Erdoğan’s New Turkey, as illiberal as it is, can help build peace in the Middle East
Mustafa Akyol is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, where he focuses on the intersection of public policy, Islam, and modernity. Follow him on X at: @AkyolinEnglish.
On October 9, 2023, just two days after Hamas launched its terrorist attacks on Israel, Bülent Arınç, a longtime confidant of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, made some striking public remarks that received little attention abroad. “We all love Palestine,” he told his Turkish audience, adding that the way forward had to be a two-state solution in which both Israel and Palestine would be “independent states within their borders.” And yet, Arınç complained, “we cannot bring Gaza to [accept] this…. They insist on refusing to recognize Israel.”
Then Arınç criticized Hamas for repeatedly firing rockets at Israel, only to “rain bombs down on your head.” “Why are you doing this? What’s in it for us?,” he asked, adding: “We told them, ‘don’t do this, you’re putting us in a difficult position too.’ But they don’t listen.”
Arınç’s comments revealed an important nuance about Ankara’s relations with Hamas, which has infuriated Israel and its supporters repeatedly over the past two decades: Yes, Turkey had close ties with the militant group, but this included encouraging it to follow a more moderate path.
This point has come to mind many times in recent months as I’ve encountered analyses portraying Turkey as “the next big threat” to Israel after its devastating attacks on its enemies in Iran, Lebanon, and Syria. Some have even characterized Turkey as the epicenter of an “Islamist resurgence” that “threatens the stability of the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and even Europe.” These alarmist takes, some of which even predict a war between Turkey and Israel, aren’t just hyperbolic. They also risk undermining a potential role for Turkey as a peace-maker in the Middle East – as evidenced by President Trump’s collaborations with President Erdoğan, first to stabilize post-Assad Syria and then to broker a ceasefire agreement in Gaza.
Here is why: Neither the national aspirations of the Palestinian people, nor the feelings of solidarity with them that spans across the Muslim world, are likely to disappear. The question is how to channel them. Since the 1980’s, the Iranian regime, with its “axis of resistance,” tried to push these sentiments in a radical direction by calling for the destruction of Israel and generating militancy with its network of proxies: the Syrian regime, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Hamas. This has served only to provoke fierce Israeli reactions that have proven disastrous for the Palestinians. But there is a moderate option as well – one that envisions Palestinian liberation as part of a two state-solution. This has also been Turkey’s official position for decades, as is repeatedly affirmed by Erdoğan.
Therefore, in a new Middle East, where Syria is no longer an asset of Iran but an ally of Turkey, and where Hamas looks not to Tehran but to Ankara and Doha, there may be more room for diplomacy and more hope for peace.
Turkish Realities
This does not mean that we should dismiss concerns about Erdoğan’s authoritarian drift. I have been among the president’s vocal critics ever since his move toward illiberal populism in the 2010s became manifest – with sharp declines in free speech and rule of law. The ongoing purges of the main opposition party, which includes the jailing of the popular mayor of Istanbul, raise questions about the fairness of future elections. From the vantage point of liberal values and democratic norms, today’s Turkey is a disappointing story, if not a sobering lesson.
Unfortunately, though, if we want to build peace in the Middle East (and elsewhere), we don’t have the luxury to wait for countries to become liberal democracies – especially when liberal democracies themselves are going through turmoil. Instead, we can appreciate leaders when they help international peace, no matter what we think about their domestic policies. It can be a hard nuance to accept – within America, too – but it is a needed one.
Nuance is also needed regarding the governing worldview of Erdoğan’s New Turkey. In the West, it is often labelled as “Islamist,” which is a scary term that reminds people of violent jihadists like Al Qaeda and brutal theocracies like Iran. Yet Islamism – a vague term that simply refers to doing politics with Islamic references – rests on a very wide spectrum. It’s moderate end includes pragmatic movements like Tunisia’s Ennahda Party as well as Turkey’s ruling AKP, who are not too different from the “religious right” in the West.
Consider: After 23 years of “Islamist” rule by Erdogan’s AKP, Turkey is still a NATO member and a secular republic with no sharia law in sight. It is still a capitalist economy that welcomes tourists and investors, and a diverse society where mosques co-exist with nightclubs. Alcohol is heavily taxed but not banned, and while the pro-family conservatives lash out against the LGBT-themed shows on Netflix – like their Christian counterparts in America – no “religious police” patrols the streets. It turns out that, while the staunch secularism of Kemal Ataturk was too radical to be sustained in a Muslim-majority country, it also left traces that have influenced all, including its religious dissidents.
Sultan Recep’s Agenda
A similar nuance is also needed in understanding Turkey’s much-discussed “neo-Ottomanism,” which would be frightening indeed if it referred to empire-building with violent conquests and political hegemony. But for Erdoğan and his entourage, neo-Ottomanism seems to mean soft power in the former Ottoman territories in the Balkans and the Middle East, along with a sense of responsibility for them – which is fine, when it leads to political cooperation, economic integration, and peace-making. Such neo-Ottomanism, which also implies religious and ethnic pluralism, has already proven helpful to Turkey’s Jewish and Christian minorities, and has been helping Turkey’s century-old problem as well: the Kurdish question. It is no accident that Erdoğan, whose movement has always been more embracing of Kurds in comparison to the secular Turkish nationalists, is now engaged in a peace process with the PKK, which, if it works, will be a historic win for both Turks and Kurds – and not just for Turkey itself, but also for Iraq and Syria.
Unfortunately, the current Israeli government, which is emphatically against any Turkish role in post-war Gaza, seems uninterested in all such nuances. “Turkey supports Hamas,” says Amichai Chikli, a minister in the Netanyahu government, “that’s a very simple equation.” But reality is really less simple. To date, Israel has saved its hostages mainly thanks to the mediation offered by Qatar (which got bombed by Israel for its trouble), and also by Turkey, which “exerted significant pressure on Hamas leadership,” as reported in Yediot Aharonot in an unusually perceptive profile of Turkish spy chief İbrahim Kalın. A U.S. official also confirmed, “The Turks were very helpful in getting the Gaza deal,” only to add: “Netanyahu’s bashing Turkey has been very counterproductive.”
In fact, it may not be wise for Israeli leaders to defy all such Muslim actors who are genuinely pro-Palestinian but also sincerely pro-peace – unless, of course, their real strategy is regional hegemony through the weakening of all “strong nation-states” in the region, as the U.S. ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack critically observed. But such an approach would hardly amount to a solution of any kind, since it can only lead to permanent war and more destruction on all sides.
Meanwhile, back in Washington, President Trump’s long-stated goal of ending the “endless wars” should be the permanent policy. That requires restraining Israel’s expansionist ambitions, which has always been a big part of this modern problem in the Holy Land. That, in turn, needs Muslim partners who have legitimacy across the region and also leverage over the very forces that must be moderated. Foremost among them, whether one likes him or not, is President Erdoğan, whose readiness to work with “my friend, Donald Trump” in order to bring peace should be welcomed.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
Mustafa Akyol
Mustafa Akyol is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute’s Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, where he focuses on the intersection of public policy, Islam, and modernity. Follow him on X at: @AkyolinEnglish.
