Why is Erdogan riding the Islamist wave?
Does Erdogan, the president of Türkiye, want to become a caliph? The analysis of Francesco Galietti, strategic scenario expert and founder of Policy Sonar
The ferocity of Hamas tickles Erdogan, who dreams of restoring the Caliphate.
The horror in Gaza had a further effect: the Turkish leader Erdogan began to ride the Islamist wave and attack Israel. He doesn't even think about putting it into reverse. It is not certain that this drastic tightening was included in his plans from the beginning. It is likely instead that, close to the centenary of the Turkish republic, Erdogan had refocused his strategic agenda, focusing in particular on the Caucasus and the Black Sea. Hamas's initiative changed his calculations. Here because.
For some time, Erdogan had recovered the Panturanic doctrine in its most recent formulation by Ahmet Davutoğlu, eminence grise of Turkish strategic thought. The most visible example of Erdogan's pivot to Asia is obviously the support offered to the Azeris in the recent invasion of Nagorno-Karabakh. Lately, Erdogan had an easy time nibbling away strategic spaces from the Russians in the Black Sea, taking advantage of the Russian-Ukrainian war and Turkey's geographical position.
In any case, Erdogan's metaphorical desk was already cluttered with maps and bills. Turkey, in fact, is an exuberant power on a strategic level, but rather fragile in terms of accounts and economic stability.
WHAT TURKEY IS DOING
Precisely for this reason, the solution devised by the Turkish leaders was to manage one problem at a time, i.e. avoiding keeping too many fronts open at the same time. It is no coincidence that Erdogan had for years tried to smooth out the rough edges with the Gulf monarchies, and also to normalize relations with Israel, in a process of gradual rapprochement that also included agreements on the gas fields of the Eastern Mediterranean. Having been left out of the agreements on the Indo-Arab-Mediterranean strategic IMEC corridor celebrated at the G20 summit in New Delhi, Erdogan did not fail to loudly express his disappointment.
ERDOGAN INFLAMS THE ISLAMIST CROWD
Faced with the worsening of events in Gaza, Erdogan immediately set aside the 'selective détente' approach. The videos of Erdogan haranguing huge crowds attacking Israel rather give us the image of a leader trapped in his theatrical mask. Erdogan inflames the Islamist crowd because he knows it and, most likely, because he fears it. In fact, it owes its rise to power, as well as its consolidation at home and abroad, to nationalism steeped in Islamism and the constant search for closeness with different and powerful Islamist acronyms – from the Sufis to the Barelvis up to the Deobandis. Erdogan wants to be the protector of Islam in the world, in a strange mix between geopolitics – pan-Turanism which embraces the space from Bosnia to Xinjiang – and religious suggestion – the restoration of the Caliphate – which adds to the status of a sui generis and armed NATO member to the teeth.
Obviously, if Erdogan reopens the valve of Islamism, this will cause numerous and serious problems. The USA, for example, has recently signaled the existence of insurmountable 'red lines' through the presence of its troops in Armenia. For Washington it is not in itself a bad thing that Turkey is pushing towards the East, because pan-Turanism is in principle in conflict with the Chinese Silk Roads, but it does not want the Armenians already dumped by Moscow to pay the price. Furthermore, in the Levant, it is the Kurds who can count on American support. Now Washington cannot accept Ankara thundering against Israel, much less adding fuel to the fire of political Islam in a coordinated effort with its Siamese twin, Qatar. It is no coincidence that in recent days Meshal bin Hamad Al Thani, the Qatari ambassador to the USA, signed an article in the Wall Street Journal to reject all charges and present Doha as an honest broker , an irreproachable mediator, in complex Middle Eastern affairs. Qatar's position, mind you, is also of strong interest for Italy, which has a large LNG supplier in Doha.
THE TURKISH PRESIDENT WANTS TO BECOME CALIPH
Erdogan not only worries the USA and the rest of the West, Germany in the lead with its one million three hundred thousand Turkish residents, but also Russia and India. Take Dagestan, where in an airport an angry crowd has recently staged a gruesome hunt for the Jew. Politically, Dagestan is Russian territory. Culturally, however, the population suffers from a clear Turkish hegemony, which extends to large slices of the Northern Caucasus. If Erdogan fans the flames, in the eyes of the world Putin is no longer master of his own house. Even the Indian Prime Minister Modi, a few months after the elections and always dealing with the enormous Indian Muslim minority, is eyeing with concern the Turkish President who wants to become Caliph.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/erdogan-islamismo/ on Sat, 11 Nov 2023 06:38:20 +0000.