Talking Turkey Transcript

Disclaimer: This transcript is an edited version version of a transcript created using AI technology and may not reflect 100% accuracy.

The video can be found here.

Sarah: First, I was very disappointed to hear what President Trump had to say about Erdogan and Turkey. We’ll start. Good afternoon and welcome to yet another topical and timely EMET webinar. This past Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with President Donald Trump for the second time during this Trump administration. Much to our dismay, president Trump seems to have more than a healthy dose of admiration for the Turkish Premier Recep Tayyip Erdogan. He referred to the Nation of Turkey on Monday as, “I have a very good relationship with Turkey and with their leader, and I think we’ll be able to work it out. So, I hope that’s not going to be a problem. I don’t think it’ll be a problem.” Then the President added in regards to Erdogan, “I happen to like him and he likes me, and we’ve never had a problem.”

How dangerous is this for the nation of Israel that an Erdogan allied person such as Ahmed al-Sharaa or formerly Mohammad al-Jolani, the president of Syria, seems to be under the increasing influence of Erdogan of Turkey. Turkey, who’s a member of NATO, has already purchased the S-400 Russian Missile Defense System, and now it wants to purchase RF35s. Should we allow this to happen? Here to answer these questions and many, many more is the wonderful FDD Senior fellow Sinan Ciddi. Sinan is a frequent guest on I24 News. He is also an associate professor of National Security Studies at the Marine Corps University. Prior to joining the Marine Corps University, Sinan was the executive director of the Institute of Turkish Studies at Georgetown University. He continues to serve as an adjunct associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service.

Sinan is also the author of Communalism in Turkish politics, the Republican People’s Party, secularism, and Nationalism, a book which clearly explains the electoral weakness of Turkey’s main opposition Republican people’s Party. He obtained his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies of the University of London in 2007 in the field of political science. First of all, Sinan, since Israel seems to be so dependent upon the US for much of their weaponry and certainly further their support against the Houthis, along with much of their military hardware to fight against Hamas and Hezbollah and possibly for support against Iran, how dangerous is it for Israel to try to defeat the Turkish influence within Syria, particularly since President Trump possesses such deep admiration for Recep Tayyip Erdogan?

Sinan Ciddi: Well, yeah, that’s a tough question. There are ample reasons, obviously, why Israel is worried about turkey’s intentions inside of Syria. What does it represent? But also, it’s obviously worried about what Erdogan’s intentions are towards Israel through its presence inside of Syria. I don’t think there’s an easy way to answer how worried they should be, but they have ample course to be, obviously since October 7, the Israeli state has faced or is continuing to face multiple vectors of threats. But it also obviously does not welcome escalatory language or some may see it as Erdogan’s hyperbole. But nevertheless, all these threats and all the rhetoric on the part of Turkey admonishing Israel are taken very, very seriously. But those are now also obviously backed by actions.

What we have seen is not only Turkish military presence inside of Syria but we’ve also seen and know quite for sure now that Erdogan is very much interested in being the main sponsor, the main backer of the Ahmed al-Sharaa led government, what I typically refer to as Al-Qaeda government of Syria. We see how much influence Erdogan has on him much to the chagrin of other regional states such as the Saudis, the Emiratis. This is mainly for one reason I assume, or I would argue, Erdogan and Turkey essentially pay the salaries of the Syrian national Army and that shouldn’t be mistaken with an actual regular army that belongs to a state. It’s just called the Syrian National Army. It’s a hodgepodge of about 20 to 22 militia groups. So many militia groups, jihadist, extremist militia groups, many of them have ties to Al-Qaeda. We’re assuming that a lot of these individuals, member of these militias all have ties to former ISIS, and Turkey has basically bankrolled them and essentially provided them weapons training and pays their salaries to this day. They were mobilized to defeat the Assad regime. So, Ahmed al-Sharaa relies or has to rely on them to maintain order inside of Syria. Without their support and without his central formerly HTS fighters it is very hard for this new administration inside of Syria to hold peace and not keep order. That’s why Erdogan has a lot of sway on Sharaa, I assume.

We’re going to see Sharaa visit Turkey next week as well as the United Arab Emirates. Presumably Turkey wants to deepen its relationship with the government of Syria. This is obviously concerning to Israel in terms of what are they seeking to do? One of the things I think [inaudible] seen this play out in the last few weeks is Turkey is seeking to reconstruct and build former Syrian air bases and military bases and staff them with the Turkish military. One of them is actually very close to in terms of airspace, close to Israel, the T4 airbase, which was recently bombed by the Israeli military just to make its runways, et cetera inoperable.

But that was seen as a warning shot across the bow to Turkey saying, I don’t want your fighter planes, your military presence installed here, because that would be in an airspace that is very conflictual. There are no de-escalation measures in the airspace between Israel and Turkey should Turkey use air bases inside of Syria and come close to or patrol the airspaces that Israel currently does. So how worried should Israel be about Turkish actions? I would say considerably, because Erdogan has no explicit statement saying, this is why we’re militarily present in Syria, because Turkey has no history of occupying another country, a territorial expansion with the one exception of Syria, which it’s very proud of having engaged in regime change towards.

