*** GUILLAUME PERRIER: Dans la tête de Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Essai. Solin / Actes Sud (Place Nina-Berberova BP 90038, F-13633 Arles cedex. Tel: (33-4) 90498691 – Fax: 90969525 – Internet: http://www.actes-sud.fr ). ‘Dans la tête de...’ series. 2018, 233 pp, €19. ISBN 978-2-330-09238-2.
Who is Recep Tayyip Erdogan exactly, the man in power in Turkey since 2003? What drives this declared Muslim who has been ‘a vampire on Turkish political life’ like no other leader since Atatürk, but whose course of action is difficult to trace since it follows a ‘bending road, comprising mad gallops, sudden u-turns and unexpected about-turns’? In this book, journalist Guillaume Perrier discerns the personality and motives of this figurehead, who is as complex as he is unavoidable these days, including for his ‘European partners. Posted for a long time in Istanbul, he provides a detailed, living portrait marrying objectivity and documented criticisms of this ‘political omnivore, who advances by feeding himself on anything that could be useful, depending on what seems to him to be the most effective for consolidation his power.’
Erdogan is the rise of an instinctive boy in Kasimpasa, a workers’ quarter which, in the Istanbul imagery is the ‘shady hangout of fighters and small gangland bosses.’ The teenager earns his reputation there of belonging to a ‘deprived working class.’ Is it to his ‘tyrannical’ father that he owes the fact that he didn’t sink into petty crime, but quickly became open to religion, to such an extent that he ‘sometimes replaced the imam when it came to reading the sermon’? In any case, it was his father who prevented him from being recruited by the Fenerbahçe club, thus preventing him from becoming the Turkish Beckenbauer. His playground would be that of politics where. very quickly, he ‘stands as a representative of the poor, the oppressed class’ as opposed to the ‘white European westernised Turks.’ This man of the people, who was happy to be a populist, was made prime minister at the start of 2003 after five years of ineligibility due to his reciting of a poem with Islamicist leanings when he was close to Necmettin Erbakan, the patriarch of Turkish Islamicism. Without the corresponding state of mind, in order to become prime minister, he put on a jacket of slogans such as ‘democracy,’ ‘economy,’ and ‘social justice’ to the dismay of psalmists of the previous generation. For Erdogan, this is the key to success, the stages of which are methodically spelled out in these pages, and which enable him today to imaging still being in power in... 2029.
This growing success from one election to the next has implications for Europe. Hence the man who was voted ‘European of the year’ in 2004 by European Voice magazine for his ‘efforts and reforms introduced by Turkey to comply with the demands of the European Union in the accession negotiations’ is a wily politician who can even be sly at times. The way he sees it, Europe and its demands of democratic virtues for candidate countries rapidly becomes ‘the best way to weaken the army’ that has been guaranteeing social order since Atatürk. Hence he takes advantage, to his own interests and those of his party, of the EU's demands, a former foreign minister, Yasar Yakis, confiding in this connection that at the start of the decade beginning in 2000, ‘Europe guaranteed certain freedoms that didn’t exist in Turkey, particularly for conservative Muslims. The best way to obtain these rights was to join the EU.’ Because the EU allowed young women wearing the veil to go to university, the EU was seen by Recep Erdogan and his circle ‘as an antidote to secular kemalist oppression.’ However, the honeymoon between ‘Brussels’ and Erdogan did not last long. Firstly, because the island of Cyprus soon became a bone of contention. German MEP Cem Özdemir told the author that Europe was fully responsible since it decided to incorporate the ‘most nationalist part of Cyprus, which had rejected the Annan plan,’ dropping the ‘pro-European north headed by a social democrat supported by Ankara.’ Above all, there is also the fact that over time, a front had built up of rejection of enlargement to Turkey, which was felt by all Turks of all social classes ‘as a betrayal tinged with xenophobia.’ Rightly, no doubt, since it is true that the signals that were given by European capitals ‘fed Erdogan’s Islamicist and nationalist rhetoric.’ Basically, by its procrastination and hedging, Europe, as Green politician Cem Özdemir points out, ‘dropped Turkish democrats’ and pushed Recep Tayyip Erdogan ‘to retreat into nationalism, Islamicist and authoritarianism,’ a posture that now allows him to take advantage of Europe when it comes to managing refugees on the EU's border. This resulted, concludes Guillaume Perrier, in ‘everything that connects Turkey to a democratic system’ being today ‘in the process of disappearing,’ which leads him to ask the following question at the end of this both instructive and edifying essay: ‘Is Turkey experiencing a new form of fascism?’
Michel Theys
*** SOTIRIS LIVAS: Vues de la Turquie. L'idéologie de l'État et la société civile des citoyens. Editions Papazisi (2 rue Nikitara, GR-10678 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3822496 – Fax: 3809020 – Email: papazisi@otenet.gr - Internet: http://www.papazisi.gr ). 2017, 124 pp, €8.48. ISBN 978-960-02-3283-7.
