"A Blessing from God"?

PHOTO from Hurriyet

The fears of those who opposed last September's referendum on the grounds that the constitutional amendments approved therein would strengthen the AKP government's hold over the judiciary may be coming home to roost. The Council of State, Turkey's chief administrative court, has elected Huseyin Karakullukcu to the court's presidency, a vote facilitated by newly appointed Council of State judges. For more (in Turkish), click here.

In Turkey, judges are appointed by the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), the composition of which was altered by the recent amendments. The HSYK was expanded from seven to 22 members, 19 of which are appointed by a variety of institutions. Earlier Nazim Kaynak, another friend of Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, was appointed to head the Supreme Court of Appeals, the same institution that in 2008 brought a closure case against the AKP.

After Karakullukcu's election, Arinc said the appointment was "another blessing given by God."

The Row with Austria

Tensions between Austria and Turkey are high after Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu announced on Friday that Turkey would block the nomination of former Austrian foreign minister Ursula Plassnik to become secretary-general of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

According to Austrian officials, President Abdullah Gul promised Austria it would not veto Plassnik's nomination during a recent visit to Vienna. Austrian officials cite that Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu made the same promise. Turkish officials reject the allegations.

Austrian officials top even Sarkozy and Merkel in their opposition to Turkey's accession to the European Union and, like Sarkozy and Merkel, Plassnik has called for Europe to conclude a strategic partnership with Turkey rather than granting it membership.

Turkey had nominated its own candidate, Ersin Ercin, though Greek Cyprus and Armenia blocked the appointment.

Relations with Vienna have been particularly sore since December when Austrian rightist MP Ewald Stadler lambasted Turkish Ambassador to Austria Evcet Tezcan in a fiery (fascist?) speech in Austria's parliament. Stadler and the Austrian right have led staunch anti-immigration reform efforts in Austria.
For the speech, see here:



I am not suggesting that blocking Plassnik's nomination is payback, but it is understandable why Turkey would not want yet another Islamophobe heading a key European institution.

Syrian Refugees Pour Into Turkey

As Syrian security forces surround the the town of Jisr al-Shughour, located just 12 miles from the Turkish border, traumatized refugees continue to pour into the country. From Hurriyet Daily News:

Turkey will not close its doors to Syrians fleeing unrest in their country, the Turkish prime minister said Wednesday after a group of 169 Syrians fled the border town of Jisr al-Shughour overnight, fearing bloodshed.

“We are monitoring developments in Syria with concern,” Prime Minister Tayyip Erdoğan said at a news conference, urging Damascus to “change its attitude toward civilians” and “take its attitude to a more tolerant level as soon as possible.”

Turkey has exerted efforts for a peaceful transition process in Syria, but reforms have not been carried out at the desired speed and are being outpaced by growing violence, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told the private channel NTV in an interview Wednesday. He said Turkey is prepared to deal with a mass influx of Syrian refugees.

“We have taken all necessary precautions in case of a massive flow of crossings,” Davutoğlu said. Implying a security check would be made for Syrian refugees, he added, “We have to determine their intention [in] seeking refuge.”

People who fled the town of Jisr al-Shughour on Wednesday, fearing a crackdown by their government after the alleged massacre of 120 policemen, are sheltering at a camp set up by the Turkish Red Crescent in the Yayladagi district of Hatay, a Turkish city on the Syrian border.

A total of 420 Syrians have crossed the border and stayed in Turkey since the start of the unrest, a Turkish Foreign Ministry diplomat told the Daily News. The Anatolia news agency reported, however, that new groups are continuing to arrive at the Turkish border. Turkish officials also told reporters that many Syrians were waiting at villages near the border.

There are reports in the Turkish press that Syrian opposition is urging Syrians trapped in the conflict to flee over the border. Zaman reports that 200 refugees arrived in Turkey late on Monday night, and that the numbers have increased since. For Syrian expert Joshua Landis's account of what is going on, click here.

As Turkey gears up to respond to an influx of Syrian refugees as it continues to call on Syrian President Assad to cease human rights abuses and institute major reforms, the London School of Economics has released a report stating what is all the more obvious given Turkey's increasingly prominent role in the Arab spring. According to the newly released LSE report, "Turkey's influence and reach are certain to be central to the future of the economic and political development of the region as the revolutions responsible for overthrowing governments make the difficult transition to constructing them." For the full report, click here.


UPDATE I (6/9) -- Sabah reports (in Turkish) that the number of refugees arriving from Jisr al-Shughour now total over 400. According to the paper, the government has allocated 30 million Turkish Lira to deal with a wave of refugees it is expecting to total from 500,000 to one million persons. Prime Minister Erdogan has said the border will stay open. At the moment, Turkey is the only country to have an open border with Syria.

