Istanbul, Irredentism, Islam: The Foreign Policy of Recep Tayyip Erdogan

After a pandemic that rocked the world of foreign policy, it would seem logical that few nations in 2020 were able to make great geopolitical strides. But that assumption doesn’t apply to Turkey.

Led by 67-year-old firebrand, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey is one of the few nations that did not let COVID-19 get in its way. In fact, Erdogan did more than just survive the pandemic: he—arguably—thrived in it. Although currently dealing with economic stagnation and a budding liberalist counter movement, Erdogan’s aggressive foreign policy is likely to propel Turkey into great-power territory in the near future.

A lifetime politician, Erdogan became Mayor of Istanbul in 1994 with Turkey’s Islamist Welfare Party. Renowned for his problem-solving skills, he gained national fame and won Turkey’s Prime Ministerial position in 2003. By 2014, Erdogan became the President of Turkey as part of the AKP Party. Riding on the back of the same Islamist ideologies he used to gain a mayoral seat, Erdogan instantly began to project Turkish power throughout Europe and the Middle East in what has been dubbed “Neo-Ottomanism.”

Much like Hungary’s Victor Orban or Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Erdogan frequently references his nation’s past—in Turkey’s case, the Ottoman Empire. Revisiting past empires is a useful strategy for strongmen because it cultivates the feelings of national pride that are key to preserving their regimes. Erdogan dreams of restoring the glory of the Ottoman Empire through aggressive military action, and his policies may be Turkey’s best chance at doing so.

A map of the Ottoman Empire at its greatest extent.

Erdogan knows the timing for his policies is propitious. Indeed, the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne, a post-World War One treaty designed to carve up the remains of the Ottoman Empire, will expire in July of 2023, giving him extra legal impunity. The world is still battling the pandemic, and many surrounding states, such as Libya, Lebanon, Greece, or Syria, are weak. The rest of his neighbors, Erdogan knows, are suffering from severe demographic issues or have decidedly failed in upholding democratic institutions. The time for the resurgence of the Ottoman Empire, it seems, is right.

What was once deemed the “sick man of Europe” is now looking to be on the mend. Over the past few years, Erdogan has begun aggressively expanding Turkish power in all four directions.

To the North, he warmongered with the Kremlin while supporting Azerbaijan against Russian-backed Armenian forces during the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War, a decisive Azeri victory.

To the East, he has made large gains in Pakistan through his Islamist soft power, spreading his Islamic worldview that has shaken Turkish secularism. As he once recited from a poem: “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.” Erdogan has used dizi, Turkish television dramas, to spread his brand of Islam and help familiarize the world with Turkish history—the most famous dizi is “Dirilis: Ertugrul” (or “Resurrection: Ertugrul”) and has taken Pakistan by storm. Turkish TV is now the second most-watched worldwide after the U.S. and Turkish is now the most-watched foreign language in the world, beating Korean, Hindu, Spanish, or even Mandarin. Erdogan’s dizi crusade has made Pakistan grow closer to Turkey’s modern Islam and estrange itself from Saudi Wahhabism, a medieval, repressive, orthodox sect.

To the South, Erdogan’s actions have been incredibly aggressive. He sent his troops to occupy over 8,000 square miles of Northern Syria. He intervened in the bloody Libyan Civil War in support of the National Salvation Government, which is one of three other factions that oppose the U.S. and U.N.-led Government of National Accord, or GNA. He stoked tensions with Syria and Iraq over the damming of the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, and even proposed a two-state solution to solve Cyprus’ Greco-Turkish dispute.

Invaded by Turkey in 1974 during Operation Attila, Cyprus has been hotly contested between Turkey and Greece. The aforementioned Treaty of Lausanne, which will expire in 2023, ended all Turkish claims to the island, which was once part of their Ottoman sphere of influence. However, given that the treaty will be nullified soon—and that Turkey sees it within its historical jurisdiction—Erdogan has Cyprus firmly within his crosshairs. Cyprus is culturally split between Greeks and Turks, and the 1974 invasion divided the island along a dividing line known as the Green Line. Erdogan has already begun his slow takeover of Turkish Cyprus—he has begun unilaterally reviving Varosha, a Turkish Cypriot city that was abandoned during the invasion. Like the dizi in the Middle East, revamping Varosha could prove to be a smart move to spread Turkish soft power.

By proposing a two-state solution (whereby Turkey and Greece would each get a slice of the island), Erdogan could endow Turkey with a tactically advantageous piece of territory—or, if nothing else, a client state with an ethnically and linguistically Turkish population that would aid him in his goals for hegemony over the Eastern Mediterranean. The fact that Erdogan could make strategic territorial gains all while masquerading under the guise of “valuing multilateral diplomacy” is important to note.

Screen Shot 2022-01-23 at 2.30.59 PM.png

Erdogan’s interest in Cyprus has also played into his European strategy. To the West, Erdogan has been picking fights with the E.U. over his aggressive policies. He has threatened to occupy some of the outlying Greek islands and, as Foreign Policy writer Allison Meakem said, turned “natural gas drilling in the Eastern Mediterranean into a contact sport.”

Erdogan’s main rival appears to be French President Emmanuel Macron. As Turkey grows more and more Muslim, France, led by Macron’s signature policy of laïcité, or secularism, is growing less tolerant of Islam. Just last year, Macron expressed outrage at the beheading of Samuel Paty, who was killed after drawing a caricature of the prophet Muhammad—a forbidden action in Islam. Following a rise in Islamic extremism—and a concurrent rise in European Islamophobia—tensions between Erdogan and Macron are high. To get back at Macron, Erdogan may threaten to release refugees from Middle Eastern conflicts into the E.U., just as Belorussian strongman Alexander Lukashenko did in December of 2021. Such a tactic will get Erdogan the geopolitical leverage he craves.

A reversal of the “Unholy Alliance”: Macron (right) argues with Erdogan (left).

But Erdogan’s Turkey is not without its faults. Domestically, Turkey’s economy has been wheezing. Turkish democratic institutions have been slowly eroding, and its Gen Z population has not taken kindly to such backsliding. Even Erdogan’s crowning infrastructure project, the Istanbul Airport, hasn’t gotten much use due to a decline in global travel. But look to the 2011 Gezi Park protests—Erdogan has faced unrest before, and he has lived to tell the tale. Erdogan has a mountain to climb domestically, but if he is able to surmount Turkey’s stagnating economy, deflating currency, and disillusioned left, then he could continue to make strides in reuniting the Ottoman Empire.