Sarah: Turkey wants to see the rise of the Ottoman Empire as it once was before Sykes-Picot?

Sinan: Well, this has long been a pet project of Erdogan mostly in terms of rhetoric. It breaks with a long-established tradition of Turkey being a revision estate interested in expanding its territory. The Republic is just over 100 years old. It’s 101 this year, but it was established on the grounds and Turkish founding treaty and basically the title to its territory was based on the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923, which the United States was an observer, but mostly the former imperial world basically exceeded to the establishment of the Republic of Turkey to succeed the Ottoman Empire. To get that the Kemal or Mustafa Kemal Atatürk renounced all claims to former Ottoman territories safe for what we now know as the modern republic of Turkey, because he said that was the minimum what they would be willing to accept, but also the maximum of what they would be willing to accept.

They give up all claims of territory to the former Middle East, north Africa, the Greek islands that we know them today. That was the conciliatory as well as the pragmatic, but also the realistic way that esoteric recognized the establishment of Turkey as a nation state and not a former empire. With Erdogan unfortunately, his political movements inside of Turkey, the Islamist movement, for years they’ve essentially peddled these narratives suggesting that Turkey was cheated out of its former realms. We saw his former foreign minister Ahmet Davutoglu being the brainchild of this. He has a terrible book called Strategic Depth, which he basically is the sounding cry for neo-Ottomanism saying that Turkey should use its historical influence and position within the Middle East to lead the Muslim world. We’ve never really seen that come into fruition, except now obviously with Turkey’s direct participation in the overthrow of the Assad regime and subsequent bid to be the new regime’s strongest background, use Syria as a means to expand its influence, possibly its territory, but at least wield the ideological weapon around the area, suggesting that everything has to go through them. I think it’s precarious, but they’re certainly interested in it. Yes.

Sarah: Do you believe that there might be within Syria any renewed conflict between Turkish forces, Iranian forces, Alawites, Russians, Kurds, you name it?

Sinan: Yeah. This is one of the big conundrums of Syria in terms of will there be future conflicts? Will the peace last? Will this new administration, even though skeptics like me call it the Al-Qaeda regime inside of Syria, will it be able to build an inclusive and stable Syria for all Syrians such that we don’t go back to the prolonged civil war that we saw that was so destructive and so dangerous and so catastrophic? I would say the odds are against it not because I’m a pessimist, but I’m just looking at this and thinking, well, how is this possible? What we’re asking this new administration inside of Syria to do is to establish basically a modern administrative state along the lines of what Max Weber or you and I what we recognize as state entity in the daily lives that we live, whether it’s the United States or any other average European country that we’re from or we live in. Well, expecting that of the Sharaa government, which what he said, is composed of former Jihadists who basically had an interest in destroying not just the Assad state, but establishing a caliphate in the region. They’re not interested in building a modern state that’s inclusive.

It wasn’t too long ago when al-Sharaa was cutting off heads when he was a prominent leader of the al-Nusra movement inside of Syria, had ties to the Islamic State. His so-called Justice Minister had executed a woman in broad daylight in 2016 because she was accused of being an adulterer. When quizzed about it recently, he didn’t even deny it. He just said, well, that was what the law required it to do of me at the time. So just taking a look at how all these people are ideologically programmed, I’m just not sure how an inclusive state that’s built on representative and legitimacy-based grounds that you and I would understand is going to survive.

So, on the opposite side of that, we have the other Alawite minorities inside of the country. We have a significant Kurdish presence there, which really, at this point is not interested in integration or let’s see how these things work, even though they’ve signed deals with the central government and have negotiations with them. I think that’s just buying time because If you talk to them, which I have they have no illusions about the prospect of this country is essentially not going to remain stable for that long. They’re interested in being autonomous at the very least, if not totally separate from whatever transpires there. We see Turkish ambitions inside of there vis-a-vis Israel, but also there are competing Arab powers who would like to see a different Syria, like the Saudis and the Emiratis, I believe would have a vision for the country that is free from Sunni Jihadists or Salafist elements. That’s something that they have been investing in heavily for the last 30, 40 years across the region. I don’t think they’re too excited either. Obviously, there’s Israel in terms of like, well, I don’t want a jihadist state or my northern front. That’s not what would work for me. So, I think the prospect of conflict exists. It’s hard to predict where that will spring from, but let’s just say there are too many opposing forces there that I think present significant challenges to a prolonged and stable Syrian state.

Sarah: Right. Speaking of prolonged challenges within Turkey on the domestic front, on March 23rd, the Turkish Premier arrested his major opposition contender Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul. Thousands of people advocated or demonstrated to support Imamoglu and they were also arrested. Can you tell me how likely is there that there might possibly be a coup within Turkey against Erdogan?