Additionally, refugees are giving Turkish authorities information that what Syria alleges was a massacre of 120 people by the opposition was instead a massacre of 120 people committed by Syrian security officials following a mutiny within the country's security apparatus.

UPDATE II (6/9) -- Refugees coming from Jisr al-Shughour are continuing to confirm stories that a mutiny occurred when Syrian security officials refused to do the regime's dirty work. From Hurriyet Daily News: A Syrian security officer who fled with the civilian refugees told the Hürriyet Daily News:

that they received an order by phone Friday to kill all the protesters in the town.

“We received a phone call from the center, and they ordered us to shoot and kill all the protesters,” said Ahmad Gavi, 21, a Syrian soldier who fled to Turkey following the deadly clashes in Jisr Al-Shughour.

“Five soldiers who refused to follow this order were killed immediately in front of me. Then commanders and some soldiers started to shoot each other,” Gavi said. “There were 180 soldiers at the security check post and 120 of them were killed.”

Gavi said he dropped his gun and ran away to Turkey as a refugee. “It was not the protesters who killed the soldiers, it was the commanders who killed them; most of the soldiers ran away with the protesters then,” he said, adding that there are 60 Syrian soldiers in the group that fled to Turkey.

Over 200 Syrians are reported to be hospitalized in Hatay. The narratives drastically increase the likelihood that Erdogan will strangthen the Turkish government's line with Assad. The National Security Council (MGK) is scheduled to meet after Sunday's elections.

Not Just a Thin Skin . . .

The Wall Street Journal's Marc Champion will no doubt soon be on the AKP's list of journalists being used by international gangs to undermine its government. In an article appearing yesterday, Champion reports on what observers of Turkish politics have long known: Prime Minister Erdogan is a very, very litigious man. For the story, click here.

According to Champion, Erdogan had filed 57 libel suits by 2005, just two years after taking office. He won 21 of the cases, netting a total 700,000 Turkish Lira, or about $440,000, in compensation. An excerpt:

Since then, the government has refused to answer further questions on the matter. It said that whomever Mr. Erdogan sues—under article 125 of the Turkish penal code—is a private affair. The law criminalizes insults against a person's honor, differentiating such barbs from other protected free speech. Guilty parties face a maximum penalty of two years in jail.

Mr. Erdogan's spokesman didn't respond to several phone and email requests for comment.

Fikret Ilkiz, a prominent Turkish press freedom lawyer, says the frequency with which the prime minister's lawyers launch insult suits on his behalf has increased since 2005. By now the tally is "in the hundreds," he estimates, and has triggered a boom in lawsuits launched by cabinet ministers and legislators. Mr. Ilkiz added that previous prime ministers rarely used article 125.

The article goes on to document a few recent libel suits the prime minister has filed, including the one against the Milliyet cartoonist who depicted him as a cat tied up in yarn, as well as another involving a theater troupe and the case against British citizen Michael Dickinson, who drew the prime minister's head on a dog's body.

While the prime minister seem to have problems dealing with criticism, however tasteless or disrespectful it might be, he has no problems dishing it out. Erdogan recently called Milliyet journalist Nuray Mert "despicable" for having written that new roads the government is building in the southeast will facilitate security operations and threatened another journalist, Abbas Guclu, for tying the prime minister to a scandal involving Turkey's university entrance exam. In regard to Guclu, Erdogan said the journalist would "pay the price" for his allegations. For a litany of such allegations, see Sedat Ergin's recent column (in Turkish) in Hurriyet.


UPDATE I (6/9) --  Another example (from Milliyet, in Turkish) of the prime minister's thin skin was displayed when Erdogan accused Taraf columnist Ahmet Altan of insulting him after the columnist said he would not be voting for the AKP on Sunday.

Why Turkey and Turkish Civil Society Matter

Far too many Western political leaders, thinkers, and donors, especially here in Washington, have come to think of Turkish democracy as a “mission accomplished,” or at least, a project "near complete.” The sad state of affairs is indeed the opposite, and mostly sadly, it is this premature attitude that could turn Turkey back toward its authoritarian past rather than build on the democratic successes it has achieved in the past 15 years.

As American think-tanks bandy about a “Turkish model” as some ideal path for the newly emerging Arab democracies to follow, the real state of Turkish political affairs remains a mystery to all too many. In fact, Turkey now has more journalists in prison than any other country in the world, including China. And, like China, a new Internet regulation that goes into effect Aug. 22 will set up an online filtering and surveillance system by which every Turkish citizen will be followed by the government using an online profile. These developments are all the more disturbing given the ongoing Ergenekon investigation, which while supposed to bring down the infamous Turkish “deep state,” instead has been used as a political tool to go after the ruling AKP government’s political enemies.

