ERDOGAN’S DILEMMA
Posted By Sinan Ulgen Sunday, June 2, 2013 – 12:06 PM
The demonstrations started in Istanbul a few days ago. The initial
objective was to protect the park in Taksim, Istanbul’s central square,
from being demolished and replaced by a shopping mall. But the police
intervened with excessive force against a peaceful assembly, liberally
using tear gas to disperse protesters. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip
Erdogan stated that the project will go ahead regardless of the
“few” people that oppose it. As a result, this local dispute was
unexpectedly transformed into a city and then a nation-wide mass
demonstration against his polarizing style.
The mass protests should be seen as a reaction against the
ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and Erdogan’s style of
majoritarian governance. By cementing a pro-government majority
and avoiding consensus on sensitive issues, Erdogan’s political
strategy has polarized Turkish society. This majoritarian approach to
decision-making has worked well for him so far. He not only succeeded
in setting the agenda for the country, but he also increased his
popular support over three successive elections. But it now seems that
this style of governance has reached the limit of Turkish society’s
tolerance. The recent adoption of a law on alcohol that significantly
impedes the marketing, sales, and consumption of alcoholic drinks had
already stirred a debate in Turkey about the government’s negligence
to take into account the sensitivities of Turkey’s non-conservatives.
Moreover, Erdogan’s defense of the law by referencing religious
principles only served to provoke the law’s secular opponents. Instead
the decision to transform a public park in the central square of
Istanbul into a shopping mall became the rallying theme for many
Turks to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with Erdogan’s leadership.
Compared to past rallies in Turkey’s democratic history, this
week’s events stand out for a number of reasons. First, the
mass demonstrations are against the non-participatory style of
decision-making adopted by the Erdogan government, but they are not
ideological. They have not been hijacked or led by any single political
party or ideology, as the protesters hail from disparate backgrounds
and represent the rich diversity of Turkish society. They are composed
of youth, women, football club supporters, trade unionists, college
students, NGO activists, and urban professionals.
Second, there is for the first time a sense of empowerment against a
government that has dominated the political scene for the past decade.
This sense of popular empowerment stands in stark contrast with the
dismal performance of Turkey’s parliamentary opposition. The oft-made
comparisons to the Tahrir demonstrations are not correct. Turkey is a
democracy and there is no call for regime change like in Egypt. The
only overlap with Tahrir remains this immense sense of empowerment
and emancipation by the ordinary citizens that have seen the impact
they can have on the political system if they act in unison.
And then there is the media. Turkey’s mainstream media has become the
laughing stock of the country. While Istanbul was burning with tear
gas, Turkish TV channels were busy broadcasting documentaries, cooking
shows, or soap operas. The Saturday edition of the pro-government major
daily Sabah has not mentioned the events. The government imposed a
blackout and the widespread self-censorship further discredited the
mainstream media in the eyes of the Turkish public, which turned
to international media outlets or to social media to follow the
events on their streets. Indeed, one clear winner has been social
media. Many Turks rushed to Twitter and the like to witness the
rallies in real time. According to a study conducted by New York
University’s Social Media and Political Participation Laboratory,
the social media response to and the role of social media in the
protests has been phenomenal. Within a window of 24 hours, at least
two million tweets mentioning hashtags related to the protest, have
been posted. Even after midnight on Friday, more than 3,000 tweets
about the protest were published every minute.
The way forward is, however, unclear. Erdogan conceded a small victory
on Saturday to the protesters by withdrawing the police forces from
Taksim square and admitting to their excessive use of force. But
more defiantly, he reiterated his willingness to proceed with the
disputed Taksim square reconstruction project. Yet regardless of how
the events unfold in the coming days, there are two conclusions that
can be drawn even now from this episode of unplanned and yet massive
protest movements that shook one of Europe’s largest cities: one is the
glaring need to fundamentally restructure the media in Turkey; and the
other the urgency of behavioral change in Erdogan’s leadership style.
The blatant failure of the Turkish press to fulfill, even minimally,
its role to report events harms the progress of democracy in Turkey.
Consequently, new measures should be legislated, such as forcing
media companies to shed their non-media activities, to ensure that
the independence of the media can be re-established and maintained.
Another set of rules should focus on safeguarding media pluralism.
Although they do not represent an immediate threat to Erdogan’s rule
in Turkey, these mass protests should nonetheless be taken seriously
by the Turkish prime minister. Many Turks have grown increasingly
disaffected with the top-down, non-inclusive style of decision-making
that has characterized the later years of the Erdogan government. They
are tired of polarization and strive for more consensual politics.
Erdogan needs to understand this yearning and adopt a more conciliatory
mode of leadership.
But possibly even more important for Turkey’s future political
stability is the increasingly visible gap on the acceptable forms
of dissent between the Turkish leadership and society. Erdogan
seems genuinely to believe that mass protests have no place in a
country administered by a strong, stable, and economically successful
government. He emphasizes the ballot box as the venue for social and
political stakeholders to show their disaffection with the government.
“Every four years we hold elections and this nation makes its choice,”
he said on Saturday. “Those who have a problem with government’s
policies can express their opinions within the framework of law and
democracy.” But with its maturing and increasingly pluralistic civil
society, Turkey has moved beyond this more limited definition of
democratic freedoms. The Turkish political leadership, including the
parliamentary opposition, have to readjust their outlook. Otherwise
with the newly found sense of empowerment of its citizenry, public
turbulence in Turkey will become much more common.
Sinan Ulgen is the chairman of the Istanbul based EDAM think tank
and a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe. His Twitter handle is
@sinanulgen1.
From: A. Papazian
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/06/02/erdogans_newest_dilemma