Discursive Manifestations of the Lausanne Syndrome Since the Second Group, and the AKP’s Geopolitical Vision

Abstract

This chapter looks more closely at how the Lausanne Syndrome manifests historically and under the AKP through discourses, narratives, perceptions, and beliefs. More specifically, it details the linkage of the AKP’s Lausanne Syndrome to the tradition of the disappointed conservative-Ottomanists of the 1920s during the twentieth century. The chapter presents speeches, writings, and interviews of officials belonging to the AKP and the broader political-Islamic movement associated with the AKP, as well as relevant public intellectuals or outlets. It focuses on the analysis of the unit-level variables of leader images and strategic culture(s) and ultimately navigates through the beliefs that these elites and their constituents hold or support regarding the Treaty of Lausanne (its geopolitics and history) and fleshes out the related geopolitical vision that they have. Lastly, the role of these intervening variables vis-à-vis the foreign policy outcome is expanded upon as the book moves on to the practical-policy aspect of the Lausanne Syndrome.

Our physical boundaries are different from the boundaries of our heart.

Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

This chapter focuses on how the Lausanne Syndrome manifests through perceptions and beliefs based on the analysis of the intervening (i.e., unit-level) variables leader images and strategic culture and their role as “filters” of systemic pressures in producing foreign policy outcomes. But before looking at related discourses and ideas, I first explain why ideation is important when discussing contemporary TFP based on the NcR framework. Arguably ideation has a place in the analysis of every state’s foreign policy and yet in some cases it carries more causal weight than in others. This depends to a great extent on the type of the political system. The more centralized and less democratic is a political system, the less space exists for ideological pluralism and domestic pressures in the process of policy and decision making. Likewise, in dictatorships and hybrid or majoritarian regimes, such as Turkey,¹ the government feels little to not at all constrained by or compelled to consider domestic interest groups or the wider masses in an inclusive way. It often chooses to rally the votes of the supportive electoral majority, even if that is marginal, thereby reproducing societal divides and polarization. By extension it maintains a foreign policy orientation that is heavily influenced by the largely unchecked ideational filters of the government elites, particularly the Foreign Policy Executive (FPE).

With these in mind, the following section provides a brief overview of the political developments under the AKP that rendered the government increasingly authoritarian. Tracking this process and the different milestones also demonstrates the growing weight that ideational factors acquired in TFP, particularly during the 2010s. The stage is thus set to examine ideational manifestations of the Lausanne Syndrome and their relation to foreign policy outcomes.

4.1 The Weight of Ideation in New Turkey’s Foreign Policy

During the AKP’s first term Turkey saw great democratic and economic progress. However, as years went by and the AKP moved to its second (2007) and third (2011) terms in power, the country started to gradually drift towards authoritarianism with much of the achieved progress being reversed.² At the heart of this drawback was President Erdoğan’s desire and efforts to establish a presidential political system with himself at the helm. The road to presidentialism was neither easy nor short and went through at least six important milestones: (a) The constitutional referendum of 2007, (b) the constitutional referendum of 2012, (c) the first direct presidential elections of 2014 that elected Erdoğan to the presidency, (d) the failed coup attempt of 2016, (e) the constitutional referendum of 2017, and (f) the double—general and presidential—early elections of 2018 that implemented the constitutional changes of the 2017 referendum thus also launching the presidential system.³ As mentioned in the book’s Introduction, this process included the gradual erosion of the military’s power through democratic reforms that civilianised/politicised various state institutions, and legal trials that led to the imprisonment of hundreds of military officers on grounds of plotting against the government.

Especially during the 2010s the AKP’s approach to democracy became increasingly majoritarian. It treated elections as a process that gives ‘the winners the right to impose their will on society at large with little regard for the concerns and interests of losers,’ thereby creating much ‘socio-political conflict and polarization.’⁴ In the early 2010s this tendency was in its early stages. And given that ‘even non-democratic states must take into account the demands of powerful political actors such as the military, economic elites, and even, occasionally, the public as a whole, if they wish to remain in power,’⁵ Erdoğan remained vulnerable to some domestic pressures regarding both domestic and foreign policies for he still had to win a series of elections and constitutional referenda. But the more Erdoğan consolidated his power and came closer to his political objective the more majoritarian his approach and the less checked the exercise of his authority became.

The summer of 2016 was a decisive milestone in Turkey’s drift towards authoritarianism. Erdoğan and his government used the failed coup of July 15 as a pretext to go after all real and perceived political enemies through a massive purge that included more than 150 thousand individuals from all state institutions, including the military.⁶ The consequences of the failed coup attempt had thus accelerated the processes of authoritarianism and, by extension, affected (foreign policy) decision-making processes. Because of the state of emergency that was enforced, Erdoğan could rule by presidential decrees. Moreover, various state institutions, including the military and the ministries of foreign affairs and defence came under the control of the President while most opposition voices within those institutions were purged. Lastly, opposition political parties found themselves having to support the government against the putschists at least in principle. Because of the hegemonic anti-coup narrative that the government constructed, it became very difficult for them to substantiate and legitimise any opposition to the government’s purge, at least in the beginning.⁷ As a result, Erdoğan managed to circumvent politico-social opposition and emerge as the core of state decisions and mechanisms.⁸ Therefore, the role of leader images became more dominant even as the Imperial strategic culture paradigm became more institutionalized. Both variables became central to TFP.

It was not a coincidence that TFP after 2016 became more assertive and interventionist. Between 2016 and 2020 Turkey intervened in Syria four times, intervened and maintained troops in northern Iraq against the will of Baghdad, intervened in Nagorno-Karabakh on the side of Azerbaijan, intervened in Libya on the side of the Government of National Accord (GNA), and conducted multiple illegal marine surveys or drilling operations in the Eastern Mediterranean—particularly within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the Republic of Cyprus. From this perspective, and as we will see in more detail in the next chapter, it seems that as Erdoğan consolidated his power more, the causal weight of the Lausanne Syndrome (as an inclusive ideational variable) increased. The next section presents manifestations of the Lausanne Syndrome—elements of leader images and strategic culture—among political leaders, societal elites, and the public.