Sinan: It’s hard to say, but I would say the prospects of Erdogan being able to govern unquestionably and without any challenge from the realm of just the population, which has been pretty dormant and pretty quelled up until this now is less and less and less. Erdogan is facing a major public legitimacy problem which he has not encountered before to this extent, certainly has not since 2013 when the last big public protest broke up, which he was able to essentially subdue. But at that time, Turkey was essentially economically very prosperous and growing, and actually in a position to challenge public defiance, mainly because there was a large swath of Turkey’s population satisfied with Erdogan and they saw the public protests that erupted back in 2013 as possibly just overstated by opposition groups.

But now we’ve had millions of people rising up in like two thirds of Turkey cities, like 55 out of 80 provinces. We’ve seen mass public protests. They’ve been very hard to subdue and they’re cutting across all age groups, demographics, whether they’re people who are devout, people who are secular people, whether they’re Kurdish, Turkish, you name it. People have had enough. Erdogan is basically just holding onto power by non-legitimate means. We say that because the arrest of Istanbul’s mayor is highly significant, simply because that was the one person who held a primary or who was about to hold a primary election and the anointed the main opposition party’s candidate to run for president against Erdogan. What did Erdogan do? Erdogan essentially put him in prison. The charges are so ridiculous, just unsubstantiated, just ridiculous notions of corruption, which if you saw this man, if you know his reputation, and he’s the antithesis of that.

He is a credible and essentially a dangerous person basically to Erdogan, because if there was an election held tomorrow, he would likely decisively defeat Erdogan. So, we’ve never seen this in the history of Turkey, a sitting government preemptively jailing Russia style a viable political opposition. [Inaudible] even farce to say, even when Turkey had military coups that took governments away from civilians, when they handed power back to civilians, we never saw people prevented from running for office. Even the military, I’m trying to say in Turkey, has never interfered with people’s choices in terms of who is going to vie for national office to lead the country. Erdogan doesn’t seem to care mainly because he’s realized that if he didn’t jail him, then all bets were off, and he was just going to become more and more popular as he built momentum.

Erdogan is so unpopular because look, he has ruined the country’s economy. If you look at the rate of inflation in Turkey, it’s about 75, 80% a year. People’s incomes have not risen even by a fraction of that. The middle class has been destroyed, the retiree class has been destroyed. They have no purchasing power. Their ability to pay rent, buy consumer goods, basic grocery shopping, buying meat. We’ve never seen this in Turkey’s history. So, people are thinking [crosstalk]

Sarah: Right, when are the elections supposed to be held and will Imamoglu’s name still be on the ballot?

Sinan: Good question. Erdogan doesn’t really have to hold presidential elections until 2028, but there was a speculation and rumor that he was going to essentially bring them forward and have a snap election. This is why the main opposition party basically thought, well, if that’s going to be the case, let’s just make sure that Imamoglu is anointed. The party basically was just about to open up its ballot box to its party members so that they could vote for whoever they wanted to be their presidential candidate. It’s because of that Erdogan took a very quick measure to get rid of him. But it’s had catastrophic consequences. Look, once you do something like this, this was the final straw for major investors in Turkey.

So, for example, Morgan Stanley, it was the first clearing house to essentially just exit the Turkish stock market, said, yeah, we’re done, because for us, it’s a fundamental rule of law issue. There is no rule of law at this point. Clearing houses, investment portfolios, these companies will just about stomach anything. They don’t really care about democratic governance or whatever. They’re not a real advocate of that, but what I’m saying is if they’ve taken the decision that they think there’s no possibility of good returns from these markets, it’s a gargantuan step. The Turkish Central bank has sold off close to $50 billions of dollars just to keep the national currency, the lira stable, I don’t even care. All he cares about is regime preservation at this point. So, he’s gone to great lengths to de-legitimize himself internationally, nationally, regionally. But if it keeps him in power, so be it.

Sarah: Hey, one of our very early day guests, Claire Lopez has asked can you talk about the relationship between Turkey’s AKP with the US CMO and its Muslim Brotherhood members?

Sinan: Yeah, that’s a good question. I actually do not have specific traceable linkages that I could provide her, unfortunately. We assume that they have organic ties. The AKP itself has been very sympathetic of the Muslim Brotherhood although in the last two years, since 2022 because Erdogan [inaudible] wants to rebuild his relationship with Egypt’s Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, one of the preconditions of that was essentially Turkey had to put a distance between itself, and this established Muslim brotherhoods organization inside of Turkey. So, what we saw was a lot of the brotherhood characters from the Morsi governments that was deposed in 2014, they were asked to politely leave, Erdogan shut down their TV station, et cetera, et cetera. I think he did this a lot with a light touch and politely, but historically, yes, Erdogan has been very supportive of the brotherhood not least of all, because of his outward support of Hamas. That was the most visual expression of that, and that still continues to this day.

