Turkey: troubled times ahead

S P SETH

Turkey is in trouble. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government are facing difficult times. Not long ago, Erdogan was the country’s brightest political star in raising Turkey’s international profile. He got rid of the country’s generals given to staging military coups in the name of maintaining its secular polity as the custodians of modern Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk. By winning successive elections over the last decade with his Islamic credentials, Erdogan showed that Islam and capitalist economic model weren’t antithetical. And that a political party rooted in Islamic traditions could successfully practice democracy. So much so, Turkey was often touted as a political model for other Islamic countries.

Internationally, Erdogan carved out a high profiled role in the Middle East following the Arab Spring; though the volatile nature of the developments in that region, particularly in Syria, where he sought to play a decisive role to bring down the Bashar al-Assad regime didn’t play out to his script. In Egypt too he had a falling out with the new military-backed regime for ousting Morsi and for his support of the Muslim Brotherhood. His initiative to make Turkey a member of the European Union hasn’t worked out because of opposition, particularly from Germany and France, to incorporating a Muslim country into this exclusive European club, though efforts in this regard continue. His reputation internationally has received a setback because of his crackdown on domestic opponents, as we shall see.

All in all, he did a good job as Turkey’s Prime Minister and that, in a way, is part of the problem. This perceived success led him to presume people’s approval of whatever he might decide to do. He has become an authoritarian father figure making decisions without referring to his ‘grown up’ children.

Which is leading him into confrontation with his people in different ways. The first test was his decision to turn Istanbul’s major public park, Gezi Park, in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, into a replica of the Ottoman-era military barracks and a mall, which led to popular protests that later spread all over the country, crystalising a range of grievances against the Erdogan government. The police crackdown on the protesters led to large-scale arrests, there were fatalities and the protests were ruthlessly suppressed. Not wanting to face reality that his government was losing popularity, he blamed the protests on terrorists, vandals, looters and foreigners.

This is reflective of Erdogan’s arrogance and self-belief that he knows best. Having won a series of consecutive elections, he believes that he now has the popular mandate even to lecture people on how they should their lives. For instance, he has urged Turkish families to have at least three children. At the same time, his creeping programme of Islamisation in a society with a strong streak of secularism is not liked by many people. His government is increasingly putting curbs on drinking as it is against Islam. Indeed, there has been a concerted effort to reengineer society to conform to Islamic precepts and traditions. But Turkey is not entirely a traditional Islamic society. It is culturally pluralistic, with its secular tone set by modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

Erdogan’s great strength was to seemingly reconcile capitalist mode of production with Islam. His Islamic credentials gave his political experiment of combining democracy and capitalism a certain moral tone, without the unsavoury effects of corruption and nepotism. No wonder, Turkey was touted as an example to other Islamic countries.  But that was not to be. The flurry of recent corruption scandals involving his ministers, their families and even his son has shaken Turkey, even more so because Erdogan and his government claimed to epitomize Islamic values. And when the news came out about the corruption scandal, claiming four ministers, he reacted angrily and blamed it on some “dirty foreign plot”. He has followed it up with purging the country’s judiciary and police, punishing them for doing a good job of trying to cleanse the system. Instead of being a statesman welcoming the opportunity to overhaul the system, he has acted like an autocrat, blaming everyone else but himself.

Turkey’s liberals hate him for his intolerance and absolutist views. In his scheme of things, the right way is the Erdogan way. He doesn’t talk to his people but he tells them what everybody should do. As Christopher de Bellaigue writes in the New York Review of Books, “…he criticizes the lives of his subjects, and his views are rarely less than vigourous. All drinkers are alcoholics; every family should have three children; wholemeal flour is best…abortion is murder and Caesarean sections should be avoided. Twitter is a ‘menace’…” Turkish society is becoming increasingly polarized.

With Erdogan behaving like a modern day Sultan at home, some of it was also projected on the international stage. For instance, in the Syrian crisis he was the first regional leader to work towards Bashar al-Assad’s overthrow, though unsuccessfully so far. In the wake of the Arab Spring he apparently had ideas to recreate Turkey’s old zone of influence on the lines of the Ottoman Empire. All these grand visions have crashed, and Erdogan is a much weaker leader than before.

Another important reason for Turkey’s declining situation is the fraying of a compact between Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party  (AKP) and Hizmet movement led by Fetullah Gulen, a spiritual leader, living in the US. Gulen has a powerful political and spiritual base in the country and joined forces with Erdogan to ease out the country’s powerful generals given to periodic military coups. But now Erdogan fears that Gulen’s supporters in the judiciary and police  are seeking to destabilize him. Which accounts for tightening his control over the judiciary and police by purging those behind investigating corruption in his government at the highest levels.

Erdogan is becoming increasingly paranoid and sees conspiracies all around. The Turkish press has been muzzled and many journalists are behind bars. The control over the Internet is being tightened to the point of virtual suffocation. With the stench of corruption reaching the highest levels, including government ministers and even the prime minister’s son (by implication the prime minister), the decade old experiment of popular democracy in Turkey appears to be rolling back. Even as the political situation is increasingly troubled, the country’s economy, Erdogan’s main achievement, is also faltering. As one Turkish political scientist has reportedly said, “ What is happening is the erosion of Turkey as a state—it is a meltdown.”

Despite such a dire picture, AKP is likely to win the next election because of the lack of an effective alternative. But Erdogan’s ambition to become the country’s executive president might further complicate the situation. His ambition to concentrate more power in his hands, at a time when corruption scandals are flying round, might prove counter-productive.

Note: This article was first published in the Daily Times.

Contact: sushilpseth@yahoo.com.au