4.2 The Lausanne Syndrome in Leader Images and Strategic Culture: From the Second Group to the AKP

Beyond the 1918–1923 period, further evidence of the Lausanne Syndrome and the ideological continuity between the Second Group and the AKP can be traced in key periods of Turkish history that could be seen as parentheses and in statements of AKP leaders or leaders of the broader political-Islamic movement in Turkey. In one of the speeches that sparked the controversy in the mid-2010s, the leader of the AKP, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, openly disputed the Treaty of Lausanne, making specific references to Mosul, Thrace, Cyprus, and Crimea, saying that Ankara ‘cannot ignore its kinsmen’ in those places. The Turkish President went on to say that ‘for years, they [the founding fathers of the republic and their successors] have tried to show Lausanne as a victory to us by comparing it with the Treaty of Sèvres’. And he added: ‘We cannot draw boundaries to our heart, nor do we allow it.’⁹ He was referring to the boundaries drawn in the region by the Treaty of Lausanne effectively ending the Ottoman Empire. Erdoğan was making clear that those boundaries are unacceptable, at least emotionally. He moreover made a direct reference to the National Pact by way of justifying Turkey’s current foreign policy, and he harshly criticized both Turkey’s main negotiator of the Lausanne Treaty, Ismet Inönü, and Mustafa Kemal himself calling them ‘two drunkards (iki ayyas)’ whose incompetence resulted in the limited territorial borders of Turkey.¹⁰ Perhaps not coincidentally the leader of the Second Group, Ali Şükrü, one of the most vocal critics of Kemal, used to often refer to and denounce Kemal's drinking habits as well.¹¹

This Lausanne Treaty-related discourse already showcases certain leader images that are also associated with the Imperial strategic culture paradigm and were historically suppressed under the Kemalist rule. To be sure this was not the first time in Turkey’s contemporary history that the Sèvres Syndrome was challenged and that the Lausanne Syndrome manifested through leaders and intellectuals of the same or similar “images” and politico-ideological tradition. Robert Olson writes that at least since the early 1970s some scholars started becoming critical of Kemal’s compromises breaking the monotonous refrain regarding his great successes: ‘Western Thrace, the Dodecanese Islands and Mosul are those mentioned. These areas were declared integral parts of Turkey during the war of independence, but at Lausanne and in subsequent agreements Turkey withdrew these claims.’¹²

Even from the time of Prime Minster Adnan Menderes (1950–1960) we can find elements of the domestic and external aspects of the Lausanne Syndrome—albeit in small degree. Menderes was not a conservative; he was in fact a member of Kemal’s Republican People’s Party (CHP). However, together with other members of parliament he maintained a critical approach towards the party’s leadership and in 1945 he suggested democratic reforms. In the same year he parted ways with the CHP and together with Celal Bayar founded the Democrat Party (DP). Ismet İnönü, then leader of the CHP, accepted the development as he realised the need for a multiparty system and the creation of new parties that would not, however, challenge the authority of the CHP.¹³ The DP was eventually elected to power in 1950.

Despite the DP’s Kemalist roots and the fact that its time in power was characterised by more continuity than change, Menderes did make some interesting moves. Domestically, apart from liberalizing the economy,he loosened the state’s grip over religion adopting a less strict interpretation of secularism.¹⁴ He also introduced a number of related initiatives such as the Imam Hatip (religious) schools, a Faculty of Divinity at the University of Ankara, religious radio shows, optional religious courses in primary schools, and the closure of People’s Houses (Halkevleri) – an enlightenment project that Kemal introduced to gain social support for his reforms and curve conservative opposition.¹⁵ As Hakan Ovunc Ongur notes, though these initiatives were ‘not directly aiming to dismantle the secular state structure,’ they ‘helped to recall and normalize Islamic and Ottoman societal traditions,’ not least in the context of a pragmatic electoral strategy that involved the establishment of ‘local networks with extended families’ and religious orders.¹⁶

Somewhat similarly, the DP’s foreign policy maintained and reinforced the western orientation of the CHP against the Soviet threat of the time through Turkey’s accession to NATO in 1952 among other policies. And yet in the context of NATO’s security architecture, Turkey under the DP for the first time after 1923 made significant—though largely unsuccessful—openings to the Middle East such as the Baghdad Pact (1954) with Iraq, Pakistan, Britain and Iran which later (1959) transformed into the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO).¹⁷ On the one hand, the DP’s foreign policy faced significant backlash in the Third and Arab World; it lacked the pragmatism of the Kemalist approach and was accused of being adventurist. On the other hand, however, Menderes’ foreign policy was also marked by Turkey’s official reengagement in the Cyprus issue with the argument that Cyprus was Turkish and that it should be given back to Turkey (see more in Chap. 5). Not surprisingly, the DP government used the Cyprus issue, an issue related with the results of Lausanne and resonated with the public, to divert the unrest that stemmed from domestic problems and crises.¹⁸

From the perspective of domestic and foreign policy, although Menderes and the DP were not really bearers of the Lausanne Syndrome, they had to acknowledge its presence among the society in developing a narrative and a political program that would help them expand their electoral base, as well as compete and survive politically against the CHP. It was thus not a surprise that, by appealing to these ideas, the DP won all three parliamentary elections of the 1950s (1950, 1954, 1957) every time winning in most provinces. Apart from a relative increase of votes in 1957, the CHP only won in ‘underdeveloped areas in the east, where landowners and tribal chiefs were still able to deliver blocks of votes.’¹⁹

For these and other reasons, Erdoğan often exalts Menderes and his time in office as a parenthesis of democratization in the history of the Kemalist state, despite Menderes’s drift towards authoritarianism in the latter half of the 1950s.²⁰ Regarding Menderes’ imprisonment (and later execution) after the 1960 coup d’état, Erdoğan, who was 7 years old at the time, stated the following at the wake of his first term: ‘Some are saddened by things like this, and they give up. In my case, this sadness turned into an attraction for politics.’²¹ Erdoğan relates particularly to two aspects of the Menderes story: First, his early democratic approach and openings to religion that constituted the first break from the Kemalist political dominance and, second, his overthrow by the military. The latter, being the guardian of the Kemalist state, was seen by Erdoğan as undemocratic, the oppressor of religion and political Islam more specifically. As elaborated below, Necmettin Erbakan’s similar experience adds to Erdoğan’s perceptions, and the related images shared by AKP elites.

