Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
I have been watching Recep Tayyip Erdoğan closely for the past 30 years. I witnessed him get sentenced to jail for 10 months by the Turkish high court for security and the outrage it caused. I thought at the time that the secular, pro-western government at the time had made a mistake, and have since been proven right.
Erdogan left prison, formed the Justice and Development Party and went on to change the face of Turkey, probably for generations. How can the former prisoner arrest his only significant political rival three decades later? Is he repeating the same mistake? Will Ekrem İmamoğlu, Istanbul's mayor, do to Islamist Turkey in the future, what Erdogan had done to the secular state of the past?
3 View gallery
Mass protest in Istanbul after the arrest of its mayor
(Photo: Umit Bektas / Reuters )
Probably not. Erdogan is one of the longest serving politicians on earth. He has never lost an election. In the past decade, he solidified a religious-nationalist coalition that appears unbreakable.
And now, before our eyes, a new circle of defense is being formed. Turkey is set to begin peace talks with the Kurdish rebels, after 40 years of war. If those talks succeed, two of the jailed Kurdish leaders - Abdullah Ocalan and Selahattin Demirtaş would be released and would bolster Erdogan's political hold. In exchange, Turkey would allow the Kurds cultural autonomy in the country's south-east.
Ocalan, who has already been imprisoned for 25 years out of his life sentence, could become Turkey's vice president. Against an Islamist-nationalist-Kurdish alliance, İmamoğlu does not stand a chance.
To truly understand the extent of Erdogan's cruelty, one must look back at 2013, which was undoubtedly his most difficult year. Islamist allies who supported Fethullah Gülen realized that he and his senior ministers were corrupt.
Their past ideological alliance could not protect hundreds of thousands from Erdogan's persecution and unbelievable cruelty. The Islamist base that brought him to power was divided into loyalists or enemies. He demanded personal loyalty.
Alon Liel Tens of thousands lost their jobs or were jailed, exiled or persecuted, at a cost to Turkey's professional backbone, including its police and judicial system. Along the way, Turkey lost many of its democratic characteristics.
Get the Ynetnews app on your smartphone: Google Play: https://bit.ly/4eJ37pE | Apple App Store: https://bit.ly/3ZL7iNv
Under the principle of natural selection, where only the strong survive, Israel should maintain diplomatic relations with Turkey. Erdogan had a good political year that included the Kurd's laying down arms, a security agreement with the new regime in Syria, the election of Donald Trump to a second term in the White House and the growing European need for Turkish involvement in NATO. There is no doubt that Turkey is a strong regional player.
On the other hand, if morals, ethics and human rights should guide policy decisions, Erdogan is a dictator and his open hostility toward Israel calls for the diplomatic relations to be severed immediately. I would follow those guidelines.
Alon Liel is a former diplomat who served as ambassador to Turkey and director general of the Foreign Ministry and is a lecturer at Reichman University's School for Government and Diplomacy