This year now ending is also the centenary of the Republic of Turkey (aka Türkiye, more recently), born in 1923 between the Treaty of Lausanne (July 24) and its actual proclamation (October 29, now the national day). Below follows a potted history of the last 100 years with references to Argentina despite the many differences between the two countries.
Separated by over 12,000 kilometres with the Turkish people having several centuries of history in their current location alone as against just 207 years of independence here since last July, there is also the geopolitical contrast of Turkey being bang in the middle of virtually all the world’s ongoing conflicts (unless push comes to shove in Guyana). Perhaps due to the geopolitics, the two G20 economies also have had until now differing growth engines, export-oriented and open to the world in Turkey’s case as against the protectionist, consumer-driven model here – will Argentina’s brand-new government lead to more convergence?
Yet at least one similarity emerges from the very origins of the Turkish Republic. Almost uniquely in world history Argentina and Turkey had two military men who politically transformed their countries to this day – Juan Domingo Perón and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk (only France’s General Charles de Gaulle springs to mind as comparable). Atatürk’s reforms perhaps did more to modernise on the social front (secularisation, female emancipation, the Latin alphabet, Western attire, etc.) than the economic although both agriculture and a force-fed industry boomed. The birth of the Republic is no longer seen as purely a one-man show, however, with both contemporaries and a prehistory of modernisation stretching back into the 19th century more recognised. Here Turkish Ambassador Ömür Budak pointed out that Turkey’s war lasted a dozen years between the Balkan conflicts beginning in 1911 and 1923 (like China’s experience between 1937 and 1949), not four years at most like other First World War participants, thus decimating the male population – female emancipation was thus as much a need as a principle.
Atatürk died in late 1938 and soon after came the Second World War. Turkish neutrality in those years when Istanbul became the spy capital of the world on a par with Third Man Vienna in the next generation is too complex for this space but was basically due to the consequences of taking either side being too huge.
Soon after the war Turkey became a multiparty democracy with its first free elections in 1950, won by Adnan Menderes of the Democratic Party, the prime minister throughout that decade. While Atatürk had pushed hard to modernise the economy, he overdid the state ownership and management, perhaps because the lack of any local entrepreneurial class in the foreign-run Ottoman economy left him no choice. Following a firmly pro-Western line in both harnessing the Marshall Plan and entering NATO (1952), Menderes also encouraged private enterprise, relying on the popular support confirmed in three successive electoral victories, but ran afoul of a military coup in 1960 and was executed the next year. A possible cautionary tale for Argentina’s new president Javier Milei – a military coup does not rank among his potential obstacles and still less any danger of execution but pushing drastic reform on the back of electoral support against entrenched institutions does not always guarantee success.
In contrast to this collision course, Turgut Ozal took advantage of the military regime following the 1980 coup to push through the reforms to liberalise the economy at greater speed than normal – comparable to Hernán Büchi in Chile in very similar years and in a very similar context. These reforms were more remarkable for their structural revolution than for spectacular growth – by opening up trade and lifting exchange controls he transformed the model from state intervention and import substitution to export promotion. Although pursuing these reforms as a premier and president in the decade following the return of civilian rule in 1982, the groundwork was laid in those junta years.
Ozal was both the midpoint and the transformational figure in the four decades between Menderes and the dawn of Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2003 but others were more dominant in that period – chiefly Süleyiman Demirel, a conservative firmly grounded in the rural masses who was premier or president for almost 20 years in that period, and his opposite number Bülent Ecevit, Turkey’s only clearly leftist politician to reach the top.
One explanation of Turkish politics tending to focus around a single name is that Turkey is not a federal country with nothing between Ankara and the town hall. In the 30 years between 1989 and 2019 every Argentine president of any duration has been either a provincial governor or the equivalent in this autonomous city (or the spouse of the former) but there is no such figure in Turkey. Nevertheless, mayors are important, especially in the case of Istanbul which has a larger population than two-thirds of the world’s countries – that is where Erdogan began his remarkable career modernising that metropolis.
The 100 years of Turkey beginning with Atatürk have been celebrated this year under Erdogan who continues to run the country after two decades, having won this year’s election unlike the Argentine incumbent. A devout Muslim, his retreat from a secularising state has also led him into some very modern economic policies which have helped Turkey to rebound from crises.
The Times then ventured the opinion that crisis gave Argentina and Turkey common ground as being more vulnerable to turbulence than other G20 countries with also stronger spurts of growth than most. Yet this picture is missing a few key differences – apart from Turkey having parted company with import substitution and being a rare case of a Middle East country without oil in contrast to Argentina’s wealth of resources and protected, consumer-driven model, their volatility is no longer comparable since Turkey came out of the global 2008-2009 subprime crisis with consolidated banking and expanded capital markets, the envoy explained. Yet Turkey has still been flirting with triple-digit inflation over the past year (while not hitting it big time like Argentina).
While Argentina ends this year with a dramatic change of government and the open-ended dawn of a new era, the Republic of Turkey starts its second century with domestic continuity in the midst of the world’s most explosive region.
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