To be sure the rehabilitation of Menderes in the public sphere started with Turgut Özal, the founder of the Motherland Party (ANAP), whose governance constituted another important milestone for the Lausanne Syndrome in Turkish history.²² Özal was both a pragmatist and committed to conservative-religious values while also a rumoured member of the Naqshbandi religious order. Just like Menderes, Özal focused a great deal on the economy and its liberalization. Among other things, his economic policy was characterized by open markets, incentives for foreign investments and especially “Islamic capital” from the Arab World, the development of cities in Anatolia, and an emphasis on exports.²³ But Özal’s domestic policies had a strong religious component as well. Furthering the opening that Menderes initiated in the 1950s, he deviated from the Kemalist political paradigm and brought Islam and Ottoman nostalgia to the fore.²⁴ In 1988 Özal became the first Turkish Prime Minister to go to Mecca for pilgrimage. He appointed members of the Naqshbandi order to his administration and legalised charitable donations to religious organizations. He enabled conservative businessmen and investors to improve their operations and organise politically even as he contributed to the emergence of a new, conservative middle class. Moreover, he adopted a much more tolerant stance vis-à-vis the activities of religious orders and brotherhoods (tarikats) that were banned under Kemal, such as the Naqshbandi, the Nurculuk and the Süleymancı, thus providing them with more freedom.²⁵

When asked, Özal said that the objective of his governance was to accomplish three things: ‘face our Ottoman history and halt the genocide against the Bosniaks; use our shared Ottoman memories with the Muslim communities to expand the influence of Turkey and redefine ourselves not in ethnic terms but within the context of Ottoman Islam.’²⁶ These sentiments had implications for foreign policy as well. Even though Özal remained pro-Western, he took a number of ‘initiatives to change the pattern of Turkish foreign policy’ that were strongly opposed by the Kemalist military-bureaucratic establishment.²⁷ Not least, he attempted great openings to the Arab and Muslim World and at the same time flirted with adventurist and revisionist foreign policy ideas. Among other things he tried to make new identity-based openings to Iraq and in the Kurdish issue in the context of a more democratic policy domestically and a more outward policy externally.²⁸ As Mufti notes for example, Özal’s Chief of Staff Necip Torumtay ‘had no doubt that Özal intended to invade Iraq’ on the basis that Mosul and Kirkuk ‘fell within the National Pact borders’—despite the fact that the Turkey-Iraq territorial dispute had been officially settled in 1926.²⁹

Özal never disputed the Lausanne Treaty officially, but his worldview often pointed to what was then dubbed neo-Ottomanism (i.e., nostalgia for the Ottoman Empire). His view was that ‘Being a Turk in the ex-Ottoman space means being a Muslim or vice versa’; he thus tried to construct an identity that would transcend other ethnic or linguistic identities based on shared historical experiences and Islam.³⁰ Beyond aiming to bring about peace at home by bridging different identities, this approach re-conceptualized and re-interpreted Turkey’s external environment according to Ottoman nostalgia and prescribed a more active and assertive role for Turkey. After the collapse of the Soviet Union more specifically, Özal saw the opportunity to push for a new and wider geopolitical vision. He thus stated that ‘The current historical circumstances permit Turkey to reverse the shrinking process [of the Ottoman Empire] that began at the walls of Vienna [in 1683]’.³¹

Leader images and strategic culture under Özal manifested the Lausanne Syndrome not in the way that it manifests under Erdoğan with the direct disputing of Lausanne, but by reviving elements of the Ottoman past, be it in domestic or foreign policy. And though he did not challenge the geopolitical status quo in a territorial manner, he did try to transcend national borders through relations with “kin” groups and states on the basis of the Ottoman and Islamic identity to the end of gaining more influence abroad and enhancing trade relations.³² On the other hand, leader images connected to territorial revisionism have manifested through politicians belonging to the same or similar political-ideological currents. For example, Sadettin Tantan, former member of Özal’s ANAP, mayor of Fatih (1994–1999), Interior Minister (1999–2001), and later co-founder of the Homeland Party (Yurt Partisi), called for the updating of the National Pact arguing that ‘starting from Mosul and Kirkuk, Aleppo, all of Cyprus and the Aegean islands, Western Thrace, South Caucasus should be included’ in the new borders.³³

Similar ideas were even more prevalent within Necmettin Erbakan’s Milli Görüs (National Outlook Movement) and a series of associated political parties since the 1970s,³⁴ including the AKP. The National Outlook Movement was (and still is) known for its anti-Western, anti-European, anti-Semitic, and pan-Islamist ideology. When given the opportunity, Erbakan attempted a ‘re-traditionalization’ that ‘included the redefinition of the people’s identity through Islamic principles and the memories of the near, Ottoman past.’³⁵ He aspired to elevate Turkey to the leadership of the Muslim World (the ummah) to antagonize the West and articulate an alternative civilizational identity. The belief was that TFP ‘should be adapted to reflect its [Ottoman-Islamic] history.’³⁶ These ideas ‘echoed the resentment that had been accumulating since the end of the Ottoman Empire’ and were appealing among the dissatisfied ‘new urbanized poor that saw identification with Europe and the West as a characteristic of the rich elites.’³⁷ When Erbakan became a Prime Minister for a short year in 1996, though not unaware of the prescripts of the Kemalist paradigm, he attempted significant foreign policy openings in the Arab and Muslim world with the aim ‘of creating a sort of “Islamic Common Market” and “Islamic NATO”’ under the leadership of Turkey.³⁸

