The Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, appeared at an hour-long on-the-record event at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York yesterday afternoon. The complete – if not entirely coherent – transcript of the English-language simultaneous translation can be found at "A Conversation With Recep Tayyip Erdoğan." I attended the meeting along with many other members (so many attended that an overflow room was needed) and I offer some responses and reflections about him:
 Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the Council on Foreign Relations. |
Also, the Council rarely permits teleprompters but Erdoğan relied on one, although it's unclear why it was necessary, given that he spoke in Turkish and gave his standard attack-dog speech berating many of Turkey's neighbors and going after such current favorite targets as Fethullah Gülen, the Moody's and Fitch credit-rating agencies, and the New York Times.
A protracted "I'm not an antisemite" defense was the only content specifically designed for a New York audience: "I am very sad to see that my country, myself, and my colleagues, sometimes, are labeled as being antisemitic." As he spoke about being labeled an antisemite, I admit to taking advantage of sitting directly in front of Erdoğan, just behind his three rows of dark-suited young men, vigorously nodding my head in assent, thinking all the while that I was glad to be in New York and not Istanbul.
Perhaps most amusing was the argument that all was well when the Ottoman Empire ruled and things fell apart after its demise in 1923. "The Ottoman State had a very successful administration system, and for centuries, these areas of crisis today had maintained their existence without problems. The Palestinian issue, the problems in Iraq and Syria, Crimea, Balkans, are all issues that came about after the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire."
The question period, as usual, held special interest because it is the only part of the meeting that is unscripted. The moderator, Fareed Zakaria, pressed Erdoğan on the quid pro quo for the release by ISIS of the 49 Mosul hostages; Erdoğan all but explicitly admitted that his government had exchanged prisoners for the hostages. Peter Galbraith asked about the possibility of Turkish recognition of an independent Iraqi Kurdistan, to which Erdoğan replied no, that he opposes any division of Iraq. On behalf of the International Press Institute and the Committee to Protect Journalists, Harold Evans of Reuters requested a meeting with Erdoğan to discuss the treatment of journalists in Turkey, to which Erdoğan gave his immediate assent. Margaret Warner of PBS asked about Turkish efforts to stop the flow of foreign jihadis going into Syria and Iraq, to which Erdoğan piously replied that the government is doing all it can, even professing to be insulted when Warner pressed him about Turkey's porous border with Syria.
I then asked my own question: "Your government as prime minister pursued a policy of 'zero problems with neighbors'. Now that that has failed, do you have a new policy towards the region?" My intent was to provoke the speaker by asserting the failure of this policy. Erdoğan replied that the "zero problems policy is still ongoing" and then insisted that the failures were those of the neighbors, rather than of Turkey, mentioning Iraq, Syria, and Egypt in this context. Especially noteworthy was the withering disdain he expressed for President Sisi of Egypt, to whom he referred as "a soldier in [Morsi's] cabinet [who] organized a coup."
Summing up, experiencing Erdoğan in person confirmed my sense of him as an ambitious and aggressive populist whose electoral successes have gone to his head and spell trouble both for his country and the world. (September 23, 2014)
Other reports on the speech:
"Turkish President Hints That Prisoner Exchange Won Release of Hostages Held by ISIS": http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/23/world/europe/erdogan-hints-that-prisoner-exchange-won-release-of-hostages-held-by-isis.html?_r=0
"Turkish Leader Erdogan's Misstep in NYC": http://www.huffingtonpost.com/stephen-schlesinger/turkish-leader-erdogans-m_b_5865248.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
"Erdogan indicates IS prisoner swap, cites Shalit deal": http://www.timesofisrael.com/erdogan-indicates-is-prisoner-swap-cites-shalit-deal
"President Erdoğan Addresses CFR": http://www.tccb.gov.tr/news/397/91111/president-erdogan-addrebes-cfr.html
"Erdogan rebuffs anti-Semite claims but lashes Israel for 'massacre'": http://www.timesofisrael.com/erdogan-rebuffs-anti-semite-claims-but-lashes-israel-for-massacre/
Sep. 26, 2014 update: I wrote above in reference to my nodding in response to Erdoğan saying he's accused of being an antisemite, "I was glad to be in New York and not Istanbul." Well, maybe New York is not that much protection from the president's flunkies, toadies, and toughs: Today's Zaman, Gülen's newspaper, carries a story today about its reporter, as well as one from another newspaper, getting roughed up by those toughs while standing in a hotel lobby awaiting Erdoğan. The Zaman reporter, Ali H. Aslan, also tells his version of the incident. The high point comes when
a few low-level hotel staff arrived and asked me to leave the hotel. I asked why, and they told me the Turkish security team had issued this demand and I could be forced to leave because I was not a hotel guest. So I ordered a glass of lemonade to qualify as a customer.
Humor aside, Erdoğan's thuggery even extends to commercial property in the United States. Also of note: the key thug appears to be the president's nephew.