Recent years have seen Turkey governed by the AKP and President Erdogan being seen by increasing numbers of people in Europe as taking a radical distance from the Kemalist model. Public opinion thus discerns at the same time an attempt to refurbish the State and its institutions, abandoning the dream of joining the European Union, a symbolic reunification with the Middle East, all naturally contributing to a definition of the objectives of Turkish foreign policy. However, as the author of this book, who is a professor of geopolitics at the Ionian Sea University, recognises, Erdogan and Kemal Atatürk have more similarities than differences. What unites them above all, he explains, is the desire to strengthen the State and opt for an authoritarian governance model (with variations imposed by the historic conditions of the time), which is, of course, based on precise and legitimate ideological approaches. Four chapters in the book are devoted to the Turkey of Kemal and four to the Turkey of Erdogan. In the first part, Kemal Atatürk’s policies are analysed, the author highlighting in particular the social policy and cultural policy desired by the founder of the Turkish Republic, relations with democracy, his choice of the Turkish language and also the search for a pre-Islamicist historical cradle. In the second part of the book, Sotiris Livas attempts above all to clarify the ideological, religious and political perceptions of Erdogan’s great opponent – a former mentor – Fehullah Gullen. However, Turkey continues to turn on the same axis: the emergence and assertion of the Turkish State as an unmoveable element. (AKa)
*** CONSTANTINOS GOGOS: Le mouvement islamiste en Turquie. Contribution à l'étude de la pensée islamique turque moderne. Editions Livanis (98 rue Solonos, GR-10680 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3661200 – Fax: 3617791 – Email: webmaster@livanis.gr – Internet: http://www.livanis.gr ). 2017, 144 pp, €10 ISBN 978-960-14-3096-6.
What ideas and proposals does the Islamicist intelligentsia have in modern Turkey? Who draws them up, validates them and expresses them? What trends dominate Turkish political Islam? What is the contribution of Islamicist writers to the strengthening and hegemony of Turkish political Islam in the face of kemalist secular forces? These are some of the questions answered in the pages of this book on the perceptions and thoughts of three Islamicist intellectuals who decisively influence Islam, politics and society in Turkey today. Moreover, the author, who lectures in Islamicist studies at the National and Kaporidstrian Universities of Athens and Yιldιz Teknik in Istanbul, incorporates the work and role of Islamicist intellectuals in the particular context of social theory, proposing representative texts of these thinkers in Greek. With this study, he aims to contribute to awareness and understanding of the rise of political Islam and the strengthening of Islamic identity in modern Turkey which appeared before 1980 and has been asserting itself over the decades. The author says this rising power owes much to Islamicist writers and intellectuals who, through their work, their opinions, their criticisms and their proposals, have made a decisive contribution to a vision and an Islamic interpretation of society, politics, the State and its institutions, the economy, the culture and history of Turkey, the Muslim world and the whole world in general, the author particularly stressing the West. (AKa)
*** Südosteuropa Mitteilungen. Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft (49 Widenmayerstrasse, D-80538 Munich. Tel: (49-89) 212154-0 – Fa: 2289469 – Email: info@sogde.org – Internet: http://www.sogde.org ). 2017, 114 pp, €12. Annual subscription: €60. Most of this issue of Südosteuropa Mitteilungen is devoted to Romania and its quest for democracy since 1990. (MT)
*** ALEXANDROS MALLIAS: La constellation du président Donald Trump: la nouvelle Turquie et nous. Relations internationales, stratégie nationale, la politique de cohésion et la prévention. Editions Sideris (116 rue Solonos, GR-10681 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3833434 – Fax: 3832294 – Email: contact@isideris.gr). 2017, 72 pp, €7. ISBN 978-960-08-0764-6.
Greek ambassador to the United States from 2005 to 2010, in other words at a time that saw serious divergences emerging between the great powers of the world, Alexandros Mallias examines in this book relations between Greece and Turkey in the light of the extra threat of the unpredictable nature of President Erdogan. Currently special advisor to the Greek Foundation for Foreign Policy (Eliamep), the author recommends a review and updating of the doctrine of Greek national security to deal with the new perils. He stresses the importance of unity and invites the political world to act to boost the morale of a country that is deliberately ‘self-despising and self-humiliating.’ They author returns to what was Greek foreign policy towards its neighbour and its US ally at the time of prime minister Constantin Karamanlis, from 1974 to 1981, spending time in particular on the critical year of 1976, which leads him to discern his country’s trump cards, notably the negotiation capacities offered by the military base of Souda in northern Crete. Alexander Mallias also analyses the national security doctrine of the US President, Donald Trump, and its consequences in the region of south-east Europe, before noting the limited influence of international organisations, the United Nations in particular, when it comes to finding solutions to conflicts. He also points out the ambiguity of NATO and the absence of a European Union common foreign policy, arguing that these factors require a realistic review of the fundamentals of Greece’s security policy in terms of the threat from the East. (AKa)
*** ANGELOS SYRIGOS: Les relations gréco-turques (1922-2010). Editions Patakis (38 Panayi Tsaldari, GR-10437 Athens. Tel: (30-210) 3650000 – Fax: 3811940 – Email: bookstore@patakis.gr – Internet: http://www.patakis.gr ). ‘Sciences sociales et politiques’ series0. 2017, 895 pp, €66. ISBN 978-960-16-5376-1.
Starting with the fate of prisoners in 1922, Angelos Syrigos analyses in turn in this book the Conference and Treaty of Lausanne, Greco-Turkish relations between the World Wars, the Cypriot problem from 1955 to rejection of the Annan plan, the various viewpoints of the continental platform in the Aegean Sea, questions relating to airspace, the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the legal status of Muslim minorities in Thrace and the Greek minority in Turkey, and the ecumenical Patriarchy. Professor of international law and foreign policy at Pantheon University, the author also analyses the current problems of the gas fields around the island of Cyprus, petrochemical pipelines, the exclusive economic zone and the island of Kastelorizo. The author analyses in fine detail each of these issues and the concerns they generate, before formulating tangible proposals for Greece’s foreign policy towards Turks. He thus also addresses sensitive issues such as the limits of NATO’s operational responsibility, the S-300 missile crisis and, finally, the country’s geopolitical priorities. The book is studded with a vast bibliography. (AKa)