by Alev Scott
When people were gassed in the streets of Taksim, they acted not as scared individuals but as a kind of responsible civil army. People handed out masks, water, lemons and lotions to help strangers deal with the gas. When there was a sense of panic and people started running, a general cry of Yavaş, yavaş (‘Slowly, slowly’) calmed everyone down. Football supporters wore the colours of rival teams and linked arms, cheering each other on. At seven every morning, protesters went around the streets clearing up the rubbish they had left the night before – discarded masks, bottles and broken paving stones. I saw two things during the protests that I had never seen in my two years in Turkey: friendly football fans, and people picking up rubbish.
During the Gezi protests the public took full responsibility for themselves and their actions in what felt like a war. People were traumatised, but they did not flinch. The uncertainty of not knowing what would happen next was, eventually, exhausting; messages from the government were incoherent, and no one trusted them anyway. The insistence of people to keep collaborating and caring for each other was humbling and much more impressive than the aggressive shouts of angry young men who taunted police on the ‘front lines’ of the resistance.
Some friends of mine seemed to have been waiting their whole lives for the Gezi protest movement – liberal, secular leftists who do not identify with any of the mainstream political parties. One in particular, Gökhan, was in a frenzy of excitement at the beginning, barely sleeping, paying no heed to his job and hoping and praying that the protests would manage to bring some kind of pressure to bear on the government, as the opposition parties had failed to do throughout his lifetime. He lives nearly two hours away from Taksim Square in a distant suburb but would come without fail every night to protest, leaving at around 5 a.m., getting home for two hours’ sleep and then off to work followed by yet another night of passionate resistance. It was an exhausting schedule, but my friend had never been happier or more energetic. He was one of those who said he would not leave Taksim Square until Erdoğan resigned. After the evacuation of the square and park and the government crackdown on those who had taken part in the protests, his hope and energy left him – he removed himself from social media and was conscious only of the danger of having been associated with the protests. It was very sad to watch.
Media censorship in Turkey usually takes the form of self-censorship by editors and media moguls who want to keep in with the government, and the Gezi protests brought this painfully to light. During the first couple of days of protest, CNN Türk broadcast nature documentaries, most famously a programme on penguins, instead of coverage of the protests. There were widespread calls for CNN to cut its Turkish division from the franchise, and penguin memes spread across social media like wildfire. The best was a stencil of a penguin wearing a gas mask that was replicated on walls around Taksim – an interesting instance of social media making a concrete mark on the protests.
Brave channels who decided to air footage of the protests were punished by the Radio and Television High Commission and the Supreme Council of Radio and Television. The latter fined several new channels, including Halk TV, for ‘harming the physical, mental and moral development of children’ by showing harrowing live footage of the police brutality in Taksim Square. The High Commission threatened to close down Hayat TV, another channel which had made the mistake of covering the protests too closely.
Sometimes it was individuals rather than regulatory bodies who took it upon themselves to mete out punishment. At the beginning of the protests, Erdoğan described Twitter as a dangerous bed of lies. A few weeks later, Melih Gökçek, the mayor of Ankara, strove to prove him right by directing a smear campaign over Twitter against a BBC journalist, Selin Girit, who had quoted a protester in one of her tweets. He used a hashtag meaning ‘Don’t be a spy for England, Selin Girit’, and exhorted all his followers to retweet it. When the Twitter community responded by using the hashtag: ‘Provokatör Melih Gökçek’, he declared he would sue anyone who used it. He then announced plans to open a museum of vandalism, in which he would display smashed-up bus stops and chronicle the acts of hooliganism perpetrated by Gezi protesters. Apparently, this would be for the edification of the Turkish public, ‘so that they know what can happen if they capture Ankara’.
There was a strong sense during the protests that, while protesters were to be punished for ‘inciting public unrest’ or damaging public property, people in authority and police officers were not accountable for what they might have said or done. The most notable instance of this was the policeman who killed Ethem Sarısülük, who was only identified and remanded after a public outcry, and was quickly released because he was deemed to have acted in self-defence, despite video evidence to the contrary.
