A “cat town” has been founded by locals in the Black Sea province of Samsun to provide a healthy and comfortable living space for stray cats. AA Photo
RESMI TIKLAYINIZ DETAYLAR ICIN
Category: Turkey
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The future of Turkey’s Syria policy
Jund al-Aqsa fighters, part of a coalition of rebel groups called Jaish al-Fateh (Army of Conquest), drive in the Idlib countryside in a tank on a highway that connects Damascus to Aleppo, near Psoncol town, after saying they had taken control of it, June 6, 2015. (photo by REUTERS/Mohamad Bayoush)
TURKEY PULSE
the future of Turkey’s controversial Syria policy has become even more uncertain with the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP’s) loss of a parliamentary majority. Any potential coalition partner with the AKP — still the leading party, although it cannot form a government — will approach Syria totally different than the AKP did.
The Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) have accused the AKP of becoming a party to the Syrian crisis by arming groups fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, allowing foreign militants to cross our borders and helping organizations such as the Islamic State (IS) and Jabhat al-Nusra to become prominent forces.
Many believe that one reason for the AKP’s dismal showing in the 2015 elections is its policy on Syria. While the AKP’s militant base angrily asks in Internet messages, “Who lost the elections? Jerusalem, Syria, Egypt and Somalia did,” there are those among the AKP founding fathers who believe that votes were lost in provinces bordering Syria and among Kurds in general because of the AKP’s mishandling of Rojava and Kobani. These seniors now think that a new course of action is essential to solve the Syrian crisis.
The number of AKP deputies from Hatay, Kilis, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa, Mardin and Sirnak provinces bordering Syria dropped from 30 to 20, and the AKP was totally wiped out in five heavily Kurdish-populated provinces.
The change of power structure in Turkey came precisely at a time when the new Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey partnership is changing the balances in the field against Assad’s regime.
The double-pronged strategy of the partnership sought to arm and expand the territory dominated in the northern front of Idlib and Hatay and the southern front of Daara, Quneitra, Suwayda and Damascus via Jordan. The Turkish prong of this strategy is now up in the air.
As Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan agreed with Saudi King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz Al Saud in their Riyadh meeting, the new addresses for weapons assistance were al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch of Jabhat al-Nusra and the Army of Conquest (Jaish al-Fateh), led by Ahrar al-Sham, set up by former al-Qaeda affiliates.
After the shipment of weapons via Turkey, the Army of Conquest captured Idlib, Jisr al-Shughour, Ariha and Mastume. The Syrian army also lost some locations in the south. In the latest development, the 52nd Brigade, which was 100 kilometers (62 miles) south of Damascus, had to abandon its base.
On the northern front, the objective of the Army of Conquest is to capture Aleppo and Latakia after Idlib and then move toward Damascus. Before Turkey’s elections, there were reports that Turkey was about to send troops to Syria along with Saudi Arabia to set up a buffer zone. The second prong of the strategy developed by the Turkey-Saudi-Qatari alliance is to devise a new approach in the south. The south front, commanded from an operations room in Amman, Jordan, in the presence of Western intelligence officials, will hopefully be reorganized under the leadership of Zahran Alloush, commander of the Army of Conquest.
Reports say that Alloush was in Istanbul last month to meet with opposition representatives and then in Amman to meet with Gulf and Western intelligence services.
The scenarios for government change in Turkey will not affect support for the opposition from Amman, but the future of the northern front will depend mostly on Ankara’s new attitude. If the new government in Ankara does not agree to continue with the Turkey-Qatar-Saudi Arabia partnership, then the flow of weapons via Turkey will cease. In such a case, it won’t be easy for the Army of Conquest to hold on to the territory it has captured in Idlib and the vicinity.
The Syrian army is now massing around Idlib and preparing for a major offensive. According to journalist Mehmet Serim, who is reporting from Damascus, Assad’s regime was waiting for the Turkish elections for its major offensive.
There are also reports that Iran has moved 5,000 to 15,000 fighters it gathered from Iraq, Iran and Lebanon to the region, and Hezbollah is trying to expand its operations from Qalamoun as far as Aleppo.
The Syria crisis has five dimensions of major concern for Turkey:
- Supporting both the civilian and military wings of the opposition
- Controlling the borders
- Combating IS
- Refugees
- Relations with autonomous Kurds of Rojava
Regarding arming the opposition and controlling the border, the AKP will have to listen to voices from its own ranks as well as from any potential coalition partner. A more concrete and determined line can be expected in combating IS. The new government will find it very hard to introduce a new approach to the refugee issue or to send the refugees back. On Rojava, the MHP and the HDP have sharply opposing views. If the new government is to include the MHP, then relations with the Kurds could deteriorate.
