Today, the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, issued a statement about Turkey, the general thrust of which was: relations are now on a back foot and seemingly don’t have a chance of improving, at least for the time being. This is broadly due to the Turkish government’s response to the Turkish coup of 2016 and specifically the crack-down of supporters of Fetullah Gulen.

Gulen is the leader of a highly conservative political movement which, in part, appears to promote dialogue over force in its dealing with Kurdish separatists in Turkey. In 2002, President Erdogan formed an alliance with Gulen and in doing so broke the number one rule of Middle Eastern politics, which I can now expand to Asia Minor: don’t grow a snake in your pocket.  Now, I’m not saying that Gulen is a snake, or even a ‘terrorist’ – definitions of which are vague anyway – but at least, in President Erdogan’s eyes, Gulen is a snake.

What should be kept at the forefront of the mind, however, is that Erdogan’s APK party was able to sweep to power via the ballot box because they worked in partnership with Gulen’s movement. In the following nine or so years, Turkey embarked in wholesale integration of APK and Gulen movement supporters into all aspects of Turkish public life. This included appointments in the frontline institutions of political power: the judiciary, police, and intelligence services. The political favouratism in appointments presumably extended to institutions across the social sphere as well, to the mediam education, and so on.

During all that time, accession talks with the EU were ongoing. The question I have regarding the accession is: would common European sensibilities have approved of this shift in Turkish political dynamics, had the general population been broadly aware of it? In 2011, my attention was not focused so much on values of potential accession partners. Brexit was only an apple in the eye of Brexiteers, and the EU public view had not been thrown into confusion by the difficulties arising from the refugee and migrant crisis. The march of EU expansion and closer integration seemed to be an unstoppable and inevitable process.

Thinking about it now, I’m generally inclined to believe that the accession of Turkey under an Erdogan-Gulen partnership would not necessarily have been in the EU’s favour. The pacifist approach to dealing with Kurdish separatism – which brings Gulen the charge of terrorist apologist – might simply seem inherently reasonable to EU observers; while the focus on religious conservatism in the political domain something more at odds with the other EU capitals.

Historically, the momentum that originally brought strategically-positioned Turkey into the western world, and ultimately NATO, had been a separation of state powers, secularism, and a new-found Turkish nationalism. Since 2002, the APK-Gulen political movement appears to have focused on subjugating the Turkish military – which preserved the status quo – and eliminating the legacy of ‘Kemalist’ values. That process necessitated the installation of sympathetic persons in high office, which amounted to hundreds, possibly thousands of persons from the APK and Gulen camp.

In 2011 there was an incident referred to as the MIT crisis; you can read something of a summary here: http://www.turkeyanalyst.org/publications/turkey-analyst-articles/item/395-the-coalition-crumbles-erdogan-the-g%C3%BClenists-and-turkish-democracy.html. This was the watershed moment in which President Erdogan changed his view on Gulen and began the crackdown on his followers. This was all before the issue raised its head above the parapet into the western consciousness. While dangerous and worthy of condemnation, the coup of 2016 subsequently gave the APK the necessary pretext to move ahead with a purge of their erstwhile colleagues.

None of this means that I believe the coup was staged by the APK – in a well-developed country like Turkey, the externalities of such an action would outweigh the dubious potential advantages. It does mean however, that I see the coup as the visible culmination of a political process originally subscribed-to by the ruling APK party, and not something that appeared out of the blue. It should not be confused with the regional movement, the Arab Spring, for example. Does it also mean I think that western governments were behind the Gulen plot? No. There were bigger fish to fry in the coming months.

In summary my takeaway points are: (1) the APK government was partially directly responsible for creating the problem which it now has to resolve; and (2) most people that have now been purged would probably not have been the positions they were in without the APK and President Erdogan. If they are recent appointees they are readily identifiable; they are not clandestine plotters, but openly known sympathizers (since that’s why they were appointed).

Lastly, the balance of where you stand on military primacy in public life, and relations between the Turkish Government the PKK and the Kurdish militia, as opposed to your views on religiously-inspired government should – if you’re an EU citizen – determine your view on whether Gulen’s movement was a force for good or not. That’s largely a historical question however. As it now stands, President Erdogan now has an unparalleled opportunity to move to a more EU-friendly position by putting the right decision-makers in key posts. I suppose we’ll see what happens.