As far as the AKP’s an actual connection, CMO in the United States and Brotherhood, that’s hard to put together. One of the things I could suggest if your listener want to look up, we just released a report, a memo through FDD. It’s on our website, it’s just called Turkey and Hamas Partners in Terror. It’s about a 16-page document that looks into all the various ways that Turkey’s entangled itself, but also entrenched its relationship with Hamas inside of Turkey. There are implications towards its relationships towards the United States and how it comports itself for the NATO country. But as far as I know, that’s the most detailed look at Turkey’s relationship with Hamas and it’s gotten a lot of traction. So, I would just point that way, just Turkey and Hamas Partners and Terror. It’s free to just download and look at.

Sarah: FDD does excellent, excellent work all the time. Yeah. Following Hamas’ surprise attack on Southern Israel on October 7th, Erdogan lauded Hamas as a liberation group and it also called them the [foreign words] waging a battle to protect its lands and people. Erdogan has certainly no love lost for Benjamin Netanyahu. He’s likened him to Adolf Hitler. Can you describe and delineate the relationship that Erdogan has to the Muslim Brotherhood as opposed to how, for example, Qatar has a relationship with the Muslim Brotherhood, or Gaza. It’s a different relationship, isn’t it?

Sinan: I think so, yeah. I think what we can say definitely is, for example, Qatar likes to underplay and package its relationship with, and its affinity towards the brotherhood in a way that’s, I’m not going to say palatable, but certainly ignorable by the United States and the Western Hemisphere, and they do that really cleverly. Because on the one hand, they will say, we don’t support terrorism, but also look at all the things that we do for international development and sports sponsorships, and we play host to American university campuses in Doha, and we’re all about rights and freedoms, but on the other hand, we’re a Muslim country and we have relationships with Hamas. But even then, they will say, look, you need that because we helped with the negotiation of the hostage releases that Hamas took.

So, Qatar packages it and makes it palatable in a way that makes it hard for US decision makers as well as European decision makers, not to just shut the door on Qatar. Whereas the Turkish perspective to this historically is if you look at Turkey’s justice and development party, Erdogan’s party, but also its parent company party, it sprouted from the welfare party, which exists in a different guise now. Or let’s just say Turkey’s relationship with political Islam as a political movement inside of Turkey and its relationship and affinity towards the Muslim Brotherhood. This is mostly from their perspective civilizational. I would say that the hardcore committed members of the Turkish public who espouse this affinity, you’d have to couch this. I would say you would not find more than 20% public support in Turkey for this outlook.

Most Turks in Turkey are dismayed and absolutely aghast at their country’s international image in terms of what Erdogan has done to it. Take for example, the death of Ismail Haniyeh, when Turkey ordered a National Day of Mourning and all of its embassies and missions around the world had their flags lowered to half-mast. We had people street interviewed in Istanbul and major cities across the country saying, what do you think about that? Overwhelmingly you saw people responding to it, saying, I don’t understand why we’re holding a National Day of Mourning when some two-bit terrorist was assassinated or killed or whatever. Why are we doing this? This is ridiculous. Just embarrassing to say the least.

Sarah: So, you know, of course, that Turkey is a member of NATO. What would happen if Turkey and Israel were to go to war, or if Israel were to launch an attack against the Turkish presence in Syria? You know the NATO motto one for all and all for one.

Sinan: Correct, yeah.

Sarah: [Inaudible]

Sinan: Yeah, that’s the scenario that nobody ever wants to think of in terms of what to do about that. But let’s just say a couple of things that might make people’s minds a little easier although you can’t take anything to the bank these days. One is obviously, I think if you look from Israel’s perspective, Israel’s not interested in a ministry confrontation with Turkey, it just isn’t. Not because it likes Erdogan, but it would be catastrophic and really, distracting is not a good word but just a devastating in all fronts because it would be the first military confrontation that the Israeli state would’ve to engage in with a mammoth of another military power unlike the Iranians, the Lebanese, Hezbollah. You’re looking at a state actor with major capabilities and that would be destructive, so nobody wants that.

I would also say the Turks don’t want that. As much as Erdogan’s hyperbolic rhetoric and just belligerent stance and its military presence inside of Syria. We saw his foreign minister basically say the other day, he went on TV, when interviewed and said, look he says, we are not interested in a confrontation with Israel, if the Shiraa government wants to essentially establish ties and relationship with Israel, that’s its right to do that. That’s none of our business. I think that’s the first inkling of behind the scenes, behind the rhetoric, behind the media-based belligerence that we see of Turkey coming to a little bit of reality.

