In the last 10 days, the Western media tried to prove that they could set aside their differences and unite on a common theme. The theme was Türkiye's forthcoming dual elections for the Presidency and Parliament and how to convince their Western audiences that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his majority party were incapable and that they should get rid of them.
Bloomberg’s Bobby Ghosh had the opening salvo declaring the approaching Turkish election “the world’s most important election in 2023” and Erdoğan the winner of it, for “even those who wish to see him gone cannot be sanguine about who or what will come next.”
We continued with former U.S. President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, who lost a Cabinet post because of his mustache and was fired from the National Security post because he believed he was the vice president. Sources had said that Trump literally kicked him out of the White House. Bolton might still be thinking that he was in an influential position because he penned an article for The Wall Street Journal calling on NATO to exclude Türkiye from the alliance and support its opposition parties, accusing Ankara of behaving as a non-ally.
He thinks that when Türkiye is kicked out of NATO, the Turkish electorate would start hating Erdoğan and they would tally-ho around the hotchpotch of seven dissimilar political parties. Since Bolton the Walrus left the government, he sure cannot see the confidential correspondence, but he should remember that he could see that the anti-Western sentiments are all-time high in Türkiye since he made Trump turn down Ankara’s request for the Patriot aerial defense system.
Following Bolton’s heady and inspiring piece, we have been treated to Michael Rubin’s equally seminal work asking the U.S. government to declare Türkiye’s drones as a “destabilization factor” in the Mediterranean region and sanction the manufacturers as well as Erdoğan. Turkish drones, he wrote for the 19fortyfive website, have been undermining security in Africa’s Great Lakes region to the Caucasus and from Indian Kashmir to Libya.
Rubin is a former Pentagon official. He was pro-Erdoğan for a long time and he has been sliding to an anti-Erdoğan position as the Erdoğan government gradually implemented policies to solidify security and energy independence. I think there is no love lost between us since this “fortune-telling stupid comrade” turned into “the running dog of the Gülenist cult,” referring to the coup-plotting Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ). I think the U.S. Congress is not going to sanction Türkiye and Turkish companies for manufacturing now world-famous and fast-selling unmanned and armed drones.
Later, we had that special supplement from The Economist, on the Turkish elections, claiming under eight headings that Türkiye is about to become a dictatorship after the election unless its Western allies help the opposition to win the elections. The world-famous magazine did not offer one single piece of proof of “the looming dictatorship" under those eight headings.” I tried to express my feelings about that outrageous claims recently, but I failed to ask this simple question to the esteemed editors of the magazine: Why would a politician declare his dictatorship if he has been winning all the elections he ran in?
Who knows, maybe Rubin had a fortune-telling session with The Economist. However, one thing came out of that Economist issue. Turkish social media users loved the image on the cover of the magazine. It shows an Erdoğan silhouette etched on the crescent moon they have been using in their posts.
Finally, The Wall Street Journal, seeing that Bolton’s article might not do the job, published an editorial signed by the editorial board, no less. Editors complain that Erdoğan targets his political rival and a prosecutor is seeking to dissolve the second largest opposition party. First of all, it is not the second largest party in its own right but had the third largest parliamentary group thanks to the electoral alliance of the opposition parties as they are trying to repeat it in the forthcoming elections.
Another point: The party-closing cases are brought to the Constitutional Court by the chief prosecutor, who is elected by the high judges, not by the government.
Türkiye has had many elections: 21 presidential elections, 19 of which were in Parliament, two with the popular votes and 19 parliamentary multiparty polls since 1946. Had Ghosh not declared the May 14 polls “the world’s most important elections,” perhaps this one would be one in the series where Erdoğan kept winning.
Elections are important milestones in nations’ histories, but so are bilateral talks. When we were busy with Boltons and Rubins, Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu was in Washington D.C. trying to go the extra mile toward better friendship with the U.S. and permanent peace in Syria. Türkiye wants to purchase U.S.-made F-16s whereas we did not hear any concrete assurance from U.S. President Joe Biden's administration. However, the legendary New York smile of U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken seems to have been won this time.
I cannot be a good judge of Blinken’s smile anyway because as soon as I see that smile, the leering image of then-candidate Biden in a New York Times interview with its editorial board pops up in my mind when he says:
“(Erdoğan) has to pay a price. He has to pay a price for whether or not we’re going to continue to sell certain weapons to him...”
Probably, Biden will continue selling “certain weapons” to Türkiye because he must have seen the futility of blocking Türkiye’s purchase of those fighters when it is about to manufacture its own fighter jets, manned or unmanned, soon. Maybe, allowing Türkiye to purchase them now would make the U.S. appear friendlier right before Gosh’s “world’s most important elections.”
Blinken’s and his under-secretary Victoria Nuland’s tongue-in-cheek small talks and Twitter posts are not going to change the fact that cooperation and solidarity among allies will be remembered after the election, regardless of who won.
Yes, an ordinary election that yet again Erdoğan might win without any fanfare has turned into the most crucial election in the nation’s history. In a country where two political parties of the same political orientation cannot keep a coalition government surviving for more than a year in power, now seven parties, openly and secretly joined forces to topple the Erdoğan administration. Why? Because Biden promised so in his infamous NYT interview:
“So I’m very concerned about ... (how to make Erdoğan pay the price). I’m very concerned about it. But I’m still of the view that if we were to engage more directly like I was doing with them, we can support those elements of the Turkish leadership that still exist and get more from them and embolden them to be able to take on and defeat Erdogan. Not by a coup, not by a coup, but by the electoral process.”
Perhaps the U.S. still sticks to that point; it is still trying to make Erdoğan “pay the price.”
But the U.S. should know that we are not going to miss these tumultuous days, but an alliance torpedoed will always be remembered.