There are many reasons why Turkish authorities are generally unwilling to admit to being at fault. The main reason is that they can get away with it. Another major factor is that, traditionally, they have always feared giving any grounds to groups who might be ready to depose them, namely the military. In Turkey, rather as in Egypt, the military has had the role of protecting the state against both internal and external threats, which has given them the licence to carry out coups against governments, as they did in 1960, 1971 and 1980. In 1997 they staged what became known as a ‘post-modern coup’ by issuing ‘recommendations’ which the government could follow or resign, and outlawed the ruling Islamist Welfare Party, of which Erdoğan was a member. In 1999 Erdoğan was sent to prison for reciting a poem which was regarded as an ‘incitement to commit offence’. It included the lines: ‘The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers.’ Perhaps, in recent years, the overlapping images of mosques and barracks have made an impression on Erdoğan. In 2012 he announced plans to build an enormous mosque on Çamlıca hill in Istanbul, positioned so that it will be visible from any point in the city. In 2013, he ordered the rebuilding of an Ottoman barracks which had been the seat of an Islamic uprising against nationalists in 1909. This barracks was the proposed centrepiece for Taksim Square’s redevelopment.
Erdoğan has been keen to show that the decades of military-backed nationalist control are now over, and that Islam can proudly return to public life in Turkey. He wants to say: ‘We’ve won.’ It hasn’t been easy; Erdoğan has worked hard to limit the power of the military, both by changing the constitution and by prosecuting alleged ex-members of the shady, ultra-nationalist Ergenekon movement which had sought to bring down the AKP in the early 2000s, and had included many generals or ex-generals of the Turkish army. In 2010 he changed the constitution to bring the military and the judiciary under the control of the government by rushing through a constitutional amendment full of disparate reforms, to which the public could only vote yes or no in a general referendum. Because the bill was sugar-coated with vows to improve the environment and make public transport more accessible for people with disabilities, people voted ‘yes’ after a popular campaign by liberals who urged Yetmez ama evet (‘Not enough but yes’). In 2011 Erdoğan appointed new heads of the armed forces and finally, after the Gezi protests, he oversaw a change in the wording of the military code so that now its duty is to protect the Republic of Turkey from external threats, but the protection of the republic from internal threats is no longer mentioned. Coups are now technically illegal, and probably impossible in practice given the change of crucial personnel; indeed, Erdoğan has boasted that Turkey is ‘immune to coups’. Shortly after the Gezi protests, the Egyptian army staged a coup that overthrew President Morsi, a self-styled moderate Islamic leader not dissimilar to Erdoğan.
The AKP immediately, vociferously, denounced the coup. First came a statement from the AKP’s spokesman, Hüseyin Çelik, calling Egypt ‘backward’ for staging a military coup. Next, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu demanded that Morsi be released from house arrest and reminded everyone: ‘Leaders who come to power with open and transparent elections reflecting the will of the people can only be removed b
y elections, that is to say, the will of the nation.’ This might as well as have been a statement directed to the Gezi protesters who were shouting: ‘Tayyip, isitifa!’ (‘Tayyip [Erdoğan], resign!’).
The AKP’s refusal to admit that democracy is comprised of anything other than ballot-box victories might be their undoing, because it makes them deaf and blind to other sources of criticism. Çelik claimed that foreign powers had ‘mobilised the streets’ in Egypt and staged the coup, which chimed perfectly with the government’s insistence that the Gezi protests had been staged by an eclectic mix of terrorists, journalists, Jews and interest rate lobbyers. Çelik pointed out that the Egyptian military probably could not solve Egypt’s economic problems – a reminder to Turks that their hard-won economic gains might be in jeopardy in the (unlikely) event of a Turkish coup. The potential for coups in Turkey was something that needed to be addressed, and while there was a vindictive air to the way the government neutered the military, it was a progressive rather than a regressive move. However, many weaknesses remain in the Turkish political system, in particular the hierarchical, top-down structure of political parties which means that unless you have a very strong leader all is lost. It is also extremely hard for new parties to gain any traction, which means that political opposition inevitably stagnates.
