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Michael Rubin joined Institute for National Security Studies senior research fellow Gallia Lindenstrauss and San Diego City College adjunct professor Tugce Varol on a March 8 Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) panel discussion on Turkey’s growing material support for terrorism under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Turkey, moderated by FDD non-resident senior fellow at Sinan Ciddi.
As discussion turned to what the United States can do about the problem, Rubin attributed the reluctance of recent American administrations to tackle what he called “Turkey’s soft underbelly of support for terrorism” to a commonly held fallacy:
At this point, we all recognize that Erdoğan is bad. I mean even his former defenders will say that. But they say, ‘We can’t do too much damage to the relationship because we have to worry about what comes after Erdoğan.’ But here’s the problem: More than 30 million Turkish schoolchildren have been educated under Erdoğanism. He’s completely reshaped the Turkish military. Even if we get someone who is democratic, someone who’s liberal, ... Erdogan has shown the power of this populism. So even if we get a liberal interregnum of a year or two, I suspect we’re looking at a situation where we’re going to see future Erdoğans, and I’m afraid, quite honestly, that one may be visiting Washington, DC, as we speak [referring to Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, who arrived a day earlier].
