Terra Firma

Just as Turkey seemed to be emerging from a winter of political discontent, a pair of international provocations has drawn its government into new conflicts. Ankara accuses Iraqi Kurds of harbouring militant Turkish Kurds who have carried out repeated attacks on Turkish soldiers and now threaten cross-border military operations into northern Iraq. In addition, in the US Congress, a House resolution formally recognising the Armenian genocide has threatened to generate yet higher tensions between Turkey and the US.

However, I was surprised to discover during a recent visit to Istanbul that the real emerging risks in Turkey have more to do with domestic politics than with all this foreign-policy turmoil. These risks are not going away.

Over the past three months, Prime Minister Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party secured a solid parliamentary majority, got its man (former Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul) elected president, and developed a good working relationship with at least one of the major opposition parties. It also now appears to enjoy a temporary truce with Turkey’s military, still a key player in the country’s politics. In fact, the foreign-policy conflicts appear to have drawn Erdogan’s government and the military a bit closer together.

POSITIVE MARKET REACTION, BUT IS THERE LOOMING DOMESTIC TROUBLE?

Markets responded to Erdogan’s resounding July victory with jubilation. Prices on the country’s largest stock exchange quickly spiked. The value of Turkey’s currency rose to its highest level against the dollar in more than two years. So why the looming domestic trouble? Erdogan looks set to overplay his hand in ways that upset Turkey’s still delicate political balance.

Since his party, known by its Turkish acronym AKP, first rose to power following elections in 2002, Erdogan has helped deliver 7.4 per cent annual growth, lower inflation, and unprecedented levels of foreign investment. A series of liberalising reforms keeps Turkey’s bid to join the European Union limping forward. The party’s new parliamentary majority, 341 of 550 seats, frees Erdogan to pursue his agenda without having to compromise with rivals.

TOO FAR, TOO FAST?

Therein lies the danger. The prime minister still faces a range of domestic critics who fear that his moderate Islamic party will erode the country’s secularist traditions – and that his new strength threatens their political and economic interests. An uneasy co-existence has taken hold, but if Erdogan moves too far too fast, interpreting his new mandate as a green light for some of his more controversial policy ideas, trouble won’t be far behind.

CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES WILL UPSET VARIOUS FACTIONS

First, Erdogan says he plans to rewrite the country’s constitution. The scale of the AKP’s electoral triumph speaks for itself, but efforts to use the constitution to promote greater religious freedom – by striking down a ban on the Islamic headscarf in universities, for example − risk a strong backlash from those who see it as a symbol of resistance to Turkey’s official secularism.

Erdogan’s political clumsiness has made matters worse. Party officials say he alone will make the decision on headscarves, confirming the fears of those who warn that his party has amassed too much power. The prime minister didn’t help matters during a press conference in September when he invited critics within the universities to “mind their own business”.

However, disgruntled scholars are the least of Erdogan’s problems. There is no more resolute guardian of the country’s secularist tradition than its military brass, which has pushed four civilian governments from power since 1960. The current constitution, the one Erdogan wants to rewrite, was drafted by the generals in 1982. The new draft may well undermine key aspects of the military’s authority.

But if there’s an even better way to rile nationalists within the army, it’s by using constitutional changes to win friends among Turkey’s minority Kurds, particularly as Kurdish separatists become more aggressive in their attacks on Turkish soldiers. One of the AKP’s biggest electoral boosts came from a surge in support from southeast Anatolia, home to much of the country’s restive Kurdish minority. The party won 53 per cent of the vote there this summer, up from just 27.7 per cent in 2002.

An early version of Erdogan’s proposed constitutional changes, leaked to the media, includes a proposal to amend the clause which establishes Turkish as the country’s official language, a move that nationalist critics insist will encourage demands for education in Kurdish and other minority languages. Given the new tensions over Kurdish militants hiding out in northern Iraq, these proposed constitutional changes have become the country’s dominant political issue.

