Turkey Reaps The Whirlwind

An internal crisis or determined by external events?

• Is Türkiye's crisis internal or external, perennial or existential...

• Driven by internal economic problems or outside interference?

• Does it stabilise the Mediterranean or drive disruption?

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(1,900 words or about 10 minutes of your company)

Mar 29, 2025

A whirling dervish in gas mask in Besiktas, Istanbul.

The classic imagery of Color Revolution ™ attention grabbing agitprop with photogenic models... designed to win your support emotionally, while distracting you from those behind the protests.

Always look at the pictures. Not only because they’re worth a thousand words but that’s also your clue when someone is trying to bypass your rational mind.

Sometimes the same images crop up: the young woman fixing her make up in the reflection of a police shield, for example. The couple celebrating their wedding in the middle of a riot.

What are Turkey's interests — or Türkiye as president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants it to be called. What are those of its partners and rivals?

The West-NATO bunch don't much like president Erdogan. They snubbed his inauguration ceremony in 2018. Some think NATO would like to return to the days when Turkey's military called the shots and its leaders were Western aligned.

Erdogan has purged the military; his Justice and Development Party (AKP) has Islamicised Turkey, or in their view taken it back to its roots, wooing the Turkic region.

Partly this is a counter reaction to another snub, the reluctance of the European Union to admit Turkey, which back in 1950 had become the 13th member of the continent's senior body, the Council of Europe. Accession talks came to a halt after 2017 constitutional referendum in which Turkey abolished the office of prime minister and instituted a presidential system.

It is probably going too far to say he wants to rebuild the Ottoman empire but he wants Turkey to have comparable influence. It is this independence of action that lead Western politicians to wonder if Turkey can stay within NATO.

Erdogan walks a fine line with Russia, does not cooperate with Western sanctions on Iran, and intervenes in Libya, Syria, Somalia and Sudan.

As the overthrow of president Bashar al Assad in Syria showed, he pursues Turkey's security interests against the Kurds, and territorial interests along the border.

Turkey on the other hand does Europe a service. Since the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in 2011, who called Libya the cork in the bottle of migration, Turkey is the main bottleneck.

It is home to 3 million Syrians, including the extremists who just overthrew Assad, many of them trained and financed by the West.

Whether the current unrest in Turkey is an attempt at internal destabilisation and whether it comes from inside or out is unclear.

Again, consider the imagery and the timing. As for the arrest of mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoglu, it was not just him.

Turkish Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya has said that 323 individuals were arrested as part of an ongoing investigation into the staff of Istanbul metropolitan municipality.

Domestic context

Erdogan's AKP party was created from an alliance of smaller Islamist parties.

He has tried to expand his influence in society and culture. In 2021 he appointed a rector to an Istanbul university. Students poured into the streets in protest: rectors are by tradition elected; the last time they had been appointed was after the coup of 1980.

The origins of the 2016 coup are still disputed but Erdogan used it to purge the military and civil institutions, dismissing more than 150,000 individuals.

Erdogan's belief that inflation is caused by high interest rates has led to a collapse of the currency. [1]

As in many Western countries the economic decline has led governments in an authoritarian direction, though Turkey is a global contender in jailing journalists.

A better vantage is had by looking at Turkey's actions abroad and how these impact the interests of others.

Is Turkey's crisis internal or existential, perennial or existential?

Turks ahoy!

One focus is Syria, whose government fell in December, but Libya provides another staging ground in Turkey's economic and strategic moves in the Mediterranean where there are territorial waters and energy resources in play. Turkey is active in the eastern Horn of Africa in Somalia. Likewise Turkey is active in Sudan, where it builds on relationships going back to the Ottoman era.