The president's rhetoric

In a recent speech, speaking with the leaders of the AK party he founded, in his hometown of Rize (the context is particularly important and determines the tone of the conversation), Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan said, among other things, expressed thus: «Our exports were 36 billion dollars, but now we have reached 250. The situation will improve. Where was our import-export in the defense industry and where is it now? But dear brothers and sisters, do not let these successes deceive us. We must be very strong, so that this Israel is not able to do these things to Palestine. How we entered Karabakh, how we entered Libya, so we can do something similar to them [Israel]. There is no reason why we shouldn't be able to do this. We just have to be strong to be able to take these steps." Here emerges the quintessence of the President's rhetoric, already analyzed several times: decisive and reassuring at the same time, in a perfect paternalist style. What seems truly innovative is the attempt to set new horizons, first of all emotional, in a phase in which the leader's political parable has undoubtedly begun its decline.

As the great political animal that he is, Erdoğan wants to hand over to history the balance sheet of his political path, to be understood as a movement that is also a process of no return, inaugurated by the intuitions, sometimes brilliant, consolidated in the golden decade between 2000 and 2010.

He who has always had the charisma of Mustafa Kemal as his (unconfessed) model, has learned a lot from the failed attempt to replace him at the heart of Turkish history and now wishes to at least perpetuate his memory alongside that of the indisputable "Father of the Fatherland ”.

Evidently, wanting to push the political imagination of his followers, to set new goals before them, he touches their emotional chords by mentioning a “possible” military intervention in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Evoking this front, rather than referring to a concrete military option, allows him to implicitly highlight the indisputable economic and strategic success (well beyond the borders of the homeland, especially in the Caucasus and North Africa) achieved with the war industry and, in particular, with the production of Bayraktar drones. These merits alone are certainly not enough to stem the catastrophic economic situation that Turkey is going through, but the leader demonstrates that he does not ignore the unflattering data of the crisis, also by abstaining, despite the bellicose rhetoric, from economic sanctions on Israel, knowing full well which would further damage Turkey's economic well-being. This is why, on this front, it is better to be "multilateralist". It is no coincidence that, almost at the same time, Turkey presented its request to the International Court of Justice for intervention (after Nicaragua, Colombia, Libya, Mexico, Palestine and Spain) in the case against Israel on charges of genocide, brought by the South Africa.

Commenting on this initiative, the Turkish Foreign Minister declared that the international community must intervene to stop the genocide and exert the necessary pressure on Israel and its supporters. What may seem like a two-table game is actually a perfect illustration of the dynamics of international diplomacy. Also for this reason, it is difficult not to recognize that on a diplomatic-strategic level, Ankara is perfectly placed in the concert of international politics although, formally, very often kept on the margins. This is the hypocrisy of a policy with little vision and a lot of straw that, paradoxically, for more than twenty years, has strengthened the internal position of the astute Tayyip, well beyond his own successes.


Claudio Monge
NP August/September 2024