Erdogan came to power, brutalised Turkish opposition and behaved badly abroad. Now he wants to portray himself "beacon of democracy" with regard to Myanmar protests

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Back in 2003, Turkey welcomed a new Prime Minister, the former mayor of Istanbul. His name was Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Just 49 years old at the time, he belonged to his newfound AKP (Justice and Development  Party, Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi). He governed a relatively secular, modern, industrialised Turkey, and by the end of 2000s, Turkey appeared to be on the right track, as usual. And Erdogan didn't have any intentions to stay long in power since there was "nothing to do".

Then, the Arab Spring broke out. It changed the political landscape across the Middle East. In response, Erdogan started to unveil his inner self, slowly weakening opposition groups and placing figures loyal to the party and his family members in charge of Turkey. But this didn't sit well with most of Turkish population, who were enraged by Erdogan's political reforms that trying to undermine the secular and already modern Turkey. Erdogan responded by force, dispersing violently protesters across Turkey.

In 2016, however, a major event erupted. The anti-AKP sectors of the military launched a coup trying to remove Erdogan as they accused him of sidelining democracy and his infamous records of corruption. The coup was intercepted as Erdogan also successfully gathered the pro-AKP remnants in the Turkish Armed Forces. Following the coup, Erdogan became harsher to the opposition, repressing other political parties and shutting down independent newspapers across the country, eroding freedom of speech in Turkey. He also nationalised some of the private banks, firms and institutions since he feared these organisations could be backing anti-AKP parties. As for 2021, Erdogan has remained in power despite pressures and is now the President of Turkey. This time, the Presidency in Turkey is no longer honorific like 2003, but it assumes absolute power - thanked for Erdogan.

And then, I was ablaze to see Burmese democratic activist, Thinzar Shunlei Yi, praising the Turkish people for siding with President Erdogan against the coup, as it was reported in Anadolu Agency ("Turkey's stance inspires people of Myanmar"). Well, probably I think she had her reasons to respect that, but Thinzar Shunlei Yi, just like the majority of Burmese "daylight activists", have unfortunately ignored the fact that Erdogan dispersing the coup only to create a totalitarian state for himself. I think it is important to highlight the hypocrisy of Erdogan to connect with Myanmar's crisis.

Shameless and manipulative

Well, I think one of the most notable fact to understand the Turkish regime under Recep Tayyip Erdogan is its behaviour. If I think about early days of Erdogan's career as Prime Minister, nothing worth saying though because the 2000s was probably the more peaceful era of Turkish contemporary history. From 2010s, Erdogan is like someone else, an ambiguous megalomaniac and thirst of everything.

When the Syrian crisis broke out in 2011, Turkey was one of the first nations to support the opposition and cut tie with Bashar al-Assad. Yet Turkish goal in Syria is not about completely removing the Syrian dictator - it was rather looking on the Kurds. The Kurds of Syria, just like in Iraq, Iran and Turkey by majority, suffered persecution and oppression for decades. In 2004, when the Syrian Arabs chanting slogan about Saddam Hussein at a stadium in Qamishli, the Kurds responded by glorifying George W. Bush, the American President at the time, creating racial unrest. The Syrian police, largely belong to the Arab ethnicity, harassed and beat Kurdish protesters.

With Syria embroiled in a civil war, the Kurds saw the opportunity to reclaim control from the Arab-based leadership, and created a safe zone in Northeast called "Rojava". Ankara was outraged and demanded to remove the Rojava, but was prevented by then-President of the U.S., Barack Obama. Thanked for Obama's actions, the Kurds could ramp up its force and, when ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) rose to become a global menace, the Kurds were the most effective group in the fight against these fanatic jihadists. The uncomfortable reaction by Erdogan explicitly showed that Erdogan wanted to reduce the Kurds to rubble.

The Rojava region in yellow.

When Donald Trump became President of the United States, Trump's unpredictable policies greatly weakened the U.S.' gain in Syria, as Trump prioritised money and interests above. Trump's ignorance about the Kurds reached a climax when he accused the Kurds of not helping the U.S. during the World War II, a bizarre claim that nobody accepted except for Erdogan himself, and abandoned the Kurds mostly with the exception of some handful American troops guarding Rojava's oil rigs. Blessed by Trump, Erdogan launched several punitive military campaigns into northern Syria and committed ethnic cleansing against Kurds in the region, forcing the Kurds to look for Russia instead. It was also thought that Erdogan sought to help ISIS in order to wreck the Kurds since the Turkish military is too strong for ISIS.

