What the future of President Erdogan may hold after devastating earthquakes in Turkey: National Public Radio

As elections approach in Turkey, NPR’s Michel Martin speaks with Soner Cagaptay, an expert on Turkish politics, about the political fate of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after last month’s deadly earthquakes.

Michael Martin, host:

It’s been just over a month since earthquakes devastated parts of Turkey and Syria, and the dimensions of the tragedy are all too clear – tens of thousands dead, even more injured, and millions now homeless. But now we want to focus on how to deal with disaster and what that might say about the leadership of one central figure. I am talking about Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. That is because Turkey has become a major player in world politics. It is a member of NATO, and Erdogan was a key figure in negotiating a deal to take grain shipments out of Ukraine last year.

But his tenure was marked by growing controversy. He’s been accused of taking ever more authoritarian tendencies, and was the subject of an attempted coup in 2016. Given all this, we wanted to hear more about what his history as a leader might tell us about what we might see next as the country faces the next election, even as it You are trying to recover from the earthquake. We contacted Soner Cagaptay for this because he has been following Erdogan for years. He is the author of Erdogan’s Empire: Turkey and the Politics of the Middle East, and he’s here with us now. Welcome. Thank you for joining us.

Soner Cagaptay: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Martin: Let me start with the week’s news. President Erdoğan announced on Friday that the elections in Turkey will be held in May – May 14, which I believe is a month earlier than scheduled. I mean, even as we said, you know, the country is still recovering from this devastating event. And, as you know, millions of people have been displaced. They don’t even have homes. So how do you read this decision?

Cagaptay: It’s a month before the constitutional deadline of June 18th. And I think President Erdogan decided that the earlier he holds the elections, the better for him. Because Turkey suffered the worst natural disaster in history, thousands died. I think the country is now still in the grieving phase, trying to come to terms with the loss. And then, of course, what follows is anger. So President Erdogan will face criticism of relief efforts, rescue efforts, construction, corruption and all that. And he’s decided that – he just wants to move forward with the election as soon as possible, before grief turns to anger and that he can be buried under a tsunami of anger if that happens.

Martin: Did the earthquake change things for him from what you can tell?

Cagaptay: It happened. So President Erdogan – I followed his career for almost two decades. He’s built a brand in Turkey, which is an interesting brand as a Janus-faced politician, right? It’s been growing for about 15 years, lifting people out of poverty, increasing income, and getting the pie. It’s all great and has a base, including a lot of people, the poor that he’s lifted out of poverty, and you love it. But he also has a dark, illiberal side. He is an indigenous and popular politician. He has brutalized and cracked down on demographics unlikely to vote for him. So he’s got part of the country he loves and part of the country he simply hates.

So I would say his brand over the last two decades has been that he was seen as an authoritarian politician, but his brand has also been — he’s going to take care of you. He was efficient and effective. So he was kind of like a father figure in Turkish politics. And the earthquake completely stopped that. During the disaster, the authoritarian patriarchal figure, President Erdogan, was not there to take care of the citizens. I think it will be difficult for him to rebuild his image in the future.

Martin: You wrote an article in Foreign Affairs this month. She wrote, quoting, “Erdoğan will change his position and once again seek to instill fear in the citizens, trying to appear strong and in control.” I added, for example, during a public speech, Erdogan scolded the citizens for spreading false news in a tone of exasperation. What is it all about? Like, what is he trying to achieve here?

Cagaptay: For Erdogan, as you know, his anger is as real as his sympathy. And I think that over the years, while those who oppose him hated him, he built a base shaped by conservative voters who were also drawn to his nationalist populist message who simply love him. So I was really surprised that in the aftermath of this biggest disaster in Turkey’s history, where thousands died and thousands more were waiting under the rubble to be pulled out alive, he chastised citizens for criticizing him and his performance. And I think this is the angry Erdogan that we will probably see going forward. He realized that if he did not double down on tyranny, he would not win the election.

Martin: But just — forgive me, just playing devil’s advocate here. This was a tragedy of colossal proportions. I mean, wouldn’t that have strained most countries’ resources?

Cagaptay: Certainly. I think for a disaster of this proportion, perhaps no government could have conceived of responding to it in such a way that, you know, relief would be there within hours after the disaster. But in Turkey, it took 48 hours for government aid agencies to show up. Civilian-run NGOs have done a better job than publicly funded agencies with multi-billion dollar budgets. And that’s what happened. When Erdogan came to power after his unification, he destroyed many of Turkey’s institutions.

Martin: I was going to ask you. What I’ve said here is kind of the gist of what a lot of our correspondents saw on the scene, which is how these NGOs, privately funded groups, sometimes even informal, you know, networks, you know, family groups were able to emerge faster than government-funded agencies? And really, I mean, do I understand that Turkey has the largest standing army in the Middle East, right? Isn’t there like a million men under arms?

Cagaptay: It is the second largest army in NATO. It is also a country with an economy of close to a trillion dollars, and huge corporations. But while consolidating his power, especially in the past decade, Erdogan has removed many institutions. Take, for example, the Turkish equivalent of FEMA, which is called AFAD in Turkey. This is the Relief and Rescue Agency – the Disaster Emergency Response Agency, right? So instead of appointing engineers, civil engineers, salvage engineers and seismologists — Turkey is an earthquake-prone country, unfortunately — to run this agency, Erdogan appointed his loyalists. Turkey is an advanced case of what happens to countries when a nativist populist leader takes over.

So the leader demonizes not only those who do not vote for him, but also the institutions, turning them into zombie institutions. If the establishment did not fall into his hands, the leader would essentially appoint loyalists or pass legislation to reduce its power. This is what happened to the Red Crescent Society of Turkey, a traditional agency in Turkey that provides relief in the event of earthquake and other disasters. That agency completely disappeared because Erdogan did not like it and set up his own agency. So the sad part about it is that after the earthquake, neither the Red Cross nor the new agency Erdogan created was there. The citizens were on their own. Civil society intervention. And I think the takeaway for the citizens would be that Erdogan, the powerful and autocratic father-like political figure is not really the father who takes care of the citizens.

MARTIN: What is driving Erdogan at this point? Has it changed over time? I mean, he’s been in power in one form or another for about two decades now. What is he paying for?

Cagaptay: So what drives President Erdogan at this stage is political survival. He has to win the elections at any cost. He fears that if he loses the election, he and his family members will be sued or even persecuted. Thus, he will try to win the elections by hook or by crook. This means doubling tyranny. This means waging new cultural wars of polarization. This means going after vulnerable groups, women, gay people in Turkey, other minorities. It also means that he will do whatever is necessary to win the election. There are foreign policy components in it. He has been maintaining good relations with the wealthy Gulf states and Russia from which financial flows to Turkey have come, helping the economy. So I would like to say to President Erdogan, what is at stake is Erdogan’s career.

MARTIN: So it seems to me that this election in May is really worth watching.

Cagaptay: It will be historic because Erdoğan is the inventor of the populist model of populist politics that has been copied by leaders elsewhere in Europe and closer to home. And I think it’s historic because that would be the end of this kind of politics in the world. I think Erdogan is the best executor of this kind of politics in the world. And also historical, because either 20 years of Erdogan’s rule in Turkey will end or he will remain in power forever, as long as he is alive.

Martin: This is Soner Cagaptay. He is the director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. This is a Washington-based think tank. His most recent book is a book titled “Sultan in Autumn: Erdogan Confronts Turkey’s Uncontainable Forces.” Thank you very much for joining us.

Cagaptay: It gives me great pleasure. Thank you.

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