The overthrow of Erbakan by the so-called “post-modern coup” of 28 February 1997 did not allow him to unfold his foreign policy vision in full, though he did demonstrate tendencies that were clearly informed by the Lausanne Syndrome. After all, Erbakan believed that the Treaty of Lausanne ‘was introduced in order to create a state where the Turks would be alienated from their religion and all their institutions taken over by world Zionism.’³⁹ Perhaps most indicative of National Outlook’s Lausanne Syndrome, however, was the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Back then Erbakan, as the leader of the National Salvation Party (MSP), participated in the CHP coalition government under Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit and served as Deputy Prime Minister. Erbakan claimed the success of the Cyprus invasion saying that ‘the victory of Cyprus is an MSP victory.’⁴⁰ Milli Görüş saw the Cyprus operation as an anti-Western campaign and in favour of the national interest. Yet at the same time, to them ‘the importance of Turkey’s 1974 military victory was that after almost 300 years of continuous territorial contraction, land was won back from the West’ and revitalized the ‘glorious Ottoman-Islamic past.’⁴¹ These images are part of the strategic culture paradigm that dates back to the days of the Empire, even though at the time of the invasion it was not yet institutionalised as the state was still dominated by the Kemalist tradition. And yet these ideational factors display many similarities to the geopolitical vision of the Second Group and are connected to both Ottoman nostalgia and the National Pact narrative that survived all the way from the Second Group and Milli Görüş to the AKP.

In the same vein, Christos Teazis finds a great degree of convergence between the religious-Ottomanist belief system of the Second Group and that of the AKP, which points to a linkage and at least some continuity between the two in terms of political perceptions and thought.⁴² Apart from territorial and geopolitical matters, such convergences include a religion-based concept of democracy and the synthesis between capitalism, free economy, and cultural tradition. In agreement with other works,⁴³ Teazis concludes that the AKP’s roots can be traced to the Milli Görüs, partially to the DP, and lastly to the Second Group. It could indeed be said that Milli Görüs was the product of a ‘stratum of Turkish Islamists [who] remained dedicated to an Islamic restoration’ after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire and the emergence of a new secular state under Mustafa Kemal.⁴⁴ The Second Group’s support for a constitutional monarchy and a state where religion would have as much power as in the Ottoman Empire is very similar to Milli Görüs’s and the AKP’s vision for a strong—even authoritarian—presidential system and a more religious society. What is more, the Second Group had an overall ‘conservative aim of making the new Turkey—if there was ever to be a new Turkey in any basic sense—conform as far as possible to the customs and traditions of the old.’⁴⁵ The resemblance between the Second Group’s “new Turkey” narrative and the AKP’s aim to inaugurate “New Turkey” in 2023, at the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Turkish Republic, is striking and telling.

Against this background the conservative and pro-Ottoman Second Group, though not entirely homogenous, can be seen as a political predecessor of the AKP. This would also mean that many of the perceptions of the former never ceased to exist and have been transferred through history and the political Islamic movement, including the milestones of the DP and ANAP, through the belief system of Milli Görüs and into the AKP. After all, many members of the AKP have been Milli Görüs members while Erdoğan himself used to be Erbakan’s protégé.

As far as the geopolitical vision is concerned, we have seen that the process of drafting the National Pact was intertwined with the evolution of the Turkish nationalist movement after 1919 and that it was supported by people from a wide range of political-ideological backgrounds. And although the National Pact effectively represented ‘a foundational break from the Ottoman political tradition’ due to its territorial and other aims, it was still adopted with the support of Sultan-Caliph loyalists as well which gave them, too, a sense of ownership over the decision.⁴⁶ However at the time, the movement was still, in theory, not only committed to the territorial objectives of the National Pact but also to the preservation of the Sultanate and the Caliphate. These were important reasons behind the decision of many conservatives to support the resistance movement and the National Pact. Erdoğan himself highlighted the participation of muftis and imams in the resistance drawing an ideological association between the AKP and the pro-Caliphate/pro-Ottoman political current of that time.⁴⁷

Similar images were demonstrated by key AKP intellectual, former Foreign Minister and Prime Minister of Turkey under the AKP, Ahmet Davutoğlu, in his book Strategic Depth, among other writings. Davutoğlu laments the fact that Turkey abandoned the Ottoman Empire’s lost territories and was overtaken by the anxiety of defending the new borders. According to him, ‘this situation prevented the formation of interim tactical plans, such as the creation of fields of influence between the areas of total domination and total abandonment’.⁴⁸ Furthermore, he criticises the passivity of TFP arguing, in line with Milli Görüs discourse, that in order for Turkey to find its place in the world, the experiences of the Ottoman Empire’s late years should be evaluated carefully as Turkey is in a process of redefining itself domestically and in terms of foreign policy.

Davutoğlu attributes Turkey’s foreign policy passivity to psychological, identity and political cultural factors—akin to the Sèvres Syndrome and the Republican strategic culture paradigm—and calls for their recreation to the end of a new ‘civilizational opening’ and ‘strategic orientation’ in accordance with Turkey’s historical legacy and sphere of influence.⁴⁹ The recreation that Davutoğlu refers to is basically the enabling and manifestation of the Imperial strategic culture paradigm and a different mind-set at the policy-making level—both of which are components of the Lausanne Syndrome. In fact, Davutoğlu goes one step further arguing that, by adopting the boundaries of the National Pact, the leadership of the Turkish Republic rejected a powerful position in the international system as well as the potential of becoming a state that could constitute an alternative to the Western axis.⁵⁰ He further posits that, by compromising on the Treaty of Lausanne, the new Turkish state also diregarded the transnational Islamic identity of the Ottoman Empire and the Caliphate thus hindering its own influence over the post-Ottoman space.⁵¹ All of these ideas resemble the discources of Özal and Erbakan.

