Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan talks with students of Tevfik Ileri Imam Hatip School during its opening ceremony in Ankara last month. Turkey has seen a sharp rise in religious schooling under reforms which Erdogan casts as a defence against moral decay, but which opponents see as an unwanted drive to shape a more Islamic nation.


By Shabtai Gold/DPA/Istanbul

With only 100 days in office under his belt, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has insulted feminists, accused the West of wanting to see Muslim children dead, and gone head-to-head with the country’s Kurdish minority over the battle in Kobane.
Analysts have warned that Erdogan - who was sworn in as president on August 28 after serving as prime minister for over a decade - is unlikely to relax his grip on power.
There had been some hope that as president, an ostensibly non-partisan post, Erdogan would seek to heal the societal divisions exacerbated during his tenure as premier, especially after last year’s Gezi Park protests.
“I do not think anything has changed,” says Ahmet Kasim Han, a board member of the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy Studies and a lecturer at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.
“His policies remain the same, though he is much more able to position himself as an opinion pundit and the figurehead of discourse” rather than engaging with day-to-day politics, Han says.
Erdogan attacked feminists, saying they do not understand motherhood and that equality between men and women goes against nature, raising fears that he is imposing conservative Islam.
His reputation was further damaged internationally when he claimed a Muslim had discovered the New World, a theory touted only by fringe historians.
He further agitated the West by charging the US-led coalition is only seeking to destroy the Islamic State militia because the group is in control of oil fields.
“Those who come from the outside may seem like friends to our faces but they love our dead bodies and our children’s dead bodies,” Erdogan said ahead of a papal visit to Turkey.
He also angered the country’s Kurdish minority - helping spark unrest that left 40 dead in October - after insisting there was no difference between Kurdish fighters battling against the Islamic State in Kobane and the brutal jihadists themselves.
Ozgur Unluhisarcikli of the German Marshall Fund in Ankara believes that Erdogan will not risk reversing two years of talks with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the Turkish armed group which has been fighting the state for three decades in an effort to gain more rights.
However, the likelihood of reaching a deal in the near future that leads to real peace is slim.
“I would not talk about a peace process, but a state of ceasefire. To me, the Kurdish peace process resembles the EU process: It is open ended and we do not know where it will lead. Both parties value the process more than the end goal,” says Unluhisarcikli.
Turkey’s bid to join the European Union has stalled for years, and Erdogan’s consolidation of powers domestically and stance on foreign policy is only likely to make it harder for Ankara to join the bloc.
The president has refused to let the US-led coalition use Turkish airbases to attack the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq, putting him at odds with many of his Nato allies.
As premier, Erdogan was already facing growing criticism abroad over domestic policies which have been described as authoritarian, such as increasing the powers of the police, weakening the judiciary and tightening controls over the internet.
“Even though he was elected president in the first round, [the result] was less than his expectations and that does not make him feel more comfortable,” says Han. “And when he is less comfortable he doesn’t loosen his grip, but tightens it. This is his understanding of control.”
Han calls Erdogan the “Teflon politician,” as none of these scandals - or the reported $615mn spent on his new 1,000-room palace - seem to harm his domestic standing.
The biggest threat for Erdogan, and the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) he founded, would be economic decline, as they have staked their reputation on lifting people out of poverty and expanding the middle class.
Analysts have argued repeatedly that if a sharp slowdown were to happen - signs of which are already starting to emerge - his other blunders could come back to bite him.
Erdogan might just be lucky enough to benefit from lower global oil prices, easing inflationary pressures and giving him enough breathing room until after the elections for parliament.