That has led to speculation that Erdogan, fresh from surviving an attempted coup, wants to crown his 14-year rule in Turkey by annexing chunks of its neighbors. But analysts see a more mundane domestic calculation behind the rhetoric: they say the president is really trying to expand his own powers, not his country’s frontiers.
Erdogan still hankers after making his office the focus of all power in Turkey, instead of the largely ceremonial post it was before he took over -- and, on paper, still is. But he doesn’t have support in parliament to make that constitutional change -- and maybe not in the country, either, if it went to a referendum. In both cases, the likeliest bloc of voters to be won over are nationalists who aren’t at all averse to talk of Turkey’s historic claims on nearby lands, or military attacks on Kurdish groups who live there. [...]
Erdogan’s foreign policy has become more assertive since the coup attempt. In August, he sent troops into Syria, where they’re pursuing Islamic State but also clashing with fighters linked to the separatist Kurdish PKK -- the group that’s a main target of Erdogan’s crackdown at home. Its Syrian affiliates have established control over much of that country’s north during five years of civil war, and in doing so, emerged as a favored U.S. fighting force in the ground war against Islamic State. [...]
There are also sectarian allegiances at stake. Erdogan is a Sunni Muslim, like most Turks, and his politics are rooted in religion. He portrays Turkey as the protector of Sunnis in Iraq and Syria who face oppression at the hands of rulers backed by Iran, the region’s main Shiite power. “Erdogan is unhappy -- as would be any Turkish leader, secular, Islamist, you name it -- to see Iran rising,” Cagaptay said.
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