The failed Turkish military coup, a doomed attempt to seize state power from President Recip Tayyip Erdogan, represents a win for Russian imperialism, a bitter defeat for U.S. rulers, and another sign of growing instability in the petroleum-rich Middle East.
Erdogan—once hailed as a model “democratic” leader—has jailed more than 10,000 people, including 42 teenaged schoolchildren accused of treason (dailymail.co.uk, 7/25). Thousands of schools and hospitals have been seized; tens of thousands of government workers, teachers, and university deans and professors have been fired. Turkey presents a clear case of rising fascism, a reign of state terror to smash internal factions and terrorize the working class.  
Coming on the heels of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the turmoil in Turkey is a blow to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the U.S. military hammer in Europe and the Middle East. Turkey fields the second-largest armed forces in NATO—a legacy of the 1950s-era Cold War, when the U.S. needed a bulwark against Soviet influence in the region. Now Turkey stands as a crucial counterweight to Russian client Iran; it borders Iran, Iraq and Syria. Turkey’s Incirlik Air Base is the forward base for U.S. air strikes on the Islamic State (ISIS), the regional imperialists who threaten U.S. control over oil in Iraq. If NATO was the centerpiece of the U.S. rulers’ post-World War II strategy to dominate the globe, Turkey is the linchpin.
As NATO weakens, and Turkey becomes a less reliable U.S. ally, Russia grows that much stronger. These trends reflect sharpening inter-imperialist competition—and a move toward a wider global conflict.
Fethulla Gulen, CIA’s Man in Pennsylvania
Five times between 1960 and 1997, relying on Turkish generals they’d trained, the U.S. bosses backed military coups or open threats of coups to keep a secular, pro-U.S. government in place. When Erdogan came to power in 2003 and installed an Islamic nationalist state, it marked a victory for pro-Russian sections of the Turkish ruling class. The Erdogan government promptly increased trade with Russia and China and limited U.S. use of Incirlik Air Base in the Iraq War.
Shortly after his election as U.S. president in 2008, desperate for allies in the region, Barack Obama “began to court Erdogan, whom he saw as a moderate Muslim democrat who could help him stabilize the Middle East…[but] Erdogan…has been at best a reluctant ally in the fight against ISIS and a supporter of Islamist groups the U.S. opposes, including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood” (Politico 7/16). Additionally, Erdogan has escalated Turkey’s racist slaughter of Kurdish nationalists, the most effective U.S.-financed force against ISIS in Iraq.
Meanwhile, the U.S. ruling class hedged their bets with a moderate Islamist named Fethulla Gulen, a billionaire imam who supported the 1980 coup that murdered and jailed thousands of workers and students. Gulen moved to Pennsylvania in 1999, an arrangement eased by the former vice-chair of the CIA’s intelligence council (Huffington Post, 7/22). The Gulen religious “movement” opened more than a thousand schools worldwide, from Turkey and Pakistan to the largest chain of charter schools in the U.S. (The Atlantic, 8/12/14). His followers infiltrated Turkey’s judiciary, intelligence services, police and military. In 2013, after a corruption probe by Gulenist judges got too close to Erdogan’s friends, the former allies fell out.
As their relations with Erdogan soured, U.S. capitalists built up the Gulen opposition as a wedge to coerce Turkey to do more to fight ISIS. But once Erdogan blamed Gulen for the failed coup and seized the opportunity to eliminate the Gulenists and other pro-U.S. forces, that strategy now looks like a loser.
Rulers Running Out of Options
In the bloody proxy war in Syria, Turkey initially sided with the U.S., and against Russia and Syria’s Bashar al-Assad regime. But after the U.S. was forced to look to Russia to reverse ISIS territorial gains, the balance shifted. “Moscow is back as a big player in the Middle East, while Washington looks humbled, a shadow of the great power that once dominated events in the region”(The Guardian, 2/13). In June, Erdogan apologized to Russian President Vladimir Putin for downing a Russian warplane last November. Turkey also mended fences with Syria; “Assad the enemy” became “Assad the brother” (sputniknews.com, 7/4). The Russian ruling class sees Turkey making “a general shift toward the East and closer relations with Russia” (Moscow Times, 7/21).
Regardless of who actually orchestrated the failed coup, the result is clear. The U.S. bosses’ base in the Turkish ruling class has been decimated. Their credibility with oppressed workers there is nil. The bosses’ options are steadily narrowing—in Turkey and Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan, South America and the South China Sea. At some point, they will have just one option left: World War III. But without Turkey on their side, they are less likely to win it.
Fight Capitalist Dictatorship!
As Erdogan’s ruthless purge unfolded, Obama gave the effective dictator a “‘shout-out’ for his resilience” (New York Times, 7/20). This pathetic capitulation exposed the bosses’ conventions in Cleveland and Philadelphia for the empty charades they are. Turkey reminds us that capitalist “democracy” is a velvet glove on the iron fist of capitalist dictatorship—and that the glove can be thrown off very quickly. As Erdogan once said (and as Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump might say, if they were honest), democracy is like a bus ride: Once he got to his stop, he was getting off (Bloomberg News, 7/4/13).  Workers in Turkey have no more “due process” or “constitutional rights” than Philando Castile or Alton Sterling, murdered in cold blood by the kkkops.
But millions of those workers are seeking a way to revolt against the profit system’s brutality. From Baton Rouge to Istanbul, the working class will fight back against the bosses’ exploitation and endless wars for profit. Within that struggle lies our opportunity. Only a united working class—led by the international, revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party—can defeat rising fascism and the capitalist system that breeds it. Join us!