Meanwhile, the Kurdish conflict, which the government’s “Kurdish opening” was to finally bring to a close by granting Turkey’s Kurdish population of 15 million plus people cultural and minority rights, has ground to a halt. Prime Minister Erdogan just over a year ago recognized the “Kurdish problem” as a democracy problem, but has since denied its existence. Last summer saw the largest escalation of the conflict since the 1990s, and given the government’s recent nationalist posturing, it is highly unlikely that the problem will be resolved.

Most important of all is Turkey’s stalled European Union accession process, the primary fuel behind the rapid-pace reforms that constitute Turkey’s democratic successes at the turn of the millennium. However, more than four years have passed since Turkey began accession negotiations, wherein the country has made little progress in fully meeting the EU’s Copenhagen criteria for democracy and human rights. Indeed, as Dilek Kurban notes in yesterday’s post, progress has actually become regression. Turkey now has a repressive Anti-Terrorism Law in place that has landed thousands in prison without adequate legal redress and torture, illegal detention, and impunity remain problems just as daunting as they were before the AKP entered power in 2002.

The main problem, more than any other, is a ruling party that has distanced itself from the liberal democracy it once embraced to in its place champion a majoritarian conception of rule by the people where minorities, opposition figures, and political dissenters are becoming less secure in their rights by the day. Democracy, as the AKP understands it, is rule by the majority—it is electoral authoritarianism dressed up to look nice for Western audiences keen to fondly fixate on the notion of an Islamist party that has somehow come to champion a long oppressed majority while adopting liberal values. However, the AKP is not liberal. While there is plenty of truth that the majority of conservative Muslim Anatolia has been repressed throughout the history of the country’s history, now it is the majority who is comfortable to reign over the minority.

There is no resolving the Madisonian dilemma—the inherent conflict between majority rule and individual liberties—for the ruling AKP government. There is only a will to power—a will evinced by Prime Minister Erdogan’s designs to create a presidential system. As The Economist noted in its controversial editorial endorsing the CHP and which now has the prime minister fuming about Zionist-driven conspiracies, if the AKP is to unilaterally push through a new constitution, it could end up being worse than the greatly amended one currently in place.

Ironically, if the United States and Europe do not move fast to realize what is happening inside Turkey, the world will lose a country that really could serve as a democratic example to the Arab Middle East. The AKP government made tremendous progress when it first came to power in 2002, and it could be said that the party’s first years in office provided the best government in the history of the Turkish Republic. However, a lot has happened since and the model is at risk. If Turkey’s democratic progress is ultimately lost, then there will not only be the lack of a democratic success story in the region but a failure that could set back Islamist/conservative democrats in other Muslim countries who otherwise have good chances of making democracy work. And, as recent survey research attests, Arabs are paying attention. (66% of Arabs surveyed at the end of last summer said they viewed Turkey as a democratic model.)

What is to be done?

Now is the time for action. The EU accession engine that powered the AKP’s early reform efforts is imperiled by the Greek Cypriot presidency, which will commence in just a little more than a year from now.  This means the Turkish government, which will still be led by the AKP whether the party gains a super majority or not, must make serious progress toward accession. The country is in a race against time. And, no matter what happens in June elections, movement toward a new constitution, or at least major constitutional reform, will be on the plate.

In this context, Turkish civil society will prove key to saving Turkish democracy just as it did during the optimistic years after the EU accepted Turkey’s application for membership in 1999 and major reforms started coming down the pipe. The authoritarian tendencies of Turkish political parties, not exclusive to the current party in power, need to be countered by civil society.

When the AKP tried to make adultery illegal in 2004 and ignore legislative proposals that would reduce the sentences for honor killings and rape in certain instances, it was a highly mobilized network of women’s groups that pushed the party to do the right thing. Many of these groups had become empowered thanks to donor money and expertise, and they fought the good fight, and well, won.

Though Turkey is now confronting a different set of challenges, support for civil society is just as critical now as it was then to support these groups. And, what kind of support exactly? What is needed are not requests for proposals that nearly prompt groups to apply for money, but rather funds for genuine projects grown out of grassroots understandings of political expediency. Turkish civil society groups should be encouraged to do more to work together, as women’s groups did in 2004, and even more importantly, engage political parties, the government, and the state (listed here in an ascending order of difficulty).

Support for strengthening political parties and institution-building has been enormously successful in Turkey, and to some extent, has resulted in the recent democratic turn by CHP we have seen of late, but without funding civil society to keep political parties in check and goad them to respond to democratic demands, little will get done.

And, the impact?

The AKP has accomplished tremendous feats in its time in power, but the party has grown too strong while civil society has lagged behind. Now confident that it is the voice of the majority, without an active, challenging, forward-looking civil society to remind it of its earlier liberal promises, the party will be doomed to failure—and, with it, Turkish democracy. It is no coincidence that civil society and liberalism emerged together in the history of other countries’ political development, and the two go together in Turkey as well.

