Comment: Erdogan is an increasingly unreliable ally, but that is better than having him as an enemy

President Erdogan has used the coup to round up his enemies
AP
Robert Fox18 July 2016

Whoever was behind Friday night’s coup in Turkey, President Erdogan has lost no time in using it as the cue to round up enemies.

The main targets are elements of the army and air force commands, and the judiciary.

The military are old foes, and so, too, are lawyers and journalists who want a secular democracy, which they say is the true legacy of the founder of the modern state, Kemal Ataturk.

The coup was a half-hearted mess and the president and his prime minister never seemed in danger.

As the orchestrated demonstrations continue, Erdogan’s motives, and what he intends to do, must be examined.

Addressing the youths on the streets on Sunday, Erdogan said mutinous troops “will pay a heavy price for this. This uprising is a gift from God to us because this will be a reason to cleanse the army.”

Adherents of the Hizmet movement, led by cleric Fethullah Gülen, his one-time ally and friend in exile in the US, are also in Erdogan’s sights.

Hizmet wants a functioning pluralist democracy within an Islamic Turkey and has criticised the corruption and cronyism of Erdogan and the AK Party.

The fear is that Erdogan will push for a constitutional change so that Turkey becomes a presidential Islamic republic, closer to aspirations of the old Ottoman Empire than Ataturk’s republic.

He has been softening his approach to Putin’s Russia and Hamas in Palestine and the fear is that he will become “an unreliable ally”, in the words of Jean-Marc Ayrault, France’s foreign minister, over Islamic State and refugees.

Erdogan has said he needs no lectures from Nato allies and partners. Awkward and ambiguous friend he may be, but he would be an even more dangerous enemy.

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