References to the Lausanne Treaty and the National Pact became more frequent since the mid-2010s and Erdoğan spearheaded the articulation of a narrative influenced by the Lausanne Syndrome. This is important given that, as noted in the beginning of this chapter, the weight of Erdoğan’s images, opinions and worldview in decision making became even greater after the attempted coup of July 2016 as state power and authority became highly centralized to his person. For example, in the lead up to the anti-IS Mosul operation (see more in Chap. 5) Erdoğan insisted that Turkey should participate in the operations invoking the National Pact:

Turkey will take part in the Mosul operation and hold a seat at the table. It is out of the question for us to remain outside. Because there is history in Mosul for us. If those gentlemen wish so, they can read Misak-ı Milli [National Pact] and better understand what history we have in Mosul. Currently there are our brothers and sisters in Mosul, including Arabs, Turkmens and Kurds. Likewise, to the north towards the border, we have relatives there […] No one should expect us to withdraw from Bashiqa.⁵²

Two months later, he expressed similar views about the Lausanne Treaty while speaking about the situation in Syria:

Over the ten years preceding the establishment of our Republic, we regressed from three million square kilometers [of territory] to 780 thousand square kilometres. They imposed the Sèvres on us and we consented to the Lausanne. That is all. Is this what we deserve? We were the top state of the 17th and 18th centuries; however, now this is what we have left. Some say, ‘Where is the harm in losing any more?’ Wasn’t this what these dastards, these scums, called the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party], wanted? Were they not the ones who were seeking to establish a state in our southeastern region? […] A Muslim is not stung from the same hole twice. We are not stung from the same hole twice.⁵³

In another speech he made for the start of the 2016–2017 academic year he talked of the importance of knowing about the National Pact for understanding (and justifying) Turkey’s geopolitical role:

Should we fully comprehend the National Pact, we can realize what responsibility we have in Syria and Iraq. On the contrary, if we don’t know the National Pact, we cannot understand what responsibility we have in Iraq or Syria […] I have a historical responsibility here. We will be here. We will be both at the table and in the field.⁵⁴

The Lausanne Syndrome, which includes both the National Pact narrative and Ottoman nostalgia, is very salient in these statements. However, Erdoğan became even more transparent about his views reminding Second Group leader Ali Şükrü’s wish for a national geography that extends beyond the boundaries of the National Pact. Commenting on the reactions to his remarks and tyring to appease fears about a Turkish expansionist agenda he stated:

Whenever we talk of historical and legal rights, and bring up Lausanne, some come out and ask, ‘do you have an eye on Iraqi and Syrian lands?’ And today I saw some newspapers report that ‘Erdoğan mentioned the National Pact (Misak-i Milli) and thus stirred the pot.’ It is not me that says so, it is the history. Are we to forget such a reality that was noted down by the history? Are we not to speak of these truths? We don’t have an eye on anyone’s lands. On the contrary, we are against those who have an eye on the lands of these countries. […] As I have always said, our physical boundaries are different from the boundaries of our heart. From Europe to the depths of Africa, from Mediterranean to the limitless steppes of Central Asia; our brothers living in these geographies are all within the boundaries of our heart. To us, the Balkans are one half of our heart and the Caucasus the other half. While this is the case, how can we regard those that insistently work to exclude us from developments in Iraq and Syria as well-intentioned? […] How can I see Aleppo different from Gaziantep, Hasakah from Mardin, Mosul from Van! Be noted that we can explain this crooked understanding neither to our grandchildren nor to our ancestors.⁵⁵

Erdoğan’s efforts to reframe his statements are evident. However,several speeches demonstrate that he was unwilling or unable to conceal the revisionist character of his remarks which repetitively referred to the 1919–1923 historical juncture and the Ottoman past as well as to the Lausanne defeat or the National Pact boundaries:

Our Republic […] is the name of the new path we drew up for ourselves on October 29, 1923 after our War of Independence ended in victory. As I always underline, the Republic of Turkey is not our first state. It is our last state. Do not mistake them! Our new state, which we founded following an agreement that we were compelled to approve under the circumstances of one century ago, of course is a very important achievement of ours as a nation. And the incidents that take place in Syria, in Iraq now. Ghazi Mustafa Kemal had drawn up a line of Misak-ı Milli [National Pact]. When I mentioned it, some got annoyed. Why are you annoyed? I am giving a history lesson, examine and see what is in the Misak-ı Milli. I mentioned Lausanne and they got annoyed. Why are you getting annoyed?⁵⁶

In another speech he lamented once again the (territorial) fait accompli that the Lausanne Treaty imposed on the former Ottoman Empire with specific mention to the Greek islands:

What did they do to us in history? They showed us the Sèvres in 1920 and then persuaded us to agree to the Lausanne in 1923. Afterwards, some have tried to pass off the Lausanne as a victory. All is obvious. And now you see the Aegean, don’t you? We gave away at the Lausanne the islands that you could shout across to. Is that the victory? Those places used to belong to us. There are still our mosques and sanctuaries. However, we are still talking ‘What will the continental shelf be? What will it be in the air, or at the sea?’ We are still struggling for this. Why? Because of the ones that were at the table in Lausanne.⁵⁷

Erdoğan reiterated his views during a visit to Greece in December 2017.⁵⁸ At their meeting, Greek President Prokopis Pavlopoulos commented on Erdoğan’s opinions:

Using my former capacity [as a law professor] … I would like to tell you that, because you talk about updating the Lausanne Treaty, Treaties do not need updating or revision. The interpretation of the Law, the methods of interpreting the Law are those that allow the adaptation of the rule of the Law included in the Treaty to each time’s circumstances. The methods of interpretation exist, I am sure that your staff is completely adequate, I know who your staff on International Law matters is. Therefore, if we avoided certain terms that are not appropriate legally speaking, I think that certain misunderstandings would have ended at the right time.⁵⁹