If Turkish civil society, adequately funded and attended to, can take the mass protest movements we have seen in response to the government’s plans to pass draconian restrictions on Internet usage and round-up journalists and actually organize this anomic political mobilization into smart, organic political engagement with politicians, the result would prove not only beneficial to the longevity of Turkish democracy but also serve as an example to the Arab world.

Gulen Schools in Texas

The New York Times has an extended investigative piece on Gulen schools operating in my home state of Texas. The schools, known as "Harmony Schools," are owned by the Cosmos Foundation, which the paper reports was founded by a group of Turkish businessmen and professors. The piece centers on the ways the school uses public monies. The Cosmos Foundation operates 33 charter schools in Texas, more than any other charter school operator, and receive $100 million in taxpayer money. An excerpt:

Some of the schools’ operators and founders, and many of their suppliers, are followers of Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Turkish preacher of a moderate brand of Islam whose devotees have built a worldwide religious, social and nationalistic movement in his name. Gulen followers have been involved in starting similar schools around the country — there are about 120 in all, mostly in urban centers in 25 states, one of the largest collections of charter schools in America.

The growth of these “Turkish schools,” as they are often called, has come with a measure of backlash, not all of it untainted by xenophobia. Nationwide, the primary focus of complaints has been on hundreds of teachers and administrators imported from Turkey: in Ohio and Illinois, the federal Department of Labor is investigating union accusations that the schools have abused a special visa program in bringing in their expatriate employees.

But an examination by The New York Times of the Harmony Schools in Texas casts light on a different area: the way they spend public money. And it raises questions about whether, ultimately, the schools are using taxpayer dollars to benefit the Gulen movement — by giving business to Gulen followers, or through financial arrangements with local foundations that promote Gulen teachings and Turkish culture.

For more about earlier allegations as to the Gulen movement's abuse of the U.S. visa system (now the subject of an FBI investigation), click here. For more on the Gulen movement in Turkey, see past posts.

No Progress on the Human Rights Front . . .

Police beating a group of women assembling during Newroz festivities in Van in 2008.  PHOTO by Anonymous

As Prime Minister Erdogan spent his time this weekend denouncing The Economist's recent endorsement of the CHP, TESEV researcher and Radikal columnist Dilek Kurban writes (in Turkish) about the deterioration of human rights that has taken place since 2005 when Turkey's EU accession negotiations slowed down to a snail's speed.

Writing specifically on the issue of police brutality, torture, and the abuse of detained suspects, Kurban joins thousands of other liberal observers in drawing the conclusion that 2005 marked a turning point not only in Turkey's progress toward EU accession, but also its development toward a healthy, functioning liberal democracy. Kurban mentions two key legal changes that were pushed through with little domestic criticism but that nonetheless set back the significant progress Turkey had made in curtailing the power of the police.

In June 2006, Turkey joined many countries in the world in the wake of 9-11 to pass comprehensive anti-terror legislation. Under Turkey's revamped Anti-Terrorism Law (TMYK),  suspects in terrorism-related cases were allowed to be detained up to 24 hours without access to their attorney. The law also led soon to a rapid increase in the number of journalists, activists, and politicians facing jail time for allegedly spreading terrorist propaganda.

In June 2007, amendments to the Police Duties and Authority Law (PVSK) have police the power to conduct searches without warrants and inspect the IDs of people on the streets. Police were also given the authority to open fire on citizens who refused to abide by police orders. The effect of the police law was to essentially reinforce a culture of already existing impunity in regard to human rights violations committed by police and other security officials.

Since both these laws went into force, Turkey has seen a drastic increase in police-related violence, a phenomenon well-documented by Human Rights Watch's end of 2008 report on the issue (for my reflections on the issue at the time, see Dec. 9, 2008 post). The past two years have seen little progress on the issue. In fact, despite a supposed "zero tolerance" policy on torture, Turkey is still grappling with the problem. According to the UN Committee against Torture (UNCAT), Turkish citizens still suffer from "numerous, ongoing, and consistent allegations concerning the use of torture, particularly in unofficial places of detention."

Kurban concurs with the UNCAT, and noting an increase in the number of torture cases, also points attention to the promotions of police officials with questionable human rights records.

Kurban highlights that a year before The Economist endorsed the AKP in the country's troubled 2007 parliamentary elections, which took place in a period of intense political pressure and interference from the Turkish Armed forces, the AKP had already begun to lose its liberal credentials. However, at the time, there was no mainline party with anything better to offer. The CHP was still holding true to the strong nationalist posture it had taken since re-emerging as the chief opposition party in the early 2000s, and the hopes for a more liberal, more human rights-oriented government justifiably rested with the AKP.

