Western pundits often admire autocrats for getting things done. Turkey shows why they’re wrong. Gönül Tol analyzes in Foreign Policy on March 1, 2023.
The old idea that autocracies are better than raucous democracies at getting things done found new life during the coronavirus pandemic. Many Western commentators argued that while democracies dithered and debated, autocracies were quick to respond and mobilize their resources. Sometimes that might be true—but only if you are the right kind of autocracy. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey, it turned out, is not one of them.
Erdogan’s response to the country’s devastating earthquake on Feb. 6 was painfully slow and uncoordinated. But regimes in which power is centralized are supposed to be fast and organized. All Erdogan had to do was pick up the phone and order his commanders to dispatch NATO’s second-largest army to the badly hit cities, mobilize the bureaucracy to send much-needed aid, and deploy emergency response teams. He did not. Just minutes after the 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit 10 Turkish provinces, troops stood ready to step in and take part in search and rescue operations. Yet in the critical early hours, the order from the top never came. Nor did Turkey’s Disaster and Emergency Management Presidency (AFAD) rush to help the victims. Why?
In a brilliant book, Timothy Frye tells us that strongmen are not as strong as we all think. Being an autocrat is no easy feat. Autocratic leaders, particularly in personalist autocracies such as Turkey’s, face trade-offs. They mobilize support by promising to get things done, but the things they must do to build their one-person rule end up undermining their capacity to deliver on that promise. One of the first things strongmen do when they centralize power is weaken institutions. But weak institutions make it difficult for them to govern, which eventually undermines their strongman rule.
Erdogan, in his 20 years at the helm, has hollowed out the country’s institutions and placed incompetent loyalists in key positions to centralize power in his own hands. This made Erdogan the strongest man in the country but left the state barely functioning. One of the most striking examples of institutional erosion is Erdogan’s suppression of the Turkish military, which went far beyond the legitimate aim of limiting the generals’ role in politics.
The man who came to power promising to get things done could not deliver on that promise in Turkey’s darkest hour because his one-man rule eroded the foundations of governance.
Disaster relief is an important part of most modern armies’ work. They can act quickly and provide medical and logistical support after natural disasters. As part of his efforts to curb the generals’ power, Erdogan stripped the military of its capacity to respond unprompted to domestic disasters such as earthquakes, establishing AFAD to take on that role instead.
The organization, like every other state agency in Turkey, quickly became a tool for Erdogan to boost his support at home and abroad. He stuffed AFAD with incompetent loyalists and made it part of a network of faith-based aid organizations to push the narrative that Erdogan was the “protector of Muslims” around the world. Advertisements showing AFAD providing aid to Muslims in need appear all over pro-government television channels and newspapers, and they are displayed at events in municipalities controlled by Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party.
In reality, however, AFAD lacks the resources, experience, and human capital to carry out the mission it was set up to perform. The person in charge of its disaster response department is a theology graduate with no experience in disaster relief who previously served in Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs. Despite AFAD’s well-known shortcomings—it operates on a small budget and has a staff of just over 7,000 people—the organization was put in charge after the earthquake. All rescue efforts and humanitarian aid had to go through it, and no other state agency, international aid group, or nongovernmental organization could lift a finger without AFAD’s permission. Even Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar, criticized for not deploying troops to the earthquake-affected areas fast enough, hinted that his troops stood ready to help but never got the order. Tens of thousands of victims died because Erdogan and those in his inner circle did not want anyone, particularly the military, to outshine the agency he had created.
The man who came to power promising to get things done could not deliver on that promise in Turkey’s darkest hour because his one-man rule incapacitated the country’s institutions and eroded the foundations of governance.
The earthquake did not just shed light on how Erdogan has damaged the state’s capacity in the two decades he has been in power; it also revealed where his priorities lie. Like all autocrats, Erdogan faced a trade-off between enriching his family and inner circle and serving the people. It is a difficult balance to strike. If an autocrat chooses to please his cronies at the expense of the people, he might face popular protest. If he decides to serve the public by redirecting government spending at his cronies’ expense, he might be challenged by the small circle around him.
In the last decade, Erdogan consistently chose the former over the latter. His controversial and unorthodox monetary policy to cut interest rates despite spiraling inflation made his already-rich cronies even richer, while runaway food prices and skyrocketing rents squeezed those at the bottom. Poverty soared as millions of Turks were unable to meet their basic needs. While granting infrastructure and building contracts to cronies who cut corners on safety earned Erdogan’s inner circle billions of dollars, the shoddy residences they built turned into graves for tens of thousands of people.
Erdogan may finally pay a price for all of that. Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections are likely to be held in June. No matter how hard Erdogan-controlled media try to spin things, the sheer scale of the devastation makes it impossible for Erdogan to hide his government’s incompetent response. That will dim his prospects. Pushing the elections back to a later date will not solve his problems, either. The earthquake has compounded Turkey’s existing economic, social, and political woes, leaving the country and Erdogan’s prospects in a worse place.
Erdogan’s Turkey is a powerful reminder that strongmen do not bring stability and do not get things done. They are at their worst when their country needs them the most. The tragedy that struck two weeks ago reminds us that Turkey does not need a strongman; it needs strong, capable institutions.
Gonul Tol is the founding director of the Middle East Institute’s Turkey program and author of Erdogan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria.