The current unrest in Turkey may have caught some people by surprise. Prime Minister Erdogan’s AKP government oversaw steady economic growth and development since it took power in 2002. After AKP electoral gains in the 2007 elections, the army was successfully defanged and pushed back into the barracks. In 2011, the AKP won almost 50% of the popular vote, giving it another majority government. Mr. Erdogan even made a peace deal with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, leading to the latter’s retreat to Iraqi Kurdistan.
The protests started with a few Istanbulites upset about Erdogan’s decision to replace the only forested park in Taksim, the heart of Istanbul, with a shopping mall and replica Ottoman barracks. The “destroy Gezi Park” decision came from on high, despite local opposition and the negative recommendation of urban planning experts. Police were sent in to beat and tear gas some fifty local artists and middle class protesters. The image of one woman in a red summer dress and sandals getting gassed by a masked policeman as she just stood there immediately became a symbol for Erdogan’s opponents.
When the protests then began mushrooming in Istanbul and spreading to other cities, Turkish media studiously avoided the issue. While CNN International provided live coverage, CNNTurk aired a documentary on penguins. Turkey, you see, has more journalists in prison than any other country in the world, and half the ones not in prison fear libel suits from Mr. Erdogan–legal processes that can easily bankrupt them if they step out of line. When the Internet first swelled with the news of protests--despite Turkish mainstream media’s self-censorship--Prime Minister Erdogan complained that "there is this trouble called twitter now, social media, in my opinion, is the biggest trouble for all societies." Yes, it seems that for Mr. Erdogan, Twitter and Facebook cause more societal trouble than unemployment, crime, pollution or undemocratic styles of governance.
Turkey, you see, has more journalists in prison than any other country in the world, and half the ones not in prison fear libel suits from Mr. Erdogan–legal processes that can easily bankrupt them if they step out of line.
As the protests spread to more than 60 Turkish cities and images of Turkish police beating and tear gassing peaceful, average looking protestors circulated, the Prime Minister had to say more. He called the protestors “hooligans” who “walk arm in arm with terrorists.” Refusing to admit any problems with his own style of heavy handed rule, he claimed that “all attempts to influence government apart from the ballot box are not democratic.” By this, Mr. Erdogan seems to believe that winning an election gives him and his party a four to five year dictatorship and the unbridled right to intervene in every little aspect of people’s lives, until the next election.
Instead of seeking to calm the “hooligans” who dared to attack police batons with their heads, who greedily inhaled tear gas or pepper spray, and who refused to just shut up and accept whatever the elected Sultan decides on every little issue, Mr. Erdogan angrily promised that “We will build a mosque in Taksim and we do not need the permission of the CHP [Republican People's Party, the main opposition party in Parliament] or of a few bums to do it.” He darkly alluded to his limited capacity to “hold back the fifty per cent of the population” that supports him–implying that he might send his supporters into the streets to attack people, as Islamists did recently (with large knives) to a group kissing by a metro station to protest the AKP’s clampdown against “public displays of affection.” He also alluded to “settling accounts with foreign powers behind these protests,” a textbook deflection of a dictator who just doesn’t get it.
To understand what these protests are really about (it’s not just trees in Gezi Park), we need to reflect on the kind of hubris, ego and paternalism that underlie these statements from Mr. Erdogan. We would also do well to note a few more of the things his government has done inside Turkey besides clamp down on displays of public affection and harass the media–other policies that foreigners rarely hear about. Turkey’s governing system is extremely centralized, meaning that Mr. Erdogan makes decisions about trees in Gezi Park without even listening to contradictory opinions. A few years ago he visited the Armenian border and didn’t like a huge bronze statue honoring “Turkish-Armenian friendship” the local municipality had erected–so he had it promptly taken down and destroyed. In a recent National Review column, Michael Rubin summarizes a few other issues: The civil service is increasingly being stacked with graduates of religious schools, who have also had their admission to universities they didn’t used to qualify for facilitated. Even non-Sunni students must now also attend Sunni religious classes. Women are being pushed out of top levels of the government bureaucracy and advised to each have “at least three babies and ideally more.” Between 2002 and 2009 yearly honor killings in Turkey surged 1,400 percent, likely because of more “lenient” attitudes on the part of authorities.
When it comes to lifestyle micro-governance, Mr. Erdogan’s interests go beyond clamp downs on public affection.
When it comes to lifestyle micro-governance, Mr. Erdogan’s interests go beyond clamp downs on public affection. Shortly before the latest protests erupted, Mr. Erdogan and his AKP pushed through a bill that totally forbids any and all alcohol advertising, forbids retail sales of alcohol after 10 p.m., further limits the availability of alcohol licenses and just for good measure (or to make it look like a health initiative rather than Islamism, which the constitution forbids) also establishes outdoor smoking bans and forbids people from smoking while driving (as if Turkish roads needed grumpier, more impatient drivers). This comes after a long series of steep tax increases on alcohol and other “sobriety campaigns,” in a country with an annual per capita alcohol consumption of just 1.5 liters per person. Besides equating any alcohol consumption at all with alcoholism, Mr. Erdogan still tries to maintain that he is not banning alcohol. "If you are going to drink, then drink your alcohol in your own house" he says–which ironically sounds a lot like the old Kemalist attitude towards women wearing head scarves.
In the end, I think the protests in Turkey are in reaction to this “Sultan knows best” attitude and Mr. Erdogan’s attempts remodel every aspect of Turkish society. I am reminded of something C.S. Lewis once wrote: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since August 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press).
