Bloomberg Businessweek

 POLITICS Bloomberg Businessweek August 20, 2018

NOVEMBER 2002

Erdogan’s Islamist-

rooted AK Party

is swept into power

in the aftermath of a

financial crisis that

uproots Turkey’s

political landscape. He

becomes prime minister

within a few months.

OCTOBER 2005

Turkey formally opens

accession talks with

the European Union

amid optimism about

democratic reforms and

economic potential.

APRIL 2007

Crisis erupts as the

army, which espouses

secularism, expresses

concerns after AKP

nominates Abdullah

Gul, whose wife wears

a headscarf, as head

of state.

DECEMBER 2011

Turkey’s current-

account deficit hits

almost 10 percent of

gross domestic product.

MAY 2013

A police crackdown on

a small environmental

protest in Istanbul

triggers antigovernment

demonstrations

across the country.

DECEMBER 2013

A corruption probe

targets ministers

and high-profile

businessmen.

JULY 2016

A coup attempt against

Erdogan fails. The

government blames

Fethullah Gulen, a

former Erdogan ally who

lives in exile in the U.S.

JUNE 2018

Erdogan wins early

elections that he called

to become Turkey’s first

executive president,

a position with

unprecedented power.

○ A timeline of

Erdogan’s rise to power

33

JASON ALDEN/BLOOMBERG

There’s a famous saying in politics: “Never let a

good crisis go to waste.” It’s hard to think of a leader

who’s put that to better use than Turkish President

Recep Tayyip Erdogan. In a way, his entire political

career was born out of crisis. After a stint as mayor

of Istanbul in the1990s, Erdogan was briely jailed

and his Islamist political party was banned. He

then helped form a new party that was swept into

power after a devastating inancial crash hit Turkey

in 2001. He’s now a twice-elected president who’s

steadily amassed power, in part by knowing how to

leverage a bad situation. He did, after all, describe a

failed coup against him in 2016 as a “gift from God,”

because it allowed him to crush his political oppo-

nents and endow himself with even more authority

to bring about his vision for a “new Turkey.”

Erdogan knows as well as anyone the political

cost of an economy going up in smoke. So why is

he goading Donald Trump into tarifs and sanctions

when Turkey’s economy is in so much trouble?

That’s a question U.S. oicials and global inves-

tors are asking after watching the Turkish president

respond to U.S. pressure by ratcheting up the ten-

sion even more. To Trump oicials, it seemed like

a simple enough strategy: Turn up the heat until

Erdogan releases Andrew Brunson, an American

pastor imprisoned in Turkey for the past two years.

They didn’t expect him to risk bankrupting his

own country or consider leaving NATO in favor of

a closer alliance with Russia, China, and Iran. But

that’s the way things are headed, or at least that’s

what Erdogan wants the world to believe.

Only a month ago, he and Trump were giving

each other a ist bump on the sidelines of the NATO

summit in Brussels. While Trump criticized his fel-

low NATO leaders as weak freeloaders unwilling to

pay for their own security, he had only nice things to

say about Erdogan, in part because he embodies the

qualities of strength and power Trump so admires.

Now, however, the two leaders are caught in a

game of chicken, strongmen who pride themselves

on being tough and unwilling to blink. “What we are

seeing is the breakdown of a relationship between

two headstrong, prickly, proud men who admired

each other for their leadership styles, right up

until the moment they didn’t,” says Bulent Aliriza,

director of the Turkey Project at the Center for

Strategic & International Studies in Washington.

What Erdogan appears to be discovering is that

what worked with the Obama administration may

backire with Trump. “Previously, Erdogan could

engage in this self-hostage-taking where he could

say to U.S. leaders, ‘We know you want Turkey to

be stable,’ efectively threatening to destabilize his

own country,” says Max Hofman, associate director

for national security and international policy at

the Center for American Progress. “Now you have

Trump, who doesn’t care if [Erdogan] blows his own

head of and is happy to hand him a loaded pistol.”

Erdogan has spent much of the past few weeks

giving what sound like wartime addresses on state

TV. His message has been increasingly assertive and

aimed at convincing Turks their country is in an

economic war. Turkey is facing a legitimate crisis.

After more than a decade of debt-fueled growth,

inanced in large part by Western banks, the econ-

omy is in serious trouble. Rather than look inward

for reform, agree to a bailout from the International

Monetary Fund, or raise interest rates, as econo-

mists and his own business leaders have urged,

Erdogan has instead blamed foreign interests who

he says are aligned against him. The irony, and per-

haps genius, of it all is that he’s taking what by all

accounts is a self-made economic crisis and selling

it as an us-vs.-them patriotic yarn.

Still, as he rails against the U.S. at home, Erdogan

continues to press for talks in Washington. On Aug. 7

he sent a team of top oicials to D.C. for meetings

at the State and Treasury departments. Both ended

with U.S. oicials refusing to negotiate until Brunson

was released. A few days later, Turkey’s ambassador

to the U.S., Serdar Kilic, requested a sitdown with

national security adviser John Bolton. That ended

the same way. According to one U.S. oicial who

spoke on condition of anonymity, Kilic presented

Bolton with the same exact plan that was rejected

at the State and Treasury departments the previ-

ous week. It was odd enough to cause the oicial

to wonder whether it was part of a broader strategy

for Erdogan to appear to be negotiating in good faith

while reaping the political beneits of instability.

Watching intently from the sidelines is Russia.

After Turkey shot down a Russian ighter jet that had

entered its airspace in November 2015, Erdogan and

Vladimir Putin have worked hard to repair a relation-

ship that had plunged into crisis. Erdogan now reg-

ularly refers to Putin as “my friend.” The Kremlin

says the two talked on Aug. 10 by phone. Three days

later, as Erdogan was lashing out at the U.S. for stab-

bing his country “in the back,” Russia’s minister of

foreign afairs, Sergei Lavrov, arrived for a two-day

visit. Erdogan has touted Russia as among the alter-

natives available to Turkey amid the crisis. But it’s

unclear how much Russia can help. Its economy is

only now emerging from recession, and the ruble

just had its biggest decline in three years as inves-

tors responded to another round of U.S. sanctions.

“Russia isn’t going to bail out Turkey,” says

Elena Suponina, a Middle East scholar in Moscow.

“Russia’s task is not to save Turkey but to maintain