Machiavelli counseled, "never do an enemy a small injury." Ralph Waldo Emerson rendered the same thought as, "never strike a king unless you are sure you shall kill him." The coup plotters in Turkey can ponder these aphorisms from their cells while they await their potentially grisly fates.
Turkey has always been a contradiction for U.S. policymakers. It aspires to be European, but conflicts draw it to the Middle East. It has the second largest standing military force of any NATO country but resists committing troops to combat operations.
Now we have an attempted military coup to preserve democracy. The coup plotters no doubt saw their actions as consistent with the traditional role of the military as the guarantor of secularism in the Kemalist tradition. As with three previous coups, when an elected leader threatens this fundamental principle it is the responsibility of the military to act. The polity is greater than politics.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan long ago gave up the pretense of being interested in preserving democracy. His years as prime minster (2003-2014) and president (since 2014) have been characterized by creeping authoritarianism and rising Islamism. He has restricted press freedoms and ignored edicts from the Constitutional Court. When Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party lost its parliamentary majority in the June 2015 elections, he simply rejected the results and held another, more questionable election the following November, which gave his party a win. In the immediate aftermath of last week's attempted coup, Erdogan's government arrested thousands of military officers, judges and others who are suspected of opposing him. The revelation that the arrest list had been prepared in advance supported the theory that the bungled takeover attempt had been a set-up from the start.
There is little the United States can do to influence matters. Turkey is on the front lines of the war against the Islamic State group and the civil war in Syria. Standing strongly against Erdogan's growing dictatorship would mean sacrificing much of the ability to influence events in the Levant. As former U.S. ambassador in Ankara James Jeffrey said, "You have to deal with the Turkey you have, rather than the one you'd like to have."
One could argue that had the coup been successful it would have moved Turkey closer to one we'd prefer. Erdogan's authoritarian apparatus would be dismantled and Turkey's drift to Islamism reversed. Compare it to Egypt, where army chief General Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi deposed the Islamist government of Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and restored military rule that had been disrupted by the 2011 Arab Spring revolution. The Obama administration had never fully understood the radical nature of the Muslim Brotherhood, and believed that the rise of "legitimate Islamism" would mean that the "war on terror is over."
When Morsi was overthrown and el-Sissi elected president it soured U.S.-Egyptian relations. But since then Cairo has adopted policies geared towards fighting violent extremism and promoting pluralism and inclusion in Egyptian society. Despite the various economic and security challenges Egypt faces, from an American point of view things are much better than had Morsi been allowed to transform Egypt into a hard core Islamic state.
The Muslim Brotherhood failed in Egypt because it rose too quickly and tried to do too much too soon. The reaction came relatively swiftly, and was effective. Erdogan has been slower and more methodical than Morsi in putting together his power structure, building alliances where possible and subverting opposition leaders and institutions when necessary. It's hard to argue with the results. The failed coup, contrived or otherwise, now gives Erdogan the tool he needs to purge Turkey of the last vestiges of opposition and solidify his authoritarian regime. And there is not much the United States can do now but watch.
James S. Robbins is senior fellow in national security affairs at the American Foreign Policy Council, and author of "The Real Custer: From Boy General to Tragic Hero."