“So you’re saying he’s just a moron who got lucky.”
Moron, no, but lucky, very much so. The factors that led to Turkey’s economic success, have run their course, and Erdogan’s management will be a major, in fact disastrous, drag going forward.
His predecessor Kemal Dervis, instituted strong reforms, which had the economy growing just as Erdogan took office.
Turkey’s worst decades of economic performance occurred after its 1974 invasion of Cyprus, when it became a pariah state, subject to sanctions. The military dominated former Governments were wedded to that conflict and refused to concede to any settlement, but it was a great bargaining chip for Erdogan.
The year after he became Prime Minister (2004), he settled that conflict with the UN, in return for a flood of incentives from the EU (and reportedly, a load of personal bribes). In 2003 and 2004, Erdogan’s party pushed through a reform package, including the new labor law. These EU designed reforms, and the Cyprus deal incentives, are what set the Turkish economy into orbit.
Since then, Erdogan has done little to help the Turkish economy, and much to hurt it. He has consolidated power with his Party, and since purged the economic reformers who led the initial liberalization, replacing them with corrupt cronies. Since the coup attempt, Turkey has become a virtual dictatorship, and Turks are no longer secure in their person or property.
The only thing that has seemed to motivate Erdogan’s economic policies for the last decade or more, has been personal graft (he is worth billions, his son controls oil exports/smuggling, his son-in-law all domestic energy distribution). Erdogan had the world’s largest palace built for himself, where he now lives.
I believe it is a fundamental misperception to view him as a technocrat. He is an autocrat, who has purged the technocrats from his party, and increasingly, has driven them from the nation at large.
“The factors that led to Turkey’s economic success, have run their course, and Erdogan’s management will be a major, in fact disastrous, drag going forward.”
* Smith’s dry response to that acquaintance’s work re the Sabbath is a classic:
“He (the acquaintance) was busy with his History of the Public Revenue, in which Smith gave him every assistance in his power, and he had actually finished a treatise on the Christian Sabbath, which, in deference to Smith’s advice, he never gave to the press. The object of this treatise was to show that the puritanical Sabbath observance of Scotland had no countenance in Holy Scripture, and that, while part of the day ought certainly to be devoted to divine service, the rest might be usefully employed in occupations of a character not strictly religious without infringing any divine law. When the work was completed, Sinclair showed the manuscript to Smith, who dissuaded him strongly from printing it. “Your work, Mr. Sinclair,” said he, “is very ably written, but I advise you not to publish it, for rest assured that the Sabbath as a political institution is of inestimable value independently of its claim to divine authority.”*44”