Erdoğan’s response was rather blunt: ‘I am not a professor of law but I have in depth knowledge on political law. In political law, the term of “updating treaties” does exist; and we do update them so long as countries come to an agreement. There are many examples of this in the world.’⁶⁰

These images manifested through other AKP leaders as well. For example, a year after Erdoğan’s exchange with Pavlopoulos, Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu also spoke about the need to update the Treaty of Lausanne with regard to the Aegean islets and islands.⁶¹ In the same vein Metin Külünk, who has been the Vice-President of the AKP’s foreign relations committee, a Member of Parliament and long-time member of Milli Görüs has posted a map to Twitter depicting a vision of a greater Turkey (an expanded version of the National Pact). The map includes territories from northern Syria, northern Iraq, Bulgaria, Greece, Armenia, Georgia, and the whole of Cyprus, while in his comment Külünk justified the map by invoking a history of ‘a thousand years.’⁶²

4.3 Shaping Collective Ideas and Assumptions

With the AKP’s consolidation of power by 2016, these images became dominant not only within state institutions but also in public discourse. Having controlled most mass media organizations in the country,⁶³ Erdoğan has been able to take his ideas and those of the broader Islamic-Ottomanist movement out of obscurity and into the mainstream. Within this framework, dysphoria about the Treaty of Lausanne and Ottoman nostalgia is frequently reproduced on multiple levels. For example, the columnist of the pro-AKP newspaper Daily Sabah, Ekrem Buğra Ekinci, argues that, apart from certain territorial adjustments, the Treaty of Lausanne is not much different from the Treaty of Sèvres. He essentially suggests that both treaties were equally devastating and concludes:

Similar to the Treaty of Sevres, the Treaty of Lausanne was a plan to divide the Ottoman Empire, which had been collapsing for the last few centuries, into nation-states […] [T]he Ankara government [through the Lausanne Treaty] found the opportunity to establish a new nation-state for themselves, which was a triumph, while for the conservatives it was a loss, as they lost their entire history including their sultan, madrasahs, religious law and the fez.⁶⁴

In the conservative pro-Erdoğan newspaper Yeni Şafak columnist İbrahim Karagül blamed the West for taking Turkey ‘hostage under the name of Westernization [and] Europeanization.’ He was also very forthright in suggesting that the Lausanne Treaty was a scheme to limit Turkey to its current (unsatisfactory) borders: ‘We were able to hold on here [Anatolia]. We took refuge in the “last fortress.” Lausanne was not enough for us, hence we were never satisfied. Because we were never satisfied about being limited to Anatolia […] And hence, we were always patient throughout the twentieth century.’ Karagül concluded arguing that after decades of patience under the control of the West, Turkey’s time has come: ‘the West’s hundreds-of-centuries-long unilateral dominance ended […] Our memory was refreshed, our regional belonging was revived, our political and cultural identity was revived, and tutelage mechanisms started to gradually break down. We were returning to our core, to our self, to our power and claims.’⁶⁵ Another columnist in the Islamic-conservative and pro-AKP newspaper Yeni Akit exalted Erdoğan saying that thanks to him ‘even the most stubborn people realized that Lausanne was actually a defeat. It is interesting that hundreds of articles, papers, seminars and conferences explaining this have not been as effective as Erdoğan’s words.’ The columnist, Vehbi Kara, equated the Treaty of Lausanne with the Treaty of Sèvres and went on to argue that it prevented Islam from dominating the ex-Ottoman lands. Importantly, Kara associated Erdoğan’s actions with the ideas of Necip Fazıl Kısakürek as well.⁶⁶

Kısakürek, a Turkish nationalist and Islamist, was one of the key intellectuals of the Turkish political-Islamic movement in the twentieth century with great impact on AKP figures and the Milli Görüs more broadly. Kısakürek led the Büyük Doğu Hareketi (Great Eastern Movement) that ‘sought to synthesize Islamism, Turkish nationalism, and conservatism’⁶⁷ while elevating the Ottoman legacy. His ideas were characterised by anti-Westernism, anti-Semitism and defiance against the radical secularization and westernization project that Turkey was experiencing. He saw Turkey’s Islamic-Ottoman heritage as a remedy to these vices and believed that the country’s task was to ‘defend Islamdom… against Western imperialism.’⁶⁸ Among other things, Kısakürek supported from early on that the Lausanne Treaty was a defeat rather than a victory. This was among the views and religious-Islamic ideas promoted through his journal Büyük Doğu.⁶⁹

Key AKP figures were deeply impacted by the ideas of Kısakürek and Büyük Doğu. Hakan Yavuz argues that it was this journal ‘that sowed the seeds of the first phase of the political evolution culminating in Erdoğan’s emergence as the leader of the AKP.’⁷⁰ In fact, Kısakürek was an inspiration and an ideological mentor for Erdoğan who often praised the intellectual’s impact on his own ideas and life.⁷¹ In one such occasion, at the 2014 Necip Fazil Awards Ceremony for Literature and Research, Erdoğan spoke about Kısakürek’s legacy all the while criticizing the first (Kemalist) republican period,

If those who were marginalized in the past can now say ‘I exist’ in today's politics, this is due to the self-confidence Necip Fazil instilled in those circles […] The Turkish Republic brought a new alphabet and language as well as a new understanding of culture and arts to Turkey. During the single party period, all these spheres were confined to certain templates. All bridges with the past were burned and links with our traditions were slashed. While we were becoming estranged from our own culture, Necip Fazil managed to get us in touch with our past and maintained that struggle with determination […] Necip Fazil was a monument of self-confidence, who could say ‘I am here and because I am here, Turkey therefore exists,’ during our most oppressive period on words and thinking.⁷²

