Erdogan Is Toast

Last week a small environmental protest against the demolishing of a park in Istanbul went nearly unnoticed. But when police rather brutally intervened to let workers cut some of the trees the situation exploded. Within a few days over 100,000 were out on the streets and clashing with police forces.

Most of those people did not come out to save the Gezi park but to demonstrate against the kind of politics that it symbolizes. Most of the locals want to keep the park and are against the larger related project to “renovate” the central Taksim square. Taksim stands for May 1 demonstrations, the Ataturk cultural center and common urban space.

But the AKP wishes to revive the Ottoman era and to insert more religion into public live. Its leading clique has many business interests. The AKP decided to raze the park to build a replica of the Ottoman Artillery Barracks and to fill with a shopping mall and a mosque. A government commission advised against the project but was overruled. Protesters were moved away through rather brutal police engagements. This authoritarian way of pushing party interests against the common one is what brought the people into the streets.

On Friday, a court handed the government a perfect chance to calm the protests down. It ruled that the project would be stopped until some further issues could be heard in court. Erdogan could have pointed to theruling, and could have promised to follow it. Instead he repeated that the government will continue to “realize their dream” and to build the barracks and to transform the whole Taksim square.

The AKP under Erdogan disregards the societies opinion on single political issues and only cares about its followers’ interests and winning the totals in the next election. 

The political alternatives to the AKP are not strong enough or too dogmatic on single issues to be serious challengers…Turkey has thereby become a hollow democracy and a one party state.

 Turkish media are suppressed, Journalists who dared to criticize the government lost their jobs or even went to jail. Media companies were threatened over dubious allegations of tax evasion. Many TV stations did not dare to report the protests and only now start to follow them.

The AKP pursues neo-liberal policies, privatizes state companies wherever it can and hates labor unions.

For some years it was very effective in growing the economy though most of the growth was bought with foreign capital, mostly from the Gulf. 

Turkey’s current-account deficit is some 10% of GDP per year. That is unsustainable. Much of this money is “hot” and only interested in short term return fleeing as soon as the recent Turkish growth story seems to falter.

 The Turkish stock market already started to fall before the demonstrations start. Today it plunged another 10%.. Interest rates jumped.

Erdogan has called the protesters alcoholics, bums, extremists and looters. They clearly wear riot police outfits.

 Erdogan blamed twitter and other social media for the protests and alleged,that opposition politicians were inciting the protesters and suggestedwho are under foreign intelligence control.

Whereas they are protesters who belong to political opposition parties and Istanbul’s three bib soccer club fans, who banded together to clash with the police, are not harmless pussies. But the way these protests exploded and spread within two days into nearly 50 other cities does not point to pure political or foreign control. It rather looks like a collective outbreak of long simmering frustrations with Erdogan’s authoritarian rule.

Today Erdogan went off to a week of state visits in north Africa. Before he left he claimed that he could “barely hold back” the 50% that voted for his party in the last election. It is dubious that all of those would now come out for him. 

In several of his policies, like the assault on Syria, a large majority of Turks is against him. But it still is a threat to launch counter demonstration that would inevitably end in more clashes. Last night one demonstrator was killed, when a car ran over him. Some claim the driver was incited by Erdogan’s aggressive talk.

While Istanbul was rather quiet throughout the day, clashes with the police continued in Ankara and for the first time Erdogan’s supporters went into action:

Solidarity protests against the demolition of TaksimGezi Park continued in Ankara, while clashes erupted between demonstrators, and a group of people chanting slogans on behalf of the police. The unknown group, which attacked while shouting “May the hands of those who attack the police be broken,” ran away after attacking demonstrators.

Unless Erdogan starts to compromise on the Gezi park and other issuesor steps down, demonstrations and clashes are likely to continue,

while the police is on the side of the government, the military is not. Many generals are in jail for alleged coup plotting, The economy, already effected by the war on Syria and much too high current account deficits, will go down as the hot money flees from the Turkish markets. 

The big tourism industry will see further losses. 

One of the four big labor unions with 240,000 members announced that it will now go on strike, the peace process with the Kurds is still vague and attacks by the Kurdish PKK guerrilla can easily reoccur.

Erdogan is not without competition within his own party, If he can’t keep the economy going and the streets peaceful the knifes will come out against him. President Gul, one of Erdogan’s top friend enemy, is already positioning himself, he came out against Erdogan’s absolutists claims by explaining that democracy is not just about elections.

There are now four possible ways out of these troubles:

• The protests run out of steam and peter out. Unlikely in my view, especially as the labor unions are now joining.
• Erdogan becomes a humble man, stops the Taksim square project and apologizes.
• The military launches a coup. It is dubious that a majority of Turks would support another coup, and the military might not be willing to take on the burden. Why not just sit back, simply watch the show and smile?
• Some faction in Erodgan’s AKP launches a party coup against him and put him out of office.

For now my bet is on the fourth alternative, but it will take a while, so More clashes -or maybe even outright shootings, more economic damage, more political strife will happen before someone dares to take the sultan down. 

The process could take weeks or months, but however it ends Erdogan will, in the end, lose out. 

There is no going back, He is toast.

 

Source: Moon Of Alabama

 

B.N