Category: Robert Ellis

Ozymandias in Turkey

The big question in Turkey at the moment is whether Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will run for president in August.

There is every indication he will. At a meeting of the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) Central Decision and Administration Board (MKYK), it was decided to maintain the party’s rule that a deputy should serve for a maximum of three terms, which rules out the prime minister’s leadership after the 2015 elections. Unless Erdoğan intends to twiddle his thumbs, which is unlikely, his only option is take over from President Abdullah Gül. Provided he is elected.

At the beginning of April, Prime Minister Erdoğan indicated that the new president would not just be a protocol president but would exercise the executive powers provided to him by the Constitution. As he put it, he would be “a sweating, running, ordering president.” Article 104 of the Constitution entitles the president to preside over the Council of Ministers or to call the Council of Ministers to meet under his chairmanship, and it is undoubtedly this provision that Erdoğan intends to use since the failure of the constitutional commission to transform the presidency into an executive one.

President Gül has ruled out a Putin-Medvedev switch, and it is believed a deputy prime minister will function as caretaker until Gül can stand for Parliament in the 2015 elections and himself become prime minister. One of the Turkish president’s duties is to defend the Constitution and, if necessary, either to return laws to the Turkish Parliament to be reconsidered or refer them to the Constitutional Court for annulment, either in part or in whole.

This is undoubtedly why Gül has chosen to soft-pedal his presidency and sign the controversial Internet, Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) laws, so as not to ruffle the feathers of his prospective supporters in the AK Party. Despite international protests, in January without demur President Gül signed a bill criminalizing emergency medical care and penalizing doctors with imprisonment for up to three years and fines of nearly $1 million.

A total of 255 protesters are now being tried for participating in the Gezi Park demonstrations last May and June, some of whom took refuge in the Dolmabahçe mosque to escape police tear gas. Two doctors who rendered emergency aid to the victims are also being charged for “praising a criminal, insulting religious values and damaging a mosque.” As they explained, if they hadn’t helped, many people would have died or lost limbs.

Constitutional Court

Therefore, it must have been embarrassing for Prime Minister Erdoğan and President Gül together with other members of the AK Party government to be lectured by the president of the Constitutional Court, Haşim Kılıç, on rule of law in his speech to celebrate the 52nd anniversary of the founding of the court.

Defining the role of the judiciary as “the conscience of the state,” Kılıç rejected the use of the judiciary as logistical support for political ideas and ideologies and for revenge against adversaries. Furthermore, he called for documentation and evidence of Erdogan’s claim of a “parallel state” and a “gang” inside the judiciary and accused the government of “corruption of conscience.”

Kılıç likewise dismissed the claim that the Constitutional Court (in its partial annulment of the HSYK law and lifting of the Twitter ban) had acted for political purposes and against the interests of the nation as “shallow.”

In a clear reference to the AK Party government’s attempts to limit or even ban the use of information technology, the chief judge quoted Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev’s remark that in the age of globalization, one cannot issue visas to antennas.

It is the duty of Turkey’s president to appoint members of the Constitutional Court, and if Erdoğan accedes to the presidency, what will happen is a foregone conclusion, as only 10 months remain of Haşim Kılıç’s term of office. Regulatory boards and other institutions have already been stacked with AK Party appointees, and now 110 AK Party-affiliated judges with no previous experience have been appointed to high criminal courts.

Corruption

After an unruly debate in Parliament, an AK Party-dominated commission has been established to investigate charges of corruption against four ex-ministers, which will undoubtedly lead to their acquittal. In the meantime, a newly appointed İstanbul public prosecutor has dismissed charges concerning illegal construction permits against 60 suspects, including the son of the former environment and urban planning minister and a construction tycoon.

At the recent Financial Times Turkey Summit 2014 in İstanbul, Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek defended the AK Party government’s purge of several thousand police officers, hundreds of public prosecutors and judges as well as senior functionaries as “extraordinary measures” to deal with what the prime minister has called “a judicial coup.” However, he assured participants that the government’s source of inspiration was still the EU in terms of cementing the rule of law and advancing towards a better democracy. “This is our fundamental point of reference.”

This is at odds with the contention of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s economic adviser, Yiğit Bulut, who said that “we no longer need Europe and its material and moral affiliates which may become a burden on us.” Bulut is believed to have convinced Erdoğan to delay raising interest rates to defend the lira, and last summer he claimed that dark forces were plotting to kill the prime minister with telekinesis.

The EU’s enlargement commissioner, Stefan Füle, has admitted that events in the last few months have cast doubt on Turkey’s commitment to European values and standards. Germany’s president, Joachim Gauck, has openly declared that “the current developments in Turkey horrify me,” and Jean-Claude Juncker, who is running for president of the European Commission, has called for an “enlargement pause.”

Şimşek has admitted that Turkey is corrupt, although he said there has been progress in the last decade. But at a meeting of the World Forum on Governance in Prague, President of the Italian Senate and former anti-Mafia prosecutor Pietro Grasso remarked that the way to get rid of corruption cannot be to get rid of those who fight against corruption.