Now, as The Economist duly recognizes, times have changed. The lack of progress, and in some cases, outright regression, is no longer acceptable. Not only has the AKP failed to take advantage of critical opportunities to move the country further afield in terms of human rights, a course which it did a terrific job of steering from 2002 to 2005, the past six years of inaction if now endangering Turkey's progress toward accession. Most unacceptably, the party has done little in recent years, and in stark contrast in earlier efforts, to ensure that Turkish citizens are secure in their personal rights and liberties.

For more on the practice of detention under the Anti-Terrorism Law, which has spiked in recent months given the violence in Turkey's mostly Kurdish southeast, see this post from earlier last month.

Even MHP Recognizes the Kurdish Problem

PHOTO from Radikal

Even the ultra-nationalist MHP seems to recognize the Kurdish problem. In the party's first campaign rally in the mostly Kurdish city of Diyarbakir yesterday, MHP leader Devlet Bahceli went a step ahead of Erdogan in recognizing the persistence of the Kurdish problem (for story, in Turkish, click here).

In Diyarbakir last Wednesday, Prime Minister Erdogan declared the Kurdish problem "solved," seemingly closing the peace initiative his government announced in July 2009. In contrast, Bahceli said, "I know you have a problem, but the solution is not street protests." Bahceli, like Erdogan, called for more economic development in the region while arguing that amending the constitution to end prohibitions on education in mother tongue, a long-time and principal demand of many Kurds, will not "fill your stomach."

In the past, the MHP has taken the most hawkish position on the Kurdish issue. An ultra-nationalist Turkey party with historical roots to gangs that target leftists and nationalist Kurds, the party has little hope of being competitive in the region. At the same time, it is significant that even it felt the need to hold a campaign rally in Diyarbakir.

In his speech, Bahceli said Kurds are regarded as equal to Turks, stressing that they too are members of the Turkish "nation," a claim many more nationalist Kurds adamantly reject. While many Kurds are fine being Turkish citizens, the claim that they are Turks due to their bonds of citizenship with the Turkish state (a claim stipulated in Article 66 of the Turkish constitution) raises the ire of more than a small number.

The CHP has proposed amending the constitution to eliminate the controversial article so that Turkish citizenship will not longer beat an ethnic definition, a move which has been denounced by both the AKP and the MHP. It was the first mainline Turkish party in the history of the Turkish republic to do so.

Come Again??

AA PHOTO from Hurriyet Daily News

Campaigning over the weekend, Prime Minister Erdogan said the recent op-ed in The Economist endorsing the CHP was the work of "international gangs" and linked the magazine's support of the CHP to the opposition party's policy supposedly more friendly policy toward Israel. In an interview with the TRGT news channel on Saturday evening, the prime minister said, "This international media, as they are supported by Israel, would not be happy with the continuation of the AKP government. . . . Of course, they have their hands on Turkey nowadays." Is it a Zionist conspiracy? Or, is it that the prime minister simply cannot endure criticism or dissenting opinions?

In all fairness, emotional outbursts are common in Turkish politics, especially less than two weeks away from an election. At the same time, if the prime minister is looking to counter criticisms that he is thin-skinned, authoritarian, and intolerant of dissent, such baseless and strongly accusatory remarks are not winning him or his party any points.

Fellow party cadres Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and EU Chief Negotiator Egeman Bagis have also chimed in. According to Davutoglu, The Economist "violated media ethics" in printing the op-ed. From Bagis's point of view, the op-ed is mere "rubbish" and must have been ordered by "dark powers" inside Turkey (see Radikal columnist Cuneyt Ozdemir (in Turkish)). Okay . . . so not the work on international gangs . . . Ergenekon?

For more in English, see this story from Hurriyet Daily News.

Syrian Opposition Plans a Second Meeting after Elections

Syrian opposition figures are planning another meeting in Turkey after the elections on June 12. Opposition spokesman Khaled Khoja told Turkish press the opposition did not want to create problems for the Turkish government before elections, but that the next meeting will be larger than the one held in Antalya last week and draw on the opposition in Syria who were not able to attend the earlier meeting. However, whether the opposition will be able to cross the border given Syrian security remains to be seen.

The opposition is also hoping for more support and facilitation from the Turkish government, which at this time, is still in regular contact with President Assad. Anonymous Turkish diplomatic officials are telling Turkish press that the Turkish government has given Assad an ultimatum: reform or be prepared for a withdrawal of Turkish support. From Hurriyet Daily News:

In a televised interview over the weekend, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said his government would place much focus on the developments in the Middle East and North Africa after the elections.

“We cannot repeat our previous performance during the election time. I am actually quite interested in Syria at this time … I talked on the phone with Mr. Bashar al-Assad,” he said.

The Syrian president is misinforming the Turkish government, according to the Syrian opposition.

“Al-Assad is sending some messages to satisfy the Turkish government that he is going on with new reforms but we don’t believe it at all. This is just to satisfy the public opinion in Turkey and in the international community,” Khoja said.

