WASHINGTON DC – Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has “transformed” Turkey economically and must maintain the country’s openness in order to turn it into one of the world’s advanced economies, according to Soner Cagaptay, speaking in Washington at his book launch.
The Beyer Family Fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at The Washington Institute, in his new The Rise of Turkey: The Twenty First Century’s First Muslim Power, outlined the inspiring potential and grave challenges inherent in the changes taking place in Turkey.
Erdogan “transformed Turkey’s economic structure and increased the living standards of inhabitants in a way not seen before,” Cagaptay told an audience that included analysts, Turkey experts and Iraqi ambassador Lukman Faily. “In turn, Turkey has effectively become a majority middle-class society of 55 percent in the past decade and of 85 percent by the end of this decade,” he said.
Addressing the title of his talk, “Turkey’s Transformation, Prospects and Limits,” the author said he was optimistic about the country’s future.
“The most important change to me is the fact that Turkey is on the cusp of becoming the first majority Muslim society that is also universally literate, as 95 percent of Turks are literate and by the end of the decade for the first time in history everyone in this majority Muslim society can read and write.”
From the Kurdish issue to foreign policy, Cagaptay’s book argues that Turkey must successfully balance its Muslim identity with its Western overlay in order to become a regional and global power. His optimistic view of the current and future Turkey was before an audience of several Turkish attendees, some of them very critical of Erdogan’s policies.
Cagaptay said Turkey had some parallels to Argentina, in the sense that Argentines think of themselves as Europeans misplaced in Latin America.
He pointed to Bashar Assad’s Syria as an example of Turkey’s foreign policy paradox, since Ankara’s Syria policy was basically supporting the uprising and democracy movement, which soon turned into an armed struggle.
“Turkey faces both al-Qaida enclaves, an Assad-controlled rump state also engaged in a proxy war with both Iran and Syria,” Cagaptay said. “In Iraq, there is a political battle, while Turkey is increasingly becoming close to the Kurds in the north, which angers the government in Baghdad. This puts Turkey in confrontation with both Iran and Iraq.”
The author said that in its opening to neighbors, Turkey has built strong relations with the autonomous Kurdistan Region.
“Another reason is energy, since Turkey is getting three-quarters of its energy needs from Russia and Iran. Therefore, Turkey needs and wants to diversify,” according to Cagaptay. “Part of that diversification is toward Iraq getting Kurdish gas and oil.” He said once the Turks start buying gas from Israel, Turkey will be “balancing its Islamic identity with Western overlay.”
Despite the huge corruption scandal that threatens to bring down Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), Cagaptay projected that AKP may still win local and parliamentary elections, despite increasing resistance from liberal voices and desperate elites opposed to the AKP. He said this is because Turkey is too large economically, and too politically and demographically diverse to be controlled by one group in its entirety.
“It’s in the interest of Erdogan to maintain Turkey as an open society, because he has made Turkey a middle income society and could turn to an advanced economy from manufacturing cars to becoming a hub for Google, and that will be achieved if Turkey remains open,” Cagaptay said.
Former US Ambassador Ross Wilson, director of the Atlantic Council's Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center, said Turkey is an “important country: dynamic, turbulent, confusing, confounding, frustrating, irritating, and tough to figure out.” He said that the Turks have a confidence about their country now which did not exist 10 or 15 years ago.
Wilson said that, “The sense of crisis and instability today in Turkey, and concern about rising authoritarian system, will detract from the Turkish-US relationship, and Turkey playing a larger role in the region.”
Former US ambassador James F. Jeffrey, the Institute's Philip Solondz Distinguished Visiting Fellow, made a few remarks at the event as part of the panel.
“No one has contributed more to the Turkish rise than AKP and Erdogan. Nonetheless, this is building on a vast infrastructure of past Turkish involvement in its own development and with support of the outside world,” he said, noting an IMF loan in 2001, EU customs union, decades-long integration efforts with the EU, the Turgut Ozal era and Turkey’s relations with the United States and NATO.
