The Western Condition - St Antony's College - University of Oxford

The Western Condition: Turkey, the US and the EU in the New Middle East
“Mubarak, we are human beings. We are not immortal. We will die one day, and
we will be questioned for the things that we left behind. The important thing is
to leave behind sweet memories. We are for our people. When we die the imam
will not pray for the prime minister or for the president, but he will pray for a
human being. It is up to you to deserve good prayers or curses. You should listen
to the demands of the people and be conscious of the people and their rightful
demands.”
On 1 February 2011, as he urged Hosni Mubarak to heed the message of the tens of thousands
of Egyptians demonstrating in Tahrir Square against his three-decade rule, Turkey’s Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan must have been equally conscious of his own mortality and of
the legacy that he would leave behind at the end of his time. He may have also felt, watching one
Arab strongman fall after another, that he was destined for an even greater legacy than the one
he had already secured in Turkey, the country which his government has profoundly and
permanently changed in less than a decade. As the sun started to settle on the troubled era of
secular dictatorships in the Middle East, he would be the one to inspire and lead Muslims from
Myanmar to Morocco into a brighter dawn, steered by divine guidance and supported by the
people. This mission must have seemed even more inevitable in the June of that year, when his
party secured its third consecutive general election victory in Turkey, which he dedicated to
Sarajevo, Beirut, Damascus and Jerusalem as well as Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara and Diyarbakir.
Time is a scarce commodity, especially for those who strive to change the world and see the fruit
of their labour. For Turkey’s ambitious prime minister, every bureaucratic hurdle, every act of
resistance by a political opponent, every criticism by an old comrade and every day that a secular
Arab dictator stubbornly refuses to relinquish his throne is another frustrating delay on the path
to realising his vision before his time comes to an end. He therefore feels less reluctant to put
the mighty state apparatus at his disposal into use to clear the path before him, to silence the
critics, to crush his enemies and to speed on with building the powerful new Turkey and creating
the ideal society that will sustain his legacy. He knows, however, that his task would become
easier with a new constitution and a powerful presidency, which would be for him to take.
History is full of ambitious men who in their pursuit of grand visions unleash both exceptionally
creative and highly destructive forces at the same time. In many ways, one finds it hard to resist
comparing the powerful Turkish premier who will go down in history as the man who undid
Turkey’s Kemalist republic with the charismatic military officer who had established that
republic in the first place. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s legacy will continue to be debated in the
years to come. But one thing we can confidently assert is that the Kemalist project of using the
state to forge a homogenous society in the westernised, secular and fiercely nationalistic image of
its charismatic leader has failed. Unable to fully mould pious Muslims and Kurds into their
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