Erdogan’s Roadmap Going Forward

Recep Tayyip Erdogan—Turkey’s longtime leader as prime minister (2003-2014) and subsequently as president (2014-)—infamously once declared that “democracy is like a train; you get off once you have reached your [real] destination.” In other words, one can use democratic means to achieve non-democratic, authoritarian goals. He resoundingly demonstrated this tactic again by surprisingly winning yet another (third) term as president in May 2023 and now seems determined to achieve yet another. How is his roadmap going forward progressing? 

The Turkey-PKK peace process that supposedly began in earnest earlier this year when the PKK claimed it had disbanded and begun to disarm, supposedly is a major step along Erdogan’s roadmap going forward. How is it doing? Most observers took a cautiously optimistic position. However, in an earlier op-ed and then in a recently published article in Middle East Policy, this author took a very negative viewpoint and asked, “What peace process”? He then went on to argue that the peace process seems more like a PKK surrender than some type of quid pro quo deal that provides for the PKK disarming and disbanding in return for Turkish guarantees of Kurdish political, social, and cultural rights. Where are there any provisions in this so-called peace process for the PKK fighters, supporters, and leaders including Ocalan himself to be accepted in a suddenly democratized Turkey? Indeed, all this has already been tried and failed several times before as far back as the 1990s and most prominently during the so-called Kurdish Opening from 2009-2015. 

Thus, the problem with the current peace process is that the two sides basically frame the issue in starkly different terms. The Turkish government sees the issue as one of terrorism, while the PKK views it as a much broader one of Kurdish rights. For the government, the solution is one of disarmament and the end of PKK terrorism within the existing ultra-nationalist Turkish constitution which grants no rights for the Kurds as Kurds. All the government basically offers is Kurdish assimilation into the larger Turkish society and constitutional order. However, for the PKK and its many (but, of course, not all) ethnic Kurdish supporters, the demand is for a constitutionally guaranteed place for Turkey’s Kurds as Kurds. 

Nevertheless, to implement the peace process, Erdogan did establish a “National Solidarity, Brotherhood and Democracy Parliamentary Commission,” which is now nearing completion and will soon issue its recommendations. The Commission’s main recommendation is expected to be a PKK-specific law to carry out the return and reintegration of PKK militants as part of the ongoing peace process. However, Erdogan’s government is being very careful to dominate the leadership role in the process and does not want to seem to be giving in to PKK demands or even suggestions. Thus, the law will seek to avoid the language of a general amnesty. If challenged for more, the government will explain that its cautious approach is intended to facilitate consensus among the several different political parties involved. Thus, the proposed law is expected to apply different procedures to different groups of returnees, with some likely facing investigations and trials, while others might be granted an easier path to reintegration. Despite PKK and DEM demands for Ocalan’s release and participation in the whole process, no mention is even being make of the PKK reber (leader). 

The Parliamentary Commission’s progress is being closely monitored by various international bodies and human rights organizations such as Human Rights Watch. These interested groups are recommending the reform or repeal of laws used to prosecute non-violent Kurdish activists. All this, at the best, is a far cry from PKK demands for Ocalan’s release and a new Turkish constitution that would guarantee ethnic Kurdish rights within continuing Turkish territorial integrity. 

​On the surface, Ahmed al-Sharaa’s meeting on November 10 with U.S. president Donald J. Trump in the White House, seems a positive step forward in Erdogan’s roadmap going forward. After all, al-Sharaa owes much to his rise to the Syrian presidency to Turkish support, past and continuing. However, al-Sharaa is not an Erdogan puppet. His control over Syria, now supplemented with U.S. backing, may eventually lead to a Syria able to resist Erdogan’s neo-Ottomanist pressures and demands. If so, this likely would make Erdogan rethink or even regret what he had originally wished for. 

​What the new Syrian-Trump demarche means for al-Sharaa’s demands for the Syrian Kurds and their SDF militia—still partially and thus contradictorily supported by the United States despite Trump’s pressures for its integration into the new al-Sharaa regime—is anybody’s guess. What is probably certain is that having drunk from the heavy wine of previouslyimpossible Kurdish autonomy, the Syrian Kurds are not going to go quietly into the night of reintegration into a Syrian state that in the past has horribly mistreated them to the point of committing genocide. In the past, Trump has cast aspersion on both sides in this drama by declaring that Syria was nothing but “death and sand,” while the Kurds were undeserving of U.S. support because they had not supported the United States on D-Day in 1944. These Trumpian takes add comical confusion to what is a serious roadblock on Erdogan’s roadmap going forward.

​More successful perhaps for Erdogan’s roadmap are his recent meetings with Trump at the White House in September of this year followed by visits to Ankara in late October from the leaders of the United Kingdom and Germany. These mini-summits marked an important step in improving relations between Erdogan and these important Western leaders after a considerable period of tension between them. Erdogan’s meeting with Trump focused on Turkey’s earlier purchase of Russian S-400 defensive missile systems, which led to Turkey’s exclusion from the U.S. F-35 jet program, Erdogan correctly views as necessary to keep Turkey current in air power. Other topics included trade and regional conflicts such as Gaza and Ukraine. Although none of these problems was solved, the visit renewed the bromance between the two driven by their personal chemistry and apparent mutual tough-guy admiration. 

Starmer’s visit to Erdogan was to finalize a major deal for Turkey to purchase 20 Eurofighter Typhoon jets from the UK. Other topics included deepening bilateral relations, defense cooperation, trade, migration and regional security issues. Two days later on October 29, the new German chancellor Friedrich Merz arrived to discuss somewhat more acrimoniously, defense cooperation, migration, Ukraine, and Gaza. The main area of disagreement between Erdogan and Merz was the Gaza conflict,with Erdogan strongly criticizing Israel’s actions as “genocide” and Merz defending Israel’s right to self-defense, although he acknowledged some criticism of its policies. A secondary point of contention was the rule of law in Turkey, as Merz raised concerns about the independence of the judiciary and cited the jailing of İstanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu as an example of a case not meeting European standards. 

​The November 11 release of Ahmet Ozer—the opposition CHP mayor of Istanbul’s Esenyurt district incarcerated for more than a year on trumped up charges of organized crime and terrorism charges—stood in marked contrast to the continuing imprisonment of overall Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and 401 other detainees. Imamoglu—viewed by many as the CHP presidential candidate against Trump in the next presidential election most observers see as already on the horizon—was alsoarrested in March of this year on trumped up corruption charges. Ludicrously, the state now sought a prison sentence of up to 2,430 years for the Istanbul mayor! Based on this grossly silly number, Erdogan obviously views Imamoglu as the main domestic roadblock on his roadmap going forward. 

According to a recent opposition CHP report, 16 mayors from their party remain in prison, while government-appointed trustees have taken over 13 municipalities. Although CHP leader Ozgur Ozel has denounced these arrests as efforts to weaken local democracy by dismantling opposition control won in local elections in 2024 and earlier, Erdogan undoubtedly saw them as yet another step along his roadmap going forward to autocracy.However, if he is ultimately to survive, Erdogan also would be wise to devise a way to fix the glooming roadblock of domestic Turkish inflation still running at over 30 percent. 

Michael M. Gunter is a professor of political science at Tennessee Tech University and the recent author of Erdogan’s Path to Authoritarianism: The Continuing Journey (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2024).