Erdoğan's strategy
I believe that the word “mess” is the best to explain the political ups and downs in Turkey these days. On the one hand, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan comes to the podium everyday and blames almost everyone, the Fethullah Gülen movement, the liberals, the main opposition party, the European Union, the West, etc., for plotting against his government.
It is obvious that he is trying to hide the major corruption scandal by accusing all these actors of coming together to topple him.
Many political observers think that there is no way out for Erdoğan if he continues to act in the way he is acting now. They think that the West will not approve of what he is doing, the Gülen movement will not support him anymore and the liberals left him long ago and will never return to him again.
The question is the following: Doesn't he see that what he is doing is isolating him? Why is doing this these days? Is it a part of a strategy, or is what he is doing just his uncalculated response to the fact that his dirty laundry was revealed?
I think what he is doing is based on a well-planned strategy. Whether the strategy will work or not is a different story, but it seems that he is not following his instincts at this time.
As far as I can see, his associate has developed a multi-layered strategy in response. The first and most important part of his strategy is related to the upcoming elections.
One might argue that he does not care about the opposition's discomfort about his policies at the domestic level. He thinks that as long as he receives a high percentage of the vote, such as 40 percent or above, he will suppress the opposition's discomfort.
Thus, he wants to maximize his election success and use it as the only legitimate tool against his opposition at the domestic level. He does not care about democratic values, he does not care about freedom of press, he does not care about the rule of law, etc.
What he cares about is whether economic stability will continue his election success and whether the West will push him into a corner in which he could pay the political price for his deviation from democracy.
When it comes to economic stability, it appears that he has opened Turkey up to illegal finance in an effort to maintain economic stability.
When it comes to the criticism that will come from the West, this is a different story. He thinks that the West does not care about democratic values or norms either, as long as it is in the West's strategic interest to maintain relations with you.
He thinks that the West has a strategic vision for Turkey, so they cannot easily remove their support for Turkey. Therefore, Erdoğan calculates, if he wins big in the upcoming election, the West will easily forget their criticism of what he is doing in Turkey and start establishing good relations with him once again.
Therefore he blames the West, because such arguments bring him votes and he knows that the West will come to him when he wins the election.
Thus, as far as I can see, what he is doing these days is based on a well-calculated plan for the upcoming election, and he will reshuffle his cards after the election once again.
Moreover, he recently got off on the wrong foot by not being able to explain the major corruption scandal. He has no other way than finding someone to blame in order to cover up the corruption scandals in which his close associates, and perhaps some members of his family, are allegedly involved.
He thinks that the more he shouts, the more he can hide the corruption scandals. Thus, he shouts and is rewarded for it.
He may save the day for now. But in the long term, I don't think his strategy will work.
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