PROPOSED REFORMS WILL DISTRACT FROM EU BID

But they also pose a more mundane problem for Turkey’s reform process: they’re a distraction and a drain on time and political capital that might better be spent on other issues. An AKP official I spoke with told me the constitutional reform process could take up to 18 months. That would force Erdogan to shelve other reforms, many of them crucial for Turkey’s bid to join the European Union.

Ironically, though the EU has pressed Erdogan’s government to follow through on constitutional changes meant to harmonise Turkish law with EU norms, the current controversy leaves Turkish officials with little time to implement many of the changes EU officials hope to see before the European Commission releases its annual progress report on Turkish accession in November.

In particular, the measure the EU most forcefully insists must be scrapped – Article 301 of the penal code, which criminalises public insults to “Turkishness” – may not be addressed at all before Erdogan’s government puts the new constitution to a parliamentary vote. The proposed genocide resolution in Washington makes this all the more likely, because it pushes Erdogan to defend this nationalist ground.

As Turkey debates these controversies, its economy shows early signs of a slowdown, just as the developing credit squeeze in global markets threatens inflows of foreign capital. Investors, foreign and domestic, anxiously await details and budget targets of the government’s economic programme.

Foreign governments and investors like predictability and when elections provide a familiar and market-friendly political party with a solid majority, most outsiders cheer the result. But when the winner presses his advantage too far, particularly in a political environment as turbulent as Turkey’s, storm clouds can quickly gather just beyond the horizon.

ANY MILITARY ACTION IS LIKELY TO BE LIMITED

We cannot completely ignore Turkey’s threat to take military action in northern Iraq. Ankara accuses Iraqi Kurds of harboring more than 3,000 of Turkey’s most active Kurdish militants, separatists they blame for the deaths of nearly 100 Turkish soldiers so far this year. The trouble reached boiling point on October 7, when Kurdish fighters killed 13 Turkish soldiers near the country’s border with Iraq.

The Turkish public has demanded action and its government has responded. On October 17, Turkish lawmakers voted 507-19 to authorise Erdogan to order military strikes inside Iraq at any time over the next year. Despite pleas for patience and restraint from Baghdad and Washington, Erdogan has sent Iraqi Kurds a forceful message. Any concentration of military power within a conflict zone carries risks of unintended escalation. But for the moment, the Turkish military is likely to limit its operations to small-scale cross-border incursions, more shelling of carefully selected targets, and pinprick air strikes rather than to launch a full-on invasion. There are several reasons.

First, Erdogan has no interest in exposing the Turkish military to the risks that come with involvement in Iraq’s sectarian strife. Second, he hopes to keep the country’s bid to join the European Union moving forward. An invasion of Iraq would bring that process to a grinding halt. Third, Ankara is well aware that an all-out attack inside Iraq is exactly what Turkey’s Kurdish separatists want. What better way to damage Turkey than to pull its military into conflict with Iraq, the United States and the European Union at one fell swoop? Erdogan has no intention of being drawn into that trap.

With all that in mind, this latest move by Turkey’s parliament should be seen more as an ultimatum to Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government to expel the Turkish Kurds and an attempt to persuade Washington to finally use its considerable influence there. That’s hardball politics, not a declaration of war.

Further, common sense may yet prevail within the US Congress, as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi postpones the genocide resolution for another day. A number of House Democrats quickly backed away from the resolution following the firestorm of criticism that erupted when Pelosi’s plans made headlines. She will not call for a vote she knows she cannot win.

REAL DOMESTIC POLITICAL RISKS REMAIN

Yet, when today’s foreign-policy crises have dissipated, Turkey’s domestic political problems will return to the surface. In fact, the opportunities to burnish his nationalist credentials that these conflicts have provided may help persuade Erdogan to continue to press his advantage at home. That’s why the real risks to Turkey’s delicate political balance come not from Washington or Iraq, but from within. Those are the longer-term risks we should all keep an eye on.

Ian Bremmer, President, Eurasia Group

Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, the world’s largest political risk consultancy. he is also a columnist for slate, a contributing editor at the national interest, and a political commentator on CNN, Fox News and CNBC.