Ali Yurttagül, who for more than 25 years was adviser to the Greens in the European Parliament, also believes that Turkey is not producing laws compatible with EU norms anymore and is suspending the rule of law.

Nevertheless, Turkey’s EU Affairs Ministry has after a meeting of the Reform Monitoring Group (comprising Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and the newly appointed ministers for EU affairs, the interior and justice) put out a statement, declaring, “It is not understandable for some EU member states and EU officials to make statements […] about the democratization package, basic rights and freedoms, including the freedoms of expression, the press and the freedom to organize, which are improving every day with the [government’s] reforms.”

Parallel universe

The AK Party government has defended itself against serious charges of corruption with a counterclaim that the graft probe that went public on Dec. 17 was an attempted coup instigated by a “parallel state” controlled by a cleric, Fethullah Gülen, who lives in Pennsylvania. One could also argue that the same government is living in a parallel universe controlled by the dyad of Davutoğlu and Erdoğan.

Foreign Minister Davutoğlu, both as Prime Minister Erdoğan’s chief foreign policy adviser and later as foreign minister, has clearly inspired Erdoğan with his grandiose vision of Turkey’s role in the world. Davutoğlu has formulated a policy of “strategic depth” based on engagement with countries with which Turkey shares a common past and geography, and envisages Turkey not only as the epicenter of the Balkans, the Middle East and the Caucasus but also as the center of Eurasia.

This policy, dubbed neo-Ottomanism, also envisages Turkey playing an important role in setting the parameters of a new world order (“nizam-i âlem”) under Islam. Last year, in an address to the party faithful in Bursa, Professor Davutoğlu dismissed the last century as a parenthesis and stated that Turkey would once again unite Sarajevo with Damascus and Benghazi with Erzurum and Batumi.

This theme was echoed in a speech given by Prime Minister Erdoğan’s present chief adviser, Ibrahim Kalın, at the İstanbul Forum in October 2012, where he spoke of a new geopolitical framework and Turkey’s pivotal role. Moreover, the traditional foreign policy goal of advancing a state’s national interests would be replaced by “a value-based and principled” foreign policy.

The same obsession with a renaissance of Turkey’s Ottoman past is reflected in Erdoğan’s rhetoric. At the AK Party’s congress in September 2012 the prime minister declared that the government was following the path of Ottoman Sultans Mehmet II and Selim I, and it is no coincidence that the new bridge over the Bosporus has been named after Selim I, who was responsible for the expansion of the Ottoman empire.

After the AK Party’s victory in the 2011 elections, Erdoğan declared: “Today Sarajevo won as much as İstanbul, Beirut won as much as İzmir, Damascus won as much as Ankara, Ramallah, the West Bank, Jerusalem and Gaza won as much as Diyarbakır. Today the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans and Europe won as much as Turkey.”

Likewise, after his return from a trip to North Africa last June, Erdoğan sent greetings to İstanbul’s brother cities Sarajevo, Baku, Beirut, Skopje, Damascus, Gaza, Mecca and Medina, but there was no mention of Europe.

Primarily because of the Turkish government’s attempt to enforce regime change in Syria, Turkey’s foreign policy in the Middle East has been a disaster. Two years ago Davutoğlu proclaimed in Parliament: “A new Middle East is about to be born. We will be the owner, pioneer and servant of this new Middle East.”

Now Syria is ravaged by civil war, more than 9 million Syrians have left their homes, including over 2 million who have fled to neighboring countries Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. Rather than exercising a strong, moderating influence, Turkey has become a party to the conflict, acting as a hub for support not only for the Free Syrian Army (FSA), but also al-Qaeda-affiliated groups.

Consequently, President Gül has suggested that Turkey needs to recalibrate its foreign and security policies, taking into account the new realities that stem from the power vacuum in Syria. These include the declaration of three autonomous Kurdish administrations in northern Syria, which has now been put forward as a demand by Turkish Kurds for the predominantly Kurdish Southeast.

Ozymandias

Against this backdrop, a speech made by Foreign Minister Davutoğlu in Konya last month seems misplaced. According to the minister, the AK Party was not just a political party movement but a great historical movement that could not be stopped until doomsday. This is the same minister who in a brief on Turkish foreign policy two years ago stated, “… We formulate our policies through a solid and rational judgment of the long-term historical trends and an understanding of where we are situated in the greater trajectory of world history.”

In Konya, Davutoğlu swung himself up to similar rhetorical heights when he declared, “This movement, which began in Khorasan with seeds sown and a Selçuk heritage shaped in Konya, has with the Ottomans become a world government and with it the Turkish Republic has gained a future.”

At the Nuremberg Rally in 1934, Adolf Hitler declared: “It is our wish and will that this state and this Reich shall endure in the millenniums to come. We can be happy in the knowledge that this future belongs to us completely.” As we know, this wish was short-lived, but this is perhapsa fact that Professor Davutoğlu has ignored in his study of the greater trajectory of world history.

