Erdoğan supported foreign uprisings while crushing domestic ones and kept power anyway

Evidence

In the summer of 2013, Erdoğan would appear in public and make a four-fingered salute in solidarity with Rabaa Square (rabaa means “fourth” in Arabic). Even after his government had violently cleared Gezi Park, he still positioned himself as a leader who was in support of popular uprisings, as long as they were the right ones. Rabaa didn’t have too many supporters that mattered, however. The rise of Sisi was a huge victory for the Saudi royal family and the version of Gulf-dominated Arab politics that had seemed so threatened since the dawn of a so-called “spring” in 2011.15 The Turkish Model, and Erdoğan’s dream of international influence, were in tatters. In 2013, Erdoğan lost Egypt, he lost much of the secular middle class during the Gezi days, and he was now deeply involved in a bloody quagmire in Syria. It did not look like Turkey was joining the European Union anymore. But his rule itself was not in question; Erdoğan looked forward to easy election victories, as his government gradually became more authoritarian. Not long after the dust settled, the bazaar shopkeeper, Hazar, joined the military and was in for a big surprise when he met the rest of the guys in the barracks. In the square, he felt the entire country was with him—but he found out that most of these guys, watching from rural areas around the country, were against the protests from day one. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 452

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader Bevins narrative on how regime-change support vs. domestic repression diverged across the 2011-2019 protest decade; also resonates with the book’s core contrast between Egypt and Turkey outcomes.