Such a sudden relatively little incident over night can change so much in the global politics.
How does the Turkish government’s reaction to the failed putsch affects the future of
Turkey?
What does it mean for the regional geopolitics and the rest of the world?
If you don’t know or speculate about answers to these questions here are my top 6 most
crucial outcomes of the failed coup in Turkey.
Number 1: Rise of dictatorship Whoever was behind the coup, the truth is
Erdogan is using it to justify cleansing of his opponents, and eliminating all possible
opposition.
That would give Erdogan an iron grip over Turkey, allowing him to push for undemocratic
policies even more aggressively.
Turkey might turn into another great dictatorship in the Middle East alongside Saudi Arabia,
Iran and others.
That effects Turkey’s domestic as well as foreign policy.
Erdogan has a past of violating human rights, like during the protests at Taksim Square
three years ago.
Many of his critics are reluctant to speak out of fear of being flagged as conspirators.
People criticizing him in the past have already been jailed.
Erdogan even requested a German mock film of him to be shut down.
He even went on to build his $615 million palace where he settled during his presidency.
Many likened this move to an attempt to create a sultanate.
The EU membership will be put on hold and that might be a leverage to put Erdogan’s
power in check.
Erdogan, however, doesn’t keep good relations with those who criticize him and tends to
go even so far as to lock people for facebook posts.
After the coup, the situation might escalate even further and may lead the Turkish governments
to even more oppression of the opposition.
Number 2: End of secularism in the Middle East
Since 1924 Turkey has instated secular constitution and has remained so until today as one of
the few beacons of hope for religious freedom.
Though very imperfect, secularism in Turkey has been a rare example, since other big secular
states have been ruined mostly thanks to the US interventions.
It has turned Iran from a secular republic into a theocratic dictatorship, toppling of
Saddam Hussein put back religious leadership and created space for the emergence of ISIS,
and Syria is now in a complete destruction of 5 years of civil war.
Saudi Arabia being a very close US ally, is a salafist monarchy, which is a jihadi branch
of Islam, the same ideology as the one of ISIS, who they are secretly supporting in
some instances.
Building a powerful position of a strongman was Erdogan’s lifelong career goal.
Since his AKP party took power in 2002 Erdogan has been building a strong nationalist sentiment
built on religiousness and thus created tight emotional bond between him as a leader and
his supporters.
The endurance of secularism has been put to question in the past because of Erdogan’s
policies.
Turkey is currently amending a new constitution that could eliminate principles of secularism.
Erdogan usually deals with protesters harshly, with violent police actions, arresting his
critics and preventing them from talking to the press.
The line between a Muslim and Turk has been blurred through his charismatic appeals.
Only something radical, like opposition suddenly taking power, would prevent this from happening.
But because of the Erdogan’s harsh crackdown after the failed coup, this seems very unlikely.
Number 3: Balance of power shift After Erdogan contains his opposition, there
will be fewer constraints for him to pursue foreign interventions in the Middle East.
The country is currently a NATO member and holds up to 90 nuclear bombs from the US.
Looking at the geopolitical map of the Middle East, this enormously shifts the balance of
power in favor of the Sunni Muslim states.
Together with Saudi Arabia, more tensions will arise against mostly Shia states, like
Iran, which don’t have comparable backing of powerful military blocks, like both Turkey
and Saudi Arabia enjoy from the US.
This situation might draw more military involvement from the US and EU to manage their situation
in their benefit.
Iran will feel a whole lot more insecure when there’s another strongman in the field that
can’t be put in check.
Since Iraq and Syria are largely diminished, Iran, which is struggling for hegemony in
the region, just like Sunni Saudi Arabia and Turkey, will be left alone in the possible
conflict.
We may observe an increase in the arms race and nuclear and military technology on all
fronts.
We could even see a coalition of Saudi Arabia and Turkey if they both find the situation
to push against Iran together beneficial.
Although this would be very risky and therefore, unlikely to happen.
But this is more of a hypothesis since this is trying to get into the heads of the countries’
leaders.
But deterrence is always inside the mind of an opponent, so it’s quite possible that
this is the way they will see things if Turkey becomes another Islamist dictatorship aiming
for hegemony.
Number 4: Fate of the Kurdish unknown The population of Turkey is much more diverse
than it seems.
The country has a dark history dealing with ethnic and religious minorities.
While more than 20% of people were non-muslim in 1914, today that number is only 1%.
But that’s not the end of the story.
While you’ll see in the statistics that 98% of Turkish population are Muslims, around
18% of that number are Alevis.
A branch of Islam that distances itself from the Sunni majority.
Despite being large in numbers, they don’t enjoy any recognition or support from the
Turkish government, like the Sunnis do.
What’s actually happening is that Erdogan is trying to use religion and Turkish language,
to force it upon minorities in their education and by building Sunni mosques, to create an
illusion of one Turkish nation.
The same is happening to the Kurds in Turkey, who constitute between 15 to 20% of the country’s
population.
In this case Erdogan is ignoring their language and cultural differences, and forces them
to accept Turkish identity under an equation – Muslim = Turk.
Kurds have been banned to speak their language in public or private, and they have experienced
many targeted massacres.
Kurdish people have been subjected to forced displacements, kidnapping, arbitrary murders,
executions of civilians and other violations of human rights.
From this position they have turned to uprisings in the past, all of them ended up brutally
suppressed.
Even today Turkey sends its airstrike to Kurdish populated villages rather than ISIS strongholds.
What happens to the Kurds is hard to predict, but their radicalization could be expected,
since their numbers amount to up to 30 million people spread across neighboring countries
around Mesopotamia.
Kurds are in a stalemate while striving for independence, because they would to have to
fight four countries at once, so without foreign intervention, their victory is unlikely just
as much as their silent submission.
Number 5: ISIS will benefit from its enemies turning against one another
Erdogan is being criticized for dividing Turkey even more because of his policies, which could
result in conflicts within Turkey that would divert forces from fighting jihadists to combating
domestic dissent.
After the coup an anti-American sentiment began to resonate in the government as well
as among the people, who suspect the US from plotting the coup.
This could have an effect on more radicalization of some factions, and lost of trust in the
Untied States, but it can also help Erdogan gain more popularity for his authoritarian
rule.
Empirically authoritarian regimes are more likely to go to war with one another than
democracies are.
Today we observe how the Middle East turns into a balance of power of three major dictatorships
each trying to claim hegemony in the region.
We witness how regional conflicts turn into global proxy wars with heavy involvement from
the United States and Russia.
But these Muslim countries are fighting proxies on their own.
Iran is supporting Shia militias and props Assad’s regime, while Turkey fights Kurds
in Syria, and Saudi Arabia supports radical jihadi fighters along with al-Nusra and ISIS.
As this conflict turns into quagmire, the power vacuum created in the deserts in the
middle of Iraq and Syria after toppling Saddam Hussein forced exiled Iraqi soldiers of Saddam’s
regime to join jihadists forces, that were the only ones willing to pay them.
ISIS has enemies everywhere and if there were joined forces against them, they would be
defeated sooner.
But everybody seems to be more interested in supporting their proxy interests than fighting
ISIS.
Turks are bombing Kurds who are fighting ISIS as well as for their rights to self-rule,
Pentagon trained militias are fighting CIA trained militias, Iran supports Shi’ite
militias and Assad’s regime who are also fighting moderate Sunnis, Russia was bombing
everybody fighting Assad and the United States ended up actually arming radical jihadists,
who are probably way worse than the Assad’s regime US wants to topple.
With Turkey turning into