The English Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley put this succinctly in his poem “Ozymandias,” which tells of a traveler from an antique land who finds two vast and trunkless legs of stone standing in the desert. Nearby lies a shattered head with a “frown, and wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command” and a pedestal, on which is written: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” As Shelley concludes: “Nothing beside remains. Round the decay of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare, the lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press.

May 18, 2014
Turkey’s culture of dissent

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is like a mousetrap salesman; the moment he plugs one hole, the mouse peeks out of the other.

His latest move to block dissent in Turkey is to ban Twitter, but millions of Turkish tweeters have, with characteristic ingenuity, found ways to circumvent this ban.

On the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth in 2009, a former Turkish judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Rıza Türmen, noted about the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, “What they are attempting to achieve today [after coming to power in 2002] is social engineering, a radical transformation of society.”

This includes a reform of the education system, which makes it possible for pupils to attend religious schools (imam-hatip schools) after only four years of primary education, the easing of restrictions on Quran courses and an abolition of the coefficient system to enable students from imam-hatip schools to enter universities on equal terms with graduates from other high schools.

This is in keeping with Prime Minister Erdoğan’s declared goal to raise a “religious generation,” and also involves other forms of social engineering such as a ban on the sale of alcohol in municipal and public restaurants in most of Turkey’s provinces. This culminated last May with a new law that imposes severe restrictions on the consumption and sale of alcohol.

Although both the preamble and Article 24 of the Turkish Constitution stipulate that no one shall be allowed to exploit or abuse religion or religious feelings for the purpose of personal or political influence, this is precisely what Prime Minister Erdoğan and his AKP government have done. Or as the Turkish imam, Fethullah Gülen, now Erdoğan’s arch-enemy, put it in the Financial Times, “The reductionist view of seeking political power in the name of a religion contradicts the spirit of Islam.”

Gezi Park

Four days after the alcohol legislation was passed, a boiling point was reached and the occupation of GeziPark in İstanbul began. What started as an environmental protest developed into nationwide protests against Erdoğan’s tyranny, which now proves to have far-reaching consequences for Turkey. As Alev Yaman, author of the English PEN’s report on the GeziPark protests, concludes, “A culture of protest and dissent has been established among a previously politically disenfranchised younger generation.”

Social media played a significant role during the Arab Spring, and in Egypt it contributed to the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak. After the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, Erdoğan advised Mubarak: “Listen to the shouting of the people, the extremely humane demands. Without hesitation, satisfy the people’s desire for change.” However, during the GeziPark uprising, he failed to take his own advice but instead supported the police crackdown on demonstrators.

Research by Eira Martens from DW Akademie on the role of social media during the revolt in Egypt showed that Twitter and Facebook mobilized protesters and helped develop a collective identity, or more precisely, a form of solidarity. Consequently, images of police brutality, also on YouTube and Flickr, made people not only angrier but also lowered their threshold of fear.

The same applied to the GeziPark protests, but whereas in Egypt the most popular hashtag was used in less than one million tweets, an analysis by New YorkUniversity estimates that out of more than 22 million tweets related to the protests in Turkey, the two main hashtags were mentioned about 6 million times. In Turkey’s case, around 90 percent of all the tweets came from within Turkey, whereas in Egypt only 30 percent were from inside the country.

In Turkey, it is estimated that the AKP government has the final word over 90 percent of the media, that is, newspapers and television. This was evidenced in an interview on CNN Türk with Fatih Altaylı, the editor-in-chief of the Turkish daily Habertürk, who complained that instructions were “pouring down” every day from somewhere.

Leaked wiretaps, one of which Erdoğan has confirmed is genuine, reveal constant pressure from the prime minister’s office and Erdoğan himself on media owners and executives. In one recording, Erdoğan’s son, Bilal, allegedly informs his father that the next day’s headlines have been agreed upon with the pro-government media.

Consequently, Turkish media coverage of the GeziPark protests was nothing short of scandalous; CNN Türk broadcast a documentary on penguins and seven pro-government newspapers ran identical headlines with the same quote from the prime minister. Four television channels that covered the events were fined for “harming the physical, moral and mental development of children and young people” and 845 journalists lost their jobs

In its report on the role of social media in the Turkish protests, New YorkUniversity said that part of the reason for the extraordinary number of tweets was a response to the lack of media coverage; furthermore, it said that Turkish protesters are replacing traditional reporting with crowd-sourced accounts expressed through social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. The report concludes that this is an impressive utilization of social media in overcoming the barriers created by semi-authoritarian regimes.

There is also the fact that, according to another study, Turkey has the top Twitter penetration rate, with 31 percent of an Internet population of 36.5 million being Twitter users.

No wonder Prime Minister Erdoğan calls Twitter “a menace” and finds social media to be “the worst menace to society.”

Dec. 17

The anti-corruption operation that went public in İstanbul on Dec. 17, and the subsequent scandal, constitutes a major challenge to Prime Minister Erdoğan’s government. The response has been a massive cover-up, with the removal of thousands of police officers and hundreds of prosecutors and judges who could continue the investigation and therefore threaten the government’s legitimacy.

