People walk next to billboards of Turkish President and People’s Alliance’s presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdogan, right, and Turkish CHP party leader and Nation Alliance’s presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu in Istanbul, Turkey, Thursday, May 11, 2023. [Khalil Hamra/AP]
I sometimes think how much Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has changed through the years. When I first met him, 20 years ago, I felt that I had a strong “political animal” in front of me. But I could not have imagined that he would be the man who would rule Turkey with an iron fist and emerge as a major world player. The distance he has traveled in those 20 years is unimaginable.
In our first interview I had to wait in a Turkish-style room, at the party’s offices, in an old apartment building in a lower-class neighborhood of the city. He was sitting in an armchair and around him women in headscarves were drinking tea and telling him their problems. In our last interview, protocol dictated that we walk a long distance before meeting for a televised handshake, in a huge room of an extravagant palace.
Many people ask, “What is in Greece’s interest? For Erdogan to be re-elected or not?” What I know for sure is that the early Erdogan was a major opportunity for Greece and Cyprus. At the time he played the European card, both because it was popular in Turkey and because he used it as a tool to defang the deep state, the military and the security services. And since it was the Turkish deep state that always pushed for tensions with Greece, his own agenda was quite different. If the politicians of the time had shown even a little boldness we could have found solutions on bilateral differences, avoiding issues like the so-called “gray zones,” the demilitarization of the Greek islands and more that have now become firmly entrenched in the list of Turkish obsessions.
Today’s Erdogan has fallen into the arms of the deep state and its far-right partners. There is no European perspective for Turkey. On the contrary, his inflammatory statements against Europe and the United States are extremely popular. Greece and Cyprus may not have been a priority in his mind 20 years ago, but today they are – and not only in his own mind. A lot of poison has been spilled into Turkish public opinion and the government’s revisionist agenda is popular and dominant across the political divide.
So, Erdogan or Kilicdaroglu? If we think purely in terms of Greek interests, Erdogan is better, if only for one reason: As cynical as it may sound for those of us who feel the agony of many Turkish friends who have been feeling trapped in recent years, if Kilicdaroglu is elected, Americans and Europeans will be very tolerant of everything the new Turkish administration does. They even do it now with Erdogan, when he provokes them with Russia or other crucial issues. Imagine how they will treat Turkey if Erdogan loses, regardless of any provocations. We will soon know if Erdogan will end his presidency with a triumph or as another leader who fell into the trap of hubris.