Likewise, Erdogan also tried hard to influence the Balkans to bring it into its hand. Using the NATO's position mask, the AKP worked in the shadow with its aims to carry out the Islamist, Turkish propaganda into the population of Bosnia, Albania and Kosovo - the three majority Muslim countries within European soil. Among the trio, Bosnia is the most manipulated one, due to the fact that the country is the home to the Bosniaks, a South Slavic Muslim people with strong Turkish affinity. Bosniak cleric Mustafa Ceric, in one of his speech back in 2011, stated that "Turkey is our mother, so it was, so it will remain". A large portion of Bosniaks are indeed pro-Turkish, they resent American influence, and dislike the presence of Croatia and Serbia, two Christian Slavic nations that once fought the brutal Bosnian War. Turkish schools are omnipresent in Bosnia nowadays, a testament to successful Turkish cultural revival in the country that alarmed the powerful Serb and Croat minorities. This is a bit different in Albania and Kosovo, where the population here, of majority Albanian ethnicity, are even more cautious, if not say anti-Turkish. Albanians are resentful of Turkish involvement as they saw Ankara doesn't appear to be helping Albanians, but to Turkify the Albanian population. Turkish institutions in both nations are accused of teaching Albanians radical Turkish nationalism, erasing Albanian cultural awareness and disrespecting Albanian historical figures, especially Gjergji Skanderbeg, an Albanian hero of the Albanian-Ottoman War.

Statue of Skanderbeg, Albania's national hero. Turkish education institutions in Albania are thought to export anti-Skanderbeg views.

This has led to a surge of anti-Turkish sentiment among Albanians in recent years.

Turkey also shows little respect for other countries even when some nations have nothing to do with Turkey. When Australian national Brendon Tarrant gunned down 51 Muslims in a mosque in the New Zealand city of Christchurch, Erdogan made vulgar insults against entire Australia, prompting Prime Minister Scott Morrison to condemn Erdogan's hate speeches. He also provoked tensions with India by accusing India of the genocide in Kashmir, siding openly with Pakistan, as well as making propaganda about India's anti-Muslim attitudes, but mentioned nothing on India's large Muslim population, over 15% in total and India's history of having Muslim Presidents in charge of the country. Erdogan was even openly hostile to many countries outside Australia and India, like Russia and NATO nations, best seen by Erdogan's accusation of French President Emmanuel Macron and France of "Islamophobe" and initiating anti-French boycotts to buy support from radical Islamists; Turkish-Russian conflict over Syria and Libya; Erdogan's threat toward Greece over Mediterranean Sea's islands dispute; and how Turkey is attacking Canada and the U.S. for the recognition of Armenian Genocide and sympathy to Armenia in the Karabakh War, even when Turkey supplied weapons for Azerbaijan whereas Canada and the U.S. didn't. Erdogan also smeared Israel, the free, democratic Jewish state, as a genocidal country toward Palestinians and Arabs; to further blasting other Arab monarchies in the Persian Gulf of allying with Israel to destabilisation and instabilities, except Qatar. Iran is also not away from the list of Erdogan's enemies, when Erdogan cited a poem concerning the unity between Azerbaijan and the Iranian Azerbaijan region when he attended the victory parade Azerbaijan in the 2020 Karabakh War.

Probably, I can mention China, given how Erdogan sympathised with Uyghurs and Turkic Muslims fighting for independence in Xinjiang, but Ankara has stayed silent, somehow, over the re-education camps.

Ruling by tyranny and mishandling at home

From 2010s, the Turkish President showed no mercy in cracking down on independent, opposition media as well as the other political parties. This has led to protests against Erdogan to rise.

The first big protest against Erdogan's dictatorship came in 2013 when the protesters gathered at the Gezi Park and Taksim Square, contesting the regime's attempt to violently removing a sit-in in the park, which later became a nationwide protest over the corrasion of democracy in Turkey. The police suppressed heavily, leaving 11 deaths.

Protesters at Gezi Park square, 2013.

