ISTANBUL – The unpredictable roller coaster that Turkish politics has become has been fully exposed over the past week after 104 retired Admiral President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was challenged in an open letter in public – and ten of them ended up in jail, resulting in accused of plotting a coup.
It was no coincidence that the episode took place, as Mr. Erdogan finds himself in one of the most intense political sections of his career, as the deteriorating pandemic and economy have slipped the president in opinion polls, even as he has amassed more powers.
To faithfully inspire the party, Mr. Erdogan returned to announce one of his favorite big ideas: to carve a canal through Istanbul, from the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea to open a new shipping lane parallel to the narrow Bosphorus.
For the time being, the use of natural waterways is regulated by the Montreux Convention, an international treaty forged between the two world wars in 1936, in an attempt to eliminate volatile tensions over one of the world’s most important marine choking points.
In addition to his support for the canal building project, Mr. Erdogan indicated that he could renounce the treaty. A spokesman for the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, told a television presenter last month that the president had the power to do so if he wished.
The alarm did not last long.
Under the treaty, Turkey agreed to allow free passage of civilian and merchant vessels, but a strict control of warships, especially of outside forces, which kept the peace in the region. While analysts believe that the withdrawal of the agreement is unlikely and dangerous for Turkey, the mere proposal threatens to send ripples of anxiety throughout the region and beyond.
Among the first to protest was Turkey’s own retired admiral, who put his name on an open nationalist website last weekend and warned that the Montreux Convention was an important founding document for security and sovereignty. of Turkey and that it should not serve for debate.
On Monday, Mr. Erdogan reaffirmed Turkey’s commitment to the treaty, but denounced the admirals. On Wednesday, he came out roaring and belligerent with a speech to the legislators of the AKP and blaming the largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, for the entire episode.
The issue, writes political columnist Murat Yetkin on his blog, the Yetkin Report, “shifts the current agenda of the pandemic and the economy to fields that the AKP likes.”
The toll of the pandemic is now worse than ever in Turkey, with more than 50,000 new cases being recorded daily. An increasing sharp economic predicament is also occurring, as the government’s pandemic support is expected to end and inflation and unemployment will remain alarmingly high.
Amid the problems, the party of mr. Erdogan dropped to below 30 percent in a recent poll, and his political ally, the Nationalist Movement Party, dropped to as low as 6 percent, making his re-election as president 2023 increasingly difficult.
Even his own supporters realize that there is a bruise ahead. “We have entered the two-year long electoral process leading up to the 2023 election,” Burhanettin Duran, the director of SETA, a pro-government research organization, wrote in a column in the Daily Sabah newspaper last week. .
“Due to the recent statement, there is a possibility that the process will be painful,” he said, referring to the admiral’s letter. He launched a joint domestic and international campaign against the government of Mr. Erdogan predicts.
Mr. Erdogan promised that his one-million-dollar channel plan would create a boom in construction and real estate and earn revenue from an increase in shipping.
Opposition parties have denounced the project as a corrupt monetary scheme, warning that the canal would be financially unsustainable and destroy Istanbul with uncontrolled urban expansion.
Investigative journalists have exposed real estate transactions in which Middle East prospectors have bought up a large part of the land where the canal will be built.
Yet Mr. Erdogan said at a regional party congress in Istanbul in February that the project would continue, despite opposition.
‘They do not like it, do they? They’re trying to prevent it, are they not? He said in his keynote address. “Despite that, we will build the Istanbul canal. ‘
The admirals are by no means the only opponents of the channel. Others include the popular mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, along with environmentalists, ecologists and city planners.
But the admirals have particular anger from Mr. Erdogan and his fellow Islamists raised in their letter criticism of a current serving admiral captured on video to attend prayers with a religious sect.
The retired admirals have pointed out that they are committed to the secular ideals of the founding father of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The government machinery is jumping fast.
Ten of the signatories were detained on Monday, and another four were ordered to report to the police, but were not sent to jail due to the advanced years. Mr. Erdogan has accused them of plotting a coup, a toxic allegation after four years of thousands of arrests and purges since the last failed coup. Some see it as a warning to serving officers who have similar thoughts.
Mr. Erdogan “got his return,” Steven A. Cook, a senior fellow for Middle East and African studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York, wrote in an analysis.
The admiral’s letter did not come out of the blue. A year earlier, 126 retired Turkish diplomats had drafted an open letter warning against withdrawing from the convention. The debate reveals the deep divisions between secularists and Islamists that have torn Turkey apart since Mr. Erdogan’s reign in 2002.
Trapped in their own aversion to the secular republic that replaced the Ottoman Empire, the Islamists distrust the Montreux Convention, said Asli Aydintasbas, a senior fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations. It was a misreading of history, she added, but Mr. Erdogan believes the rally ‘needs to be’ modernized to meet Turkey’s new prestigious role as regional weight ‘.
Secularists, as well as most Turkish diplomats and foreign policy experts, see the Montreux Convention as a victory for Turkey and are fundamental to Turkish independence and stability in the region.
Russia will lose the most through a change in the treaty, said Serhat Guvenc, a professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, although any change or breach of the convention seems inconceivable as it is consensus of the would require multiple signatories. .
“Russia would be annoyed and provoked,” he said. The United States and China would get, as none of them are currently allowed to move large warships or aircraft carriers to the Black Sea.
Most analysts have said that Mr. Erdogan and his advisers know the impossibility of amending the Montreux Convention, but that the veteran politician is using the issue to lift a storm.
“This is the government’s way of lobbying for the channel,” she said. Aydintasbas said. “Erdogan is determined to build a canal parallel to the Bosphorus, and one of the government’s arguments would probably be that Turkey would allow full sovereignty over Turkey – as opposed to Montreux’s free passage.”
The interpretation is inaccurate and dangerous, she said. ‘Inaccurate, because as long as Montreux is there, no vessel is obliged to use the new canal. Dangerous because it could aggravate the Russians and the international community. ”