Mainstream opposition in Turkey is weak. The CHP (Republican People’s Party) is outdated and disorganised, incapable of capitalising on these protests or anything else. Their policies are almost entirely reactionary, and they rarely bestir themselves beyond blanket criticism of AKP policies. The leader until 2010, Deniz Baykal, led the party for eighteen dreary years, and was only persuaded to leave after an alleged sex tape was leaked to the press. The current leader, Kemal Kılıçdaoğlu, seems like a nice man (his nickname is ‘Gandhi’ due to his alleged resemblance to the Indian leader) but has not taken the country by storm.
Erdoğan has no rivals, currently, because there is no new blood in Turkish politics. This is partly due to the ten per cent threshold which prevents any new political party from getting anywhere in elections. Even if a particular party candidate wins an overwhelming majority in their constituency, they will not win a seat in parliament unless their party has won over ten per cent of the votes nationwide. Anyone who voted for them effectively wasted their vote. This means that voters tend to support old dinosaurs like the CHP, even if they have no faith in these parties. Alternatively, they vote for independent candidates, who can legally win seats in parliament by winning over ten per cent of votes just in their constituency. The ten per cent nationwide threshold is, incidentally, by far the highest in Europe, and the subject of much debate. It was instigated after the military coup in 1980, so that the military could control the main parties in power and prevent opposition. It is a self-evidently unjust system, but unfortunately it never suits those in power to change it, so it has stayed like this for thirty years. During the protests, I heard a religious Turkish lady describe it as haram – a religious sin – which has come to mean anything unjust. Some parties have rather cleverly tried to buck the system by recruiting independent candidates; when these candidates win, they join the party to boost its profile and improve its chances for the next election. The Kurdish rights-promoting Peace and Democracy Party, for example, has done this to great effect.
Erdoğan is extremely ambitious, and has put his mind to winning over not only Turkey but much of the Middle East. In September 2011, his tour of liberated Middle Eastern countries – Egypt, Tunisia and Libya – was a tour de force of political ambition, characterised by the slamming of America and Israel combined with the portrayal of Turkey as the perfect example of a free Muslim democracy. His televised speech in Cairo was strikingly paternalistic: ‘Management of people, management of science and management of money,’ he said, grandly. ‘If you do those three, you will accomplish your goal.’
Has he managed his own people? That is open to (discreet) debate. He has certainly taken pains to look as though he has. It is crucial to his plans to be in charge in some capacity, preferably as president, as Turkey turns one hundred in 2023. Here is how he might plan to do that: although there is no bar to the number of terms someone can serve as prime minister in the Turkish constitution, it is a rule within the AKP that no one can serve as a minister for more than three consecutive terms. Erdoğan, with characteristically grandiose magnanimity, has made a point of saying he will respect this rule. However, no one believes he has had his fill of power and the odds are decidedly against him bowing out in 2015 when his third term ends.
There will be direct presidential elections for the first time in Turkey in 2014, following amendments to the constitution carried through in the controversial 2010 referendum. Until now, Turkish presidents have been neutral by definition, but usually have an affiliation with the ruling party (or the military), and are not directly chosen by the public. They are, effectively, little more than ceremonial heads of state. In 2014, Turkish citizens will vote directly for their favourite candidate. Erdoğan has been pushing for a presidential system in Turkey, similar to the French system which gives more power to the president than the prime minister, rather than the other way round as is currently the case in Turkey. It looks like these changes won’t go through, which must be annoying for Erdoğan. However, he can still serve as president for one term (rather than the two terms he would prefer as a French-style president) and then run again for prime minister, thus fulfilling his promise not to break the AKP rule of serving for no more than three consecutive terms. Most importantly, he would be in power in 2023.
During the protests, Erdoğan repeatedly and rather smugly called on Turks to ‘express yourself at the ballot box’. This spectacularly missed the point made by protesters, who objected to the high-handed way he made decisions while in power. However, the call was made. Erdoğan was confident that he will win, and perhaps he will. Perhaps he won’t, and if he doesn’t, he will have no excuse to kick up a fuss.
