ERDOGAN’S FATEFUL MOMENT
Mideast Mirror
June 10, 2013 Monday
Faced with growing domestic challenges Turkey’s PM may now have to
pursue a more cautious Syrian policy, says Salim Nassar in pan-Arab
daily al-Hayat
When President Barack Obama wished to address the 325 million
inhabitants of the Arab world [in June 2009], he chose Cairo, recalls
veteran Lebanese commentator Salim Nassar in the Saudi-owned pan-Arab
daily al-Hayat.
WHERE EAST MEETS WEST: When he wished to address the world’s 1.5
billion Muslims, however, he chose to do so from Ankara, the capital
of the country he described as the place where east meets west.
Yet this meeting-place has been wracked over the last few days by
vociferous demonstrations that spread to many Turkish cities–nominally
against the planned development of Istanbul’s Gezi Park.
The environmental issue was however merely an excuse to mobilize
thousands of young men and women in public squares in cities such as
Ankara, Istanbul, and Izmir.
The opposition Republican People’s Party CHP) exploited the mass
protests to incite demonstrators into chanting support for a ‘Turkish
Spring’ that has found its way across the border from Syria.
That was the reason why Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused
external circles of trying to undermine the security and prosperity
his Justice and Development Party (AKP) brought to Turkey.
It was only natural of Erdogan to accuse the Syrian regime of fomenting
the latest unrest. For was it not the Syrians who devastated the
border town of Reyhanli only last month when they exploded a car bomb
and killed more than fifty people?
At the time, the Turkish government dispatched units of Special Forces
to encircle Reyhanli in order to defuse the anger of its (mostly
Arabic-speaking Sunni, Kurdish and Alawite) inhabitants. For despite
the attempts of successive Turkish governments to assimilate them,
the inhabitants of southwestern Turkey still consider the province
of Iskenderun to be a part of Syria that the Turks illegally annexed
in 1939.
After the regimes in Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya fell in the Arab Spring,
Syria’s Bashar al-Assad was shocked to hear his erstwhile friend
Erdogan call on him to stand down. Turkey subsequently began to back
the Syrian rebels, host their conferences, and host Syrian refugees
in specially constructed camps near the border. Istanbul became a
permanent forum that the opposition Syrian National Coalition (SNC),
the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other opposition groups used to make
their case.
In trying to explain Erdogan’s about-face, the Turkish press said
that the PM’s position has its roots nearly fifty years ago. At the
time, Turkey was an ally of the United States, while Syria was seen
as ‘the Cuba of the Middle East’ because of its strong alliance with
Moscow during the Cold War. While Syria was close to the Warsaw Pact,
Turkey was one of the most important members of NATO.
It was therefore quite logical that the two neighbors should fall out
on many issues, chiefly water resources, border disputes, and Syria’s
support for the secessionist Kurdish (Kurdistan Workers Party) PKK. In
fact, the two countries would have come to blows in 1998 had it not
been for the intervention of Egypt’s former president Husni Mubarak.
In 2002, the Islamist-oriented AKP won its first general election.
Erdogan thus began to address his country’s severe political and
economic problems. In a fairly short period of time, he succeeded in
turning the Turkish economy around and achieving unprecedented growth.
He also utilized his political victory to revive the idea of the
Islamic caliphate that Ataturk consigned to history back in 1924. In
order to facilitate this process, Erdogan weakened and marginalized
the generals, who Ataturk saw as the guardians of the secular Turkish
state.
With Erdogan at the pinnacle of his political and economic power, it
was shocking to observers to see last week’s demonstrations overwhelm
Turkey’s cities and provinces. In fact, Erdogan himself was taken by
surprise when he saw his people denigrate his economic achievements
and the political stability that came with it. After all, had he not
led Turkey to become seventeenth on the list of developing nations
with a growth rate of 8 percent? Had Turkey not managed to achieve
growth while the EU was floundering? Turkish President Abdullah Gul
tried to dissuade Erdogan from traveling to North Africa soon after
the protests broke out, arguing that he should instead try to defuse
tensions and assuage public anger. Gul also ordered Deputy PM Bulent
Arinc to talk to the protestors and apologize for the high-handed
manner the police used to break up demonstrations.
Erdogan’s supporters attacked Gul for showing too much leniency to the
demonstrators in order to win public sympathy and for exploiting the
protests to appear as if he opposed the Prime Minister’s policies. For
his part, the mayor of Istanbul sided with Gul. He admitted being
negligent because of his failure to properly explain the Gezi Park
development project to the people of Istanbul before the bulldozers
moved in.
It is interesting to note that the ‘Turkish Spring’ began when four
young men wanted to protest against the uprooting of trees in Gezi
Park. They set up tents to encourage artists, actors and writers to
join in their protest. When the police came, the protestors merely
set fire to their tents and fled. Yet correspondents believe that the
Gezi Park issue was nothing more than a minor item on a long list
of grievances against the government and Recep Tayyip Erdogan in
particular. Demonstrators carried banners criticizing his tendency
to horde power as well as his party’s policies, which they saw as
too authoritarian. They particularly resented Erdogan’s ambition to
change the constitution so as to increase the powers of the President.