On the other hand, I would say if you just look at the relationship status of countries, both in the Israeli side and Turkey side, one of the things that Turkey would have to calculate if it was interested in military escalation with the Israelis is it doesn’t really have a lot of countries in the region that really see its perspective on the region, on the world. Turkey has no Arab friends, let’s put it that way. The Saudis, the Emiratis, the Egyptians, you name power, they’re all suspicious or it’s not apprehensible what Erdogan stands for or how it seeks to essentially challenge them. That’s a problem. On the other hand, Israel has obviously very strong ties with the United States, but also its formal relationships with a number of our powers and it is seeking to foster deeper ties with those countries.

Also, I’m still of the opinion that the United States is basically treaty bound and obligated to essentially help out Israel if it faced an existential threat. Now, the NATO clause is interesting, but it’s not definitive. Article 5 does not compel the United States to act and save another NATO country if it’s aggressed. Anybody can look at the wording of Article 5 of NATO, it provides the United States the opportunity and the option of acting on behalf. That has to be considered. When the NATO treaty was signed in 1948, 1949, you have to remember the only reason that the US Senate was willing to ratify that treaty was it basically if Article 5 avoided compulsion for the United States to act in one for all motto, and Turkey knows this. So direct aggression, a part of Turkey or a part of Israel, I don’t think whether it’s this administration or the previous administration that I don’t think Turkey has a strong US partner that would come to its aid, I would say it’s quite the opposite.

Even the president’s recent rhetoric that we saw in the Oval Office the other day towards Turkey saying [inaudible], I still think actions speak louder in words. I think that’s a Trump tactic to essentially say, look Erdogan, there are things that could happen if you do one thing. There are things that you could happen if you do another thing. What that means is like, I think Trump is actually purposefully vague and ambiguous when it comes to talking to Turkey because he likes to keep cards in his own hands. But I don’t think strong belligerent response against Turkish’s actions would land Erdogan any favors.

Sarah: Right. So, you described the devaluation of the Turkish lira and since Erdogan can’t rely on the Turkish economy to finance all of his military operations, where do you think his money is coming from? Is it coming from Qatar?

Sinan: Well, Turkey’s been doing economic jingoism and lifeline tactics for some time now. So up until these protests started, there was a modicum amount of stabilization throughout the country, which allowed Turkey to attract inbound investment although these were short term portfolios, hot money. The other ways we started seeing investment come in was actual better portfolios coming in because there has been some reform initiative to stabilize government spending and cut those and basically put an austerity program without calling it an IMF program. But there was a lighter version of that. That resulted in, I should say the stabilization of the currency market, the lira stabilized, et cetera, et cetera. But then with these protests we saw, the imprisonment of Imamoglu which basically just threw out the baby with the bath water. It’s just calamitous.

Once the dust settles, even if it does settle, there’s only so much foreign reserves, so you can sell off the prop up or central bank reserves it can sell until it becomes depleted just to keep the lira stable against the US dollar. On the other hand, Qatar is one source that the way they do that is through currency swaps. It’s an instrument which allows the Turkish lira swap for Qatari currency, et cetera, et cetera, which hopes in the short term, the Turkey Central Bank receive inbound amounts of money. That’s one aspect. They’ve done that with the Qataris, the Saudis, they’ve also $5 billion here, $10 billion there of inbound investment towards the Arab states, meaning for land sales or asset sales or infrastructure sales, which this sounds like a lot of money, but it really isn’t. It’s just drips and drabs. It doesn’t really help Turkey economically.

The other way it was doing it was because based on a depreciation, Turkey was increasing its exports. But even that’s problematic because yes, Turkey is exporting a lot, even though its currency is depreciated, but when you’re making things, a lot of the components are imported and those are imported based on hard currencies like Euro or the dollar. So again, I think Turkey faces a big drought in terms of inbound investment, the longer add on keeps up these antics. It’s not good for him in any shape or form in terms of what he does with this.

Sarah: Was it 2013, 2014? My memory is getting a little rusty, when Erdogan was blaming the military for the coup. Remember? I’m wondering about the military. I’m wondering why they’re not attempting a coup now. Can the military take things over at this point?

Sinan: We’ve never been able to predict at which point in time that the Turkish military would become active to actually challenge any political leader. They’ve always been a surprise in Turkey’s long history with military activism in the realm of politics. In 2016 when they attempted the coup, it just seemed like a shambolic rollout, which is unaccustomed Turkish coup making historically, when they’ve actually put on quite a robust presence and well planned and well executed. This is not me wishing for this, I think coup making in Turkey just cost Turkey immense amounts of capital in its democratic development. I think it’s been very catastrophic over the long term. The impact of coup making in any country is devastating to a country’s democratic future.

The last successful coup that Turkey carried out was in 1980. The military ruled for four years. Arguably, the impact of that is 30 years downstream almost. It resulted in Erdogan’s rise as a political actor. We can definitely make that correlation in terms of one of the externalities of that last coup was to empower political Islam in Turkey as a protest movement against what the military engaged in. So following 2016 and a failed coup there, Erdogan is basically very much undercut and purged the military as much as he thinks he could have of all elements which he sees as a danger to him and his regime. They coached[?] tens and thousands of officers, they basically took over direct administration of the military’s doctrine and office development through basically closing down the military academies and establishing new ones, which essentially try to develop a royal officer to Erdogan.