When the 2016 coup d'etat failed to remove Erdogan, the Turkish President trampled down further, on all levels of Turkish society. People who supported the Gulenist movement of Turkish cleric in exile Fethullah Gulen were imprisoned or expelled. Kurdish political leaders Salahettin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, Turkish journalist Nazli Ilicak, were also caught to jail. Newspapers like Zaman and Taraf; TV stations like Cihan Agency, were shut down. Even the education system of Turkey post-2016 coup was not able to evade the fate: Fatih and Izmir Universities were closed because of alleged links to Gulen, and even military academies had been completely refurbished with a number of them closed. Thousand of judges and teachers were fired, to be general. By now, Erdogan completely held a firm grip on media and social activities, and the press has been dictated to only provide good news on Erdogan.

But Erdogan, no matter how good he was in political trampling, still a very terrible economist. Having no idea about the interest rates, Erdogan has continued the policy to flirt the currency (lira) with low exchange rates by borrowing money heavily, but with Turkey being a popular tourist destination, this had gone unnoticed first, thus Erdogan unleashed a series of lavish, but unprofitable constructions of houses and bridges, and a very huge airport in Istanbul. Erdogan himself even built a palace in the capital despite economic waste.

The palace of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Bestepe, Ankara.

When investment inflows declined owing to Erdogan's aggressive nature, so was the debt rising. The foreign portfolio plummeted three times from 2017 to 2019, and subsequent high inflation rate. This created the currency crisis in 2018 and still reeling Turkey now, which the lira fell by 20% behind the U.S. dollars, causing social life upside down. Instead of listening to economists for a complete financial restructuring to save Turkey from a potential market crash, Erdogan appointed his son-in-law, Berat Albayrak, who appeared to have no experience in economics, to the position as Financial Minister, in order to keep up with his low-exchange rate policy and imbalance growth. Under Albayarak, it was a complete disaster and Turkish lira continued the free fall and degrading Turkish economic credibility. Suicide in Turkey increased because of rising debt and bill payments. GDP deteriorated sharply. It was only stabilised after Qatar, the oil-rich Gulf monarchy and ally of Ankara, invested 15$ billion, but rising cost of living and lacked any major reforms had a heavy impact, as it severely downgraded the international confidence in Turkish economy.

Berat Albayrak, Finance Minister of Turkey from 2018-2020

Mishandling the economy aside, we may also count about Donald Trump's tariffs on Turkish goods might have also impacted the economy of Turkey, though the tariffs only unveiled the inner dilemma of Erdogan's Turkey. But Erdogan, rather than trying to understand why, claimed that it was a conspiracy against the Turkish economy. This had led to his party's defeat in 2019 local elections in Istanbul and Ankara, especially in Istanbul, where Erdogan's henchman Binali Yildirim lost to CHP's (Republican People's Party, Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi) Ekrem Imamoglu, not once, but twice, in an election beset with alleged fraud, police skirmishes and re-run by Erdogan. The AKP retained control most of the country still, but Erdogan's grip has loosened.

The naiveness of Burmese people

So for me, I remained ablaze to see how Thinzar Shunlei Yi could praise Turkish people just because they supported a dictator that is no different than the military junta she is witnessing at home, and that is echoed by many Burmese people?

Well, there is a clear sign about why she and perhaps many Burmese appear to have the same feelings. Most, to say, we may conclude, and I seriously believe, that Burmese people have very little idea about how to function democracy, if not to say trying to implement it. And with the kind of "daylight democracy, nightfall dictatorship" of Erdogan, it has no credibility to speak of. But Erdogan's "beacon diplomacy" is no new for everyone who is familiar with it.

An example of this hypocrisy is Erdogan's furious reaction toward the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi (who was of Turkish origin) in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Erdogan at the time was at a conflict against the Saudis, in particular Mohammed bin Salman, for Saudi opposition to Turkish influence in Sudan, Syria, Iraq and Qatar. To decimate Saudi Arabia's image (Saudi Arabia itself is also no beacon of human rights and democracy either), Erdogan used the release of footages by Turkish police and Turkey's long history of wars against the al-Saud (Turkey is of Sufi Sunni branch while Saudi Arabia is of Salafist/Wahhabist branch) to promote himself the defender of humanity and Islam; but the same time put up silencing dissidents at home.

Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

This is also the same populist policy Erdogan used like there has been nothing wrong to begin with. When Brandon Tarrant shot dead 51 New Zealand Muslims in a mosque at Christchurch, he framed Australia for the killing despite Australia and New Zealand condemned the attack by Tarrant, leading to harsh reactions from the Australian government. He called for French people to remove President Macron even by violence, but at the same time stood absence when French teacher Samuel Paty was murdered by a Chechen migrant. He waged wars against the Kurds despite the Kurds helped his allies to crush ISIS, allowing some remnants of this terrorist organisation to re-assemble in the midst of the Mesopotamian desert. He accused Armenia of "occupation and genocide" in Karabakh, the majority Armenian region within Azerbaijan, yet actively trying to avert and denounce countries that recognise the Armenian Genocide. Erdogan also abused Israel over Palestine, Greece/Cyprus but remained silent when Israel helped his ally, Azerbaijan, in the war against Armenia. Erdogan even branded his party, AKP into the party that represents the long, nostalgic Ottoman Empire that had collapsed in 1923 and worked to install neo-Ottomanism, both at home and abroad, and doesn't recognise the validity of borders between Turkey and most of her neighbours.

This thing, coupled with Erdogan's own crisis at home, already demonstrated that Erdogan had no tenability to speak for the other about democracy nor even honest government at all.

With Turkey lacking any major display of democracy, the Burmese people's surprising lack of understanding of democracy was something Erdogan found an opportunity to make the show moving. Erdogan attracted the support of many young but ill-informed Burmese by voicing his condemnation over the coup in Myanmar and subsequent protests. Maybe because Turkey has two Ottoman cemeteries in Myanmar? Maybe because Burmese have no idea about the 2016 coup d'etat, subsequent counter-coup and the dictatorial nature of Erdogan's regime? Recep before had slandered the Burmese government for the Rohingya genocide back in 2017 and actively threatened to intervene against Myanmar, without insight about the state-within-state situation in the Burmese government.

And Thinzar Shunlei Yi just let her Burmese people into a trap Erdogan already installed. The "beacon of democracy" - this is what Erdogan doing now, without dignity. An undemocratic leader supports a democratic movement.

Conclusion?

This has really unsettled my feelings. And this is because we have seen India and Vietnam being blamed for behind the back of Russia and China to not condemn Myanmar coup, with Vietnam having the closest coincidence with Turkey as being governed by authoritarian leaders; at the same time acting like hypocrites when seeing Turkish dictatorship praising Myanmar protesters.

India and Vietnam have been accused by Burmese protesters of not condemning the coup.

To remind, as much as I agree that New Delhi and Hanoi's actions can be seen as a shame, Erdogan's Turkey doesn't support Myanmar protesters because of democratic reasons. Erdogan sought to whitewash his government, especially after having lost in the local elections back in 2019. Because Erdogan viewed the AKP as the successor of Ottoman Empire, he also wanted to demonstrate the Ottomanist/pan-Turkist ideology.

Using the Myanmar protests, Erdogan has won from majority support of the pro-democracy but ill-knowledged Burmese population, and he can also minimise the internal opposition in his home country. Erdogan makes it clear that he will not abandon his policy based on hypocrisies and madness reflection of an imperialist ideology.

On the Burmese side, by fallen to the honeypot of Erdogan, the Burmese completely forget what should be done to build a democracy. They're expecting international supports, but they don't understand that every country gear up for its interests only. Myanmar, a country bordering India and China, are extremely rich in resources, like timber, jades, gold, rare earth, etc. Democracy can't be won if the people are not educated enough to realise and distinguish the differences; at the same time realising the interests of the nation is bounded.

This lesson of what had gone with the Republic of China in 1949 and the Republic of Vietnam in 1975, where the people, with little idea about democracy functioning, easily moved to the words of the communists, appears to have been learned nothing. The same Vietnamese diaspora in the United States, many loyalists to fallen South Vietnam, attacked the symbol of American democratic republicanism - Capitol Hill - in support for wannabe dictator Donald Trump because of conspiracies against the Democrats and President-elect Joe Biden that finally eroded any legitimacy of Vietnamese democracy movement abroad as the flag of the fallen Republic is now associated with domestic terrorists, white supremacists and ultra-racist groups; FBI is waiting for these yellow flag rioters. And Burmese blame Vietnamese people for not joining hand with the Burmese against the junta. Aren't we, Vietnamese people, suffering enough shame following the failed coup in Washington D.C. which many yellow flags participated, to now Vietnamese have to stay silent?

Yet, Burmese people, in their battle to reclaim their democracy, still learns none and keeps getting into the honeypots of leaders where he/she has unpredictable antics and showing no sign of supporting genuine democracy, leave alone the supposed involvements by dictatorships like China and Russia on the side of the cruel junta. Recep Tayyip Erdogan's propaganda camouflaging paid off only for the purpose of disparaging the name of freedom and cultural democracy.