Turkey’s Trail of Terror and American Foreign Policy By Michael Rubin

The late Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh while visiting the ship Mavi Marmara in Istanbul on January 2, 2012.

ME Forum : The Pragmatism That Western Officials Ascribed to Erdoğan Was Always a Ruse That Erdoğan Embraced to Allay Concerns While He Consolidated Power​. A segment of the multi-author memo "Hamas and Turkey: A Partnership in Terror."

In 1979, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini led the Islamic Revolution that swept away Iran’s shah and replaced the Iranian monarchy with a clerical rule. Overnight, Iran transformed from a pillar of American partnership in the region to an adversary and terror sponsor. The change was undeniable, even to Iran’s most ardent supporters.

Prior to his ascent to power, Khomeini denied any ambition to rule Iran. He spoke of bringing democracy and renounced interest in ruling Iran. “I don’t want to have the power of government in my hand; I am not interested in personal power,” he told one gullible journalist.¹⁰²

There is an irony today that while policymakers recognized the obvious regarding Iran’s transformation, too many remain in denial about Turkey’s equally momentous shift.

The pragmatism that Western officials ascribed to Recep Tayyip Erdogan was always a ruse that Erdogan embraced to allay concerns while he consolidated power. It worked. And not just with the Obama administration. Daniel Fried, George W. Bush’s assistant secretary of state for European affairs, described Erdogan’s AKP Party as “a kind of Muslim version of a Christian Democratic party,” while Bush’s secretary of state, Colin Powell, praised Turkey as a “Muslim democracy.”¹⁰³

Erdogan played to Western naivete as he consolidated control. The Turkish leader’s authoritarian tendencies were on full display after the March 2025 arrest of Turkish opposition figure Ekrem Imamoglu on spurious charges. Erdogan’s subsequent crackdown on protestors only exacerbated Western concerns that Turkey’s window to join the club of liberal democracies has all but closed.

In hindsight, Ankara’s European Union accession process had less to do with a desire to join Europe than with serving as a mechanism to consolidate Erdoğan’s autocracy. Indeed, Erdogan was only too happy to accede to European demands that he unravel any internal military role in Turkish society. In theory, this was good for democracy given the military’s role in toppling previous regimes.

In 1960 and 1980, the Turkish Army interceded to end governments that violated the constitution or failed to maintain law and order. In 1971 and 1997, the threat of intervention was enough to force governments to resign. But the European Union unraveled the military’s role to protect the constitution before establishing a check on Erdogan’s power. In retrospect, this may have been the final nail in the coffin for Turkey’s democracy.

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