Tag: US Turkish Relatons

Turkish Democracy

Let’s pause in the ongoing discussion about the perilous state of US democracy in 2016 to focus on how far and how fast Turkish democracy has fallen.

Wrongo visited Istanbul in March 2013. At that point, Turkey seemed to be the better example of two Muslim-majority democracies that existed in the world (the other is Indonesia). Then came the Gezi Park demonstrations a few weeks later that left six people dead and 8,000 injured.

In July of this year, Turkey had an aborted coup attempt. In the three and half months since, Turkey has fired or suspended more than 110,000 government employees. They launched a military incursion into Syria, and have repeatedly threatened to do the same in Iraq.

So far, one third of Turkey’s highest-ranking military officers have been dismissed. Almost every major institution—military, judiciary, media, education, business—have been affected. And 170 newspapers, magazines, television stations and news agencies have been shut down, leaving 2,500 journalists unemployed.

Rights groups say the scale of the purges show Erdogan is using the coup attempt to crush all dissent. Erdogan has successfully manipulated the full-throated “patriotism” that the Turkish people showed after the attempted coup to create a constitutional change that would give him near-total executive powers.

The arrest and detention of judges, mayors, teachers, military personnel, civil servants, journalists and political opponents has shown that Erdogan is moving even further away from a pluralistic society.

On October 29, Turkey celebrated the 93rd anniversary of the founding of the Republic, but just two days later, the 92-year-old newspaper Cumhuriyet (The Republic) became the latest target in a crackdown on opposition media. The government continues to use the state of emergency following the July 15 coup attempt as a pretext for silencing Turkey’s few remaining critical voices.

The Istanbul prosecutor’s office said the staff at the paper were suspected of committing crimes on behalf of Kurdish militants and the network of Fethullah Gulen, the U.S.-based cleric that Erdogan accuses of masterminding the July 15 coup attempt. The HuffPo reported that the state-run Anadolu agency said: (emphasis by the Wrongologist)

Journalists at the paper were suspected of seeking to precipitate the coup through “subliminal messages” in their columns before it happened,

Accused of using “subliminal messages.” This is the code language of authoritarian rule. Say goodbye to a democratic Turkey, it’s Erdogan’s country now. Such a sad turn for a nation full of bright and interesting people.

But it doesn’t end there. This week, also saw the State Department tell US Consulate family members to leave Turkey. The State Department has ordered the families to leave Turkey due to increased threats from extremist groups targeting US citizens.

Erdogan’s increasingly bellicose stance on the world stage has alarmed NATO (Turkey is a member) and the US, since it is becoming an ever more unpredictable partner, one over which we have decreasing leverage. From Reuters:

Erdogan warned this month that Turkey “will not wait until the blade is against our bone” in going after its enemies abroad and has hinted at a possible incursion into Iraq if a U.S.-backed assault against Islamic State in the city of Mosul causes sectarian strife which threatens Turkey’s borders. Frustrated that it has not been more involved in the Mosul operation, Sunni Muslim Turkey says it has a responsibility to protect ethnic Turkmen and Sunni Arabs in the area, once part of the Ottoman Empire. It fears Shi’ite militias, which on Saturday joined the offensive west of Mosul, will provoke ethnic bloodletting.

A Turkish ground operation in Iraq would be dangerous, risking embroiling its military on a third front as it pursues an offensive against Islamic State in Syria and against Kurdish PKK militants in its own southeast.

We need to think about how our two US presidential hopefuls would react to this mess once in power.

Whoever wins can’t just sloganeer about what to do with Turkey or about its ambitions in Syria and Iraq, any more than they can ignore what Russia’s and Iran’s objectives are.

Aydin Selcen, a retired Turkish diplomat who was consul general in Erbil, Iraq, the capital of northern Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region, said:

History is like a huge supermarket where you can find what you want. You can choose a historical perspective created to rally the masses. But you can neither build a foreign policy nor a military strategy based on that…

Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump should stay out of the supermarket of domestic public opinion as well. The answers to dealing with Erdogan and the attack on Turkish democracy while simultaneously dealing with a hostile member of NATO will not be found in “The Art of The Deal.”

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Turkey’s March Towards an Islamist Presidency Stalls

Results from Turkey’s parliamentary elections Sunday show that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s AKP party lost its majority in Parliament.

With 99.9+% percent of the vote counted, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) garnered the support of 41% of voters. That would give it some 258 seats – 18 below the minimum needed to keep its majority. In 2011, the AK Party received 49% of the vote, 8 points higher than in 2015. This is the first time the AKP fell short of a majority since it came into power in 2002.

The election was widely perceived as a referendum on Erdogan’s plan to change the Turkish constitution in order to grant himself sweeping, unprecedented presidential powers. Because Erdogan’s record shows tendencies toward authoritarianism, many observers in Turkey and outside believed that his proposed constitutional amendments would not just change the structure of Turkish democracy, but pose an existential threat to it.

Erdogan began the campaign asking voters for 400 seats, which would have allowed the party to change the role of the presidency unilaterally. The AK Party needed 330 seats of the total 550 to call for a national referendum to change the constitution, but they stalled at 258, so that will lead to a coalition government, and no immediate ability to change the Turkish constitution.

The Kurdish HDP, now the first Kurdish party ever to be seated in Turkey’s parliament, won 80 seats. Most westerners like the Kurds, for their resistance around Mosul in Iraq and around Kobani in Syria. They also support women’s rights and gay rights. Kurds are the Muslims who are closest to western values. From BBC: Who are the HDP?

• The HDP was founded as a pro-Kurdish party in 2012
• There are 15million Kurds in Turkey, 20% of the population
• It had the only openly gay candidate in Turkey’s elections
• A higher proportion of women ran for the HDP than any other party

Here is an election results map from the Daily Hurriyet:

Turkey Electon Map

 

Voter turnout was 85%. The map shows the AKP in orange, the CHP party in red and the HDP in purple. It is clear that the HDP made its gains in southeast Turkey, the area most at risk in the ISIS and Syrian uprisings. HDP leader Selahattin Demirtas called his party’s showing:

A fabulous victory for peace and freedoms…As of now the discussions on a presidential system, a dictatorship, has come to an end

The Daily Star reported on the dilemma Erdogan faces. Under the current constitution, the president position (that Erdogan now holds) has limited powers. He campaigned to change the constitution, but the election’s result could leave Erdogan stranded in the presidency without the powers he sought. Bottom line: While Erdogan’s plan for Islamic presidentialism has been defeated, the AKP is still in control of Turkish politics — and likely will remain that way for a long time.

The reasons for the loss seem mostly driven by the Turkish economy and Erdogan’s policies on Syria. For the past decade or so, the AKP has ridden high on a dynamic record of promoting economic growth. But recently, the economy has been slowing down. The Turkish lira has lost considerable value, the economy has not grown anywhere near the rate that it had in the past, and there are worries about an economic collapse. And many were afraid of Erdogan’s plan for deepening Turkish involvement in Syria, Iraq and the greater Middle East.

Today, Erdogan is a wounded politician, and the AKP is weakened. This will lead to infighting within the AKP and maybe even a split of the party into several factions. In all this result will likely leave less capacity in Turkey for adventures in Syria and Egypt, or with ISIS and the AL-Qaeda affiliated Al-Nusra front.

As the Guardian said:

None of the four parties in the new parliament are able to form a single-party government, meaning Turkey is entering a period of volatility. Erdogan approaches politics as a binary contest between winners and losers in which the decisive aim is to secure a majority. On Sunday he lost…

The country had been sliding into an Islamic autocracy under the guise of democracy, but the Turkish electorate have called a halt to that.

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