On turkey. And the countrys domestic politics. Including the growing power of the president and his party. Also, the role rival parties might play in this novembers elections. Good morning, everyone. Im director of turkey studies at middle east institute. Im very happy to welcome you all to our eighth annual conference on turkey. Each year as we convene this conference we fine keen interest in turkish matters. 2017 was very dramatic and a difficult year for turkey for its neighbors and allies including the United States. So we appreciate if you are making time to join us in our discussion. Our keynote speaker, is a leading voice on Turkish Affairs in Foreign Affairs of the german parliament. She will provide a firsthand report on the challenges facing ankara and berlin. We have elected members of the turkish and European Parliament on the program as well alongside a leader in u. S. Diplomacy toward turkey and expert analyst. You will hear our guest speaking guest speakers on three panels. To begin we will examine turkeys internal dynamics. Our panelist include recent member of the Turkish Parliament, Political Party representative and scholars who have been writing and following turkey. After our Morning Coffee break, well turn our attention to turkeys economy with the help of three turkish scholars who teach at Washington Area universities and member of European Parliament. After the midday break well hear from the keynote speaker at 1 30 p. M. We will follow with the days final panel at 2 00 looking at turkeys foreign relations, particularly turkeys relations with the u. S. , European Union and russia. We will be joined by legislators from turkey and European Union as well as u. S. Deputy assistant secretary for state of state for Southern Europe and the turkish scholar in that conversation. As you can imagine, we are delighted with the program we have assembled. I really hope youll find the discussion valuable as well. We are recording the events. So if you miss any part of the conference, dont worry about it. Just go back and listen to it online. One final note on todays program, for the last 71 years, the middle east institute has been dedicated to balance and nonpartisan programming and analysis. We work very hard so that you hear to ensure our invited speakers represent all sides of the ideological debate so you as an audience can hear diverse views and make up your own minds about controversial issues. So in that spirit this year, as previous years, we reach out to prominent figures affiliated with turkeys ruling justice and the party as well as think tankers, journalists, who are close to the government, and opposition parties and scholars. We are very grateful to all the speakers who agreed to appear today. I also would like to express my gratitude to mr. James holman. Hes our board member, for his generous support to this conference. Mei has the pleasure to work with the conference with Friedrich Ebert foundation and Michael Meier for making it possible. I sincerely thank this partnership. Its my pleasure to ask michael to greet you and to introduce our opening panel. Michael, the floor is yours. [ applause ] i was asked to put this name tag up. Ladies and gentlemen, its really a pleasure to be with you this morning. Just come back from germany yesterday evening and the times are not easy in germany as well given the Coalition Talks and all that. But but today turkey. Turkey does not play a role yet in the Coalition Talks, by the way, but this will come up. As a german think and do tank active in turkey and the United States and more than 100 countries around the world, we have really high interests in raising this topic, and we are very proud to be able to organize this conference in crucial times incorporation with middle east institute. I would like to dwell on three areas where i think we also will get some interesting discussions today. One is concerning turkeys domestic situation. After the coup, the rifts aggravated between within Turkish Society between turks and kurds, akp and opposition mr. Erdogan and the followers, secularists and devoted muslims, country side and between generations. This is not the situation which should be welcomed by anyone. We should try to do as much as possible to keep the Turkish Society together and not to split them. So from my point of view no Political Force inside to bridge these dangerous trends. Maybe we can come Forward Together to give some recommendations on that. Economically, as you all know, the turkish lira is on an alltime low right now. Since 2000, Economic Development was very impressive. But now it seems to me that turkey is facing this middle income trap. In order to overcome such a middle income trap, Goldman Sachs identified years ago four areas, how you can overcome such middle income trap. One is Macro Economic stability, political maturity, openness of trade and investment policies, and an improvement in the quality of education. Lets see if todays conference can identify areas where turkey has fulfilled any of these requirements. On Foreign Policy, turkey and eu relations are in deep trouble. The European Commission assesses turkey doesnt fulfill the copenhagen criteria for access into the eu. The Customs Union modernization is not on the agenda right now. The turkish u. S. Relations are in trouble due to so many reasons that i want just to enumerate a few of them. Different views on syria, syrian kurds, the zurich trial, the arrest of americans and the halt of Visa Services in turkey just to name a few. Now let me come to the turkishgerman relations. They are deeply in trouble as well. Since the violation of basic rights, the jailing of germans, german citizens, journalists in