The Erdoğan playbook

The attempted military coup in Turkey against President Erdoğan has caused a serious stir in the Kremlin – as something to copy …

There can be no doubt that the causes and consequences of the Turkish army rebellion will be analysed and re-analysed in the Kremlin for a long time to come. Vladimir Putin cannot fail to draw wide-ranging lessons from the way a regime constructed along similar lines to his own came close to the precipice only to turn the situation decisively to its advantage.

The Kremlin has regularly incorporated foreign insurrections into its domestic political agenda, allocating vast sums of money to counter phantom threats to national security. The Arab Spring of 2011 made a particularly strong impression, as did Ukraine’s Maidan of 2013-2014.

Putin’s imagination has been captured by the opportunities that await the Turkish president following the crushing of last week’s uprising, which Erdoğan himself, salivating at the prospect of purges and repressions, described as a “gift from God.”

Lilia Shevtsova at Carnegie Moscow Center believes that the Kremlin will certainly be taking on board the lessons learnt from “Erdoğan the Victor,” who is now unlikely to eschew the use of dictatorial powers. “Today, the Turkish president […] [is] testing the extent to which the West is prepared to turn a blind eye to violations of rights and freedoms in his country […]. Erdoğan’s current conduct will become a reference manual for other leaders with dreams of omnipotence.”

In public, Putin spoke about the “categorical unacceptability in the life of a state of anti-constitutional acts and violence,” but that, of course, refers strictly to the coup attempt rather than to Erdoğan’s harsh response.

The contrast with statements made by other European politicians is striking – EU Commissioner Johannes Hahn: “EU diplomacy chief Federica Mogherini and I had expressed the hope that the actions of the Turkish authorities in the wake of the coup would comply with the international standards of the rule of law, but what we are seeing now suggests that this is not the case”.

Ticking off the Turkish leader clearly wouldn’t be a good move for Moscow – after all, the worse Erdoğan comes across now, the more Putin stands to gain. As journalist and blogger Arkady Babchenko writes, “The failed Turkish coup has done for Putin what the annexation of Crimea did for Lukashenko. He’s gone from European Evil No. 1 to – well, he’s still evil, of course, and a dictator, but he’s now Dictator No. 2.”

Russian propaganda has long painted Russia as a besieged fortress surrounded by throngs of provocateurs and enemies who want nothing more than to exert “bad influences” on Russian society. The events in Turkey have therefore necessitated no new rhetoric from pro-government commentators, who like to see an anti-Russian conspiracy in every Western corner. Andrei Manoilo, a professor at Moscow State University and a member of the Russian National Security Council, sees the hand of Washington behind the coup attempt. Furthermore, America’s primary target wasn’t Turkey but Russia. “The Americans most likely had a hand in the choice of date for the uprising; US Secretary of State John Kerry was due to fly to Moscow at precisely the same time, and the coup – organised by military factions for the sake of ‘democracy, freedom and human rights’ – was designed to undermine the position of Moscow (which had been strengthened by the restoration of relations with Turkey) and simultaneously to show the whole world what happens to political leaders who choose a course of rapprochement with Russia.”

Interestingly, a telephone survey conducted by liberal radio station Echo of Moscow determined that 87% of its listeners sided with the rebel military factions in the first hours following the coup attempt. There can only be one explanation for this: Erdoğan is so similar to Putin as to be his virtual doppelganger, and people were voting not so much in favour of change in Turkey as for the possibility of change in principle.

Condemnation of the stance of the liberal 87% was quick to follow, but it came from a somewhat unlikely source: liberal politician Grigory Yavlinsky. “As the coup attempt unfolded in the early hours, more than a few Russian citizens were willing the Turkish military to succeed. This is highly telling: evidently, certain supporters of democracy in Russia regard a military coup as an acceptable means of doing battle against the regime. And yet this is a gross and inexcusable error. Democracy cannot be implemented with the use of tanks!”

Since coups have been strictly forbidden by Grigory Yavlinsky, and since the regime isn’t about to repudiate the sham that is the Russian electoral process for, oh, another century or so, the country appears to be doomed to the future envisioned by Arkady Babchenko (the crusading journalist branded a “national traitor” by the Putin regime): “An impoverished, crumbling, demoralised, de-ideologised, plundered […] country – one that has been shorn of all its nation-uniting institutions – isn’t even worth fighting with. All you need to do is wait: it’ll fall apart all by itself. Or degrade to a third-world level, and quietly rot there – its nuclear weapons notwithstanding.”

The real question is this: having looked on at the situation in Turkey and acquired a sense of Erdoğan’s appetites, what will Vladimir Putin now crave for himself? And he certainly will crave something; of that there can be absolutely no doubt …