On terrible occasions, leaders must not only be physically present, they must say the right words, and mean them
by Guardian Editorial, The Guardian
Friday 16 May 2014
Disasters can shake governments and sometimes bring them down, if the issues they raise of preparedness, regulation and empathy are not squarely faced and answered in a way people find satisfactory, even in the extremity of their grief. New Orleans and Fukushima were both examples of how not to do it, and it now looks as if the tragedy of Soma in Turkey will fall into the same category.
There is no proof yet that the miners who died there lost their lives because of negligence or inadequate safety precautions, nor that regulation became more lax after privatisation. Yet, whether or not the government of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is later found guilty on either or both of these counts, it has already failed the test of empathy. On terrible occasions like these, leaders must not only be physically present at the scene, they must say the right words, and they must mean them.
Mr Erdogan, who once upon a time used to have an intuitive grasp of what Turks wanted to hear, demonstrated that he had lost it by giving survivors and grieving relatives a kind of history lesson on mining accidents in which he stressed that they happened everywhere, including Britain and America, in spite of the best technology. He treated the tragedy, in other words, as if a case was already being made against him which he had to combatively dispute, instead of showing that he cared.
It was exactly the wrong tone. To make matters worse, an aide was filmed kicking a protester, and he himself may have slapped or pushed another man. Whatever the truth of that, what is not at issue is that the prime minister’s increasingly ungovernable temper has become a major factor in Turkish politics. Only a few days previously he had interrupted a speech by the head of the bar association at a political ceremony, berating him in front of an astonished audience which included President Abdullah Gul. Mr Erdogan rings up journalists and shouts at them. Many have ended up in jail. He fulminates about Twitter and YouTube and rounds on even sympathetic critics.
Underlying this permanent irascibility is a realisation that, in spite of his recent victory in municipal polls, he has lost his ability to appeal across class and social divides, gravely compromised his reputation as a democratic politician, and mismanaged his relationship with many parts of Turkish society. For a man, a party, and a country that were once seen as a model for the region, this is a bitter turn of events. He may go on to many more years in power, either as prime minister or president. But the remarkable synthesis of both conservative and progressive elements which Mr Erdogan once seemed to embody now seems to have been a mirage.