turkey, the med lipping of turkish officials in the german election campaign, the refusal to german lawmakers to visit german troops on the nato base and the linked relocation of the units outside nato territory to jordan. This is unprecedented but it happened. Ladies, we have a lot to discuss. Im looking forward to that, your input and active participation. I would like to thank middle Eastern Institute and mei and the Friedrich Foundation for making it possible. Let me introduce the panel, from johns hopkins, well informed specialist. Doctor, the floor is yours. Thank you to all of you for coming. Thank you for that kind introduction, thank you to middle east institute for inviting me and bringing us here. When you study turkey every day its a fascinating day to be study iing and to be following whats going on. We have much to talk about. I want to briefly introduce our panelists as well. Have you their biography in the brochure so i wont spend a lot of time on that because obviously we have lots to talk about. Over here we have talabani chair of kurdish political study and associate professor at the university of central forward. Here we have giran ozcan. Im going to use and abuse my role as moderator to make a point i always like to make everywhere i go. If you know me you know this. In the brochure Peoples Democratic party apostrophe after people which means single people, if you think about republican peoples party, one singular people. In fact the translation is peoples after the s so means multiple people. Its a translation and political point i want to make as well. Okay. Ive now abused that power. Over here we have ahmet kuru from San Diego State and aykan erdemir, Turkish Parliament and senior fell or for defense of democracies. We have an extraordinary esteemed panel for this discussion. I was thinking about what are the sorts of issues i want to bring up. Of course i wanted to publicize the event, so i was trying to tweet about all the things we could possibly cover. I was thinking everything from kurdish issue to whats the state of the military following the purges to allegations of corruption to everything from things that touch on economy, things that touch on Foreign Policy. Its very difficult to understand kurdish issue without understanding syria and iraq. Its difficult to understand syria without understanding russia. Its difficult to understand russias relationship if you dont understand the economy. Theres a lot of connections among the panels were going to be seeing. I tried to tweet about it. Even with the extra number of characters that were now allowed, i couldnt even get a quarter of those issues in. I want to see how many we can get in. Well obviously leave a lot of time for questions. This is a great audience. Youll be interested to ask this panel your pressing questions. I actually want to start with a very, very general question and then well kind of drill down into the specific issues. So i want to ask all of the panelists. Obviously again thinking about things that are connected, its very difficult to understand any of the atps domestic and foreign policies without understanding Upcoming Elections in 2019 and what are the motivations for domestic and Foreign Policy or potentially moving up those elections as some are now talking about. What i want to ask the panelists is, what do you think the akp or erdogans greatest challenge in the Upcoming Elections, whether they be held in 2019 or moved up to 2008 will be and how do you think the party or he is or will try to address that challenge. Okay. Gunes, can we start with you. Good morning. So let me just like since this is going to be the first time image for actual elections its a point to emphasize that. A link to kurdish question very quickly. The thing is that the main reason why kurdish in 2015 basically collapsed is because of the sacrament between kurdish and erdogan regarding erdogans desire for a system. This does not work out. The question erdogan did not like it, ultimately erdogan looks for new allies. The new allies found in the party mhp. Why, how the party wants to make a deal with erdogan so they will never have a chance to become part of a cause in government. Ultimately establish a system basically means mhp never take ministerial seat. So it kind of sounds counterintuitive if not basically selfdestructive. You have to think about like, again, kurdish nationalists, your nightmare in which the ruling party akp making a deal with kurdish nationals. This was a real possibility until summer of 2015. Once this is happening, i think basically thought, well, if i cant basically take an action, then erdogan the ultimate goal it is better afford this deal to erdogan so i have more leverage. This is basically what happened last year and obviously ep log 2017 referendum, which was very controversial, by the way. For erdogan, the challenge coming back to your question is basically making sure the turkish nation is kept happy, so this becomes his prior concern, get this magic person in the next president ial elections next year or 2019. But then the challenge is obviously we have different like the party, whatever you want to call it english, sounds very nice, which basically means more fragmentation in the turkish nation as well. This is going to be kind of a major challenge for erdogan which basically implies means he doesnt have incentive to take kurdish question because not his priority. It may change after the elections but not basically for the future. In a sense, let me make my point, look at the turkish politics, okay, huge polarization, secular guys, this has been going on since early republican years. Obviously more complicated. Erdogan is very powerful, a