Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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President Erdogan is focused on setting Turkey’s foreign policy direction. Key priorities for Ankara include strategic autonomy, enhanced regional influence, economic revitalization, and balancing between NATO and Russia.
Turkey, under Erdogan, has been trying to break out of a disruptive cycle of serial foreign policy crises for some time now.
Turkey’s balancing act between Moscow and the West has so far granted the Kremlin an important strategic advantage. Whoever emerges victorious in the presidential election will have to reassess Ankara’s position between NATO and Russia.
Three factors explain Erdogan’s stronger-than-expected first-round performance.
Erdogan looks on track to secure another term as Turkey’s president, despite the struggling economy and his government's flawed response to the earthquake. But the opposition’s resilience in this election suggests there is still life in Turkish democracy.
Both Greece and Türkiye need solid and determined leadership to orient bilateral relations in the right direction and practical steps to show the benefits of an alternative and collaborative bilateral relationship.
The immense suffering and loss Turkey experienced as a result of the February 6 earthquakes led its neighbours to put aside deep-rooted disagreements and historic grudges to offer support and solidarity.
Turkey has been here before. The magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck Turkey in 1999 exposed the ineffectiveness of the state and is generally viewed as the prelude to the political shock that brought Erdogan’s AKP to power in 2002. Maybe history will repeat.
The political shock of a magnitude 7.6 earthquake in 1999 brought the AKP to power. The current government’s mishandling of this earthquake may now lead to Erdogan’s downfall in the elections anticipated later this year.
The earthquake in Türkiye and Syria is likely to rank among the deadliest calamities of the century. But this tragedy could have been avoided if only the Turkish government had not kept allowing substandard constructions to be built.