But I still think he doesn’t trust what he has in hand. The reason I say that was because a couple of months ago, we had a graduation ceremony for this year’s crop of second lieutenants graduating from the new national defense academy that Erdogan created. When Turkish officers typically graduate from a service academy on the day of their graduation, it’s a big celebratory event. They get their commission papers, and they typically profess their faith to the country’s constitution and it’s eternal leader, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and his principles and the Constitution. So, it’s not a loyalty to any particular person, but to a set of ideals established under the republic. That’s all officers have recited the same chant, the same oath when they graduated the academy, basically since the 1920s. This time around Erdogan purged a crop of this year’s essential graduates up for no other reason, they boisterously chanted their oath, which was seen to be politically active.

What I’m saying is there are elements within the military that it’s not a homogeneous organization. I think there are very different opinions across the ranks and the officers in the leadership. We never know if the military’s become politically active. But they’re watching, obviously political and settlements. They’re seeing millions of protests that have taken place in the past since the beginning of March. I would also suspect not independent of the military, you could also probably start suspecting what does Erdogan’s cabinet make? His closest people, will they ever come to a position of walking up to Erdogan and saying, look, I don’t think your position’s tenable anymore.

We just don’t know how paranoid Erdogan is, because he puts less stock in public protest being able to remove him or force him out of power. But on the other hand, how much does he trust the military and his people inside of his government to have his back? This is typically a problem of authoritarian regimes like this, because they become paranoid thinking where am I going to face challenges and opposition? What could depose me? It’s not peculiar to Erdogan, it was peculiar to Assad, it was peculiar to Saddam Hussein, Hosni Mubarak. Name your favorite authoritarian or dictator or whatever. These are similar problems that they have.

One thing that always boggles my mind is with Erdogan, yes, you’ve been in power 22 years as an individual, but here’s the thing, what makes you think that you figured the secret source to eternal authoritarian governance? No one in your regime has succeeded. No one. Name me one dictator that has succeeded in holding onto power. The person who’s gotten off the lightest so far is Assad, who still has his life for now, we assume. But everyone else has had a pretty bad ending. But this is why they have their blinders on. They just think that they’ve taken the next step, which ensures their safety and the survival of the regime. But you get to a point when it’s no longer tenable. I don’t know if Erdogan will reach that point but he certainly has to be thinking about where the threats are coming from.

Sarah: Could you just give us a word of your thoughts of selling the F35s to Turkey since they have the S-400 Russian missile defense system?

Sinan: Well, it shouldn’t happen. Not like this. Yeah, Turkey blew the opportunity to acquire the F35. It put the payment down for approximately 100 units in the tune of two and a half to $3 billion worth of payment, back in 2019. It was about to receive its first units. We had Turkish pilots training here on their first platforms in Arizona, in Norfolk. They were about to take deliveries of those until Erdogan essentially purchased and had the delivery of the Russian made S-400 system, which by the way, the threatening of deploying inside these air bases inside of Syria which would be a problem. Turkey was also a member of the manufacturing consortium because if you remember, the F35 is not a domestically made airplane here. It is part of an international consortium that Lockheed Martin, the parent company here, sources parts from all different partner states. Turkey was a fundamental component of that manufacturing chain. So as a trusted ally that was very beneficial to it.

Again, it was booted out of that by the Trump administration in 2019 and slapped down with punitive sanctions under what we call CAATSA, the Countering of America’s Adversaries through Sanctions Act, which is congressional set of sanctions, initially destined for Russia, but basically intended for anybody who does stuff like this. Trump was reluctant then, but he still had to impose them because they were congressionally mandated and they’re still in place. Now, the Turks have played this long game thinking that this administration will be amenable to essentially lifting those sanctions and be in a position and willing to sell Turkey F35s and bring it back into the program once again.

Are they wrong? Maybe not. If you ask me why is this the case? I have no idea. I do not understand why this administration is looking favorably and they are looking favorable to lift these sanctions and bring Turkey back into the F35 program. How do we know this? Erdogan held a telephone conversation with the president just a few weeks ago and Turkey’s foreign minister has met with the Secretary of State a couple of times in person. The rumors that we’re hearing suggest that the administration is amenable. Rubio was on record, the time immemorial is when he was senator, having a very critical position of Turkey, he even sponsored legislation with members of both parties in Congress to essentially take further punitive measures against Turkey for its S-400 purchases.

It’s destabilizing role against Greek and Cypriot allies in Eastern Mediterranean. Not least of all, it’s certainly positioned towards Israel too. If you ask me why he’s putting himself in a position with the administration to engage in these F35 sales, I have no idea. It makes no sense to me. In return for doing that or reauthorizing these sales to Turkey, then Turkey’s basically saying, well, as a demonstration of our good faith, we could destroy a certain number of these S-400 units that we hold onto. That should be enough for you. Oh, and by the way, Erdogan has said to Trump, hey, I’ll take care of the Syria problem for you, which can be seen as an interesting tease for the President who really does not want to deal with Syria.

