Western capitals remained silent through Turkey's presidential campaign - privately hoping Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's erratic 20-year rule would come to a surprise close - but now he has been handed a decisive mandate to serve a third term, the west is caught between fear and hope.
It fears he will exploit the result to take this Nato founder member further from the liberal secular west, but hopes against hope that, not being eligible to run again and thus freed from the need to pander to a nationalist electorate for the rest of his political life, he may at least be open to persuasion and base his foreign policy on something other than self-preservation.
The choices Erdoğan unbound makes matter not just for Turkey, Nato, and whatever order that emerges at the end of the war in Ukraine. The immediate issue is to prevent him falling into the lap of Vladimir Putin.
This story is from the June 02, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
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This story is from the June 02, 2023 edition of The Guardian Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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