A few facts:
- Erdogan was prime minister of Turkey from 2003 to 2014.
- Erdogan has been president of Turkey from 2014 to the present.
- Erdogan was a democratic leader.
- Erdogan became in time an autocratic leader.
- Erdogan has a lust for power – he will not surrender it and his thirst for more cannot be slaked.
- Turkey is part of Europe.
- Turkey is also part of Asia.
- Turkey is, because of its strategic location, at the crossroad of Europe and Asia, one of the most important countries in the world.
- Turkey is a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance.
- Turkey drives every other member of the North Atlantic Treaty Alliance nuts.
- Turkey is however pivotal to the Alliance – to NATO.
- Turkey is important to NATO not only because of its strategic location, and not only because it has one of NATO’s largest armies, but because it is a majority Muslim country.
- Because Turkey is majority Muslim, and because Erdogan himself is a practicing Muslim, he can relate better to some leaders in some Middle Eastern countries than any other Western leader.
Which brings us to where we are now. Just when the rest of the West was ready, again, to tire of a major irritant, Erdogan, he has managed, again, to make himself seem indispensable. This time it is the war in Ukraine that has put Erdogan back at center stage.
Some of this is simple geography. Turkey shares the Black Sea coast with both Russia and Ukraine. And some of this is history. For years Erdogan has nurtured his ties with Moscow, both as leverage within NATO and out of a keen awareness that while Russia is an unreliable neighbor, it is nevertheless a powerful one. And, finally, some of this is the exigency of the current moment.
Since the start of Putin’s War Erdogan’s role has been central. On the one hand he has worked harder than any other single leader to negotiate an end to Russia’s blockade of more than 20 million tons of Ukrainian grain. And on the other hand, he used his leverage within NATO to block, if only temporarily, the admission of Sweden and Finland.
Erdogan has long been a thorn in the side of the West. But here he is now, poised next week not only to meet personally with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but to do so in, of all places, Tehran. Within days, therefore, Erdogan will be shaking hands with America’s two archenemies: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and Iran’s President, Ebrahim Raisi.
A Zelig is a chameleon-like person who seems always, somehow, to be at the center of the action. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is a leader who is a Zelig. He gets no medal for being a decent democrat. Impossible though to deny him his capacity and tenacity.