So, Erdogan, who he seems to have a rapport with, seems to be tickling him, saying, look, we’ll take care of this, but also in return for destroying a bunch of these S-400s can you also give us the F35? So far, the indications, and hopefully we’re wrong about this but not from what we’re hearing is that the administration seems amenable to this. I think it’s a dangerous path to go down. I don’t know what Netanyahu’s conversation with Trump yesterday, today, whatever looked like on that front. Because obviously that conversation came up, I think. The Israeli government is clearly concerned. I would say the only person’s talked Trump down from going ahead with that is not Rubio or anyone else in the cabinet. It would probably be Netanyahu, if he has his ear, otherwise I’m fearful that the administration will work with Turkey on this.

The other side of this is, these are congressional sanctions that prevent Turkey acquiring this. They should only let necessarily be lifted by Congress. Congress even today, as well as the previous Congress they’re not friends of Turkey. They would like to be friends of Turkey, but they’re very aware of this. FDD as well as other organizations, we recently had a congressional hearing on Turkey in, I can’t remember. It’s one of the first congressional hearings in this Congress. Maybe it’s about four weeks ago on Turkey. These are the questions that the congressmen and the House Foreign Affairs Committee really pose and they say for one I think will still remain very concerned and the leadership of both foreign affairs committees in both houses, they’re not interested in selling F35s. But the problem is those sanctions can be lifted if the president issues a national security waiver and that’s I think, where the problem lies. Hopefully that can be prevented. Hopefully Trump’s words are more ambiguous and realizing the threat that Turkey continues to possess with those S-400s, which could prove very detrimental to the future of the F35 stealth capabilities if it is sold to Turkey. So, we’ll see.

Sarah: Right. How old is Erdogan and can you comment on his health?

Sinan: I know exactly how old he is because his birthday is very close to my mother’s. He’s 71. I don’t know what stress does to a body of that caliber, but he’s been in power nonstop since 2003. He’s always rumored to have dealt with this notion of colon cancer, although it’s never been publicly confirmed. He’s had some mysterious treatments in place like Cuba. So, he continues to thrive. I don’t know, we have no indication or idea as to what his condition is because it’s never released and what kind of treatments he’s receiving for any ailments. They’ve never confirmed he has any ailments. His health though is hit and miss. You can see some days he’s very spry and active on the stage, his bellicose speech is right up there, but other days, just as frequently when you see him walk around or when he comes out of a car and walks around, you can see he’s struggling. I would say 71 going on 91 based on the amount of stress his body is eating. But it’s not stress like job stresses that you and I might have. It’s paranoia. You’re on top of the country, so to say. But that in itself presents its unique set of problems. What if Erdogan was just killed over tomorrow? The Turkish constitution in the way that he redesigned it to put forward this presidential system, which Turkey is very new to, which only started after 2017 that empowered the presidency to the unaccountable level.

It’s not really clear in terms of power transition. We assume it’s going to go to this elusive vice-presidential figure, but do elections have to be held? I think there’s an overwhelming amount of public pressure. If Erdogan was interested in anointing someone as a caretaker or a successor. Again, you could try. That’s one area where I don’t think he has a much chance of success. This really is what really separates the Turkish Republican from say a place like Russia. Putin can appoint whoever he wants and basically the system falls in line. Turkey has no experience in that. But also, even like I said previously, even despite military interventions, the people are accustomed to voting and choosing who their leader is and their government is Since 1950. Successive election, the after election, this is why you’ve seen these protests finally erupt in the millions across the country when Erdogan jailed Imamoglu.

My point is, let’s say he nominates his son-in-law with, this guy called
Selçuk Bayraktar major defense contractor, CEO, this and that, married to his daughter, he was often taught to be one of the front runner successors. Great. Where’s that kid going to get public support from? Can he rely upon institutions and the military to hold his back like they do Erdogan’s? I doubt it because he’s not going to be the only contender. You have the present foreign minister Hakan Fidan, who’s also seen to be another political heavyweight that is supposed to be succeeding Erdogan. He’s not just going to let Erdogan’s son-in-law walk all over him. They’re not the only two, but on top of all that, you’ve got a public right now in outcry that’s not just going to just shut up and go home.

So, I think even if he kills over, which I think this is actually a good scenario, even if he kills over, he’s incapacitated. The regime’s ability to just anoint someone and just let that be the end of it is not a reality, I think. I’m not sure if they’re aware of it but I’ve studied the countries for a while and I understand the electoral dynamics and public preferences. Turkey can’t essentially do what Russia does. We don’t have elections where 90% of the votes goes to Putin magically. Erdogan won the presidential election back in ’23 by less than a percent and a half. It was close and we assume that he didn’t have his thumb on the scale, we assume. I’m just saying it’s hard to just pull the hood over people’s eyes in Turkey and just say, let that be the end of it because as we see things now, they’re not going to shut up and go home and they loathe this regime, they want it to be done. Go ahead.