The AKP has made use of its parliamentary majority to block the reading of indictments that involve four former government ministers, and it has also blocked the formation of an investigative commission. As Fethullah Gülen noted in the Financial Times, “A small group within the government’s executive branch is holding to ransom the entire country’s progress.” And one of the founders of the AKP, Abdüllatif Şener, has even said that Erdoğan is prepared to drag Turkey into a civil war to retain his hold on power.

The immediate threat to the AKP government is the outcome of the local elections on Sunday, which will act as a barometer for the party’s popularity. Some 35 percent are reckoned to be the AKP’s core voters and, according to a Sonar survey, 80 percent of them don’t use the Internet. Added to this is the fact that Turkey has a relatively low newspaper circulation (96 papers bought daily per 1,000 people), which increases the importance the government attaches to the control of both public and private TV networks.

Nevertheless, since February, almost daily tweets from Haramzadeler (Sons of Thieves), joined by Başçalan (Prime Thief) and Hırsıza Oy Yok (No Votes for Thieves), have contained links to wiretaps on YouTube and other social media allegedly involving Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family and ministers in bribery, tender rigging, media manipulation and interference with the judiciary

Despite widespread international criticism, President Abdullah Gül, “Mr. Nice Guy,” has approved new legislation giving the government control over the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and the powers to block important websites. Prime Minister Erdoğan has now (ab)used these powers by imposing a blanket ban on Twitter through the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB), which has also blocked access to Google’s domain name server (DNS). Furthermore, Erdoğan has threatened to block access to YouTube and Facebook.

In the first few hours of the ban, there was a massive increase in the number of tweets sent in Turkey, and Turkish users have found ways to circumvent the ban by using virtual private networks (VPN) or Tor. Nevertheless, there has since been a marked decrease in the number of Turkish tweets. Following several complaints, a Turkish administrative court has also ordered a stay of execution, which Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said the government will implement

Erdoğan has, in turn, elevated the conflict to a “new war of independence,” with a TV commercial showing Turks from all walks of life rallying round the flag. However, as Turkish economist Emre Deliveli remarked on his blog, “There are several million people in Turkey who would believe the world was flat if Gazbogan [Erdoğan] told them so.”

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press.

March 28, 2014
The demise of Turkish democracy

Events in Turkey since Dec. 17, 2013, are not a mere bump in the road but constitute a major setback for Turkish democracy.

A total of 84 American foreign policy experts have written a bipartisan letter to US President Barack Obama, expressing concern that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s autocratic actions and demagoguery are not only subverting Turkey’s political institutions and values but also endangering the US-Turkey relationship.

The European Parliament (EP) has also expressed deep concern at recent developments, and Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Füle’s spokesperson, Peter Stano, has stated that the European Commission’s (EC) assessment will be reflected in their next report after the summer. Moreover, Liberal MEP Andrew Duff has said that the European Union is now closer to the point of suspending talks.

The US State Department noted in its Human Rights Report for 2013 that the Turkish government’s reactions to the anti-corruption investigation launched on Dec. 17 have been aimed more at discrediting and stifling the investigation than conducting an impartial enquiry.

This, no doubt, hangs together with the fact that many suspects are connected with the top echelon of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government but also because the latest revelations target Prime Minister Erdoğan and his family.

The 24 suspects, including the sons of two ministers, the general manager of a state bank and an Iranian businessman, who were arrested in connection with the first round of investigations, have now been released, and the Iranian businessman’s assets have been unfrozen. The same has happened to the assets of seven businessmen who would have been detained in the second investigation on Dec. 25, 2013, if it had not been blocked.

This lenient treatment is a marked contrast to the lengthy periods of pre-trial detention experienced by other suspects; for example, journalist Mustafa Balbay, who sat in prison for four years before being sentenced to almost 35 years’ imprisonment in the Ergenekon case, or another journalist, Tuncay Özkan, who was detained for almost five years before receiving an aggravated life sentence (22 years and six months) in the same case.

Crackdown on Gülen movement

According to a presentation made at a meeting of the National Security Council (MGK) on Feb. 26 of this year, a third of the police force and judiciary are made up of followers of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s erstwhile ally, the Turkish imam Fethullah Gülen, who has lived in Pennsylvania since 1999. Higher up the scale, at the level of police chief, the Council of State, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK), it is believed to be about two-thirds.

At the meeting, which was chaired by President Abdullah Gül, it was decided to cleanse the state of what Erdoğan has called “a virus” held responsible for extensive wiretapping that has revealed to Turkey and the rest of the world a network of corruption, bribery, tender-rigging and media interference at the heart of the country’s government.

Previously, some 7,500 police officers and 400 prosecutors have been reassigned, effectively putting an end not only to the first two investigations but also a third in İzmir, involving former Minister for Transport and Communications, Binali Yıldırım, who is running for mayor in the local elections on March 30.

