When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) triumphed in Turkey’s November 2002 election, he sought to assure the international community that he had shed the Islamism of his past and learned the lessons of his 1998 ouster as Istanbul mayor and 1999 imprisonment for Islamist incitement. “We are the guarantors of secularism,” he declared. “We are not an Islamist party; we are for democracy, good economics, and social justice,” he said, hitting all the progressive talking points the West valued.
It worked. Visiting Ankara in 2004, President George Bush said, “I appreciate so very much the example your country has set on how to be a Muslim country and at the same time a country which embraces democracy and rule of law and freedom.” Nor was Bush the only one. Secretary of State Colin Powell called Turkey a model representing “a Muslim democracy living in peace with its friends and neighbors.”
“We are not an Islamist party; we are for democracy, good economics, and social justice.”
At a 2004 conference, James Holmes, a veteran diplomat in Turkey who then lobbied for Ankara as president of the American-Turkish Council, grew visibly upset at anyone who questioned Turkey’s trajectory. Assistant Secretary of State Daniel Fried described the AKP as “a kind of Muslim version of a Christian Democratic party.” Cuneyt Zapsu, a businessman and AKP founder, backchanneled to American neoconservatives like Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and Bernard Lewis to assuage any concerns they had. The wishful thinking, if not outright naivete, continued into the Obama administration. President Barack Obama identified Erdoğan as one of his most trusted foreign friends. Obama even said he solicited parenting advice from Erdoğan, perhaps unaware that in the first seven days of Erdoğan’s rule, the murder rate of Turkish women increased 1,400 percent.
During this period, Erdoğan consolidated control, grabbing the reins of technocratic bodies like banking and auditing boards that he would later wield against his competitors and enemies. He slowly proved that he remained true to his earlier quip: “Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination; then you step off.” Not only did Erdoğan eviscerate any checks and balances inside Turkey and imprison hundreds of thousands of political opponents, but he also flipped Turkey’s foreign policy 180 degrees. Once a staunch counter-terror ally of Israel, he became perhaps Hamas’ top sponsor. In recent months, he has even reportedly extended that help and support to Hezbollah. Today, rather than lean to the West, Erdoğan tilts toward Russia, China, and the “Axis of Ikhwan,” those states unified by their embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood. Turkey might still be a member of NATO, but few in Congress would call it a loyal ally. Most see it as a Trojan Horse, and even its most ardent proponents acknowledge that, at best, Turkey is a problem to manage.
History now repeats. It has been almost a decade since Mohammed bin Salman became crown prince in Saudi Arabia. The heir apparent position has increasing importance as 90-year-old King Salman bin Abdulaziz’s dementia worsens. In effect, MBS as most call him, is Saudi Arabia’s ruler in all but formal coronation.
From his very start, U.S. and Arab officials praised MBS and his reforms. In 2015, Obama called MBS “wise beyond his years,” and said, “he struck [me] as extremely knowledgeable, very smart.” Investors were enthusiastic. “He wants to shake up the Saudi economy for sure,” Sebastien Henin, head of asset management at The National Investor, said. “He is involved in everything.”
A reformed absolute monarchy is not a democracy; it is simply a reformed monarchy.
President Donald Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner hit it off with MBS. Trump called MBS a “visionary” and “spectacular” leader. Kushner said MBS’ leadership could be truly “transformational.” And, just as Erdoğan initially pursued reforms to make Turkey function better, so too did MBS seek to jumpstart business in the Kingdom. He also pursued many reforms demanded by generations of diplomats and U.S. policymakers, growing understandably frustrated when he received little credit for them in the face of a steady drumbeat of criticism, especially after the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a former Saudi intelligence officer and Muslim Brotherhood acolyte, who later became a Washington Post columnist. Many American critics also falsely conflated reformism with liberalism. A reformed absolute monarchy is not a democracy; it is simply a reformed monarchy.
Like Erdoğan, MBS has always been a tactician. As Erdoğan consolidated control, he shed his pragmatism and let his ideology shine through. Part of his initial compromise was to use the West against itself. He got his wish when the State Department and European officials demanded the Turkish military remain aloof from politics and forfeit its role as constitutional guardian. With that check-and-balance eliminated, Erdoğan’s authoritarian nature showed through.
MBS embraced the same strategy. He used his supposed reformism and liberalism to win Western support, which he then leveraged against his many rivals. Now that he has successfully sidelined his competition, he no longer needs to pretend his goal is to transform the Kingdom in a Western sense. Saudi Arabia’s pivot to an Islamist vision, and his turn toward Turkey, Qatar, and Pakistan, may very well have been his end goal all along.
That Qatar funded both Erdoğan and now may also underwrite Saudi Arabia’s hemorrhaging economy completes the similarity.
For decades, Erdoğan played his American counterparts for fools. It now seems MBS has followed the same playbook, feigning reform while seeking power consolidation in pursuit of an Islamist order antithetical to regional security and the broader liberal order.
