Turkey’s Spiral

What’s
Wrong Today:


Turbulence in Turkey
is growing. It started with the Gezi Park demonstrations last year that the Wrongologist
reported on here,
that left six people dead and 8,000 injured. At the time, Prime Minister Recep
Tayyip Erdogan repeatedly accused outsiders of being behind the protests. In a NYT Op-ed, Elif
Shafak wrote:


Several
government officials insinuated that dark forces were operating behind the
scenes, including the Jewish Diaspora, the CIA, the BBC, CNN and the
interest-rate lobby, a term for a cabal of domestic and foreign banks that
officials believe want to harm Turkey to further their own interests…Protesters
in Taksim Square were called terrorists


In December came the
major corruption
case involving Mr. Erdogan’s administration and his AKP party. That led Prime
Minister Erdogan to frame the probe into the corruption as an “attempted coup”
by the US-based Sunni religious leader Fethullah Gulen. Mr. Erdogan also blamed
the US as the mastermind of a plot against his government. He raised
the possibility of expelling Francis Ricciardone, the US ambassador to
Turkey, soon after the scandal broke.


Then on
Feb. 15th, Reuters reported
that Turkey’s parliament approved a law boosting
Mr. Erdogan’s control over the appointment of judges and prosecutors,
after a heated debate and a brawl that left one opposition lawmaker
hospitalized. Mr. Erdogan blamed Fethullah Gulen for instigating the corruption
investigation, and is threatened by Gulen’s rumored control over many in the
judiciary. Lots ‘o turbulence.


So, little
reason to be surprised when Al-Monitor reported
that on Feb. 19th:


President
Obama had his first conversation with PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan since the
latter’s government came under a corruption and bribery investigation
two months ago


That phone call
should have been routine, because Mr. Erdogan has enjoyed the reputation
of being the foreign leader that Mr. Obama spends the most time with on
the phone. That was, until Gezi Park in the summer of 2013. Only two weeks before the
Gezi events, Mr. Erdogan’s visit to DC was received with the highest levels of protocol.
But, after Gezi, they had a chilly encounter at the G-20 meeting in St.
Petersburg on Sept. 5-6, and just one brief phone conversation since.


Their call took place
on the same day that the Turkish parliament passed
restrictive Internet legislation that would allow the government to block
individual URLs without judicial review. It also obliges ISPs to store users’
personal Internet data for up to two years.



You might get the
impression that previously, there were no regulations or controls on the Internet
in Turkey, but that is incorrect. According to al-Monitor,
40,000 websites are inaccessible
in Turkey today. YouTube has been blocked for months at a time, and Vimeo has
been temporary blocked in the last couple of months, there were also a lot of adult entertainment sites such as https://www.sexfreehd.xxx/ that have also been blocked.


If all of
this was not enough, whatsupturkey.com
along with many news outlets has reported on a new scandal:


With
about one month left to local elections, five phone recordings were leaked on YouTube
yesterday. In just a couple of hours, the video with the recordings had over
one  million views. Why? It exposes that Tayyip Erdogan and his family is
bathing in enormous amounts of unaccounted cash


Most of the
conversations on the leaked recordings allegedly took place between Tayyip Erdogan
and his son, Bilal Erdogan on the 17th of December, the same day as
a graft probe was unexpectedly initiated against ministers and sons in Mr. Erdogan’s own government.


The gist of the
conversations is that Mr. Erdogan needs to urgently move a LOT of cash.


In later recordings,
Bilal Erdogan calls back to his father and reports how the work is proceeding.
After a day of collecting enormous amounts of cash, allegedly about USD
1 billion from 5 different houses and making it disappear by buying apartments
and making advance payments to businessmen they work with, he still hadn’t been
able to hide it all. Bilal says: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)


We
did not zeroized it yet father. Let me explain. We still have 30 million Euros that we could not yet dissolve.
Berat thought of something. There was an additional 25 million dollars that
Ahmet Calik should receive. They say let’s give this to him there. When the
money comes, we do something, they say. And with the remaining money we can buy
a flat from Sehrizar, he says. What do you say, father?


Mr. Erdogan agrees on
the call. How these leaked phone call recordings will influence the upcoming
local elections March 30 is unclear. The opposition parties, naturally,
immediately called for Mr. Erdogan to resign, while the Prime Minister has claimed
that the 11 minutes of conversation was a fabricated montage.


Then
there is today’s report from the BBC:


Riot police in
Turkey have fired water cannon and tear gas at hundreds of protesters calling
on Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to quit. There has been uproar since a
recording emerged which it’s alleged features the prime minister and his son
discussing how to hide large sums of cash


Where is
all of this heading? Turkey has been an important US ally for a long time. The Turkish government has increased
its control over the judiciary and the media. It has exacted a high price in
terms of freedom of press, speech, and assembly, and has hurt Turkish economic
growth, which has been the strong point of the AKP’s appeal to voters.



In the process, the
“Turkish model” — a successful mix of democracy, market capitalism and Islamic
conservativism — that Mr. Obama and other Western leaders have celebrated, has
been endangered.



These major internal
tensions are unfolding just before municipal elections (Mar. 30, 2014). That
will be followed by the first-ever presidential election by popular vote
(August 2014) and then by a general election in June of 2015. The AKP should
make another strong showing in March, but it will be at the expense of government
transparency, the rule of law, the separation of powers, and a free media.



There’s little the US
or the EU can do to prevent Mr. Erdogan and the AKP from becoming more
dictatorial. The only force that can prevent that is the Turkish electorate, and it is
unclear whether it will embrace that idea. Mr. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party have a
very different ideological worldview from that of the West. They gather in
protest in front of the US Embassy, they provoked the civil war in
Egypt and support the Salafi groups in Syria.


It is clear that the
Turkey-US relationship could be derailed at anytime.


In
the past, Turkey has concentrated power in the military or in the incumbent party.
In 2014, it appears that it is elections, the economy, and very limited international
pressure that will determine what happens next in Turkey.

 

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