Recordings

Nevertheless, a tweeter called Haramzadeler (“sons of thieves”) has created havoc in Turkey, where there are believed to be 13 million Twitter subscribers. His (their) tweets send links to various websites, for example, YouTube, Vimeo, SoundCloud and Dropbox, where you can hear recordings supposedly of the prime minister giving instructions to media bosses, accepting two villas in return for easing zone restrictions and the involvement of Communications Minister Yıldırım in rigging a tender for a media group.

The great granddaddy of them all came on Feb. 24, when Haramzadeler posted an alleged recording of five phone calls made between Prime Minister Erdoğan and his son Bilal on Dec. 17 (when the graft probe was launched) and Dec. 18, 2013. In the first two recordings, Erdoğan tells Bilal to remove and “dissolve” all the cash he has in the house, and in the fourth Bilal admits they still have 30 million euros they could not yet dissolve. Like a scene from “Breaking Bad,” Bilal complains how hard it is because it takes up too much space. Finally, the next morning Bilal reassures his father it is all “zeroed.”

The prime minister immediately condemned the recordings as “a vile attack” and “an immoral montage.” The pro-government media have claimed that the recordings were doctored, and Islamist TV channel Kanal 7 said that two American audio studios had proved they were edited. However, this has been denied by both firms, one of which stated that Kanal 7’s claim was “an obvious attempt at deception.”

Various specialists have confirmed that the recordings are genuine, and Guarded Risk, a US data security and forensic consultant, has in a preliminary audio forensic report concluded that although there are multiple recordings placed in one mp3 file, they cannot be proven false. Erdoğan has admitted that his encrypted phones were tapped, which makes it likely that the leaked wiretaps come from files compiled by prosecutors dismissed in the Great Purge.

Haramzadeler, joined by another tweeter called Başçalan (“chief thief”), has since come out with other revelations, including donations to the Youth and Education Services Foundation (TÜRGEV), where Bilal Erdoğan is an executive board member, which allegedly acts as a slush fund for “donations” by businessmen in return for public tenders, and also an attempt by Erdoğan to have his candidate elected as chairman of a football club.

Incidentally, Prime Minister Erdoğan has a curious definition of corruption. In his view, corruption means the embezzlement of public funds, which means that the allegations against his former ministers and the general manager of Halkbank are unfounded. Accordingly, the $4.5 million found in shoeboxes at the latter’s home was “charity money” and therefore should be returned.

This no doubt hangs together with the views of Erdoğan’s Islamic counsel, professor emeritus of Islamic law Hayrettin Karaman, who advises that there is no problem in encouraging people who win contracts from the state to make donations to charitable foundations, for example, TÜRGEV.

New legislation

Particularly in view of the local elections at the end of this month, which will act as a benchmark for the AKP government’s performance, the Turkish government is making a frantic effort to plug all the leaks. Apart from the mass reassignment of police officers and prosecutors, the first step has been amendments to the Internet law, which Dr. Yaman Akdeniz, a cyber rights expert, has called “an Orwellian nightmare” and “the first steps towards the creation of surveillance society in Turkey.”

Around 40,000 websites have already been blocked in Turkey, and the amended law, ostensibly to protect young people and prevent the violation of privacy, can lead to many more. President Gül, who had earlier deplored the decline of media freedom in Turkey, approved the new law but sent it back to Parliament to make two amendments: A decision by the Telecommunications Board (TİB) to block a website is now subject to court review within 24 hours, and a court order will be necessary to obtain Internet traffic data.

Another piece of legislation that has caused an outcry is the new law to restructure the HSYK. According to the law, which has been signed by President Gül, the Minister of Justice has the authority to reshape the composition of all three chambers and the Justice Academy. Although the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has filed an appeal with the Constitutional Court, new Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ, who is regarded as an Erdoğan stooge, has already appointed a new secretary-general and five of his deputies as well as members of the disciplinary board and a new head of the Justice Academy.

Another controversial aspect of the new law is that even if it is annulled by the Constitutional Court, HSYK members who have been removed from their positions will have no right to appeal to a court to demand the reinstatement of their jobs, as a number of police officers have done. There is also a provision that judges and prosecutors are required to have 20 years’ experience to be members of the board, a move intended to preclude supporters of the Gülen movement.

President Gül has been heavily criticized for not vetoing the law, as he himself has said it violates 15 articles of the Constitution, including Article 159, which states that the HSYK shall be established and shall exercise its functions in accordance with the principles of the independence of the courts. These principles have now been violated, and as deputy chairman of the CHP Faruk Loğoğlu has remarked, now the minister of justice has become chief qadi in a process transforming Turkey into a sultanate.

A new bill giving extensive powers to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) and, in effect, making it Erdoğan’s Praetorian Guard, has been postponed until after the local elections.

The economy

In the meantime, Turkey’s economy continues to suffer. In January, the president of the Turkish Industrialists and Businessmen’s Association (TÜSIAD), Muharrem Yılmaz, warned: “A country where the rule of law is ignored, where the independence of regulatory institutions is tainted, where companies are pressured through tax penalties and other punishments, where rules on tenders are changed regularly, is not a fit country for foreign capital.”

