Back in the 1990s Recep Tayyip Erdogan likened democracy to a bus: “You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.” With the arrest of his main rival for the presidency, Erdogan appears to have reached his destination and may now bring the bus to a complete stop.
The timing is important. The detention of Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition leader and mayor of Istanbul, on corruption charges follows the collapse of the Assad regime in Syria, and Donald Trump’s return to power. It also gives Erdogan three years to try to ride out the current storm of protests and then fix a battered economy before the presidential elections of 2028.
He can do this safe in the knowledge that if he stays within certain (ill-defined) limits, criticism from other countries will be muted because he has established himself as a key player and potential problem-solver in events that affect them. As it so often has in the past, Turkey has become a fulcrum for most of the key issues that worry global leaders late into the night. Russia and Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Iran, Syria: solutions to any of these problems run at least part of the way through Ankara.
Turkey played a significant role in Assad’s downfall in Syria. Erdogan watched closely as a window of opportunity was cracked open by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, then flung wide by Israel’s destruction of Hezbollah in Lebanon.
When the Islamist militia Hayat Tahrir al-Sham marched on Damascus in December, it did so with Turkish support. HTS overthrew the regime, and installed its leader, Ahmed al-Sharaa, as interim president. Al-Sharaa dropped his nom de guerre (Abu Mohammed al-Jolani) shortened his jihadist-length beard, and lengthened his conciliatory statements. This show of moderation was for the outside world, but Erdogan knows exactly who he has helped to come to power.
Last month, he invited al-Sharaa to Ankara, a visit that underlined how Turkey has emerged as the big regional winner in the Syrian civil war. Iran’s influence is diminished, Turkey’s is enhanced, and now there’s talk of Turkey establishing airbases in central Syria and training the Syrian army.
This would bring Erdogan’s military closer to Israeli forces in the buffer zone they have established inside Syria. Rising tensions between them are ominous, but thus far Turkey has proved adept at playing both sides of Israel and Palestine. Turkey hosts Hamas officials, partially because both it and the ruling AK Party have their roots in the Muslim Brotherhood. But despite the fierce rhetoric aimed at Israel, the value of Turkey’s trade with it is about $7 billion a year — and has remained buoyant during the long Gaza war.
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Turkey’s rise coincides with Trump 2.0 and the subsequent panic in Europe about the potential end of America underwriting European security. In response to American warnings, the European powers — and Britain — called urgent meetings to continue their 30-year discussions about “strategic autonomy” and then recalled that just across the Bosphorus lies the second largest military in Nato: Turkey. Its army alone has about 300,000 active service personnel. It hosts the US airbase in Incirlik, a Nato land base in Izmir, and an early-warning radar system in Kurecik in the middle of the country.
Needed for Nato
Turkey joined Nato in 1952 in a marriage of Cold War convenience. The West was keen to stave off a potential Communist revolution in the country and wanted a bulwark against Soviet influence. Such was its strategic importance that alliance members managed to overlook military coups in Turkey in 1960, 1971, and 1980. Amid some embarrassed throat-clearing and muttering about “internal matters”, Turkey’s indispensable geography trumped its status as a military dictatorship.
This, and an annual trade relationship worth more than €200 billion helps explain the European Commission’s relatively tame reaction to Imamoglu’s arrest and its excitement at the prospect of Turkish troops joining the European “reassurance force” in the event of a ceasefire in Ukraine. In response to Imamoglu’s arrest, the commission issued a statement saying it raised questions about Turkey’s “adherence to its long-established democratic tradition”. This was more of a tickle than a slap.
The EU has form in this regard. In 2015, while negotiating a deal to pay Ankara to prevent Syrian refugees in Turkey reaching Europe, it sat on a highly critical report on Turkish human rights and released it only once the deal was concluded.
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The Europeans are anxious to keep Turkey onside. No matter that the opposition leader and dozens of co-defendants were hauled off to Istanbul’s infamous Silivri prison, built to house about 11,000 inmates but now home double that. The media has been muzzled, the courts brought under control, and after 23 years in power, Erdogan appears to be positioning himself to become president for life.
If, as it seems, we are in the post-post Cold War era, where hard-nosed great power politics is the order of the day and fewer countries pay even lip service to human rights and “values”, then Turkey’s position will serve it well. It may not be thought of as a maritime power, but Turkey borders the Black Sea, the Aegean, and the Mediterranean and has 7,200km of coastline. It controls the entry to the Bosphorus Strait that leads to and from the Black Sea. If it closes the strait (less than a mile across at its narrowest) the Russian Black Sea Fleet cannot break into the Mediterranean and then the Atlantic.
Turkey is also a land trade bridge linking Europe with the Middle East, the Caucasus, and on up to the Central Asian countries. It has eight land borders: Greece, Bulgaria, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, and Syria.
For more than 2,500 years, this geography has put Turkey, and particularly the region around Istanbul, at the crossroads of commerce. Trade heading east, west, north, and south, all must pass through it. It has attracted the Persians, Greeks, Romans and Byzantines. When Constantine the Great occupied what was then the Greek city of Byzantium in 330 and renamed it Constantinople (now Istanbul) the whole weight of the Roman Empire shifted eastwards. History marched on through the region as did the Crusaders, the Arabs, and then the Ottomans.
Crossroads of history
Turkey today is about 1,600km across, but well protected. The mountains along the borders with Iran, Iraq, and Syria offer protection from invasion in that direction. Across from the other end of the country is the Bessarabian Gap. This is the coastal plain where the Carpathian Mountains end and the flat land descends to the Black Sea in what is now Moldova. The ability to project land forces into the gap allows a power to advance towards Russia, or in the other direction the Balkans, or, to block an enemy force which might seek to come through the gap.
Modern Turkey has emerged from its turbulent history and now maintains good relations with Ukraine, Russia, China, and the United States — a trick that few European countries manage. It is an increasingly powerful diplomatic influence in the Horn of Africa, the Balkans, Libya, and beyond. The 2022 Black Sea grain deal with Russia and Ukraine, which may have averted massive food shortages in many developing countries, was not brokered by France, the UK or Germany but by Turkey.
Turkey is also a growing force in the defence industry. Seventy per cent of its military equipment is now built domestically, and by the end of the decade it may be one of the world’s top ten arms exporters. Its big-ticket project is the TF-X, intended as a fighter jet to replace the F-16 by 2030. It also builds tanks, armoured vehicles, submarines, and frigates. Its Bayraktar TB2, widely used by Ukraine on the battlefield, has been described as “the drone which changed the nature of warfare”.
Turkey is also investing in becoming a space power to enhance its military abilities. Late last year construction began on its first spaceport, in Somalia. The location will allow it to test-launch rockets towards the Indian Ocean without the risk of debris falling on other countries or urban areas. In 2024 Turkey’s first domestically built satellite was launched — delivered to space by one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets.
What’s particularly striking about recent events is just how much room for manoeuvre Erdogan seems to have, both at home and abroad.
Speaking from prison, Imamoglu told his followers: “The ballot box will come, and the nation will give this government a slap it will never forget.” However, if Erdogan gets his way, his only serious rival will not be a presidential candidate.
In 2019 his party lost the election for mayor of Istanbul. Erdogan, shocked at the prospect of losing Turkey’s biggest city, demanded a recount of ballot papers. The results were the same so he said the vote should be rerun. A joke quickly spread about a list of things people can’t choose in life: “Place of birth. Ethnicity. Mayor of Istanbul.” We shall see if another category is to be added: “Turkish president.”
The new 10th anniversary edition of Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall (Elliott & Thompson) is out in paperback, ebook and audio on April 10.
