How Many Bridges Can Turkey’s Erdogan Burn?

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Since his sweeping overhaul of Turkey’s political system in 2017, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has cemented his near-total control over the country. Despite the worst electoral setback of Erdogan’s career in the Istanbul mayoral election in June 2019, as well as a tailspinning economy exacerbated by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic, he continues to maintain his grip on power, even if he must destabilize Turkey’s democracy to do so.

Erdogan has simultaneously pursued an adventurous and bellicose foreign policy across the Mediterranean region, putting Ankara increasingly at odds with its NATO allies. After Turkey’s purchase of a Russian air-defense system in July 2019, Washington suspended Turkish involvement in the F-35 next-generation fighter plane program. In October 2019, the Turkish incursion into northeastern Syria targeting Syrian Kurdish militias highlighted the disconnect between the U.S. Congress—which fiercely defended the Syrian Kurds, America’s principal partner on the ground in the fight against the Islamic State—and U.S. President Donald Trump, who seemed oblivious to their plight and subsequently received Erdogan at the White House. More recently, Turkey’s repeated incursions into waters in the Eastern Mediterranean claimed by Cyprus, as well as its standoffs with Greek and French naval vessels in the region, have further raised tensions and alarmed observers.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s presence in northwestern Syria is increasingly putting it in the line of fire of Syrian government forces, as well as the Russian forces that support them, heightening fears of a further conflagration in the Syrian civil war. Its involvement in the Libyan civil war on behalf of the United Nations-recognized Government of National Accord similarly put Turkey at odds with both Russia, which is supporting the forces of Gen. Khalifa Haftar, and Ankara’s European partners, who are seeking to enforce an arms embargo on the country. Most recently, Turkey’s political and military support of Azerbaijan in the latest outbreak of fighting with Armenia over the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region has once again put it at the heart of a conflict with direct implications for Russia’s national security interests.