Turkey’s downward spiral and the scuffles at Erdogan’s Brookings speech (Kemal Kirişci, Brookings)

On March 31, Brookings hosted the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who delivered a speech on “Global Challenges and Turkey’s Goals for the Year 2023.” His speech focused mainly on terrorism and the need for international cooperation in combating it (while also jabbing at Washington’s support for some Kurdish groups in Syria that Turkey defines as terrorist organizations). He also spoke about economic inequality and the challenges associated with the Syrian civil war, among other themes. Not surprisingly, Erdoğan took care to elaborate on the economic gains and democratic and legal reforms implemented during his thirteen years in power. The talk—which lasted forty minutes, twice the time foreign dignitaries speaking at Brookings typically take—left many wondering at the gap between the event’s title and its actual content.

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Kemal Kirişci is the TÜSİAD senior fellow and director of the Center on the United States and Europe's Turkey Project at Brookings, with an expertise in Turkish foreign policy and migration studies. Within the project, Kirişci runs the Turkey Project Policy Paper series and frequently writes on the latest developments out of Turkey. His upcoming monograph titled "The Consequences of Chaos: Syria's Humanitarian Crisis and the Failure to Protect" (Brookings Institution Press, April 2016), co-authored with Elizabeth Ferris, considers the long-term economic, political, and social implications of Syria's displaced and offers policy recommendations to address the humanitarian crisis.