Asked if they had any contacts within the Turkish government, he said: “At the low level we have some contacts but at the high level, no.”

The planned meeting after the Turkish elections will be more important than the Antalya meeting “because a lot of committees from Syria will gather here,” Khoja said.

“Now they are preparing in Syria to send representatives, some of whom are from Damascus. This will represent the real movement in Syria,” he added. “The opposition outside Syria can only support the movement inside Syria but since the movement in Syria will represent itself at that upcoming meeting, it will be more important.”

Khoja said the group chose Turkey as a venue for its meetings “because Turkey is in the middle of the active countries and it’s so easy to gather here without any visas.” Turkey and Syria abolished visa requirements for travel in 2009.

For an English-language translation of the declaration drafted at the conclusion of the conference on Friday, see Joshua Landis's excellent blog, Syria Comment. Human rights groups are reporting that security forces killed 35 demonstrators over the weekend.

Falling Out of Love

Signalling that the Western media is falling out of love with the AKP, The Economist has endorsed the CHP ahead of the June 12 elections. In 2007, and in the midst of seriously high tensions with the Turkish military over the election of President Gul, the magazine endorsed Erdogan. Now it seems the magazine has turned an about-face. An excerpt:

That Turkish voters are poised to return Mr Erdogan to power in the general election on June 12th is thus not surprising. It is, however, worrying. Mr Erdogan is riding sufficiently high in the polls to get quite close to the two-thirds parliamentary majority that he craves because it would allow him unilaterally to rewrite the constitution. That would be bad for Turkey.

This judgment is not based on the canard that a theocracy is being built. Nine years ago Istanbul’s secular establishment fretted about AK’s Islamist roots—and some early squabbles over religious schools and allowing women to wear the Muslim headscarf at university were indeed troubling. But since then the pious Mr Erdogan and his party have been pragmatic. No matter what the army and too many Israelis (and Americans) whisper, there is scant evidence that AK is trying to turn a broadly tolerant Turkey into the next intolerant Iran.

The real worry about the AK party’s untrammelled rule concerns democracy, not religion. Ever since Mr Erdogan won his battles with the army and the judiciary, he has faced few checks or balances. That has freed him to indulge his natural intolerance of criticism and fed his autocratic instincts. Corruption seems to be on the rise. Press freedom is under attack: more journalists are in jail in Turkey than in China. And a worrying number of Mr Erdogan’s critics and enemies, including a hatful of former army officers, are under investigation, in some cases on overblown conspiracy charges.

On top of this, on the campaign trail Mr Erdogan has begun to take a more stridently nationalist tone: he and his party are no longer making serious overtures to the Kurds, Turkey’s biggest and most disgruntled minority. Mr Erdogan has hinted that if he wins a two-thirds majority next week, he will change the constitution to create a powerful French-style presidency, presumably to be occupied by himself. In a country that is already excessively centralised, that would be a mistake.

It would be better if a new AK government were to take a more broadly inclusive approach. Turkey’s constitution does indeed need a makeover, but it should be rewritten in consultation with other political parties and interest groups, and not as an AK project. The best way to make sure this happens would be to push up the vote for the main opposition party, the centre-left Republican People’s Party (CHP). Assuming that two smaller parties also get into the grand national assembly, that should be enough to deny AK its two-thirds majority.

As it happens, the newish CHP leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu (nicknamed Gandhi for his ascetic ways), has been a huge improvement on his dinosaur of a predecessor, Deniz Baykal. He has weeded out much of the party’s old guard, shown himself intolerant of corruption and shifted the party away from its instinctive sympathy for the army’s role in politics. Even more remarkably, Mr Kilicdaroglu has been attracting more supporters than Mr Erdogan to election rallies in the mainly Kurdish south-east, where the CHP has long been weak, by talking more openly of giving all of Turkey’s 81 provinces greater autonomy (it probably helps that he is from the Alevi Muslim minority and that he may have Kurdish forebears).

The AK party is all but certain to form the next government. But we would recommend that Turks vote for the CHP. A stronger showing by Mr Kilicdaroglu’s party would both reduce the risks of unilateral changes that would make the constitution worse and give the opposition a fair chance of winning a future election. That would be by far the best guarantee of Turkey’s democracy.

The Economist has a Turkish-print edition and the endorsement matters. There are already items in the Turkish press that the prime minister is denouncing the magazine, a move that will likely earn him only more scorn. For the story that ran with the op-ed, click here.

In addition to The Economist, Erdogan has also caught the attention of the New York Times, which, while not endorsing the CHP, expresses many of the same concerns about the prime minister's ironclad rule. From the Times:

Turkey does need a new, more democratic constitution. But if the AKP gains 330 of the 550 seats, it will be able to push through a constitutional draft without support from the opposition and put it straight to a referendum. (If the AKP gained 367 seats, it could even to adopt the constitution in a parliamentary vote.) A “one-party” constitution would lead to further divisions in Turkey’s already-polarized political system. The opposition parties, together representing half of Turkey’s electorate, might well boycott a constitutional process dominated by the AKP.

