Turkey: The Return of Demons - By promoting a strategic break with Europe, Erdogan is leading Turkey into the unknown, with demons whispering in his ears.

 

Turkey: The Return of Demons

by Amir Taheri  •  November 8th 

• Though Empire-builders of the first order, the Ottomans were always careful not to bite more than they could chew. Erdogan, however, is leading Turkey into empire-building adventures which it does not want and cannot afford.

• It has... launched a war of words with the European Union as a whole. Ostensibly, Turkey's beef is about old maritime demarcation lines that deny it the right to tap underwater oil and gas resources. What Erdogan does not realize is that the potential market for those resources is the very European Union he is now casting as enemy. In any case, the disputed resources cannot be tapped without massive investment from the West, not to mention the technology needed.

• By promoting a strategic break with Europe, Erdogan is leading Turkey into the unknown, with demons whispering in his ears.

Increasingly, Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to rule the country by fiat, often ignoring even a minimum of formal deference to his Cabinet, the parliament or even his own political party. (Photo by Adem Altan/AFP via Getty Images)

"Our past was in Asia but our future is in Europe!" This was how Mesut Yilmaz portrayed his vision for Turkey in a panel debate in Davos in the 1990s.

At the time, Yilmaz, who died last week at the age of 73, was one of the rising stars of Turkish politics and a generation that seemed destined to complete a revolution that had started in the 1880s in the Ottoman Empire. That revolution had aimed at transforming the moribund empire into a modern Western-style state capable of reversing more than a century of decline that had earned the caliphate the sobriquet of "Sick man of Europe."

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