Erdogan Begins to ‘Behave’ Conditionally

The tight control of the government extends to the seizure of many properties. One such property is the Sanasarian Han Building, in Istanbul, which had been confiscated in 1930. In 2011, the Armenian Patriarchate of Istanbul began legal proceedings to recover that valuable piece of property. After many setbacks, the Constitutional Court decided to return the property to the community in December, just in time for Mr. Erdogan’s election gambit.

In another move, members of the Turkish football Federation this week visited the Armenian Patriarchate to invite the patriarch to a football match on March 25 between the Armenian and Turkish national teams.

Some positive movements were recorded on the state level with Armenia. On January 6, the Armenian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Turkey had lifted the ban on direct cargo flights with Armenia. Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan characterized this initiative as a “positive move.”

The Armenian special negotiator Ruben Rubinyan and his Turkish counterpart, retired ambassador Serdar Kilic, have been meeting to improve relations between the two countries. They have met four times in the past year in different capitals. Now, they have decided to move these negotiations to Armenia and Turkey. As a result, agreements have been reached to open the border for the citizens of third countries. It is reported that technical work is in progress to open the land border between the two countries, although Mr. Erdogan had conditioned that move on the signing of the peace treaty between Armenia and Azerbaijan. It seems that Turkey has temporarily relegated to Baku the task of harassing Armenia, in order to be able to emerge with an innocent face looking towards the world political community.

There is no reason to cheer Turkey’s moves, because any expression of gratitude may turn into a political tool in its hands to be presented to its partners as favors towards its victims.

Now it remains to be seen what Mr. Erdogan’s moves in the region and in world politics will be. The elections are not too far away and coalitions are forming at this time. Mr. Erdogan’s longtime nemesis has been Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s combative mayor, who challenged Erdogan’s’ AK Party in Istanbul’s mayoral elections in 2019 and won. Erdogan cancelled the results and called for a new one. This time around, in 2022, Imamoglu won with a larger margin. Although he has not announced his candidacy for president, Erdogan is fearing the prospect and has arrested, convicted and sentenced him to a two-year suspended prison term for “having insulted government officials.”

Another unannounced candidate is Ankara’s powerful mayor, Mansur Yavas.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the 75-year-old head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), has been asking those two potential rivals to “clear my way. I will be the opposition candidate.”

At this time, Erdogan’s AK Party has formed the People’s Alliance with the National Movement Party (MHP), an extremist nationalist party known as “Gray Wolves.” The opposition has banded together in a coalition they call the “Table for Six,” with the largest party being Kilicdaroglu’s former Kemalist Party. These six parties have left the progressive People’s Democratic Party (HDP) out because of the latter’s pro-Kurdish leanings. (Armenian Member of Parliament Garo Paylan is a member of this party.) The party’s two leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksedag, have been stripped of the parliamentary immunity and been jailed on trumped-up charges for years.

Many intellectuals, academics and politicians have received long jail sentences and are awaiting the end of the Erdogan era to return the country into a democratic republic. The forthcoming elections will decide whether they will continue languishing in prison or see Mr. Erdogan retire.