The AKP appears to be heading for an in-house account settling. An AKP founder, who spoke anonymously because of the sensitivity of the issue, told Al-Monitor, “Syrian policy played a part in our defeat. Although there may be a minority [in] our base that will say this is a loss for Jerusalem, it is obvious that we lost the Kurds because of Kobani. Until today, the AKP was the party with [the] most Kurdish votes. Syrian policy must change. When Abdullah Gul was the president, he had warned the government but to no avail. The priority must be to end the clashes in Syria.”
Diplomat Murat Ozcelik, vice chairman of the opposition CHP who has entered parliament as a deputy from Istanbul, said if they join a coalition government, they will seek radical changes to repair relations not only with Syria, but also with Egypt, Iran and the European Union.
Ozcelik told Al-Monitor, “To secure a cease-fire [with] Syria, we will initiate dialogue with all parties including the Assad government. We will talk to anyone we have to, including Iran. After stopping the bloodshed, we will go for a political settlement. AKP’s Syria policy has borne disastrous results for the region and for Turkey. This can’t go on.”
HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirtas, in his interview with CNN International, said a new coalition cannot continue with the current Syria policy. “I don’t believe that a coalition government will continue to support IS and other radical groups in the region,” Demirtas said.
In short, changing the policy on Syria appears to be a prerequisite of parties to enter into a coalition with the AKP. The AKP might also have to look for a new course of action for its own internal harmony.
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European Parliament Resolution on the 2014 Commission Progress Report on Turkey
Dr. Azmi Guran, Prof. Emerritus
Kore harbinden beri dunyada turlu harpler, catismalar, carpismalar oluyor, ama kimse cani gonulden problemlerin cozulmesini istemiyor. 70 seneden beri devam eden Filistin meselesinden tutun, Kibris, Kashmir, ……. Ukranya, Afrika’dan gelen muhaciler meselesine kadar, hic bir sey cozulmus degil, ve en muhimi ise, kimse cozulmesini istemiyor. Sunu soyle yapmali, bunu boyle yapmali. Bastanbasa tavsiye. Nitekim burada da goruyoruz:
Heybeliada’da ortodoks seminerinin acilmasi. Acilmazsa ne olacak? Hic bir sey yok.
Ermenistan’la hududun acilmasi tavsiyesi. Acilmasinin sartlari ne? Neden simdiye kadar acilmadi? Acilmazsa alinacak kararlar ne?
Yunan adalari uzerinden Turk askeri tayyareleri ucuyormus. Ucmalari karsisinda Avrupa ne gibi tedbirler alacak? Hic bir sey yazilmamis.
Alinan kararlarin hepsi tavsiye mahiyetinde. Demek kimse problemi ele alip bir cozum caresine hep birlikte ugrasmak istemiyor.Hepinize guzel gunler
AB raporu
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Erdogan lost because he tested Turkish democracy
The march of authoritarianism around the world has had different names over the past decade: “Neo-Ottomanism,” “Putinism,” “the Beijing Consensus.” The shared premise has been that fragile democratic systems were no match for strong rulers who can impose top-down solutions.
This idea of the efficient despot got a sharp rebuff Sunday in Turkey’s parliamentary elections. In a turnout of over 86 percent, voters denied President Recep Tayyip Erdogan the majority he needed to rewrite the constitution and give himself more executive authority. The result affirmed the stabilizing power of democracy and the wisdom of an informed electorate.
Turkish commentators were jubilant. “Pax Erdogan is over,” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, the German Marshall Fund’s representative in Ankara, told The New York Times, adding, “Turkey has proved to be a self-correcting democracy.” Bulent Aliriza of the Center for Strategic and International Studies likened the election to “a nuclear explosion in Turkish politics.”
Why did Turkish voters reject authoritarianism at a time when its appeal still seems strong in other places? The answer surely begins with the relative strength of political institutions in Turkey. Secular democracy is nearly a century-old there: It has survived hot wars, cold wars, military coups and religious extremists. Turks know they have something to lose if their system is hijacked.
Turkey also has a civic culture that can support democratic institutions. It has a vibrant free-market economy, a free press, a strong military and an independent legal system. These were the very parts of Turkish society that Erdogan was seen as trying to intimidate or repress in his bid for greater power. Journalists, generals and judges couldn’t fight back effectively on their own; but voters together could do so.
