Turkey's worrying trajectory
Two developments in Turkey in the past week have provided a good illustration of what is meant by “Erdoganism”, a term that is being used increasingly in Turkey to describe the philosophy behind the third administration of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, particularly since his sidelining of the secular military in 2011.
A good description of “Erdoganism” has been provided in the past week by two commentaries in the moderate Islamist newspaper Zaman. In its 29 June and 1 July commentaries, the paper described Erdoganism as a mixture of authoritarianism and Islamism underpinned by pragmatism. The pragmatism is aimed at achieving the most basic of goals, namely staying in power. Now, having been returned to power three times as prime minister, Erdogan is trying to change the constitution so that he can become a powerful executive president without breaking his pledge not to stand for more than three terms as prime minister.
As part of his idealism, Erdogan has worked to mould a generation of youth that adheres to his conservative/Islamist vision of Turkey. Erdogan’s goal is “to groom a Muslim youth that shares the ideal of establishing a unified Middle East under the leadership of Muslim Turkey”. In order to mould such a youth, Erdogan has established foundations and schools to propagate his vision. In this he is following the Kemalist tradition, but for a very different purpose. Like the secular state created by Kemal Ataturk, Erdogan is happy to use state power as an effective tool to pursue his ideology.
Controlling the media is another aspect of Erdoganism, and as the Zaman commentary put it: “The government does not even hide the appointment of its supporters after a media group came under the control of the government.” It added: “Erdogan himself challenges the media outlets. When he sees opposition in media outlets, he immediately makes a phone call to the owners of the media group and complains about the journalists or columnists. There are only few media outlets left that are able to resist Erdogan's pressure. Such media outlets, of course, are under heavy economic pressure from government institutions to give up their opposition.”
Depending on the criteria used, it is thought that between 40 and 100 Turkish journalists have been imprisoned, with the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) saying that Turkey has more journalists locked up than any other country in the world. Reporters Without Borders (RWB) ranks Turkey 154 out of 179 on its Press Freedom Index.
The Zaman commentary also noted: “When we look at the transition in the media, we see more and more programmes on conservative values of Turkish history and society as the year passes. It is a common tendency for political leaders to ban soap operas when they think the programmes are not compatible with their conservative worldview. Erdogan is especially critical of soap operas that touch on historical events outside of his own particular reading of history. Erdogan's criticisms towards TV series are not just spontaneous statements, but they are related to his worldview of imposing his own version of history through TV series and media outlets.”
He is working hard to entrench cultural conservatism, in part by funnelling money to religious networks and by establishing suitable symbolic icons such as the mosques at Camlaca Hill in Istanbul and the mosque in Atasehir. Zaman says: “Unlike his predecessor, Erdogan doesn’t believe in Western values and is especially trying to pull the country and the Turkish youth away from Western styles and values.”
Away from home, a central component of Erdoganism is antipathy to Israel, once such a close ally of Turkey. As Zaman’s commentary put it, Erdogan has “never been a leader with a neutral worldview of Israel…No doubt the removal of Israel from the face of the earth would make Erdogan happy.”
Erdoganism is also Islamist and ‘third-worldist’, as seen in Erdogan’s criticisms of the United Nations structure and of Western perceptions of justice. He advocates a new world order that balances the influence of developed countries.
The elements of Erdogan’s foreign policy that seem to be in line with his Islamist authoritarian streak include his apparent sympathy for radical Sunni Islamists, which is evidenced not just from his support for Hamas in the Gaza Strip or the Islamist elements within the Syrian rebellion. In January, for instance, Turkey’s ambassador to Chad, Ambassador Ahmet Kavas, sent the following Tweet after France’s intervention Mali: “The word terror is French-made. It cannot be the work of Muslims. Al-Qaeda is different from terror.”
Then there was Erdogan’s proclamation earlier in the year that membership of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) could be a better alternative to EU membership, partly because of “shared values”. On 25 January, Erdogan said: “If we get into the SCO, we will say goodbye to the European Union. The SCO is better – much more powerful...” Then, when asked to confirm that the SCO is a genuine alternative, Erdogan said: “The Shanghai Five is better and more powerful and we have common values with them.”
Now there have been two developments in the past week that have served to reinforce this characterization of Erdoganism.
The first was Deputy Prime Minister Besir Atalay blaming “the Jewish diaspora” for the Gezi Park protests. The Gezi Park protests began on 31 May over a decision to build on Gezi Park, next to Istanbul’s iconic Taksim Square. The protests led to mass protests throughout the country, affecting about 80 cities. Reasons for the protests include the sharp drop in Turkey’s economic performance from 9% average growth in 2010-11 to just 2.2% in 2012. Perhaps more important, though, has been the intolerance and perception of growing authoritarianism on the part of the Erdogan administration. There has been particular concern over Erdogan’s plans to revise the constitution and to become the country’s first elected executive president, thus prolonging, and strengthening, his grip on power beyond his three terms as prime minister.