While the protests were going on in earnest against the AKP’s
authoritarianism, writer Mohammad Nureddin (author of ‘Turkey in an
Era of Change’) wrote an article about the plans to build a third
bridge over the Bosphorus in Istanbul (called the Yawuz Sultan Selim
Bridge). In that article, Nureddin criticized the AKP for alienating
the country’s twenty million Alawites (who are different from their
Syrian co-religionists) by naming the new bridge thus. Sultan Selim
inaugurated his reign by slaughtering over forty thousand Alawites,
who he accused of plotting with Persia’s Shah Isma’il to spread Shiism
in the Ottoman Empire. Nureddin said that the bridge should be given
another name, one that neither increases sectarian tensions nor hints
at any pretensions to revive Turkey’s Ottoman heritage.
Leaders of the opposition Republican People’s Party say that the
protests were meant to let off steam. The Gezi Park issue, they say,
was merely the trigger for the explosion of pent up feelings of anger
and frustration at a PM who has monopolized power for far too long.
The ten years Erdogan has been in power were enough to stoke up enough
domestic anger, which, when allied with external forces keen to exploit
the state of lawlessness to express their dissatisfaction through local
forces, resulted in the riots we saw. Indeed, pro-Assad circles were
the first to join the protest movement through Turkish opposition
parties and factions. This was merely revenge for Erdogan’s siding
with Syria’s Sunni majority against that country’s ruling Alawites.
Early last December, Russia’s Vladimir Putin paid a surprise visit to
Ankara. Its purpose: To try to change Turkey’s position vis-a-vis
Syria. It was said at the time that Putin objected to Turkey’s
provocative actions, such as its insistence on inspecting a Syrian
plane traveling from Moscow to Damascus and confiscating its cargo,
as well as its decision to deploy a U.S. missile shield and Patriot
missiles on its borders with Syria.
Russian Foreign minister Lavrov lambasted Erdogan for allowing NATO
to expand its influence to Russia’s borders when he threatened to use
NATO troops to help defend missiles aimed at Moscow. Although he has
publicly disavowed Marxism, Putin expressed satisfaction at the fact
that 13 communist factions (and 250 thousand leftists) took part in
the demonstrations in Turkey.
For its part, the Israeli press printed a series of articles, all of
which attacked Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Israeli newspapers said that what
was happening on Turkish streets was nothing more than a spontaneous
expression of public exasperation at Erdogan’s contradictory policies
(not forgetting to remind their readers that it was President Obama
who succeeded in reconciling Erdogan with Prime Minister Binyamin
Netanyahu after relations between them were fractured after the
[Gaza flotilla] Mavi Marmara incident in 2010).
Two weeks before the reconciliation, Erdogan was invited to address
an UN-hosted forum in Vienna. Attendees at that forum were shocked to
hear the Turkish Prime Minister describe Zionism as a ‘crime against
humanity.’ Netanyahu responded by calling his Turkish counterpart a
‘liar’ and ‘anti-Semite.’ Meanwhile, Pinchas Goldschmidt, Chief Rabbi
and President of the Conference of European Rabbis, issued a statement
in which he said that, ‘The irony of these comments will not be lost
on the families of those slaughtered during the Armenian genocide,
a crime still not recognized by the Turkish government.’ It was
because of that statement that the Turkish Jewish community joined
forces with the protestors.
According to Turkish newspapers, half of the protestors were women.
The reason for the high female participation was laid at the door of
negative statements made by Erdogan about abortion, which he equated
with premeditated murder. The Turkish Prime Minister also criticized
working women, saying that the proper place for veiled Muslim women
was the kitchen.
As to the ‘invisible party’ that Erdogan’s supporters accused of
encouraging the protests, it refers to the 400,000 strong Turkish
army that was marginalized and emasculated by the AKP. It is said in
Ankara that the Generals were content to see the situation unfold
without even intervening to prevent the riots spreading to crowded
neighborhoods. The opposition warned that the generals would not
stand idly by if security worsens or if the Syrian regime succeeds
in supplying its Turkish allies with bombs.
During his recent North African tour, Erdogan tried to defend his
policies rather than accomplish the mission he set out for, viz.
reconciling those Arab leaders who were shaken by the Libyan
revolution. But President Gul insisted that he return to Turkey in
order to consider the options tabled by the opposition and to try to
steer the AKP away from potential damage.
Washington think-tanks advised Turkey to get out of the Syrian morass,
especially after bombs began to go off in Turkish cities. They believe
that the supine policies of the Obama administration could cost the
AKP a large part of its popularity, especially as Obama frankly told
Erdogan that the U.S. would not intervene militarily in Syria.
With all this in mind, observers believe that Erdogan will be more
cautious in dealing with the Syrian opposition and the FSA in the
future–especially as President Gul is seemingly determined to devise
a new strategy designed to save the AKP from the threats it faces,
as well as to help Turkey avoid sliding into an abyss.