While I wait for confirmation that Turkey has become a Putinist dictatorship (I presume the Higher Election Council will reject requests for a recount in Ankara and Istanbul as it has today for Antalya, but I wont be completely sure until that rejection takes place) a few comments on how we got here and what exactly we have here. Erdoğan did deliberately polarise Turkish politics during and since Gezi, not because of some unearthly political genius which can gain votes by frightening off the middle ground, but because he wanted to make it clear that he is in charge more than a normal Prime Minister, that no one can challenge him within the AKP, that no one can make a serious challenge in the public sphere, no one can challenge constructions projects that bring contracts to his family and friends, and that most importantly he is immune in every sense from challenge including legal investigation of his assets, the assets of his family and associates, and the networks connecting them. If Erdoğan had chosen to compromise during and after Gezi, I believe AKP would be on 50% plus, but that would be of little benefit to Erdoğan if normal rule of law separation of power and democratic politics applied , if he is ever subject to full investigation of his finances and associated activities, if AKP operated as a normal mature democratic party willing to dump a flawed leader and let rule of law operate unimpeded high and low. Erdogan preferred to let the AKP vote drift down, as part of establishing absolute control of the AKP-machine, and as he was sure that he had all the levers of power to rig elections and prevent the opposition coming close enough to AKP in officially counted votes and gaining psychologically important victories in Ankara and Istanbul. If such gains were allowed the hold on power protecting him and his allies from accountability could start to slip as people could see the possibility that he would be out of power soon, and might start thinking that protecting his misdeeds might not a be a clever look in the near future. Under the AKP rule the police has been massively built up, with senior officers now part of the AKP machine, reinforced by the purge of Gülenists. Gezi gave them the chance to practice controlling civil protest, and looking back now they must have been planning for it and expecting it during that huge build up. Erdoğan famously said before he went moderate conservative democrat that democracy was a street car from which he would descend. That was always the real Erdoğan, he always intended to descend when his control of the state institutions was completed, and expected to have to put down civil protest from below, from those wicked enough to not share his messianic vision of his right to become a figure of Caesarist wealth and power, no doubt in his opinion a modest price for the historic hero of Sunni Islam, pious believers, and the Turkish nation he believes himself to be, riding above petty concerns about individual rights, legal process and the like.
Posted on: Wed, 02 Apr 2014 11:01:51 +0000
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