Is This How Erdogan Ends?

With 98 percent of votes counted, Turkey is headed for a runoff election on May 28. Twenty-one years after first taking office, charismatic strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan fought his most closely run election, with consequences that will be felt from Damascus to Brussels. Israel will be watching closely, too. After years of hostility from Erdogan, relations have been recently repaired, and the election result will have implications for their fragile alliance.

Global Strongman

While Erdogan faces discontent at home, there’s no doubt he’s made Turkey a global power broker. Straddling the East-West divide, Turkey has a finger in the Syrian and Russian pies, and holds membership in the G20 and NATO, with ambitions to join the EU.

Erdogan has used these diverse alliances to tilt eastward in recent years, alienating Western allies.

The EU stopped accession talks with Turkey in 2018 when democracy went into reverse there. Erdogan has used the four million Syrian migrants absorbed by his country over the last decade as a bargaining chip with the bloc, threatening to allow them to flood into the EU.

While Turkey supplies Ukraine with weapons, Erdogan refuses to sanction Russia. He’s been the only NATO member to express willingness to host Putin, and vetoed Sweden’s bid to join the military alliance.