Erdogan himself, ironically, helped encourage the Kurdish activism that was a potent factor in Sunday’s elections. As leader of the Justice and Development Party, or AK Party, he has courted Kurdish votes by offering greater rights – and even by making peace, for a time, with the extremist group known as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
But Sunday, the vehicle for Kurdish self-expression turned out to be the liberal People’s Democratic Party, or HDP, headed by the charismatic Selahattin Demirtas. It won more than 13 percent to become the first explicitly Kurdish-oriented parliamentary party in Turkey’s history. This embrace of pluralism in Turkish life may be as important as the rejection of Erdogan’s executive-power grab.
The Turkish election has global importance because it challenges what had seemed, until recently, the inexorable rise of nationalist strongmen and authoritarian parties. Proponents of the so-called Beijing Consensus argued that the great advantage of the Chinese model was that it worked; centralized state power could achieve results that were impossible in more chaotic, bottom-up democracies. These anti-democrats were buoyed (and critics were deflated) by the success of China’s President Xi Jinping, who styles himself these days as “Xi Dada,” or “Big Daddy Xi.”
Russian’s Vladimir Putin is another avatar of modern authoritarianism. What’s disturbing about Putin is that his corrupt, belligerent regime is extremely popular with the Russian people. A Russian polling firm called the Levada Center reported recently that his popularity stands at 86 percent, despite sanctions, a declining economy and suppression of dissent. President Barack Obama’s approval rating, by contrast, currently stands at about 45 percent. The qualities of reason and restraint that arguably help define Obama as a democratic leader are taken, in his case, as signs of weakness.
Putin seems to answer a popular Russian yearning for greatness and empire. But similar words were used just a few months ago to describe Erdogan’s appeal as a “neo-Ottoman,” a Turkish leader with the power (and palaces) of a sultan. Even as popular resistance began to surface in the Gezi Park protests in 2013, Erdogan pressed ahead. It wasn’t obvious that he had overreached until Sunday.
Fareed Zakaria has written over the past decade about the rise of what he calls “illiberal democracy” – the growing power of leaders such as Erdogan, Xi and Putin who govern with a veneer of popular legitimacy but a core of state control. You could add Egypt’s popularly elected strongman, President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi, to that list.
Americans are too quick to define democracy in terms of elections. What produced Sunday’s genuinely democratic outcome in Turkey was something deeper than the fact that large numbers of people went to the polls. Erdogan failed to get his mandate because he challenged a culture of checks and balances, and the institutions that give Turkish democracy its resilience.
David Ignatius is published twice weekly by THE DAILY STAR.
A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Daily Star on June 11, 2015, on page 7. -
The End of the Erdogan Era?
By Dexter Filkins
President Erdoğan’s plans to re-write the Turkish constitution are at a standstill after his Justice and Development Party failed to win a majority of seats in the general elections. Credit PHOTOGRAPH BY LEFTERIS PITARAKIS/AP
Whether abroad or at home, it’s easy to get disheartened by democracy: sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. But every now and then a moment arrives that wipes away our doubts and reaffirms our hopes in the wisdom of the democratic idea. One such moment came yesterday in Turkey, where voters decisively turned back President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s march to authoritarian rule.
For years, Erdoğan seemed unstoppable. First elected Prime Minister in 2003, Erdoğan came to power as a moderate Islamist reformer who overturned decades of rule by an unresponsive secular élite that, backed by the military, had dominated the Turkish Republic since its founding, in 1923. In his first years in office, Erdoğan did indeed act as the reformer he claimed to be. He liberalized the economy, granted new rights to Turkey’s long-suppressed Kurdish minority, and, most of all, gave voice to the majority: moderately religious Turks who wanted a greater say in the way the country was governed. During those years, Erdoğan was seen as the great hope of the Islamic world, the moderate Islamist who could bridge the divide with the West. Under Erdoğan, Turkey seemed to be a reasonable candidate to join the European Union.
Erdoğan dashed those hopes—slowly at first, and then, increasingly, in bombastic and megalomaniacal fashion. Beginning in 2007, he launched an extraordinary campaign to crush the secular-liberal-military establishment that formed the opposition. Prosecutors targeted generals, police officers, politicians, university professors, newspaper editors—anyone who represented a threat to the new Islamist order. The campaign made use of make-believe conspiracies with names like “Ergenekon’’ and “Sledgehammer,’’ which Erdoğan and his cronies claimed were aimed at taking over the country. More than seven hundred people were charged in these conspiracies, and many went to prison, despite the fact that even a cursory examination of the evidence showed that it was largely fabricated.