The truest word spoken in Brussels on the occasion of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s visit, also in January, came from the EU Commission’s president, José Manuel Barroso, when he stated that 75 percent of the investment in Turkey comes from the EU. It is only when foreign investors start to vote with their feet that the Turkish government will sit up and take notice.

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press.

March 9, 2014
Turkey’s Failed Attempt at Democratization

Turkey’s Failed Attempt at Democratization

Turkey has signalled a shift from European to Islamic values.

By Robert Ellis
Contributor
February 25, 2013

U.S. Ambassador Francis Ricciardone incurred the wrath of the Turkish government when he drew attention to the shortcomings of the country’s legal system. Military leaders are locked up as if they were terrorists, parliamentary deputies and university professors are detained on unclear charges, and non-violent student protesters are imprisoned for protesting tuition hikes as evidence. Despite this, the United States remains a staunch supporter of Turkey’s European Union membership.

When accession talks started in 2005, the reform process which began under Turkish Prime Minister Ecevit’s coalition government and continued under the AK (Justice and Reform) Party’s rule in 2002 started to grind to a halt. Soon after talks started, Olli Rehn, the European Union’s Enlargement Commissioner, noted that the pace of change had slowed and the implementation of reforms remained uneven. Rehn also warned that pluralism and free speech were basic values which could not be compromised.

Nevertheless, the AKP government was met with a chorus of praise. In 2007, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice stated that the AKP was “a government dedicated to pulling Turkey west towards Europe.” A year later, Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt declared “the AKP government is made up of profound European reformers.”

Although it was apparent that the reform process had stalled, Rehn’s successor, Stefan Füle, claimed at a conference in Istanbul in June 2010 that Turkey had been making “remarkable advances” in reforms. Füle was not the only victim of wishful thinking. Last June, 16 EU foreign ministers proclaimed Turkey to be “an inspirational example of a secular and democratic country.”

In response, Deputy Chairman of Turkey’s opposition CHP (Republican People’s Party), Faruk Loğoğlu, called on the EU to “acknowledge the realities of Turkey with objectivity.” According to Loğoğlu, the EU ministers’ perception of the state of affairs in Turkey was “sadly out of focus” and ignored the fact that the AKP government pursued an authoritarian policy of gradual Islamization in all walks of life, including education, science, politics, the economy, the armed forces and civil society, leading to the erosion of Turkish democracy and secularism.

In 1997, Fareed Zakaria wrote in Foreign Affairs about the rise of illiberal democracy, where he made a distinction between democracy as an electoral form and a liberal democracy, where citizens’ rights are protected by the constitution, a separation of powers, and the rule of law.

Zakaria concluded that democratization in the Islamic world had led to an increasing role for theocratic politics, eroding long-standing traditions of secularism and tolerance. Furthermore, he held that if elections were to be held, the resulting regimes would be more illiberal than the ones currently in place.

Nuray Mert, a Turkish professor and commentator, recently asked whether Turkey is going to be another illiberal democracy. She compared the present government’s political values with the absolutism of Putin’s Russia and its model of economic growth, which comes at the expense of democratic rights and freedoms, with that of China. According to Mert, because Islamic conservatism represses the liberal democratic culture of rights and freedoms, Turkey has become a Muslim country with a failed attempt at democratization.

Moreover, the EU Commission has expressed concern for Turkey’s reform process. Its 2012 Progress Report on Turkey criticized the catch-all indictments which have led to the mass arrests of military personnel and critics of the AKP government, as well as lengthy periods of pre-trial detention. The Commission also expressed serious concern about the increase in violations of the freedom of expression, which has caused Reporters Without Borders (RSF) to call Turkey “the world’s biggest prison for journalists.”

Regardless of EU interests, under the AKP government there has been a shift in consciousness. In his key 2001 work “Strategic Depth,” the Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, the architect of Turkey’s new foreign policy, stated that the EU’s demands for political reform are interpreted as the return of foreign hegemony. Therefore, EU membership has become less of a goal in itself as an instrument to facilitate the country’s economic development.

In a keynote speech held at the Istanbul Forum in October, Prime Minister Erdoğan’s chief advisor Ibrahim Kalın rejected the European model of secular democracy and pluralism, which he believes has little traction in the Arab and larger Muslim world. Furthermore, he posits that there is “a mental gap” between Islamic and Western notions of what constitutes sacred religious rights and freedom of expression.

Turkey’s president Abdullah Gül has said that the EU must decide whether it represents a community of values or a narrowly defined geographic entity. But Turkey belongs to neither. There has been much debate about Turkey’s ‘axis shift,’ which is justified. In Sarajevo in 2009, Foreign Minister Davutoğlu spoke of an Ottoman renaissance and last April in Konya he went further and spoke of “the mission for a new world order” under Islam.

In a recent interview, Prime Minister Erdoğan also stated his preference, when he remarked, “The Shanghai Five is better and more powerful and we have common values with them.”

