/ world today news/ The West is torn between fear and hope as Erdogan extends his 20-year rule, according to Western media outlets speaking in reaction to Turkey’s election results. A re-elected president could bring the NATO member even closer to Russia or “instead be more open to alternatives,” analysts say.
Western capitals remained silent during Turkey’s presidential campaign – secretly hoping that Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s uncertain 20-year rule would come to an abrupt end – but now that he has won a crucial third term, the West is torn between fear and hope. Guardian.
The collective West fears that a victorious Erdogan will use his triumph to alienate the NATO member from the liberal and secular West.
But at the same time, there is still hope in the West that, barred from running again and thus freed from the need to pander to a nationalist electorate for the rest of his political life, the Turkish leader will at least be open to persuasion and will base its foreign policy on something other than self-preservation.
In any case, the choices the non-aligned Erdogan makes matter not only for Turkey, NATO and whatever order emerges from the end of the conflict in Ukraine, The Guardian suggests.
The main task of the West, the paper notes, is to prevent the influence of Putin’s Russia on Erdogan’s Turkey. But, The Guardian admits, few Western diplomats are optimistic.
One of them said: “In the past, he made transactionalism almost an art form, and then almost an ideology. But lately it has turned into a real antipathy to Western values and arrogance.”
Erdogan’s interior minister, Süleyman Soylu, said during the election campaign that anyone showing pro-Western tendencies was a traitor. It may have been mere campaign rhetoric, but it reflects the mentality in Turkey and probably elsewhere.
Translation: SM
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