Likewise, AKP founding member, former Foreign Minister and President Abdullah Gül acknowledged Kısakürek as the intellectual with the greatest impact on his worldview. For him and his friends, ‘Büyük Doğu was more than simply a journal of ideas. Fazil’s ideas of a “Great East” or “Great Orient” was a world vision and a grand one that held enormous appeal for many in Turkey at the time who were pondering their faith and sense of being Turkish.’⁷³ Though initially on the side of the CHP, Kısakürek’s later “conversion” through his contact with Naqshbandi and other Islamist ideas, rendered him a prime bearer of the Lausanne Syndrome and source of the related political, geopolitical, cultural, and religious ideas for other intellectuals of the Islamic movement as well as for the conservative public.⁷⁴ It is worth noting that after being convicted and imprisoned for insulting Turkishness in 1946, Kısakürek was among the political prisoners released by the Menderes government.⁷⁵ However, in the 1950s he remained critical of the DP for not being harsh enough against the CHP and not deviating substantially from its ideology.⁷⁶ Lastly, Turgut Özal was, too, among the leaders of the political Islamic current whose views were influenced by Kısakürek and like-minded writers.⁷⁷

Another key intellectual in the history of the Lausanne Syndrome was controversial historian and writer Kadir Mısıroğlu. His three-volume work in the 1960s and 70s Lozan Zafer mi, Hezimet mi? (Lausanne: Victory or Defeat?) became the intellectual cornerstone of the anti-Lausanne ideological framework within the political-Islamic movement and contributed significantly to the reproduction and enhancement of the Lausanne Syndrome. Mısıroğlu supported that the Lausanne Treaty was a foreign plan that ruined the glorious imperial legacy of the Ottoman Empire and left the Islamic world without a leader by punishing the Turks. According to him, Lausanne had a great spiritual cost for the Turkish nation because of the abolition of the Caliphate and the Sultanate, and great material costs for it sacrificed territories such as Batumi, Western Thrace, the Greek Islands, Cyprus, Hatay, Aleppo and Mosul.⁷⁸ Erdoğan and other Milli Görüs members have been significantly influenced by Mısıroğlu’s ideas; indeed Erdoğan’s narrative is virtually identical with that of Mısıroğlu.⁷⁹ When towards the end of his life Mısıroğlu was hospitalized Erdoğan visited him. At the news of his death in 2019 he called him ‘one of the important history writers of our country.’ Erdoğan was joined by a number of AKP officials who expressed their condolences for Mısıroğlu’s death, including Presidential Spokesperson and advisor İbrahim Kalın, Parliament Speaker Mustafa Şentop, and then Finance Minister Berat Albayrak, all of whom praised him as an ‘important historian.’⁸⁰

The leadership of the AKP,⁸¹ as part of a broader, non-monolithic, political-Islamic ideological current, evidently demonstrates deep dissatisfaction with how the Sèvres Syndrome confined TFP over the years, thus preventing it from reaching its full potential and rightful regional-international position. Likewise, it becomes more apparent that the worldview of key AKP leaders and, most importantly, Erdoğan himself has been shaped by ideas and narratives associated with the Lausanne Syndrome. With their rise to power these ideas manifested in an unprecedented way; as the AKP consolidated its power, they became institutionalized and created a hegemonic narrative about domestic and foreign policy that influenced both AKP-controlled mass media and a large part of the society, most notably the party’s conservative-nationalist electoral base.

4.4 On Intervening Variables and Foreign Policy Outcomes

A hundred and ten years ago, Yemen and Skopje and also Erzurum and Benghazi were parts of the same country. When we mention this, it is referred to as ‘neo-Ottomanism.’ Why is it that those who united all of Europe are not referred to as neo-Romans, however those who united the Middle Eastern geography are considered to be neo-Ottomans?⁸²

These words are from a 2013 speech of then Turkish Foreign Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu equated Turkey’s effort to unite the Middle Eastern geography under its aegis with the post-WWII project that united Europe. His argument was weak not only because of the apparent problems in the said comparison but also because in that same speech he contradicted his own point: He spoke against the notion or accusation of neo-Ottomanism but at the same time promoted it. He noted that within a hundred years since the early twentieth century Turkey has contributed to the closing of a series of historical parentheses: ‘the 1911 Tripoli war in 2011, the 1912 Bulgarian-Balkan migration in 2012, in 2017 it will be 100 years since Jerusalem’s division from the Ottoman Empire in 1917 and in 2018 it will be a century since our separation from the Middle East.’

All these events characterize the years of the Ottoman Empire’s demise, and Davutoğlu suggested that Turkey is the continuator that will restore that legacy. He argued that this historical break (of 1923) is coming full circle, insinuating that the Ottoman Empire, in some form and shape, is coming back:

Without going to war with anyone, without declaring enemies and without disrespecting anyone’s borders, we will be connecting Sarajevo to Damascus and Erzurum to Batum once again. This is the source of our strength. They may now appear to be separate countries; however 110 years ago Yemen and Skopje were both part of the same country. The same can be said for Erzurum and Benghazi. […] It is an honor to be tied to the history of the Ottomans, the Seljuks, the Artuqids and the Ayyubids, however we have never set our sights on another nation's land.⁸³

Of course, retrospectively, and as demonstrated in the next chapter, Turkey’s foreign policy plans did not proceed without war, enmities, or border violations. It is however interesting that Davutoğlu and other leaders or intellectuals of the political-Islamic movement consider the post-Ottoman Republican period (starting even before the establishment of the Turkish state) as a problematic parenthesis, even a historical mistake that needs to be remedied. Similarly, Erdoğan said that his 2014 election to the presidency closed a parenthesis that opened with the 1960 military coup against Menderes.⁸⁴ Meaning, a parenthesis of military coups, the intervening role of the military in politics, and the dominance of the Kemalist establishment.