The confidence of the AKP in their victories at the ballot box brings to mind Winston Churchill’s criticism of unrestrained democracy, which he explained in a House of Commons debate in 1947: ‘Democracy, I must explain . . . does not mean “We have got our majority, never mind how, and we have our lease of office for five years, so what are you going to do about it?” That is not democracy, that is only small party patter, which will not go down with the mass of the people of this country.’ It seems that finally, in 2013, after coups and false hopes of transparent government in the twenty-first century, it has not gone down well with the people of Turkey either. Perhaps they can identify with what Lord Hailsham called in 1967 ‘an elective dictatorship’, meaning a government elected on a simple majority acting without proper restraint on its power. You will notice that my references have been British. Gezi erupted without any open debate of this topic in their House of Commons equivalent, but the issue was, in essence, the driving force behind the protests.
Crushed in the middle of a huge crowd of angry, chanting protesters, it seemed at one point like the whole of Turkey wanted the government to resign. In the heat of the moment, it was easy to believe that a complete regime change was just around the corner, and that Turks were one hundred per cent united in their political ideals. Of course, this was not the case, and I had several sobering conversations with Turks who disapproved of the protests and were as supportive of Erdoğan as ever. It was disconcerting to go from the spitting rage of anti-Erdoğan demonstrators to the spitting rage of anti-protest Erdoğan supporters, and hear totally different sides of the same story.
Erdoğan is in many ways a victim of his own success. He is, or was, the most popular leader since Atatürk, and the longest continuously serving prime minister, but after a decade of increasingly authoritarian decisions many people think he has pushed it too far. During his leadership, Turks have become, broadly speaking, richer, better educated and more connected to the world through the spread of the internet. Young people are demanding more from their
government; Erdoğan’s achievements do not excuse his faults. Older Turks, on the other hand, have lower expectations. They have lived under previous, less successful prime ministers and they are painfully grateful for all Erdoğan has done for the economy and public services. Many Turks are so used to corrupt, power-hungry leaders that they don’t even see the greed of those in power as a fault any more. Erdoğan is above average, because at least he gets things done.
While the Gezi protests were underway I had a conversation with Yahya, a traditional Istanbullu tailor in his fifties who is a stalwart supporter of the AKP. I asked him what he thought of the protesters’ complaints that Erdoğan rules undemocratically. ‘He is uncompromising, yes,’ said the tailor. ‘But I trust him. He is a good man.’ Yahya then gave me an analogy to explain his conception of a good leader: when one goes abroad, one hands over power of attorney to a lawyer so that affairs can be dealt with in one’s absence. It is the same with politics – we vote, we choose a leader, and we hand over the power of attorney for the next four years. This was a real eye-opener for me, explaining a great deal about the implicit trust many Turks have in their leader. When I asked the tailor about the rumours of Erdoğan handing out favours like building contracts to his friends, he replied steadily: ‘We all bestow favours on friends, why shouldn’t Erdoğan?’
Many Turks view corruption as an unproblematic fact of life. There are, of course, those who are not comfortable with the idea of politicians dishing out favours to their friends, but most do not question it. It is not even a matter of just being realistic, thinking that politicians get away with corrupt decisions because there is no accountability in Turkish government. It is worse than that – these Turks have lost sight of the moral problem with it, because it is so normal. Britain’s 2009 MPs’ expenses scandal would not even break as a story in the Turkish media, not because of censorship but because the public would not be remotely interested in what they all assume happens anyway. The leader of the main opposition, Kemal Kılıçdaoğlu, does not even consider using the government’s alleged corruption as a vote-winning issue. I asked the tailor what he thought of Erdoğan’s legendary wealth, and whether it seemed reasonable that a man employed by the state should have accumulated so much money. ‘Oh yes,’ said the tailor. ‘He earned his billions. Don’t you know a mayor is awarded ten per cent of the tenders he arranges for any successful municipal projects?’ (Erdoğan was the mayor of Istanbul for two years before he moved on to bigger things. The ten per cent ‘reward’ of which the tailor spoke does not exist, to my knowledge, but it is perfectly obvious what the unofficial nature of this reward is.) This satisfied, unquestioning man was dismissive of the protesters’ concerns of Erdoğan’s authoritarian tendencies. ‘Young people don’t understand,’ he reflected, sadly. ‘They don’t know how lucky they are.’