strong leader. At the same time his power is a razor edge majority, it can swing either way very easily. Not like puth, much more established institutionalized. In erdogan case everything depends on factors. He basically, from my perspective, he needs to sway turkish nationalism to make sure he wins the next elections. Excellent. Thank you very much s. Just to add on what he said. I think the june elections is a good occasion to look back when trying to understand dangers for erdogan and adp. In the runup to june 7 elections, we saw how the akp could it was towards the he said of the Peace Process just collapsed a couple months before the elections. We can see erdogan can be dictated by policies. When we look at june elections and what happened with the Peace Process and how erdogan saw the Peace Process wasnt benefiting him numerically during elections and he could swerve into the National Space were talking about. I think for the elections, whether it will be held in 2018 or 2019, erdogan faces a huge a huge risk to whatever he does, not just whether the nationalist base will be fragmented, which probably will do with the e party, use the turkish word for the party. English it is a bit difficult. Whether that is fragmented or not, erdogan will probably in terms of the countrys economy for the first time, it will be at a stage where you probably wont be able to hide it as much. I think you believe now certain cracks have been covered pretty well. I think we have to look at the case right now and how that could have a severe Economic Impact in the next few months. The runup to the election that will be a huge factor. People are expecting that right now. Thats probably going to be a crack too far. It seems to me, at least, erdogan is not going to be able to cover that crack as well as hes done before. And so even with an attempted coup, whether you go with conspiracy theories or not, whether erdogan knew about it or not, we saw objectively speaking that attempted coup has strengthened erdogans hand domestically in terms of consolidating his significant authority on all processes in the country. So even an attempted coup in turkey has helped erdogan on his way. So what that attempted coup couldnt succeed, the on coming economic crisis which everyone is pretty much expecting right now, especially if the case in new york, what kind of decisions come out there will probably be pretty significant for any election. That seems to be a little funny that something thousands of miles away in the u. S. Will have a huge domestic impact in erdogans campaign to be the first elected in the new system, the first elected president in the new system. And so i think the challenges that are coming unfortunately arent so much from inside the country. What that election will do, how much of an impact it will have in fragmenting that nationalist vote, im not too sure. No one expects her to make a huge gain or at least threaten any kind of authority or seat or anything in that regard from erdogan. The fragmentation erdogan has been severely trying since the Peace Process will be significant. I think the challenge, if any, i dont want to paint too much of a grim picture, if any, will come from outside turkey. Excellent. Again, showing its difficult to extract domestic and Foreign Policy in turkey. Thanks for the question. In that case ive been critical of my colleagues studying elections in central asia because they study something which does not matter at all. They say whenever you say someone you dont die before finding your self in his or her shoes. I find myself in the same position discussing turkish elections which do not matter at all. Because erdogan will never do with any electoral results. He will rig it, he will cancel it. He has the power. No one can challenge him. He has full control over the media. He has full control of the economy. He has full control of beaurocracy. So i dont think elections matter in turkey. What i think matters is economy. Economically Certain International policies, eu policies, u. S. Policies may hurt erdogans economic basis. The money floating from qatar may be restricted by qataris that may hurt him. But overall, im pessimistic about the possibility of power change in turkey. Erdogan is a very; isnt that right guy. He always look at the coming trends. For example, there was a nationalist trend coming, and i was expecting him to be damaged by this wave of turkish nationalism. But instead, he led it, became prominent turkish nationals in this course. In reality he has no basic backbone, basic ideological set of views. Hes very pragmatic, opportunistic. So now, for example, im expecting a secular wave, a secular backlash. But he seems to be prepared even for that, returning to this, a very smart person looking to opinion poles and has no limitation whatsoever to use any discourse, any means. And in the turkish political fabric, there is no actor who can at this point challenge him. The only factor, i want to say two things. One is economic gain, which matters. Obviously, we are human beings having material needs. Obviously if we have economic crisis, hell find scapegoats, reproduce excuses, blame someone in the party. He may get rid of this. In the long run, what i think is i know akp people, many of my friends and families are members, political level, basic level, they are losing morality. Turkey right now is under a very unprecedented ethical crisis. Consider the corruption case, the basic line is that political morality is totally gone, which is surprising and disappointing and heartbreaking for me, which is happening with a constituency, which claims to be very moral because of certain religions and National Ways they consider the