Chaos plays into Erdogan’s hands after a career shaped by coups

The political career of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been shaped by military coups, real or imagined, for more than four decades. Friday’s attempt is probably the most consequential, and potentially empowering, of them all.

Whatever goals the rebels had, they may have ended up securing Erdogan’s position at a time of multiplying challenges to his popularity: Islamic State terrorist attacks, a war with militant Kurds, a failing foreign policy and weak economic growth.

When the coup attempt was at its height on Friday night, some of Erdogan’s most ardent supporters heeded his call to take to the streets, facing down the guns and tanks of the soldiers. There was no such public show of support for the rebels, even from those in despair over Erdogan’s authoritarian rule.

As a result, the failed coup will have encouraged Erdogan to intensify his drive to change Turkey’s political system from a parliamentary to a presidential democracy.

The Friday coup attempt, which Erdogan blamed on a former ally turned enemy, U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, wouldn’t be the first coup to create political opportunities for him.

The son of a Istanbul ferry captain, Erdogan entered politics in the 1970s. At the time, the 50-year old Turkish Republic had just endured a second coup by the military and was in a state of near anarchy. Ultra-nationalists, communists and, to a lesser extent, Islamists fought in the streets. An estimated 5,000 people were killed.

Erdogan joined the Islamists. Two of his friends were killed in the violence, he recalled in a 2011 interview. At the same time, he had a job at Istanbul’s transport authority, but after a third military coup, in 1980, he had to resign. The new boss, an army colonel, ordered men to shave off their beards, considered signs of religiosity, and Erdogan refused. The new regime also banned the Islamist political group to which he belonged, the National Salvation Party.

The army, with its secularist agenda, was a natural enemy to Erdogan. But the coup and repression that followed also contributed to a shift for him and his fellow Islamists, who began to temper their religious radicalism to survive politically. They embraced electoral politics; by 1994, Erdogan was elected mayor of Istanbul, the country’s largest city and commercial heart.

Erdogan’s term as mayor was interrupted by a further intervention from the armed forces — the so-called post-modern coup of 1997, in which military commanders listed their complaints about the Islamist-led coalition government in a memorandum, forcing it to resign. In the purge that followed, Erdogan was jailed for reading out a poem that compared minarets with bayonets.

Erdogan’s four-month incarceration only boosted his political appeal. He was inundated with fan mail and gifts while in prison, according to an aide at the time, Huseyin Besli. He made a CD of his poetry readings. After his release, Erdogan co-founded the Justice and Development Party, or AK Party, which explicitly accepted the secular nature of the Turkish state, helping it win a wider following. By 2002, it was in power.

From the moment Erdogan took charge, however, he appeared fearful of falling victim to yet another coup, perhaps understandably given the history. Those fears came to a head in 2007, when the AK Party put up Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul to run for president. The army objected, describing itself as the “absolute defender of secularism,” in a move reminiscent of previous coups by memorandum. This time, the army fell short.

Facing down huge secularist demonstrations, Erdogan called elections in which the AK Party increased its parliamentary majority. The new legislature elected Gul as president, and Erdogan emerged even stronger, the military’s weakening grip having been exposed.

Immediately, prosecutors targeted the top brass. One case alleged that the armed forces had planned a coup against the AK Party government early in its term. The alleged plot was a fantasy — the key evidence had been fabricated — and in 2014 the convictions were thrown out. Many officers were released, but the phony coup cases had already served their purpose. Much of the military leadership was out, clearing the way for less secularist generals.

When Erdogan’s allies against the army, turned against him in 2013, he again alleged a coup attempt.

Since Erdogan blamed Gulen for Friday’s coup attempt, in which the government said almost 200 people died, another crackdown on the group’s supporters has begun.