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Erdoğan is feeling the heat
by Seren Selvin
Korkmaz on 26th April 2021 @selvinkorkmaz
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Growing economic pains and a more united opposition threaten the Turkish
president’s grip. His regime resorts to ever more repression.
Seren Selvin Korkmaz
By pledging to draft a civilian constitution and further imagining Turkey’s
future in the European Union, the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and
his cabinet have recently sent out ‘pseudo-reform’ signals to the rest of the
world. At the same time, the government has bluntly intensified its repression
at home. Indeed, just before the European Commission president, Ursula von der
Leyen, and the European Council president, Charles Michel, visited Ankara in
March—leading to the infamous ‘Sofagate’ incident—a
slew of disturbing developments upended Turkish politics.
In the last two months alone, the Turkish lira crashed after the sudden
dismissal of the country’s central bank chief, Naci Ağbal; the government
started its attempt to dismantle Turkey’s main pro-Kurdish opposition party,
the HDP; the influential member of parliament and human rights activist, Ömer
Faruk Gergerlioğlu, was expelled, followed by his imprisonment over a ‘social
media’ message; and, of course, Erdoğan signed a presidential decree
withdrawing Turkey from the Istanbul convention, which aims to combat violence
against women.
To top it all off, the opposition accused the government of using the
central bank’s foreign-exchange reserves to prop up the currency as it came
under fire amid interest-rate cuts—state banks sold $128 billion in
foreign-exchange markets to sustain the lira. In response, the main opposition,
the Republican People’s Party (CHP), campaigned with banners asking ‘Where is the $128 billion?’,
which the government eventually seized.
Growing repression
As Turkey’s economic crisis deepens and the cost of living dramatically
increases amid Covid-19 measures, Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party
(AKP) are unable to provide solutions to the daily challenges people are
facing. According to a recent Metropoll, 58 per cent
of voters expect the situation in Turkey to worsen. The economy and
unemployment are Turkey’s biggest challenges, according to 65.9 per cent of
respondents.
The presidential system initiated by Erdoğan in 2017 has engendered a sultanistic regime,
based on patronage and loyalty networks around its leader rather than providing
real solutions to problems. By dismantling checks and balances as well as
democratic institutions, decision-making and policy suggestions only serve to
maintain the grip of the AKP and its leader on power. And, to maximise support,
Erdoğan continuously doubles down on polarisation, rewards loyalty and
suppresses any dissent in the country.
At the same time, positive developments among the opposition threaten
Erdoğan’s seeming omnipotence—and force him to make ever more use of repression
through the state apparatus. The 2019 municipal elections, from which the opposition
emerged victorious in some of Turkey’s major metropolitan cities such as
Istanbul, proved that electoral alliances among different ideological groups
are a successful strategy to push back against the AKP and its ally, the
Nationalist Action Party (MHP). These victories also bolstered voters’ hope for
change and energised the opposition parties.
More united opposition
The Future Party (GP) and the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), formed
by former members of the AKP elite, Ahmet Davutoğlu and Ali Babacan
respectively, have recently joined the anti-AKP bloc and backed the
opposition’s main demand for a return to a ‘democratic order’. The Good Party
(İYİ) and its leader, Meral Akşener, have also become more popular. Because of
the influence of the DEVA, GP and İYİ, undecided voters, who supported the AKP
in previous elections and are politically opposed to the social-democratic CHP,
might now join the opposition.
Furthermore, amid all the restrictions imposed by the central government,
the mayors of İstanbul and Ankara, Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş, have
emerged as potential presidential rivals to Erdoğan, based on their good
performances during the Covid-19 crisis.
With the opposition starting a dialogue among the different parties and
proposing a return to a parliamentary system, Erdoğan has stuck to his
divide-and-conquer strategy. The persistent allegations of terrorism against
the HDP and attempts to ban the party—even though rejected by the
Constitutional Court—are intended to maintain a degree of division within the
opposition, especially between the pro-Kurdish HDP and the Turkish-nationalist
İYİ
But the HDP is not the only target of state repression any more: the
government seems now to apply what it has learned from its attacks on the
HDP against other political opponents too. Erdoğan’s administration is
considering stripping the CHP leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, of his parliamentary
immunity—a move reminiscent of the fate of the former HDP leader, Selahattin
Demirtaş, imprisoned for several years now.
Istanbul convention
Erdoğan’s strategy also consists in targeting any particular themes on
which there is widespread consensus among society’s larger segments. One is the
resilience against his attempts to withdraw from the Istanbul convention, a Council of Europe
instrument aimed at preventing gender-based violence.
Following claims by Islamists and religious organisations that the treaty
ruins families and encourages homosexuality, Erdoğan pulled Turkey out of the
convention by presidential decree on March 21st. However, according to a recent poll, 52 per cent
of the population disapproves of this decision, despite the fact the government
effectively controls the media and has launched a massive propaganda campaign
based on false information.
The withdrawal has sparked widespread controversy within Turkish society,
including disputes among conservative women’s groups and AKP members. Women’s
rights activists, who comprise one of Turkey’s most powerful opposition
movements, have staged protests across the country, meeting police suppression.
Despite an epidemic of gender-based violence—some 382 women were killed in
2020, in confirmed cases of femicide alone—the AKP seems to have caved in to
the demands of different religious groups in the attempt to create a new
identity conflict. In this context, the withdrawal from the Istanbul convention
has symbolic significance, as it demonstrates Erdoğan’s commitment to building
a conservative national identity through a populist right-wing agenda, which includes
a more conservative stance on gender issues, endorsing patriarchal social
relations and emphasising ‘family values’.
EU selling out?
It was in this critical moment, as women’s right activists continued to
protest against the withdrawal from the convention, that the diplomatic
‘Sofagate’ crisis took place. In the official EU visit in Ankara, von der Leyen
discovered no seat had been prepared for her during a meeting when Erdoğan sat
down to speak with her male colleague, Michel. Regardless of which side was
‘responsible’, the commission president was clearly subjected to sexism. While
the episode also cast doubt on Michel’s attitude, it highlighted Erdoğan’s
anti-gender-equality politics.
As Turkey continues to restrict political and civil rights, and violate
human rights and the rule of law, EU-Turkey relations appear to be focused on
migration and Turkey’s policies in the eastern Mediterranean, as well as
strengthening trade relations. Progressive circles, in particular, are critical
of the EU’s engagement with Erdoğan’s regime. They feel betrayed and sold out
by the EU, while the regime will adorn itself with these talks. Meanwhile, the
repression in the country just grows stronger.
Turkey’s progressive circles widely believe that the EU is only dealing
with Erdoğan because of the 2016 agreement to constrain the movement of
refugees and is thereby abandoning its own values. Although good ties
between the EU and Turkey are essential for all sides, democratisation in
Turkey’s current domestic context should be a precondition for rapprochement,
and relations should not succumb to the threats of an autocratic ruler.
This first appeared on International Politics & Society
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