The most egregious illustration of Erdoğan’s authoritarianism was his government’s jailing of journalists. In 2012, ninety-four reporters and editors were in prison in Turkey, more than anywhere else in the world. (After widespread condemnation, the number has fallen to seven, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.)
As he grew stronger, Erdoğan constructed a cult of personality about himself, which made him stronger still. He dominated the news, often appearing on television several times a day, commenting on or inserting himself into seemingly every question in public life. He denounced Israel, and often made surreal comments about Jews and Jewish conspiracies. His assertive foreign policy, aimed at supporting the Islamist parties that emerged in the early Arab Spring, seemed to revive, for many Turks, the glory days of the Ottoman Empire. He began to build a third bridge across the Bosporus, and started construction on a new airport, planned to be the world’s largest, which he named after himself.
Despite the excesses, Erdoğan kept rising. After two terms as Prime Minister, he was, in 2014, elected President; and though on paper the new job had less power than his old one, it was widely understood that Erdoğan was in charge and that his Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, was a mere satrap.* He told Turkish women to have at least three children, declaring that their “delicate nature” rendered them unequal to men. He threatened to ban Facebook and briefly banned Twitter, the latter after people posted wiretaps of conversations that appeared to reference corrupt activities.
The pièce de résistance was the new Presidential palace, which was completed last year and is now Erdoğan’s home. It’s fit for a monarch: it has a thousand rooms, cost $600 million, and employs five full-time food testers, who make sure Erdoğan’s food is not poisoned.
The turn against Erdoğan began on a small plot of land in central Istanbul called Gezi Park. In 2013, Erdoğan announced plans to replace the park with a shopping mall and a monument to Turkey’s Ottoman past. People gathered in the park to protest the decision, but the demonstrations grew rapidly into a broad protest against Erdoğan’s autocratic style, with gatherings in ninety cities. Erdoğan dismissed the demonstrators, who numbered in the hundreds of thousands, as a “few looters,’’ and then turned loose the police in Gezi Park. When the demonstrators were finally dispersed, eleven of them were dead and thousands had been injured or arrested. Among other things, the move dashed any hopes of getting Turkey into the European Union anytime soon.
Then, in December 2013, three members of Erdoğan’s cabinet, whose sons were implicated in a corruption scandal, resigned, with one of them calling on Erdoğan himself to quit. When the lead prosecutor in the case began to target Erdogan’s son, the Prime Minister dismissed him, beginning a massive purge of police and prosecutors around the country who were believed to be disloyal.
Obviously oblivious to the growing dissatisfaction around him, Erdoğan made clear, as this year’s elections approached, that he wanted to re-write the constitution in order to gain more power for the Presidency. The changes that Erdoğan was proposing were not just troubling in their own right but they seemed to signal his desire to stay in power for a long time. Increasingly, his role model appeared to be that elected autocrat to the north, Vladimir Putin.
For now, Erdoğan appears stopped in his tracks. His party, Justice and Development, captured more seats in parliament than any other but fell short of a majority. That probably means Erdoğan’s party will be forced to form a coalition government. Most important, the momentum, and the votes, to remake the constitution are no longer there.
The Turkish experience with coalition governments is not a happy one, and Turkey may be entering a period of instability, on which Erdoğan would be only too happy to capitalize. But for now, the voters of Turkey deserve a salute. Their election is gratifying enough to recall that famous maxim of democratic rule: “You can fool all of the people some of the time, and some of the people all of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
*Correction: This piece previously misidentified the year in which Erdoğan was elected President. It was 2014, not 2011, as originally stated.
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Backed into corner, Turkey’s Erdogan shows hints of compromise
Wed Jun 10, 2015 3:45pm EDT
By Tulay Karadeniz and Tuvan Gumrukcu
ANKARA (Reuters) – The choice of venue seemed to say it all.
Straying from his vast new $500 million palace, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan hosted a senior opposition lawmaker at his more modest Ankara residence on Wednesday and appeared, so the lawmaker said, to be in a mood for compromise.
The AK Party Erdogan founded more than a decade ago lost its parliamentary majority in weekend polls, ending more than a decade of single-party rule and dealing a blow to ambitions for a powerful U.S.-style presidency. For Turkey, a political uncertainty not seen since the 1990s beckoned.
