Turkish cleric Muhammed Fethullah Gulen died in Pennsylvania this week. Gulen and his movement were accused by Turkey’s ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) of attempting a coup against Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2016. The coup attempt came at a time of transition in Turkey and was used by the government as an excuse to purge hundreds of thousands of political opponents from all parts of society.
It also led the Turkish state to use all means abroad to crack down on institutions and people linked to Gulen. This included extrajudicial renditions around the world.
Gulen was 83 years old. The history of how the current leadership of Turkey came to view Gulen and his movement as a “terrorist” group is not entirely clear. What is clear is that the AKP Party has dominated Turkish politics for the last two decades and it has thrived on finding various enemies along the way that it then accuses of plots so that it can then purge them. These enemies have includes accusations against secular officers in the military, as well as the Gulen movement and the Kurdistan Workers Party.
An opening for Turkey?
The death of Gulen could serve as an opening in Turkey because the ruling party may be less paranoid now. It’s not clear if the death will lead to an opening, but let’s review how we got here in Turkey.
Turkey’s current ruling party first won elections in 2002. Because Turkey has a history of coups that have been used to keep the right-wing Islamist elements out of power, the AKP moved carefully at first. It wanted to transform Turkey into a more conservative Islamic power. It wanted to reorient itself from being pro-Western and pro-NATO to being close to Russia, Iran, China, and also leading both the Turkish world and the Islamic world.
In the beginning the AKP sought to have a policy of “zero problems” with Turkey’s neighbors. This enabled the party to focus domestically. Gulen and his institutions were not seen as rivals initially. Instead, the leadership sought to crack down on secular opposition elements.
This meant going after the secular-nationalist media and targeting universities, students, and NGOs linked to the West. This was a model picked up from Putin’s consolidation of power in Russia.
The first conspiracy the AKP identified was what it called “operation Sledgehammer,” which it said was a coup plan dating to 2003. In 2012, hundreds of officers were sentenced to prison over the alleged plot. Beginning in 2008, there were also a series of Ergenekon trials which accused hundreds of military officers and others of involvement in a “conspiracy” against the state. The trials lasted until 2016. As with the attacks on Gulen, the Turkish AKP-run state accused its enemies of being part of various clandestine organizations whose existence were not always verifiable.
A turn against Israel
As the alleged conspiracies mounted, the state became more hostile to both the EU and also other former friends such as Israel and the US. In 2009, Erdogan turned against Israel. In 2010, Ankara let the Mavi Marmara ship sail towards Gaza, resulting in the Israeli raid that led to 10 deaths aboard the ship.
THINGS SHIFTED again in 2011, with the Syrian civil war. Turkey was a conduit for extremists entering Syria and this fueled the rise of ISIS. By 2014, ISIS was taking over areas on the Turkish border.
Ankara began to intervene in Syria, slowly at first. There were millions of Syrian refugees living in Turkey. Once the Syrian rebels were defeated in parts of Syria, Turkey took advantage of the situation to place the former rebels under a Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA).
Meanwhile, the war in Syria fueled not only ISIS attacks in Turkey but also an uprising by the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK). The uprising in 2015 came after several elections in which Ankara tried to reduce the Kurdish vote in parliament.
Turkey sent the army into many Kurdish cities, destroying some of them in the war. After a year of fighting, the Kurds were mostly defeated in Turkey. This came shortly before the coup attempt, meaning that Ankara lurched from fighting its own Kurdish minority to fighting the Gulen movement.
Within two years of the coup, Ankara shifted back again to fighting Kurds. It invaded Afrin in Syria and ethnically cleansed 160,000 Kurds it accused of being linked to PKK “terrorists.”
It also began targeting Americans in Turkey, arresting pastor Andrew Brunson. Turkey’s regime enjoyed relatively good relations with the Trump administration and even tried to get Gulen extradited.
Turkey also used the good ties to invade another part of Syria where the US had been operating with the US-backed Syrian Democratic Forces. However, Turkey’s embrace of Hamas and increasingly anti-Israel attitude, as well as threats to Greece and Cyprus, led the White House to sour on Erdogan in 2019 and 2020.
Shifting back to peace?
In the last several years, Ankara has shifted back to a more amicable and peaceful policy. It reconciled with Saudi Arabia and Egypt. However, it has continued the trend towards embracing Russia and Iran.
It used the Russian invasion of Ukraine to its benefit. Since October 7, it has embraced Hamas and accused Israel of genocide.
With Gulen dead and the PKK weakened – as well as secular parties in Turkey divided and weakened as well – Turkey’s ruling party now may feel more confident than in the past. It has thrived on fighting enemies, real and imagined. It might now feel that its enemies are weak and that it can return to a policy of “zero problems.”
This is unclear however. Ankara gained an appetite for invasions and warmongering. It inflamed tensions in the Caucasus and has often threatened Armenia. It has spread its wings in Africa and involved itself in Somalia and Libya. It is a close ally of Qatar and an increasing friend of Iran.
Turkey may also be ready to sell out the SNA Syrian groups in Syria in exchange for new ties with the Assad regime. Ankara once had close ties to Assad back in the early 2000s. It even tried to broker a peace deal with Israel and the Assad regime.
Ankara also may be inflaming tensions in Lebanon and may be serving as a conduit for Iranian interests. There is much at stake. Gulen’s death could change things in Turkey, or it could lead the regime to feel more confident and become more aggressive.