When it comes to the Lausanne Syndrome, although suppressed for the most part of the post-1923 history under the Kemalist establishment, we can see it manifesting in glimpses or exceptions within the century-long “parenthesis” suggested by Davutoğlu. For example, we first saw it coming out of obscurity along with the loosening of the state’s grip on religion under Menderes and the DP after 1950. It then manifested in a more tangible way in the early 1970s with the participation of MSP and Erbakan in the government that invaded Cyprus. It later gained ground and a more institutional form under the governance of Turgut Özal during the 1980s and early 1990s, and again appeared when Erbakan became Prime Minister in 1996.⁸⁵ It was then that the Imperial strategic culture paradigm started to make a meaningful come-back as well. The decisive moment for the Lausanne Syndrome came in the twenty-first century with the rise of the AKP to power and especially during the 2010s. If not closed, it seems that Davutoğlu’s “parenthesis” is in the process of closing. These historical exceptions to the “Kemalist” history of contemporary Turkey demonstrate the impact of ideational intervening variables on foreign policy outcomes. Every time they manifested, even as exceptions or weak and short-lived interventions, they had at least some impact on policy outcomes.

If we see the Lausanne Syndrome as a complex set of beliefs, ideas, and perceptions not only at the leadership level but also among many conservative ideologues and opinion makers—who now have the power to speak out more freely than ever before—and a large part of the electorate, we can easily see the character of its intervening role in policymaking. In this sense, the Lausanne Syndrome, cutting across national levels from leadership to society, becomes the state’s dominant strategic culture paradigm, especially among the governing elite.⁸⁶ The system of ideas, perceptions and beliefs included in the Lausanne Syndrome is no longer suppressed or seen as an exception. It is a governing and institutionalized system of collective assumptions about Turkey’s identity, international position and national security that functions as a “filter” of systemic stimuli and constrains its foreign policy behaviour or defines acceptable and unacceptable strategic choices.⁸⁷

Indeed, the discourse and rhetoric of AKP leaders and conservative opinion makers in relation to the Ottoman past, the National Pact, and the Treaty of Lausanne⁸⁸ are very ideologically charged. They regard

the creation of the Turkish Republic as an error, and its founder Mustafa Kemal, as less a visionary statesman and more a mistaken military officer whose horizons were limited by falsehoods of his time […] this worldview sees the key to Turkey’s security and prosperity as closer integration with Turkey’s Middle Eastern neighbors and the wider Muslim world.⁸⁹

Their aversion towards the geopolitical status quo showcases the salience of the Lausanne Syndrome. This is not to say that the Sèvres Syndrome does not have a role in TFP anymore, but to suggest that the government deals with the historical fears and insecurities that the Sèvres Syndrome carries in a largely different way. After all, both the Republican and Imperial ideological currents were scarred by the events that led to the Sèvres and by the Sèvres Treaty itself. Yet the new approach is to a great extent dictated by a different mind-set and set of ideas than those found within the Kemalist-Republican paradigm.

The threat perceptions attached to the Sèvres Syndrome have not faded away. For example, the growing divergence between Turkish and Western interests, the empowerment of Kurdish movements in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey and their strengthened demands for autonomy or secession rendered traditional Turkish insecurities more salient than ever before.⁹⁰ However systemic stimuli are no longer dealt with as much caution as in the past. Turkish foreign policy under the influence of the Lausanne Syndrome is often prone to revisionism as opposed to a pro-status quo behaviour. Ankara’s heightened diplomatic activity in the broader Middle East⁹¹ and its military operations are unprecedented in both nature and scale—often going beyond the confines of the National Pact geography. And it is not only that threats are countered with much more resolve but also that, provided a permissive systemic environment, they are treated as opportunities for diplomatic and military expansionism or, in other words, as a means of revising the geopolitical status quo to Turkey’s benefit in political, economic, security and other terms.

It should be noted that the Republican strategic paradigm still exists in parallel, or even within the Imperial one. To exterminate it entirely would be a very difficult task, one that would take a lot of time (see more in Chap. 6). Elements of the previous establishment or variations of the Kemalist ideology can still be found in state institutions, notably in the military. Most importantly, this set of beliefs and ideas is still popular in various forms within the society. From this perspective, the AKP government cannot entirely ignore political and social tendencies that are in some way or another connected to the Kemalist tradition; if nothing else, to ensure its stay in power in electoral terms and safeguard its survival from severe Kemalist reactions akin to the coups of the past (especially those of 1960 and 1997). In fact, in the mid-2010s, because of the growing alienation of liberal elements from within the AKP and electoral uncertainty, Erdoğan had to include nationalists and Eurasianists in his governmental coalition. This coincided with a shift that TFP was attempting away from Europe and closer to Eurasia, not least through a closer partnership with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Russia and China.⁹²

Among Turkish military officers one could find Conservatives (status quo-oriented), Neo-nationalists, Eurasianists, and Atlanticists (more educated and pro-Western). Since 2014, Eurasianists (especially military officers) connected to the Patriotic Party (Vatan Partisi, VP) have become more influential, while since 2018 the AKP’s coalition with the MHP added a strong nationalist and far-right dimension to TFP.⁹³ After the 2016 coup attempt a great number of military personnel was dismissed due to accusations of involvement in or connection to the coup. As a result, the number of Conservative and Atlanticist officers was reduced radically and Eurasianists became much more influential thus strengthening the Eurasianist and anti-Western orientation of TFP.⁹⁴ This change boosted the TFP shift towards interventionism and revisionism, as certain elements of Eurasianism overlapped with the Lausanne Syndrome. Lastly, the AKP’s nationalist turn also caused a broader ideological transition towards the right among Turkish political parties prompting them to adopt more a nationalist discourse in their efforts to compete with the AKP.⁹⁵

As seen in the case studies of the next chapter, the AKP instrumentalised the contribution of Eurasianists insofar as their geopolitical vision facilitated the dictums of the Lausanne Syndrome but refused to be restricted by their concerns and geopolitical confines.