Any instability in Turkey is a worry for the European Union and NATO, since the country lies on the edge of the turbulent Middle East with Islamic State militants conducting operations just across its border.
Forced to find a coalition partner for the first time in its history or risk an unstable minority government, the conservative, Islamist-rooted AKP’s top brass held a third day of meetings on Wednesday to consider their options.
Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said all options would be exhausted before an early election was considered, and made clear that Erdogan, constitutionally barred from party politics, would not be involved.
“If everybody carries out their duties and responsibilities within the constitutional limits, a culture of reconciliation
will emerge,” he said in an interview with state broadcaster TRT, in an apparent shot across the president’s bows.
Erdogan meanwhile, yet to appear in public since Sunday’s election, held a two-hour meeting with Deniz Baykal, parliament’s oldest deputy and the head, until 2010, of the secular opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
As the elder of the house, Baykal will lead parliament’s first session following the election and he was officially meeting Erdogan to discuss the reopening. But coalition alternatives came onto the agenda.
“I observed that Mr President has an understanding that a government should be formed as soon as possible and has a positive attitude on the issue,” Baykal told reporters in Ankara after the meeting.
“I got the impression that he is open to all coalition solutions.”
That would be quite a climb-down for a man who has in the past cast his political rivals as terrorists and traitors. Hopes of a more conciliatory stance from the Turkish strong man reassured nervous financial markets, with the stock market ticking up on Baykal’s comments.
Erdogan’s office did not comment.
Champion of the conservative, pious masses, Erdogan views Baykal’s CHP, the party of modern Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, as the bastion of secularists whose elitist mentality he blames for much that is wrong with the country.
There is also little love lost with the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), ideologically a more likely coalition partner, whose leader Devlet Bahceli has criticized Erdogan’s ambitions for an executive presidency and warned him to “remain within his constitutional limits”.
But some of those around Erdogan say he has been chastened by the election outcome and forced to accept compromise.
“He is the founding leader of the AKP and our president, but we have entered a new period with different dynamics,” a senior AKP official involved in coalition discussions told Reuters.
“I think Erdogan is reflecting on the election results and taking some steps accordingly … Time will tell how permanent this will be.”
BAD MEMORIES
The prospect of a coalition has revived memories for some older Turks of the fractious, short-lived governments that battered the economy in the 1990s and triggered a string of army coups in the second half of the 20th century.
“There is no trust. Not between people, and not between the parties,” said Halil Canikli, 55, a former plumber in the Ankara suburb of Sincan, a working-class AKP stronghold.
“Working-class families here… will be drastically affected by these results and by the collapsing economy,” he said.
An IPSOS poll, released on Wednesday and conducted shortly after the election results were announced, suggested the AKP would have had 4 percent more support if voters had known the outcome in advance, probably enough to have avoided a coalition.
“A coalition will never work, it will be torture for the people,” said Yasar Karabulut, 50, a retired civil servant and Erdogan fan, who said a fresh election should be called.
That remains an option. Should Turkey’s political parties be unable to agree a working coalition within 45 days, Erdogan has the right to call a snap election, but AKP officials say that is not their preferred option.
“We believe a coalition with CHP or MHP will be formed. If so, there will be discussions about some of the critical ministries,” a second senior ruling party official said.
“It is imperative that the foreign ministry remains with us. The economy is very important, but there are four ministries in the economy. We should definitely aim for a share, but nobody can request single-handed rule of the economy,” he said.
According to Daily Sabah, a newspaper close to Erdogan loyalists, he has three red lines for any coalition: the continuation of a peace process with Kurdish militants, respect for his role as president, and the continuation of the fight against the “parallel state” – the network of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom he accuses of plotting against him.
It is the middle one which appears the most contentious.
“If the president is not pulled back within his legal limitations, it is not possible to even discuss a coalition with AKP,” said a senior official from the MHP, stressing any more cabinet meetings in Erdogan’s 1,000-room palace would be out of the question.
That the president eschewed the columned “White Palace”, a grand symbol of the “new Turkey” he wants to build, might, AKP officials said, be an initial sign of change.
“We might see days where Erdogan is less intrusive,” said one, speaking on condition of anonymity.
(Additional reporting by Orhan Coskun, Ercan Gurses and Jonny Hogg in Ankara, Ayla Jean Yackley in Istanbul; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Ralph Boulton and Giles Elgood)
