Letter to the Editors: “Erdogan’s Errors”

To the Editors:Last week’s article, Erdogan’s Errors by Eric Tang, summarized the Gezi Park protests and ended with the conclusion that we, as allies to Turkey, must stop the dictator Erdogan to help the people of Turkey. While it is true that Turkey under Erdogan’s government has suffered various setbacks in democratic freedoms, suggesting that Turkey will “slide into a bloody mass uprising” lacks supporting information. Simply put, Turkey is no Arab Spring. To state that “we must leverage our influence in Turkey: for the survival of an ally” infers a policy of interference and an assumption that Turkey will appreciate or even benefit from such interference. In June, Secretary Kerry immediately criticized the police crackdowns. Turkey’s foreign minister, incensed, commented, “Turkey is not a second-class democracy.” Erdogan clearly will not recant his statements and back down now, especially so soon to elections. Numerous advocacy groups have decried the plight of journalism in Turkey and, well, they’ve made as much progress there as they have in China. Gezi Park is only a step in the progression of democracy in Turkey and the struggle between Kemalist secularism and Islamist policies. The balance between majority and minority—Erdogan’s AK Party and everyone else—has yet to be achieved. Tang wrote that we must stop Erdogan’s authoritarian measures “…before these protests slide into a bloody mass uprising.” Yet the opposite has occurred.When I arrived in Ankara, Turkey, in late June for a Turkish language program, violent riots had largely ended, but the police responses to protests remained unchanged and unrelenting. In late July, besides a few spray-painted Erdogan caricatures in Gezi Park, almost all evidence had been expunged. The adjacent Divan Hotel, famous for housing injured protesters, had not one broken window. Activists stood with pamphlets on a pedestrian walkway as people quickly brushed past. Police were planted next to the activists, daring anyone to stop for even a glance. Unfortunately, intimidation can sometimes work, to great success. This is not to say unrest has ended, however. In the side streets off of Istiklal Street one night by Taksim Square, I saw protesters chant and clap their way through the crowd. Only an hour later, water cannon trucks moved in, popping tear gas containers..Given the violent crackdowns on assembly and freedom of speech, one might draw parallels to the Arab Spring. Turkey has a median age of 29.2 (compared to 37.2 years in the U.S.). According to the Arab Spring archetype, Turkey must also have a villain to oppose the young protestors. Enter Dictator Erdogan, or his middle name Tayyip, as the protestors call him. As a final touch, the protesters have even caught on to the power of Twitter in spreading their message, while their Facebook pages show Ataturk, the secular founder of Turkey, as their profile picture. On the surface, Turkey appears to be headed toward instability similar to that in Middle Eastern countries. However, to understand the underlying cause of the Gezi Park protests, one must assess these events in light of Turkey’s history.Instead of lauding Turkey as a continual “beacon of democracy,” as phrased by Tang, perhaps we should focus instead on the three military coups of 1960, 1971 and 1980, the political assassinations of 1993 and Sivas Alevi massacre, and the 1997 memorandum (soft coup). Essentially, Turkey, though counted as a model of democracy in a predominantly Muslim nation, is less perfect than we think. The AKP government has overseen an influx of rural, largely religious families to major cities, harnessed their voting power and, through selective rewarding of business contracts, has shepherded in a higher economic class of religious Turks. Why does this matter? It does nothing to excuse the police violence in Ankara or Istanbul, but it does explain the decreasing spirit of the protestors. No matter how loud one bangs a pot outside his or her balcony in Ankara, or holds a sign underneath a tree in Istanbul, at the end of the day, the AK Party still holds 327 out of 550 seats in Turkish parliament.The Turkish people have not languished under the decades long reign of a despot, as Tang implies. The use of Twitter, a hallmark of the Arab Spring, has had a marked though narrow, self-selecting influence on the protests (if protesters only reach their own circles of like-minded friends). Erdogan did not directly illegalize coverage of the protests, though media intimidation created, as mentioned earlier, situations such as CNN-Turk airing “documentaries about penguins” (CNN-International showed live coverage from Gezi Park). However, a positive change occurred from this overt censorship. Halk TV, which dared to broadcast police violence in Taksim, received an immediate boost in viewership that continued even after the protests. Through Gezi Park, Turkey learned that—surprise—people want honest news.Gezi Park has died down and Erdogan has yet to apologize, but the events have opened up the discussion for more democratic measures to protect the everyday citizen’s social contract with the government. This begs the question hinted at in Tang’s piece, which urged America to end the AKP’s violent response to the protests: What should we do, if anything? After all, Turkey has already suffered from its own decisions, from unlikely EU status to a lost Olympic bid. One large reason for the “failure” of the Gezi Park protests is its lack of cohesiveness. From Besiktas to Fenerbahce soccer fans, from LGBT activists to Kurdish rights advocates, many people are unhappy with Erdogan, but no party (including the popular CH Party) has stepped up and united the protesters.As an ally of Turkey, America undoubtedly has a stake in Turkey’s success as a democratic nation. While it sounds intrinsically productive to say, “We must leverage our influence in Turkey,” what exactly does that entail? According to Tang, we can learn from our mistake of letting “dictatorships fester” by stopping Erdogan in Turkey. Are we really going to call Erdogan’s popularly elected government a dictatorship when we can’t even call Egypt’s government changeover a coup? When urging that we “halt the madness,” does Tang mean active interference, a forced coup? No other party in Turkey has even close to similar representation or popularity. Perhaps, then, a call to lower the necessary vote threshold in parliament is a solution, granting smaller parties below 10 percent more representation. There are many policies America could suggest, all of which would indicate support for the protestors and thus hurt relations with the AKP government. If done, this would, among other consequences, affect America’s relationship in a reconciliation process of Israel and Turkey.The world already accuses America of policing other country’s problems, and given our potential future involvement with Syria’s civil war, we simply cannot afford to further offend Turkey’s government. When Secretary Kerry expressed his concern over Turkey’s excessive police violence, he toed a cautious grey line rather than a dangerous red one. In fact, if the Gezi Park protests have shown anything, it’s that Turkish citizens are willing to work for change, for their rights, be them Alevi rights, Kurdish rights, the right to wear a headscarf or the right to get drunk late at night on the streets of Istanbul. Soon Turkey will vote and, most likely, the AKP will still hold the majority of seats. Perhaps, though Gezi Park has slightly diminished his chances, Erdogan will become the first president by popular vote. Nonetheless, though the AKP has given the religious a voice in politics, Gezi Park has shown that they cannot ignore everyone else for the prosperity of their party members. Doing our best to support human rights in Turkey is grand and justified, but even America has its limits. Whether we like it or not, actively meddling in Turkey’s earnest if somewhat shaky democracy is, at its best, undemocratic.