Sarah: So, do you feel if Imamoglu will be imprisoned he will still be a reasonable contender? Can people still vote for him?

Sinan: Who knows? You have to remember that when Erdogan ran, he was banned from politics, he was actually doing prison time like Imamoglu and like Imamoglu he was there for ridiculous charges. This is 1998. Doesn’t seem that long ago. Then obviously when he came out of jail, he was still prevented from running for office in 2002, 2003 because there was a political ban on him. That was the condition of his release. But there was a tremendous amount of international pressure at that time applied on Turkey, not just by the United States but also the European Union who essentially wanted to work with Turkey post-911. They needed a good honest representative government and they were not willing to let the military-esque pressures at that time preventing Erdogan who was overwhelmingly popular and was poised to win elections from seeking and gaining office. So those pressures were impactful in getting the courts to essentially lift that ban off him.

These days, unfortunately, I don’t think Imamoglu has the same advantage on the international scale. I don’t think he’s going to get any support from the United States government. I don’t think Europe is essentially going to step up and champion Imamoglu, because what leverage do, they have over Turkey? Trump seems to value the relationship with Erdogan. He’s not certainly going to back Imamoglu for no good reason. Europe, as much as it wants to condemn Turkey is also bent over barrel for two reasons, the Europeans demand or depend upon Erdogan to keep refugee flows out of Europe. Europe pay Turkey for this. That’s one.

Two, now with the Russian escalation inside of Ukraine and seemingly in a position where the United States is not willing to follow up its security commitments to Europe, Erdogan has stepped up and said I’m the good security guarantor of Europe. So, in both those grounds, Europe is not going to be in a position to say release Imamoglu or otherwise, otherwise what? Erdogan’s going to release refugees and not help with European security. You see, Imamoglu relaxed those playing advantages and it wasn’t just the international pressure that Erdogan got elected in 2002 and that pushed the courts to lift a political ban. It was also at that time the courts were not necessarily as compromised as they are now.

In 2002, Turkey still had rule of law. It was an imperfect democracy. I think the only way this happens is sure, Imamoglu probably stays on the ballot or maybe not. The party’s chairman, even though Imamoglu is the presidential candidate, party chairman might see that as an opportunity to say, well, Imamoglu is prison, so I guess I’ll have to be the nominee, maybe. So, we might see political infighting on that level. But obviously a lot could happen. There’s just too many unknowns. Will the political process continue to [inaudible] Imamoglu? Will there be further destabilization? Those are certainly possibilities.

The other thing that we could see obviously is like you said, when we talked about Erdogan’s health, what if he is incapacitated? Then I’m assuming that courts and judges and political actors might be looking at which way the wind’s going to blow. To the extent that judges are beholden to Erdogan now, if they feel that Erdogan’s no longer in charge of the country and they hold up a ban on Imamoglu for no other good reason than Erdogan told them to, someone’s likely to call them and say, look, what you’re doing is illegal. You’re holding a man intentionally under duress without charging him, and he was not being convicted of any crime. If you don’t release him and allow him to run, then once he is released and it takes up, you stand a good chance of going jail. You see what I mean? In terms of the absence of Erdogan’s likely to create a big vacuum across institutions and people usually fall in line because they fear Erdogan. If Erdogan’s no longer around, then they’re going to start to see who’s essentially someone that they can count on.

Sarah: Right. I actually could talk to you Sinan forever.

Sinan: Thank you.

Sarah: This conversation is really compelling and illuminating on a region of the world that we really have to focus more attention to. There were a lot of other questions, excellent questions that came in as to why did Trump open the door for Turkey and Syria, especially when he pulled US troops from Northwest Syria and abandoned the Kurds, which is really although we still have, what is it 2000 troops. How many troops do we have on North [crosstalk]

Sinan: About 2000. Yeah. They could be pulled at any time. My assumption still is Trump is going to pull them at some point, maybe after. Erdogan might come to the White House before the end of this month. That’s on the cards.

Sarah: Yeah. This is very, very problematic and I really can’t wait to have you back again, Sinan. You are a treasure trove. [Crosstalk]. Thank you so much.

Sinan: Appreciate. Oh, thank you very much.

Sarah: Yes. Please remember to support both fdd.org and Sinan, it’s wonderful work and the work of emetonline.org. I do have to say back in 2019, we worked our guts out to make sure the F35s were not sold to Turkey. We’re again working on that, but there are a lot of formidable forces on the other side this time.

Sinan: Correct.

Sarah: But thank you so much, Sinan. It’s such a pleasure.

Sinan: Thank you, Sarah. Thank you for having me.

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