Even among AKP supporters there might not be much debate: Erdogan has single-handedly struck 220 of the current 334 AKP MPs off the candidates’ list and replaced them with little-known loyalists. In a party that was once proud of its local roots, the top-down sweep has left many members cross.

Many observers suspect that Erdogan’s main objective in the new constitution is to move Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system along French lines. Already, the AKP has amended the current Constitution so that future presidents will no longer be elected by Parliament but by the people. The new constitution would presumably give the presidency bigger powers, commensurate with its popular mandate.

Most Turks expect that Erdogan himself will want to become president when Abdullah Gul’s term expires.

In Turkey’s already highly centralized system, a move toward a presidential system does not look like a good idea. It could lead either to rivalry and paralysis between a strengthened president and a traditionally powerful prime minister, both backed by a popular mandate. Or it could further erode checks and balances and reinforce autocratic tendencies.

For my own thoughts, along similar lines, see past posts on the AKP's simple majoritarian conception of democracy and burgeoning authoritarian tendencies. What Turkey is faced with should the AKP continue on its current trajectory is illiberal democracy, or perhaps better (worse?) put, electoral authoritarianism.

I laid much of this out in March 2009 when the AKP first introduced the major constitutional overhaul it pushed through in last September's referendum.

Syrian Opposition Meeting Concludes

PHOTO from Syria Comment

The three-day meeting of Syrian opposition in Antalya concluded today with a common declaration of principles and agreement to form a committee of 31 members representative of different groups in the opposition. The Turkish government is still denying that it had any role in planning the meeting and Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has made it clear that he has held no meetings with Syrian opposition figures. That said, the meeting's presence on Turkish soil indubitably adds to the pressure Turkey is placing on the Assad regime.

Turkey had been instrumental in alleviating Assad's virtual isolation, but in recent years has taken steps to distance itself from the leader. Prime Minister Erdogan has continually called on Assad to restrain from violence and implement democratic reforms, which the Turkish pro-government papers such as Zaman say has been effective. At the same time, as Assad's regime kills more and more people, bringing an end to the conflict with simple reform becomes more and more unlikely -- a reality not taken for granted by the Turkish government.

At the same time the Syrian opposition was holding its meeting, pro-Assad forces were holding another meeting at a hotel in the same city in attempt to convince the Turkish people that Assad is an Ataturk-type figure deserving of respect and patience.By my estimation, Turks are not buying it.

For more on the meeting and Syria in general, see Joshua Landis's excellent blog, Syria Comment.

Two Steps Forward, Three Steps Back (Maybe More)

PHOTO from Radikal

It seems the AKP took two big steps forward when it announced what was initially billed as a "Kurdish opening" in July 2009 (the initiative later went through many name changes), froze in place (following the nationalist uproar in October 2009 after the Habur affair), and then three steps back in recent months as the party campaigns for the June 12 elections. Though Prime Minister Erdogan had a chance to re-set his approach to the Kurdish conflict during an AKP campaign rally in Diyarbakir yesterday, the prime minister instead sounded the same notes he did in Van two weeks ago when he denied the existence of the Kurdish problem and then proceeded to blame the CHP for its creation.

In addition, as Hurriyet columnist Sedat Ergin points out, the prime minister burned all bridges with the pro-Kurdish, PKK-affiliated BDP, making it near impossible for him to work with the party in the future. Accusing the BDP of basically behaving like a terrorist organization, he said the strength of the BDP came from the PKK and then proceeded to link the CHP with the PKK. Instead of denouncing violence and pushing forward a democracy agenda as CHP leader Kemal Kilicdarolgu did when he spoke in Diyarbakir the day before, Erdogan relied on attacking opposition parties. The CHP and BDP are fascists, according to Erdogan, bent on stoking separatism and tearing the nation apart. As in Van, he wrongly pinned the existence of the Kurdish problem on the CHP's association with the Dersim rebellion in 1937-38, going so far back as to attack former Ismet Inonu, who was not even in charge at the time.

Perhaps most disturbingly, the prime minister relied on the religious card, accusing the BDP of promoting Zoroastrianism in the region (still, I want to know where this comes from) and waging a campaign against imams (see past post). For Erdogan, it seems the Kurdish problem is solved. Nowhere in his address was there even a mention of carrying on the Kurdish initiative, which did little in actualizing all the hopes it initially engendered. Instead, the focus was on economic development (more "Islamist bananas," as Milliyet columnist Ece Temelkuran articulated in 2007), an old theme the AKP sounded in 2008 and that most observers thought it had transcended during the Kurdish initiative (for a history of Erdogan's addresses in Diyarbakir and the prime minister's recent nationalist turn, see this past post).

