Date posted: July 19, 2016

Michael Rubin

For the past three years, if a bird shat on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, he would blame Fethullah Gülen, a US-based cleric and former ally. What next transpired would be the only predictable thing about Turkish politics:

• State-run TRT would broadcast newscasts talking about the plot.

• Sabah, a paper confiscated by Erdogan and transferred to his son-in-law, would run editorials condemning Gülen and infiltration of flocks of birds.

• Hürriyet would question the plot, and so righteous Turks would vandalize its headquarters and beat up its editor.

• Egemin Bagış, the president’s confidant and peon, would insult Europeans, cite Islamic honor, while smugly mocking the Quran when he felt no one was listening. What he said really would have no relevance to the issue at hand, so both Turks and Western diplomats would shrug their shoulders and ask each other what Erdogan sees in him? Was it Bagış’s big hands?

• Many Turkish journalists would repeat the conspiracy, hoping that they would mysteriously find enough money in their bank account to buy a posh house on the Bosphorus.

• Yeni Şafak, meanwhile, might provide some comic relief by noting that the bird was sent from Israel and guided over the president’s head bytelekinesis.

• Erdogan, of course, would demand the judiciary prosecute those behind the “kuş pisligi darbe.”

The whole matter might sound ridiculous to anyone outside of Turkey, but Erdogan’s supporters follow him blindly.

Enter the current coup plot. Erdogan literally has blamed every obstacle, fanciful plot, and malfeasance upon the elderly cleric. He fingered him in last Friday’s attempted coup even before the smoke settled. Increasingly, it seems the Obama administration might actually take the Turkish president seriously.

We’ve been down this path before. After the Islamic Revolution, Jimmy Carter was desperate to repair US-Iran ties. Ayatollah Khomeini repeatedly brushed him off. Perhaps emissaries might offer some hope behind the scenes but then in rhetoric and state media, Khomeini’s regime would fan anti-Americanism and try to humiliate the hapless president.

When Carter’s outreach failed to sway Tehran, he offered more. Rather than defend the ailing shah who had stood by America during the Cold War, Carter sought not only to hasten the cancer-stricken Shah’s departure for Panama, but he also may have hinted to the Panamanians that the United States would not object should they return him to Iran. The gesture did not assuage Iran’s religious dictator, however. As Peter Rodman, a former aide to Henry Kissinger, noted, “The eagerness to prove goodwill to an intransigent opponent paradoxically makes a settlement less likely.”

It wasn’t just the matter of justice or one man, however.  A willingness to reverse course under pressure and betray allies may have convinced Soviet leaders who already saw Carter as weak that American reaction to an invasion of Afghanistan would be slight.

What’s going on isn’t about Gülen. It’s a power play. When someone is delusional—even if that person happens to be the leader of a NATO ally—the worst thing that someone can do is pander to the delusion.

Source: The American Enterprise Institute , July 19, 2016

Tags: Defamation of Hizmet | Fethullah Gulen | Military coups in Turkey | Turkey | USA |