It is a skill which woos crowds and wins elections. A more cautious man would have hesitated before picking a street fight with the Israeli president in Davos over a year ago. But after Mr. Erdoğan’s “one minute” tirade, he came home a hero. He is a prime minister who shoots from the hip and, remarkably enough, hits his mark. However, this week the shot went wild, straight into his foot or possibly somewhere else more painful.There will, of course, be many who will nod their head in agreement with Mr. Erdoğan’s none-too-subtle threat to expel Armenian nationals working in Turkey illegally. Indeed, if it is a European audience he meant to address, then many of his listeners will share a prejudice against foreigners taking jobs.
However, he made it clear in an interview with the BBC’s Turkish Service that such expulsions (now unlikely) would be a tit-for-tat retaliation against foreign legislatures who want to recognize an Armenian genocide. If the diaspora wants to muddy the waters, then let them bear the consequences, was his message. Don’t scratch our back and yours will itch, too. It is not that the Turkish position is morally superior but that Turkey has the power to kick up a fuss. It is the language of the municipal official who threatens to tear down an illegally constructed story unless the contractor pays a bribe.
So if Mr. Erdoğan is a politician who trusts his instincts, in this instance, his instincts let him down badly. There could have been other ways to explain Turkey’s immigration policy. If there is a sizeable number of Armenian citizens working in Turkey (the figures are disputed but somewhere between 12,000 and 100,000), then this has occurred because the Turkish authorities have at some stage chosen to turn a blind eye. If there is an explanation for why they have done so, it is because mutual economic dependence between Turkey and Armenia helps create a momentum for reconciliation. The parallel is within the suitcase trade at the end of the Cold War when “tourists” from the former Soviet Union set up makeshift bazaars everywhere in Turkey, swapping binoculars for bubblegum albeit in a manner unrecognized by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).
This has been a bad week for Turkish political instincts. Another story which hit the headlines abroad was a directive by the Ministry of Health which forbids women seeking artificial insemination from attending clinics abroad and which penalizes medical institutions which facilitate such journeys. The ground for this is Article 231 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK), which makes it an offense to conceal the paternity of a child. The controversy seems a bad parody of the one that rages in some European capitals as to whether it is lawful to assist people traveling to euthanasia clinics in Switzerland. The latter debate is over where to draw the line between compassion and incitement to murder. The former is over how to protect patriarchal rights. It is essential for children to know who their fathers and grandfathers are, a ministry spokesman said. This defines a parent not as the person who brings you up but the person whose DNA you share -- a respectable opinion, perhaps, but surely not one that should be enforced by law.
However, people presumably are to be encouraged to attend any clinics, at home or abroad, if it means finding a cure for their homosexuality, if we are to believe Selma Aliye Kavaf, the state minister responsible for women and family affairs. Ms. Kavaf expressed her view that same sex relations were a curable disease, a view (how does one put this kindly?) at odds with several decades of sexual politics. It is also one that makes her uniquely unsuited for her job.
On all of these issues, Turkey’s government should not be pandering to prejudice. There are some instances when politics is not about expressing instincts but trying to lead.
