If Only the Sultan Would Listen!
He who sows the wind would but reap the whirlwind; and this is exactly what the Prime Minister of Turkey has been sowing for more than two years of the crisis in Syria. Erdogan’s reckless and uncalculated blind policies in supporting the extremists, takfiri, wahabi and terrorist groups in Syria have indeed crossed every red line and logic. All of a sudden, in implementation for a US-Israeli scheme paid for by the ewes and petrodollars, Erdogan made a U-turn in his relationship with Syria and left no stone unturned as to down the legitimate government of Syria and impose his affiliates of Moslem Brotherhood on the Syrians!
With this in mind, the Economist, on June 8th, 2013, published an interesting report about the ongoing anti-Erdogan protests in Turkey, which is in major part, according to many observers and analysts, the result for Erdogan’s crazy policies towards Syria. According to the Economist, the protests are a sign of rising dissatisfaction with Erdogan, Over 4,000 people have been hurt and over 900 were arrested; three have died….But only after this first protest was met by horribly heavy-handed policing did the blaze spread, via Twitter and other social media. A local dispute turned national because its elements—brutal police behaviour and mega-projects rammed through with a dismissive lack of consultation—serve as an extreme example of the authoritarian way Erdogan now runs his country.
”The real lesson of these events is about authoritarianism: Turkey will not put up with a middle-class democrat behaving like an Ottoman sultan,” said the Economist, citing the worries about Erdogan, who once called democracy a train from which you get off once you reach the station. He is disdainful of the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie of Istanbul and Izmir. His party’s religious roots led many to fear the Islamisation of Ataturk’s proudly secular state: a new law restricting alcohol sales lent credence to those worries.
The Economist underlined that there were many in Erdogan’s Justice and Development party who, like its co-founder, Turkey’s president, Abdullah Gul, disapprove of the prime minister’s authoritarianism and find his interpretation of democracy too narrow; ”The problem is not Islam but Erdogan. He has a majoritarian notion of politics: if he wins an election, he believes he is entitled to do what he likes until the next one. Sometimes, as in defanging the coup-prone army, he has used power well. But over time the checks on him have fallen away. Justice and Development Party (AK) nominees fill the judiciary and AK people run the provinces; their friends win the big contracts. Erdogan has intimidated the media into self-censorship: as the protesters choked on tear gas, the television networks carried programmes about cooking and penguins.”
Erdogan, who missed no occasion to throw stones and fire balls at the neighbors, according to the Economist, imprisoned many journalists and ”locked up whole staff-colleges of generals. Within his own party, people are afraid to stand up to him. His self-belief long ago swelled into rank intolerance. His social conservatism has warped into social engineering.” Thus, the Economist called on Erdogan, for two reasons, to abandon these ideas and prepare to pass leadership of AK, and executive power, to the more statesmanlike Mr. Gul at the next election. One is that many Turks are tiring of him …. And if Erdogan stays, he may find his country increasingly ungovernable.
Dr. Mohammad Abdo Al-Ibrahim