How Turkey’s Coup Attempt Spiraled Into A Dangerous Descent Towards Dictatorship
January 25, 2017
‘What [Turkish President Erdogan] wants is a presidential system where he controls everything and everyone. I mean, you could say that he’s controlling everything and everyone right now — he is, basically,’ Duke University Prof. Bahar Leventoglu tells Michael Nevradakis.
ATHENS — In the past year, Turkey has increasingly become a battleground of divergent, conflicting, and often contradictory, geopolitical interests. Turkey is heavily embroiled in the ongoing war in Syria and a decades-long conflict with its Kurdish majority which has recently been rekindled, while facing instability and terror at home, with a series of terrorist attacks and the July 15 coup attempt against the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
MintPress News had the opportunity to speak with Bahar Leventoglu, associate professor of political science at Duke University, about these developments and conditions on the ground in Turkey today. In this interview, which originally aired on Dialogos Radio in November, Leventoglu argues that Erdogan’s already strong grasp on power in Turkey was further bolstered following the coup, with the country essentially operating as an elected dictatorship. She analyzes developments in Turkish politics, Turkey’s role in Syria and its rapprochement with Russia and Israel, and the Turkish government’s harsh crackdowns against the Peoples’ Democratic Party, the Kurdish opposition political party known as HDP, and against opposition media outlets.
MintPress News (MPN): Has Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan emerged stronger as a result of the coup attempt?
Bahar Leventoglu (BL): The failed coup attempt has given Erdogan a unique opportunity to be even stronger than he used to be before the coup. Turkey is not a stranger to coups, we had a coup in 1960, and then in 1970 and 1980, then we had some half-coups, “postmodern” coups where, for example, the military posted something on its website intervening with the government’s business, etc. We’ve had a lot of experience with the military intervening with civilian government, but never did the military bomb the parliament, they never hunted to kill the president. So it was a really serious attempt to take over the democratically elected government. Even though the government is popular for half the population and is really, really not popular for the other half of the population. The whole country was shocked about what happened, and it really gave a unique opportunity to Erdogan to be even stronger than he used to be.
