There
is a very good reason why anyone over the age of 50 in Turkey is deeply
concerned about the increasing political and social polarisation in the
country. They remember all too well when similar divisions in their youth led
to the violent clashes of the 1970s and ultimately to the military coup of
September 1980.
I was in living in Ankara in 1968
and 1969 and remember vividly the building tensions. The 1968 upheavals in
Europe had made their way to Turkey. Hardly a day went by without an angry
demonstration against ‘imperialism’, the United States, the general
‘establishment’ or any of the other assorted evils perceived by students of
that generation. Walls at Ankara University were covered with posters urging
solidarity with the Palestinians, Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung. , and, of course,
Ho Chi Minh. The anti-capitalism works of the German philosopher Herbert
Marcuse became very popular.
All this made the government
extremely nervous. The only way officials knew how to respond was with heavy-handed
police action and subsidising squads of right-wing thugs. The stage was set for
a decade of escalating violence that routinely resulted in several killings a
week.
I remember going to a dinner party
and joking that people should check their guns at the door. It was not a joke
when several of the guests then deposited their hand guns on a table by the
front door. It was also not a joke when a journalist friend of mine was kidnapped, badly beaten and left for dead in an empty lot. It was a miracle that he survived.
Of course there are sharp
differences between now and then. For one thing, the military is a less obvious
source of intervention than it was more than 30 years ago. For another, Turks
have more experience at the ballot box and rather like the chance to choose
their own rulers.
The biggest difference, perhaps, is that now
it is the government itself fuelling tensions. Not a day goes by without the
prime minister accusing his growing number of opponents of being terrorists,
atheists, stooges for unnamed foreign powers (everyone understands he means the
US, EU, and Israel), or simply working against the National Will. Most
politicians offered ritual sympathy to the family of the young man who died
recently after being hit with a police tear gas canister. No such words of
sympathy from Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan. Instead, he accused the 15-year-old of
being a terrorist whose pockets were filled with explosive devices. Those
charges might carry more weight if earlier outrageous claims by the prime
minister about desecration of a mosque or attacks on a head-scarfed woman had
not been proven to be complete lies.
The immediate causes of these angry,
irrational outbursts are the municipal elections and the spreading corruption
charges against his cronies and family. Erdoğan is fighting for his political life
in these elections scheduled for March 30. The actual outcome in individual
cities is much less important than the overall national share of the vote. Erdoğan
has been bragging that with 50% of the vote he is essentially invulnerable and
the voters love him regardless of any corruption charges. If the ruling Justice
and Development Party (AKP) vote share falls much below 50% those claims go up
in smoke and his political future is thrown in doubt. It is unclear how low the
AKP vote total would have to go before other forces in the party would summon
the courage, if any remains, to get rid of Erdoğan before more damage is done.
Given that the stakes are so high,
will Erdoğan try to rig the elections? Turkey has an enviable record for
relatively clean elections, but Erdoğan has demonstrated time and again that
his role model is more Vladimir Putin than Thomas Jefferson. His government has
routinely bent theoretically independent state institutions to serve his own
purposes. His Minister of Interior has been caught on telephone yelling at a
prosecutor to arrest and charge a journalist. When the prosecutor demurs, the
minister angrily tells him to go ahead and that the government will pass any
law needed to cover his action.
So there is understandable anxiety
in the opposition parties about the fairness of the elections. Why, one
opposition leader asks, have more than 140 million ballots been printed when
Turkey only has about 47 million voters? What is going to happen to those
un-used ballots? So far there are no answers.
These elections will go a long way
to show if, and how far, Erdoğan’s electoral star has dimmed. The electoral
landscape has changed since he won about 50% of the vote in 2011. His one-time
partnership with the movement controlled by Islamic scholar Fetullah Gülen has
been irreparably broken. Now the question is how much electoral power does the
Gülen movement really have? Can their votes make a difference? Also, will the
urban young who demonstrated so vigorously against Erdoğan last summer go to
the polls? Can they channel their street anger into anti-Erdoğan votes? And
what about the three major Istanbul football clubs? Their millions of
supporters have reasons of their own for disliking the prime minister. Will
they express their dislike at the polls?
Meanwhile, scenes from the bad old
days continue haunt the country. Football matches and funerals have become
platforms for massive anti-government rallies. Unknown assailants attack a
Gendarme post and kill three soldiers. Pro-government gangs disrupt political
rallies. AKP blocks a legislative investigation of government corruption. Throughout
it all the prime minister continues to bellow his increasingly hollow claims
that it is the internal and external ‘enemies’ of Turkey that are causing problems.
Unfortunately, the March 30 elections will not be the end of these deep
divisions in Turkey. The presidential and legislative elections that follow
will keep tensions high. One can only hope they don’t escalate into the
violence seen not that long ago.
