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Erdogan’s wrath is damaging Turkey

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has backed away from his threat to expel the ambassadors of the US and 9 different Nato allies or key commerce companions. It will have sundered the fraying moorings Ankara nonetheless has with the west regardless of the erratic behaviour of the Turkish chief. The neo-sultan has come down from a brand new peak of wilful wrath.

This disaster erupted after the ten, led by the US, France and Germany, referred to as for the pressing launch of Osman Kavala, a philanthropist and civil society chief, held in solitary confinement for 4 years on wholly unproven however endlessly recycled fees. Their statement mentioned “persevering with delays in his trial, together with by merging totally different instances and creating new ones after a earlier acquittal, solid a shadow over respect for democracy [and] the rule of regulation”.

Erdogan mentioned the signatories wouldn’t launch “bandits, murderers and terrorists” in their very own nations. Then he publicly ordered his overseas minister to declare all 10 ambassadors persona non grata — the diplomatic formulation for expulsion.

Kavala, a quiet-spoken man who has change into a beacon of resistance, mentioned he couldn’t get a good trial and would now not attend courtroom (though his attorneys will) to take heed to the sub-Kafka charade of allegations towards him.

Erdogan declared victory over the US and Europeans, who re-endorsed their dedication to the Vienna Conference on diplomatic relations — which bars interference in a foreign country’s inner affairs.

This may occasionally properly persuade the already transformed that their hero has pressured nice powers to again down. At worst, many will see it as a score-draw. The signatories say their démarche was consistent with the Vienna Convention. These at all times against Erdogan, swelled by the exasperation of former supporters along with his mismanagement of the economic system, might be trying additional down the street.

Certain, this diplomatic ceasefire has momentarily halted the collapse of Turkey’s forex. However the lira was already heading speedily south earlier than this sound and fury accelerated it; and Erdogan retains dictating cuts within the rates of interest he believes trigger relatively than curb Turkey’s power inflation.

Nor will this pause or halt New York courts prosecuting state-owned Halkbank for busting sanctions towards Iran. It won’t persuade Washington to relent on proscribing jet-fighter gross sales to Ankara as a result of it has purchased Russian air defence techniques it sees as a cuckoo in the Nato nest.

Those that see all this as Erdogan marshalling his coalition of neo-Islamists and ultranationalists to distract from economic woes are solely partially proper. His national populism, as his ballot numbers sink, is tactical. However the president’s antipathy in the direction of Kavala is visceral.

Kavala has at all times been extra a cultural than a political activist, working to heal historic wounds with Turkey’s minorities, particularly Kurds and Armenians. The costs towards him, even Erdogan allies privately admit, are ludicrous.

Erdogan accuses Kavala of organising the spontaneous civic demonstrations of 2013 throughout Turkey as a dry run for the violent however abortive coup of mid-2016, blamed by the regime on their former allies, a secretive group led by the US-based Islamist imam Fethullah Gulen, which had cadres within the judiciary, military and safety providers.

Erdogan calls Kavala the “Purple Soros” or the “Soros leftover”, a reference to the billionaire philanthropist George Soros on whose Open Society basis Kavala was a board member. It was individuals like Kavala and his mates who first warned Erdogan towards the Gulenists.

When Kavala was acquitted final yr for lack of proof he was rearrested on the way out of jail on an much more baroque tissue of fees. It is a private persecution.

When Erdogan and his ruling party lost its majority in the June 2015 elections, the Peoples’ Democratic occasion (HDP), the primary overtly pro-Kurdish group to enter parliament however then a rainbow coalition of the left, got here third with greater than 6m votes and 80 seats. Their victory celebration was in Kavala’s Istanbul restaurant. Erdogan satisfied himself Kavala and Selahattin Demirtas, the HDP chief additionally in jail, have been attempting to dam his path to the Russia-style presidency he now has.

Erdogan has made Kavala a world concern simply as his home opposition is beginning to unite in the belief he might self-destruct. What the US and Europeans mentioned about Kavala and the absence of rule of regulation in an allied state can’t be unsaid. They are going to be measured by what they do, not what they are saying.

david.gardner@ft.com

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