, Mr. Erdogan could end up reclaiming some of his lost political mileage after all.

Claude Salhani is an independent journalist based in Washington, DC and the Middle East. He specializes in Middle Eastern affairs, terrorism and politicized Islam. He tweets at @claudesalhani
(Op-Ed earlier published by the HuffPost.)