Recep Tayyip Erdoğan

Turkey has been a proud and indispensable NATO ally for 70 years. Our country joined the alliance in 1952, having sent troops to Korea in defence of democracy and freedom. During the cold war and in its aftermath, Turkey has been a stabilising power and a force for good in the Middle East, the Caucasus and the Black Sea regions. Turkish troops, too, have deployed to many parts of the world, from Kosovo to Afghanistan, as part of NATO missions.

2022

The new state of affairs, which emerged out of the war in Ukraine, proves that Turkey’s expectations and calls were accurate. Certain member states, which suddenly appreciated Turkey’s geopolitical positioning as that conflict caused widespread disruption, saw that our nation had been right to take certain steps in the past. Turkey was right to ask NATO members to prepare for coming geopolitical challenges and, in spite of those who argued that NATO was irrelevant, Turkey was absolutely right to state that the organisation would be increasingly important.

2022

Likewise, we made legitimate and necessary demands upon NATO, as multiple civil wars broke out in Turkey’s neighbourhood, to ensure the security of our borders and airspace as well as human security, as the largest refugee wave since World War II had emerged in the region. Largely abandoned, our country dealt with all those crises by itself and paid a high price during that effort. Ironically, any steps taken under the NATO umbrella would have prepared the alliance for future conflicts and crises at its borders.

2022

The threats against international peace and security changed in recent years and that led many to believe that NATO was an “obsolete” organisation that ceased to serve its purpose. Emmanuel Macron even said in 2019 that the alliance was experiencing “brain death”. The same folks questioned Turkey’s role within NATO. That blend of extraordinary wishful thinking and extreme strategic myopia cost the alliance many years.

2022

Nonetheless, Turkey refused to believe that the shortsighted and occasionally reckless attitudes of certain member states reflected the position of NATO as a whole. Quite the contrary, we stressed NATO’s importance and called on member states to take necessary steps, that included updating NATO’s missions to cover emerging threats and making the organisation more relevant for new geopolitical and global challenges. That call was in line with our nation’s response to the international system’s deepening instability, too.

2022

Furthermore, Turkey stresses that all forms of arms embargoes—such as the one Sweden has imposed on my country—are incompatible with the spirit of military partnership under the NATO umbrella. Such restrictions not only undermine our national security but also damage NATO’s own identity. Sweden’s and Finland’s uncompromising insistence on joining the alliance has added an unnecessary item to NATO’s agenda.

2022

In this sense, Turkey argued that NATO—like all other international organisations—had to implement certain reforms to cope with emerging security threats. Specifically on terrorism, the lack of collective action, in spite of direct attacks against many member states, undermined security co-operation and fuelled deep distrust among the citizens of NATO countries about the organisation. Turkey highlighted that trend at all NATO summits and maintained that international co-operation was vital for transforming the fight against terrorism. We wanted NATO to co-operate better on intelligence and military issues when dealing with terror organisations, not only to prevent terrorist attacks but also to curb terrorist financing and recruitment within NATO borders. We remain committed to that position.

2022

Unfortunately, it is not enough to be right in the current world order; you need to be mighty as well. The criticism Erdoğan has been directing to the existing world order for years by stating that the world is bigger than five has actualized. Erdoğan has thus revealed de facto that justice cannot be expected from the current world order. You do not demand rights from this world order, you take it.

Yasin Aktay Baku sends 'loud and clear' message to whole world after Karabakh war (13 December 2020), 2020

There was a strange aftertaste to many of the calls for grand social reform in 2020. As the coronavirus crisis overtook us, the left wing on both sides of the Atlantic, at least that part that had been fired up Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, was going down to defeat. The promise of a radicalized and reenergized left, organized around the idea of the Green New Deal, seemed to dissipate amidst the pandemic. It fell to governments mainly of the center and the right to meet the crisis. They were a strange assortment. Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil and Donald Trump in the United States experimented with denial. For them climate skepticism and virus skepticism went hand in hand. In Mexico, the notionally left-wing government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador also pursued a maverick path, refusing to take drastic action. Nationalist strongmen like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, Narendra Modi in India, Vladimir Putin in Russia, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Turkey did not deny the virus, but relied on their patriotic appeal and bullying tactics to see them through. It was the managerial centrist types who were under most pressure. Figures like Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in the United States, or Sebastián Piñera in Chile, or Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa, Emmanuel Macron, Angela Merkel, Ursula von der Leyen, and their ilk in Europe. They accepted the science. Denial was not an option. They were desperate to demonstrate that they were better than the 'populists.' To meet the crisis, very middle-of-the-road politicians ended up doing very radical things. Most of it was improvisation and compromise, but insofar as they managed to put a programmatic gloss on their responses—whether in the form of the EU's Next Generation program or Biden's Build Back Better program in 2020—it came from the repertoire of green modernization, sustainable development, and the Green New Deal.

Adam Tooze, Shutdown: How Covid Shook the World Economy (2021), 2020

Every instigator or madman, who will dare to raise his hand against the government, let him be sure that the government will chop it off.

Speech delivered after the military coup, 2016, 2016

There was a young fellow from Ankara Who was a terrific wankerer Till he sowed his wild oats With the help of a goat But he didn’t even stop to thankera.

Boris Johnson wins The Spectator’s President Erdogan Offensive Poetry competition, 18 May 2016., 2016

Erdogan once said that democracy for him is a bus ride. “Once I get to my stop, I’m getting off."

King Abdullah II of Jordan, 2013

...it's not possible for a Muslim to commit genocide

November 2009 "Sudanese President Bashir's visit to Turkey in limbo", Hurriyet Daily News (November 8, 2009), 2009

There is but one alternative for Turkey. Either African barbarism, under Arabian direction, will burst around its head like an avalanche, or else it must re-establish strong leadership, thus putting twenty million heroes between itself and Africa and gaining a breathing spell for the accomplishment of its social regeneration.

As said during the EU-Turkey Summit

Turkey’s president is blackmailing the United States by threatening to curb his country’s support for the international coalition against the Islamic State. His goal: to ensure my extradition, despite a lack of credible evidence and virtually no prospect for a fair trial. The temptation to give Mr. Erdogan whatever he wants is understandable. But the United States must resist it.