As Milliyet columnist and leading Kurdish expert Fikret Bila (in Turkish) postulates, for Erdogan, the Kurdish problem is in the past. The demands for constitutional reform put forward by the BDP are irrelevant, and are only used by the "bad Kurds"  to stir up trouble. Never mind that the CHP has also put forward serious constitutional changes, including mother tongue education and removing the ethnic chauvinism that currently defines Turkey's constitutional understanding of citizenship.

"How can Muslims ever follow the BDP?" asks Erdogan. In the prime minister's world, at least at the moment and in the midst of competing for the nationalist vote with the ultra-nationalist MHP, the days of denial and assimilation are over. It is too bad that there are plenty of Kurds who do not feel this way, and too bad that until their demands are met by the state, Turkey's Kurdish conflict will rage on.

For a good play-by-play (or, step-back, step-back) accounting of the speech, see Hurriyet columnist Ahmet Hakan's column (in Turkish). For an English-language news account, click here for coverage from Hurriyet Daily News.

A Matter of Culture

PHOTO by Jodi Hilton / New York Times

The New York Times has a piece today examining the expanded space given to Kurdish culture in Turkey despite existing obstacles. This space is, undeniably, to be owed to the AKP, which worked hard in its first years in power to curb the state's repressive attitude toward Kurds in Turkey at a time when no other major political party lifted a finger on the issue. However, as evinced by the CHP's announcement that it is willing to change the constitution to include a non-ethnic definition of citizenship, there are other players now, as well as, most importantly, an influential, albeit incipient and still quite fragile, Kurdish civil society that is paving a middle way between competing Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms. An excerpt:

Concessions by the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2009 made way for the first Kurdish national television station, and the government also permitted the teaching of Kurdish language classes in private universities (but not public ones). Token gestures, they made front-page headlines: first because they were signals to the outside world that a democratic state run by an Islamic leader will not automatically become xenophobic or tribalist, and second because even small steps toward acknowledging Kurdish culture can provoke political firestorms inside the country. Turkish nationalists raised a ruckus. Nationalists regard even the most basic Kurdish demand — that their language also be allowed in grade schools and at official settings where Kurds are involved — as treason.

Turkish Kurds respond that increased cultural freedom only encourages their loyalty to the Turkish state. But in this deeply patriotic country, where sentiments are old and entrenched, Mr. Erdogan’s government, guarding its tenuous majority in Parliament on the verge of the elections, has assumed a more and more hawkish line lately. The arrests of large numbers of Kurdish political activists have fed the Kurds’ concern that the government never really had true democracy in mind for them but just cooked up some window dressing for Western consumption. Recent clashes in this city between the police and hundreds of protesters attending the funerals of separatist militants proved how fragile the peace is in the region.

As I have written elsewhere here, Kurdish disenchantment with the AKP is high. That said, perhaps the party will take a less nationalist posture once the elections are over and it is done competing with the MHP for nationalist votes.

Everyone is a Turkish Citizen

PHOTO from Taraf

The CHP has declared its support to amend the constitution in favor of a non-ethnic understanding of Turkish citizenship. Under the country's current constitution (drafted under military tutelage) all citizens of Turkey are members of the Turkish nation (click here, in Turkish). Further, according to Article 66, every Turkish citizen is considered to be a Turk. This is the first time that any major Turkish political party in the entire history of the Turkish republic has offered such a non-ethnic understanding of citizenship.

The change is proposed as part of a wide series of concrete constitutional reforms the CHP has endeavored to put forward. The proposed reforms were drafted by CHP vice-president Suheyl Batum with a team of 35 academics. Though some have speculated that the CHP is too diverse a coalition to generate concrete proposals (Batum himself hales from the center-right), the constitutional proposals are more solid in substantive than the rhetoric coming out of the AKP.

The CHP has also expressed its support for education in mother tongue, which requires amending Article 42, which stipulates that no Turkish citizen can receive education in any mother tongue language other than Turkish. Article 42 specifically targets languages native to Anatolia, such as Kurdish, while allowing for education in English, French, and other foreign languages.

Kilicdaroglu addressing a campaign rally in Hakkari. PHOTO from Milliyet


Meanwhile, for the first time in nine years, the CHP held an election rally in Diyarbakir a day ahead of the rally AKP is expecting to hold tomorrow. Though turnout was somewhat disappointing for the party (only ~2,000 people showed up), it is clear the CHP is performing a series of firsts that could find itself winning voters in the southeast and currying favor with liberal reformers who have since become disenchanted by the AKP.

For an accounting and history, as well as some more context, of the proposals the CHP is putting forward on the Kurdish issue, see this post from a few weeks ago.

Prime Minister Erdogan will hold a rally in Diyarbakir today.