Therefore, to talk of Turkey’s EU membership is illusory, as the best that can be hoped for is a modus vivendi based on mutual interest.

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and European press.

Photo courtesy of the United Nations via Flickr.

February 26, 2013
Turkey our neighbour

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses members of the parliament in Ankara | AFP PHOTO / ADEM ALTAN

Turkey’s relationship with Europe is at best uneasy but at other times has been fraught with conflict and hostility. Ottoman expansion was stopped at the gates of Vienna in 1683 and in the Mediterranean at the battle of Lepanto in 1571. Turkey’s insistence on maintaining a foothold in Cyprus is also a legacy of the Ottoman occupation. Turkey has since 1952 been a loyal member of NATO as witnessed by Turkey’s contribution to peacekeeping in Bosnia-Herzogovina, Kosovo and Afghanistan.

However, when it came to the stationing of NATO’s early warning radar in Turkey,

Turkey objected to Iran being named as the target and to sharing data with third parties i.e. Israel. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, who is regarded as the architect of Turkey’s present foreign policy, banged home the point by claiming that Turkey was not a NATO partner but “an owner”.

Turkey’s long road to EU membership began with the Ankara Association Agreement in 1963 and was confirmed by the recognition of Turkey as a candidate country at the EU summit in Helsinki in 1999. It is ironic that Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit, who secured Turkey’s candidacy, was also responsible for rejecting the offer of membership together with Greece in 1981.

In its invitation to Turkey the European Council underlined that candidate countries must share the values and objectives of the European Union and, in Turkey’s case, with particular reference to the issue of human rights. This decision led to a flurry of reforms initiated by Ecevit’s coalition in 2000 and, when this fell in 2002, by the present AKP (Justice and Development Party) government. Nevertheless, the EU Commission’s recommendation in October 2004 that Turkey had “sufficiently” fulfilled the political criteria to start accession talks was based more on Turkey’s strategic importance than a realistic assessment of the reform process.

As Naz Masraff from Eurasia Group argues in her PhD thesis, the AKP government made strategic use of EU conditionality to present itself as a Western, reformist, neo-liberal and secular party until it became clear that there was a contradiction between the AKP’s discourse and policies. Nonetheless, in the last couple of years there have been testimonials in the Financial Times, New York Times and EU Observer by various EU foreign ministers to Turkey’s strategic and economic value.

At the end of June 16 EU foreign ministers had termed Turkey “an inspirational example of a secular and democratic country”. But this was countered in a letter from the deputy chairman of the CHP (Republican People’s Party), Faruk Loğoğlu, who stated that their perception of the state of affairs in Turkey was “sadly out of focus”. In Loğoğlu’s view the AKP government pursues an authoritarian policy of incremental Islamization, so that democracy in Turkey exists largely in the abstract.

The overwhelming number of applications to the European Court of Human Rights bears witness to this fact – in June there were 19,373 pending applications – and, as the EU Commission pointed out in its 2012 Progress Report, the increase in violations of freedom of expression raises serious concerns. 71 journalists are still in prison, more than in Iran and China combined, and at a recent meeting a spokesman for the Turkish Freedom for Journalists Platform said the speed of Turkey’s democratization had slowed down.

The Turkish view

The picture would not be complete without the Turkish view of Turkey’s relations with the EU and the West. There has been much talk of Turkey’s ‘axis shift’ and in Foreign Minister Davutoğlu’s own words, “we formulate our policies through a solid and rational judgment of the long-term historical trends and an understanding of where we are situated in the greater trajectory of world history.”

In his Sarajevo speech in 2009 Davutoğlu made it clear that the goal of Turkish foreign policy was to place Turkey at the centre of an Ottoman renaissance and in his Konya speech in April the Foreign Minister laid out the AKP’s mission to create a new Islamic world order. A fortnight later Davutoğlu told the Turkish parliament that Turkey would be “the owner, pioneer and servant” of the new Middle East.

At the AKP’s congress at the end of September Prime Minister Erdoğan declared that the government was following the path of the Ottoman sultans Mehmet II and Selim I but made no mention of Turkey’s European future. Erdogan was also hailed by the leader of Hamas, Khaled Meshaal, as “not just the leader of Turkey but also the leader of the Islamic world”.

The next day at the opening of the Turkish parliament President Abdullah Gül spoke of a country where its writers, thinkers and opinion leaders are able to share their views without fear. Prime Minister Erdoğan’s clear intention is for a new constitution to establish him as executive president in 2014 but the open question is whether Gül is prepared to run against him. According to a recent poll 50.9 percent would prefer Gül and 22.7 percent Erdoğan.

In 1995 Turkey became a full member of the OIC (Organisation of Islamic Cooperation). The Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam limits the expression of opinion to a manner that would not be contrary to the Shari’ah, but Turkey is also a signatory to the International Convention on Civil and Political Rights as well as the European Human Rights Convention.

In a keynote speech at the Istanbul Forum in October Prime Minister Erdoğan’s chief adviser Ibrahim Kalın spoke of “a mental gap” between Islamic and Western notions of what constitutes sacred, religious rights and freedom of expression. The question is whether this gap is too wide to be breached.

