EMMA SINCLAIR-WEBB - In Turkey's political contest, rule of the law is the real loser
Turkey’s local elections on March 30, among the most contested in recent times, felt more like a referendum on the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan than a poll for municipal government. The terms of the contest were defined by the unprecedented political fight between Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its former long-term ally, the Gülen movement––followers of the US-based cleric Fethullah Gülen.
Erdoğan claimed victory in the face of the huge corruption investigation implicating key cabinet members and Erdoğan’s own family. He rejected the accusations, accusing the Gülen movement of being behind them and of being a “parallel state” involved in an international conspiracy to bring him down.
Erdogan’s domestic triumph came with heavy costs. The casualty of the political fight and combative election campaign period has undoubtedly been the rule of law and the prospect of Turkey having an impartial and independent judiciary. The downward slide on human rights in the country has been going on for several years but came to the attention of the world with the clampdown on the Gezi park protesters last summer.
During the election campaign the government took every step imaginable to bury the corruption scandal and impede the criminal investigation. Leaked wiretaps purporting to be senior government figures and aides’ telephone calls suggest that the prime minister’s office flagrantly intervened in the corruption investigation. The prime minister has not questioned the content of these calls or the identity of the speakers, though has issued vague denials to the effect that they are “montage”. Thousands of police and scores of prosecutors and judges the government perceives to be Gülen followers have been demoted and rotated. The government brought the main institution responsible for the judiciary, the High Council of Judges and Prosecutors, under its tighter control through a new law and by purging and rotating its members to minimize Gülenist influence. It introduced a more restrictive internet law, and after corruption allegations emerged on Twitter and YouTube, blocked access to both sites in Turkey.
All of this has damaged Turkey’s credibility internationally, with the EU, the US, the UN and Council of Europe raising strong concerns about judicial independence, the internet law, and the actions against Twitter and YouTube.
Erdoğan’s popularity
The extent of Erdoğan’s popularity and the reasons why his party commands such support are not well understood outside Turkey. Beyond the decisive factor of the prime minister’s charismatic leadership, many people in Turkey identify strongly with the AKP’s Sunni Muslim religious colouring and provincial roots. Equally important, they see the party as having brought prosperity, better services and a greater share of the pie for more people.
The AKP also has an unrivalled capacity to project that image and send out populist messages through control of much of the media and public space, while increasingly playing the Sunni Muslim identity politics card. It isn’t so much that AKP supporters don’t believe the corruption allegations, but rather that they do not feel particularly threatened by them in the present economic climate. While the stock market and currency have been affected by declining international confidence, the real economy continues to grow despite a slowdown.
The lack of a credible opposition party in Turkey is the other major factor. Historical memory of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) as a party without popular reach, except for a brief period in the 1970s, is a recurring theme.
An AKP voter, Fatma, 60, expressed this popular sentiment when I talked with her after the election in the Istanbul office building where she has worked for 40 years as a concierge. Born in a village in central Anatolia, she came to Istanbul to get married at 16. “What did the [main opposition] CHP ever do for us and what does it offer now? Under the AKP I’ve been able to walk into a private hospital and get treatment on social security where in the past they would have shown someone like me the door.”
Moreover, the AKP retains strong support from Turkey’s increasingly educated new middle class... read more:
