The danger that is Erdogan

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on the rampage. With a failed coup directed against his government behind him, with his pronounced illiberal position in politics already having proved detrimental to Turkey's democracy, he and his followers are today busily engaged in undermining what remains of secular pluralism in the country.

No coup d'etat is healthy for a state. And an abortive coup ought to be a wake-up call for every leader and for every government, for the simple reason that those who mount a coup and then fail to achieve their sinister aims are a subtle reminder for everyone that the government they have tried to dislodge and which has remained standing despite this sudden turmoil must sit back and reflect on the reasons why such a condition came to pass.

President Erdogan has failed to come up to expectations on this score. But, again, given his increasingly authoritarian tendencies massaged by his dangerous Islamist inclinations, it was only to be expected. He has had his followers engage in mob rule following the collapse of the coup. Nearly three thousand soldiers, including senior military leaders, have been taken into custody. Add to that figure the number of those, two hundred or thereabouts, who have died in the course of the violence accompanying the coup attempt. And surely the most horrifying aftermath of the coup has been Erdogan's move to dismiss more than two thousand and seven hundred judges who, in his eyes and of course without anything to back up his arguments, have been involved in the coup.

The truth about the fraught relations between the president and the judiciary has been simple: Turkey's judges have long been disturbed by Erdogan's dictatorial tendencies. The failed coup is therefore an opportunity, a dark one, for the country's divisive leader, to crack down on them. He has now done that. And he has thus cracked down on Turkish democracy, one that has been carefully rebuilt following the series of coups and military-dominated politics stretching all the way from 1960, when Adnan Menderes was executed by the Kemal Gursel junta, to 1997, when Necmettin Erbakan was forced out of office by the army.

President Erdogan has promised, in a moment of gravely misplaced populism, to undertake a purge. The purge has gone underway. But, again, it is something he has always longed for, has always waited to launch against his enemies. His enemies, in his eyes, are many and indeed everyone who chooses not to agree with him on policy. His years in power have turned Turkish democracy on its head, with the Kemalist doctrine of secularism increasingly giving way to patent demonstrations of Islamist intolerance. Note that among the crowds welcoming him back to Istanbul once the coup collapsed were a horde of hijab-clad women screaming slogans against his imagined enemies.

For Erdogan, enemies are legion. He spots them in the political opposition, particularly among the spaces of secular politics. He spots enemies, of himself and of the Turkish republic, among the media. When newsmen discover caches of arms clandestinely being passed on to anti-Assad rebels in Syria and possibly to other extremist groups, he has them thrown in jail. His view of Kurds has been similar to that of his predecessors: they do not exist, but if they rear their heads, cut off the heads. Abdullah Ocalan, the PKK leader, remains in prison. His followers carry on the struggle fitfully.

In these past many months, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has gone looking for enemies beyond Turkey's frontiers. His forces have shot down a Russian jet fighter on its way to action against Syrian rebels. That was an act of arrogance the ramifications of which Erdogan clearly could not foresee. His subsequent efforts to meet President Vladimir Putin were rebuffed. Ties between Moscow and Ankara remain at a low point, a signal negative contribution to diplomacy made possible through the arrogance and global pretensions of Turkey's islamist president.

Erdogan's abrasive politics was on display once again when he unabashedly and in unwarranted manner waded into Bangladesh's internal politics through haranguing the crowds in his country on his opposition to the execution of war criminals in Dhaka. What came through clearly in his expressions of anger toward Bangladesh was his poor sense of history, his inability or unwillingness to explore the reasons behind the trials of the war criminals of 1971 by the Bangladesh authorities. The Turkish leader today enjoys the unenviable feat of making enemies of two nations, among of course many other nations. Russians and Bengalis have little reason to respect or love him.

The attempt to have Erdogan's government overthrown through a military coup was surely a sign of danger for Turkey. That the coup collapsed is welcome relief for people around the world. But the bigger danger today is President Erdogan himself. He has accused Fethullah Gulen, without adequate proof, of being the man behind the coup. In a very subtle way, he has pointed the finger at Washington's role, which American officials have been quick to deny, in the coup.

The danger today, yes, for Turkey and for the world, is the reality of a vengeful Recep Tayyip Erdogan holding power in Ankara, for he has misused and will go on misusing this power not just to undermine Turkey's secular politics but also to have his radical brand of Islam infiltrate other regions around the globe. He is one man who comes to power democratically and then goes on to drill holes in the structure of democracy. Dissent for him is treason. An independent judiciary is for the authoritarian in him a threat to an exercise of unbridled authority. His support for radical Islamist elements outside Turkey has lowered his nation's image before the world.

The world needs to step in and keep watch – to ensure that Turkey's leader is checked as he attempts to consolidate his dictatorial rule. He has begun cracking down on everyone in sight. That is ominous, as ominous as the murder and mayhem launched by General Suharto and his soldiers against the Indonesian republic in the aftermath of what was given out as a foiled pro-communist coup in Jakarta in September 1965.