About the Author

Robert Ellis

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press.

January 28, 2013
Turkey and the new world order

Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu during a joint press conference on October 20, 2012: well-known for a foreign policy which has been dubbed “neo-Ottoman” |AFP PHOTO/MOHAMMED HUWAIS

Supporters of Turkish EU membership often claim that this would prove that democracy and Islam are compatible. But it is the Turks themselves who have demolished this argument.

In a keynote speech by İbrahim Kalın, Prime Minister Erdoğan’s chief adviser, at the Istanbul Forum in October, Dr Kalın spoke of a post-Western political order in which the West does not have a monopoly over the democracy debate and the global human rights discourse. Furthermore, he claimed that the failure of secular humanism to secure freedom, rationality and equality has led to the search for a post-secular age.

In fact, the European model of secular democracy, politics and pluralism seems to have little traction in the Arab and larger Muslim world.

It is often asserted that the EU is a community of values, and after the start of accession talks with Turkey in October 2005 Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn emphasized that pluralism and free speech are basic values which cannot be compromised. However, Dr Kalın said there was “a mental gap” between Islamic and Western notions of what constitutes sacred, religious rights and freedom of expression. Consequently, Turkey has expanded the classical definition of foreign policy as advancing a state’s national interest to include value-based considerations. As Turkey now occupies a pivotal place in the new geopolitics, it accordingly seeks to pursue a value-based and principled foreign policy.

Dr Kalın failed to define these values, but as Turkish foreign policy is determined by internal dynamics, the answer can be found in a statement by Mustafa Özel, a driving force behind MÜSIAD, the Islamic Independent Industralists and Businessmen’s Association, in 1996. According to Özel, the preservation of Turkey’s domestic unity cannot be preserved through an ideology imported from the West but through a true connection with Islam, “the key source of our world view”.

Turkey’s foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, is well-known for a foreign policy which has been dubbed “neo-Ottoman” and builds on principles outlined in his key work, “Strategic Depth” from 2001. According to Professor Davutoğlu Turkey’s strategic depth rests on its geographical and historical depth and on engagement with the countries with which Turkey shares a common past and geography as well as shared interests and common ideals.

In a speech in Sarajevo in October 2009 Davutoğlu explained: “Like in the 16th Century, when the Ottoman Balkans were rising, we will once again make the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East, together with Turkey, the centre of world politics in the future. That is the goal of Turkish foreign policy and we will achieve it.”

A new world order

In a speech made at an AKP congress in Konya in April the Foreign Minister was more specific. “On the historic march of our holy nation the AK Party signals the birth of a global power and the mission for a new world order (nizam-i âlem).

This is the centenary of our exit from the Middle East … whatever we lost between 1911 and 1923, whatever lands we withdrew from, from 2011 to 2023 we shall once again meet our brothers in those lands. This is a bounden historic mission.”

It should be noted that nizam-i âlem is an Ottoman concept, according to which the world order in all its aspects – political, social and economic – was ruled by religion (Islam).

A fortnight later Davutoğlu outlined his vision for the Middle East in the Turkish parliament. “A new Middle East is about to be born. We will be the owner, pioneer and servant of this new Middle East.” However, this vision has collided with reality.

Prime Minister Erdoğan’s cordial relationship with his “brother” Bashar al-Assad and the “long-term strategic partnerhip” between Turkey and Syria have turned to hostility with Turkey’s support of the Free Syrian Army against the Assad regime.

However, Turkey’s attempt to draw the UN Security Council into the conflict with support for a safe zone for Syrian refugees has failed. And NATO has been content to express its solidarity.

Iran’s support for Assad reflects the struggle for regional hegemony betweeen Turkey and Iran and threatens Turkey’s policy of “economic interpendence” with Iran. Around 90 percent of Iran’s exports to Turkey consists of hydrocarbons, as Iran has become Turkey’s largest supplier of crude oil and its second larger supplier of natural gas.

Turkey’s relations with Russia have also become strained after Turkish F-16s forced a Syrian airliner flying from Moscow to land in Ankara on suspicion that it was carrying arms. Another consequence of the conflict is that Turkey has had to abandon joint plans for a free trade zone with visa-free travel together with Syria, Lebanon and Jordan.

Erdoğan has offered to build a trilateral mechanism together with Iran to deal with the crisis but after the failure of the Sunni rebels to seize Aleppo the issue may be solved on the battlefield. Turkey’s nightmare is a Kurdish alliance between Turkey’s PKK and Syria’s PYD (Democratic Union Party) with support from Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.

Together with the standoff between Turkey and Israel after the Mavi Marmara incident and Turkey’s occupation of northern Cyprus, Davutoğlu’s policy of “zero problems with neighbours” has seen its day. All that remains is to resolve the standoff with Europe, and Prime Minister Erdoğan has given the EU until 2023, when the Turkish Republic will celebrate its centenary, to make up its mind.

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press.

November 12, 2012