Egemen Bağış is a colorful figure. Born in Turkey in 1970, he came to New York for his higher education and ultimately found a job with the Federation of Turkish American Associations while simultaneously scrambling for a green card. Bağış had ambition, latched on to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and rode his coattails into power.

After 2002, Erdoğan often trotted Bağış—now a parliamentarian—out to counter criticism (including my own) about Turkey’s declining freedom. Bağış eventually became Turkey’s chief negotiator for European Affairs and later its inaugural minister of European Union Affairs. In these capacities, his goal was less to bring Turkey into the Western fold than to cajole Europe to support reforms that had less to do with democracy than Erdoğan’s desire to unravel the checks and balances that prevented the Turkish leader from consolidating his dictatorship. In this mission, he succeeded.

Behind the scenes, Bağış would play dirty. He harassed writers—myself included—with spurious lawsuits to try to intimidate us into silence. Privately, his own colleagues confided he was corrupt. A 2004 US Embassy cable reported, “Egemen Bagis…[is] despised as inadequate, out of touch and corrupt by all our AKP contacts from ministers to MPs and party intellectuals.”

With time and power, Bağış grew more arrogant and his disdain for the West starker. In 2006, he bragged about masterminding Turkey’s legitimization of Hamas. In the wake of the 9/11 terror attacks, he donated money to a then-designated Al Qaeda financier and suggested Al Qaeda was not the terrorist group Washington believed. After Turkey collected billions of dollars in US defense assistance, Bağış threatened to use the Turkish Navy against Europeans and Americans exploring for gas and oil in Cypriot waters.

Ultimately, Bağış’s cynicism would catch up with him. In April 2013, Bağış endorsed the conviction of world-renowned Turkish pianist Fazil Say who allegedly insulted Islam after tweeting a joke about the call to prayer. “Everyone should learn to respect what is sacred for others,” Bağış said. Not long after, a tape surfaced in which Bağış mocked the Quran and bragged about false piety. Ultimately, Bağış lost his job amidst a bribery scandal.

After a short time, Erdoğan rewarded him for his refusal to implicate the Turkish president in the corruption. In September 2019, the president appointed Bağış as ambassador to the Czech Republic. In Prague, Bağış’s antics quickly made him a pariah. Both Czechs and other European ambassadors, for example, rolled their eyes as Bağış joined protestors in front of other embassies to protest supposed anti-Turkish slights.

So long as he had Erdoğan’s protection,
Bağış was Teflon: nothing could stick. But even though Erdoğan will never
voluntarily relinquish power, the aging autocrat’s rule will not be permanent.
This poses a problem for Bağış and a generation of opportunistic Turkish
policymakers. The legal files remain open on Bağış’s corruption. Whatever the
sins of the Gülenists (and, over the years, there have been many), dismissing
evidence of corruption as manufactured as part of some grand Gülenist
conspiracy lacks credibility.

Put another way, if Bağış returns to
Turkey, he will spend life in prison. He is in essence an ambassador
representing a country that despises him to a country that mocks him. Nor is
Bağış alone. When Erdoğan finally falls, those who enriched or shielded
themselves under his protection will face accountability. In Turkey, they would
face not only charges, but also blood retribution of those whose lives they
upended or sent to prison.

Neither Europe nor the United States
should sympathize. When Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the shah, Iran’s former
ambassadors assimilated into countries in which they served or in which they
had friends and contacts. So too have those Turkish diplomats who escaped
Erdoğan’s post-2016 purge. Bağış represents something different. He has no
friends and burned every bridge. Scores of Turkish officials are like him.

The day after the Erdoğan era ends, Turkey’s stateless ambassadors will knock on doors seeking refuge. No Western or moderate Arab state should oblige them. Instead they should extradite them immediately to Turkey to face true justice, and use their stolen assets to compensate the victims of the Erdoğan regime.

The post Is Turkey’s Stateless Ambassador the Sign of Things to Come? appeared first on American Enterprise Institute – AEI.