But that is not how Atalay sees things. He said: “There are some circles that are jealous of Turkey’s growth. They are all uniting, on one side the Jewish diaspora. You saw the foreign media’s attitude during the Gezi park incidents; they bought it and started broadcasting immediately without doing an evaluation.”
Erdogan, for his part, has blamed the “interest rate lobby” and the world’s media for stoking the protests, which was widely seen as a hint of Israeli/Jewish involvement.
In parallel to this, intelligence sources say there has been a noticeable lack of progress in normalizating ties between Turkey and Israel, as it was hoped would happen following Israel’s apology in March for the 2010 Mavi Marmara incident in which Israeli commandoes killed nine Turkish activists on a ship attempting to run the Israeli blockade of Gaza. And last weekend Turkey’s National Intelligence Organization (MİT), went public about Israel’s opposition to its chief Hakan Fidan and an alleged smear campaign. In an interview with a Turkish newspaper, an MIT official was quoted as saying: “This was the first time that a state [Israel] has reacted against the intelligence management of another state, officially declaring that it was against the appointment of Hakan Fidan as the head of the MİT.” When Fidan was appointed as head of the MİT, then Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak had described him as a “friend of Iran”.
In the interview, the MIT official claimed that the MİT had become the target of ”consecutive unfair publications and attacks”, in what was in effect a smear campaign against Fidan, including the leaking in September 2011 of details of secret talks with the PKK in Oslo, the December 2011 Uludere incident in which 34 civilians were killed after being mistaken for Kurdish terrorists, the June 2012 downing of a Turkish fighter jet by Syria, and various terrorists attacks.
Local media sources have noted this week that this was perhaps the first time that Turkey’s national intelligence agency has given an interview to a newspaper, and the first time that it has aired “a very deep disagreement with another country in the most public way”.
The second development that has caught our attention in the past week was the news that Ankara is leaning towards selecting a Chinese anti-missile and air-defence system. Turkey’s defence-procurement officials are close to finalizing their assessment of long-range anti-missile and air-defence systems, and they are said by local sources to be “strongly leaning towards the Chinese bid”.
According to local sources: “One defence official said that the government had come to the conclusion that the Chinese proposal was technologically satisfactory, allowed sufficient levels of technology transfer and was much cheaper than rival solutions. He said that the decision to select the Chinese contender was awaiting final approvals from Defence Minister Ismet Yilmaz and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.”
A senior Nato diplomat based in Ankara was quoted as saying: “That would certainly leave many of us speechless. Turkey has every right to choose its own air defence system but we do not quite understand the logic of opting for a Chinese system with no interoperability with existing [Nato] assets.”
A Nato defence attaché in Ankara said that adopting the Chinese system would lead to questions about “Turkey’s geopolitical trajectory”, and a US diplomat said: “I can tell you that integrating a Chinese or Chinese-Turkish air defence system into Nato assets may not be a good idea.”
Of course, this may all come to nothing in the face of strong Nato opposition, but it is nevertheless symptomatic of Turkey’s trajectory under Erdogan – as are Atalay’s apparent blaming of a Jewish conspiracy for the Gezi Park protests and MIT’s public allegations of Israeli smear campaigns. JdeC.
NOTE: On 30 June, the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) presented a list of demands for the “second phase” of the peace process that began in October, one day after Kurdish protests in the south-eastern town of Lice resulted in the death of a protester.
In March Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan ordered a ceasefire and a withdrawal of guerrillas from Turkish territory. Although the government says that only 15% of militants have withdrawn, the BDP says most have left and the government should now begin to deliver on its side of the bargain.
The BDP’s demands include the release of jailed suspects from the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK), which Turkish prosecutors say is a PKK-linked terror group; the immediate end to the building of gendarmerie outposts, dams, and hydroelectric power plants in the Kurdish southeast of the country; legislation to allow the use of Kurdish in schools; the repeal of the Counterterrorism Law; the abolition of the ‘village guard’ system in the southeast in which locals are armed by the state to fight PKK guerrillas; the lowering of the 10% barrier for election to parliament; and, above all, the release of Ocalan from jail.
The deputy chairman and spokesperson of the ruling AKP, Huseyin Celik, responded by saying that some of the demands could not be taken seriously. For instance, he said: "Dams are a must to ensure domestically produced energy. There are objections towards some dams just because they are going to submerge areas used by the PKK to pass into Turkish territory. These are not demands to be paid attention to."
He also said the BDP's accusations regarding gendarmerie stations and outpost were outrageous. He said: "There were outposts before the PKK, and there always will be. Those who have no intention of committing a crime are not afraid of the gendarmerie or the police due to the construction of a security station. It doesn't make sense accusing the government of building dams and gendarmerie stations."