Commentators often refer to Turkey‘s neo-Ottoman policies domestically or vis a vis its neighbours, notably Syria. What "neo-Ottoman" exactly means is disputed. The term is being used equally as an epithet or descriptive. I will sidestep that here, since, while what I am interested in may be neo-Ottoman, or not, whether that label applies or not is IMO not particularly meaningful.
♦ Building a legacy
I think that the key to understanding at least one important aspect about Erdogan’s Turkey ist he simple fact that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is an unabashed Islamist, an Islamist in a business suit, but an Islamist no less. He is also a man intent on building a legacy - nothing less than remaking Turkey, and he is beginning with the role of presidency, and if the sheer size his new palace is any indication he has grand designs.Erdoğan's biggest legacy project domestically is to rewrite the constitution and turn Turkey into a more presidential, and - Erdogan is an Islamist after all - more Islamic country, shedding the laizist constraints that Attatürk and successive Turkish generals had enshrined in the current constitution.
By all appearances, Erdogan and his supporters seem convinced that Turkey needs a firm hand ...
"seen against the background of his recent behaviour, Mr Erdogan’s plans for a strong presidency are troubling. He has dismantled checks on his power. His approach is majoritarian and divisive: so long as his party wins elections, it can trample any critics. Critical newspaper groups have been subjected to capricious tax fines. Columnists have been fired. Turkey had more journalists in jail than any other country until the middle of last year, when a clutch of 40 were let out. Reporters Without Borders, a Paris-based group, ranks it 149th of 180 countries for press freedom, above Russia but below Venezuela.
The authorities have often tried to close off access to critical websites and social media. In the second half of 2014, Turkey filed 477 requests to Twitter to remove content, five times more than any other country. And since Mr Erdogan became president, 105 people have been indicted for insulting the head of state."
... or a heavy foot: Speaking ill of Erdoğan in the presence of his advisors appears to be unwise.
The pictured man, Mr. Yusef Yerkel, aide to Erdoğan, apparently fiercly loyal, hurt his foot while dealing out swift justice and had to be given a week of sick leave to recover from his injury. He explained later that he had been provoked.
♦ The dissolution of the solution process
Apart from drafting a new constitution, Erdoğan promised to move forward the so-called solution process, the Kurdish–Turkish peace process. This was central to Erdoğan's policy program for Turkey. A part of his outreach to the Kurds has been, unsurprisingly, emphacising Muslim unity.
It is, after this, somewhat surprising that this policy found its abrupt and violent end.
For their part, the situation of the Turkish Kurds had been by and large improving, culminating in their participation in the recent elections. The Iraqi Kurds had carved out their de-facto autonomous region in North Iraq, stopping short of independence. The Syrian Kurds had been granted autonomy by the Syrian government early on in the civil war. The expansion of ISIS at Kurdish expense alarmed Kurds, especially the capture of Mosul and the climatic battle of Kobane, during which Turkey tacitly supported ISIS.
The Turks were uneasy in light of Kurdish enclaves gaining increasing amounts of autonomy bordering to statehood as a consequence of the instability in Syria and Iraq. The rising level of Kurdish activity certainly must have alarmed the nationalists and the military. But Kurdish autonomy in North Iraq had been going on for several years, and yet the 'solution process' proceeded, albeit slowly.
What changed?
♦ Overriding priorities
For one, Turkish policy empowering and facilitating Jihadis in Syria worked to undermine the credibility of the solution process. Turkish facilitation was most visible during the Battle of Kobane. That is to say that it was his own foreign policy which ruined Erdoğan's domestic attempt to come to terms with the Kurds.
Beyond that, I propose that domestic imperatives were probably more important: Erdoğan requires for his constitutional change a two third majority so that his AKP can change the constitution without a referendum. Here's the neo-liberal take on the state of affairs in Turkey:
"To change the system, the AKP needs a two-thirds, or 367-seat, majority enabling it to rewrite the constitution. Failing that – and it looks highly improbable – it needs a three-fifths, or 330-seat, majority, which would allow it to call a plebiscite on constitutional revision. That, too, is unlikely, according to the opinion polls. But there is general agreement that the party is the slickest, most organised political machine Turkey has ever seen. All bets are off. The AKP owns the bureaucracy, controls the media, has returned the army to barracks and marginalised the military, traditional arbiters of Turkish politics. Erdoğan used his final term as prime minister to curb the independence of the key institutions of state – the constitutional court, the parliament, the central bank, the prosecution and judiciary services."
After several successive electoal victories, Erdoğan’s AKP lost its absolute majority the first time since 2002 in the last elections, with the Kurds scoring a surprising 13% of the vote. Their electoral success thus threatens Erdoğan's constitutional transformation.
In a sense, by merely participating in Turkey's electoral and parliamentary process, successfully, the Kurds threaten Erdoğan’s constitutional transformation more than as if they abstained or seceded. It is my impression that their participation and success in the elections was the last straw.
♦ The fix
Erdoğan's approach to this knotty problem appears to me to have thus far been rather Macchiavellian:
After a series of suicide bomb attacks against Kurdish activists in Suruc (met with a media blackout), and only recently in Ankara (met with a media blackout),Turkish authorities are suspecting publicly bi-polar extremes - IS and the PKK.
I find that doubtful. The PKK has done suicide bombings in the past, in fact rather recently even, but to the best of my knowledge not directed at fellow Kurds.
The Suruc and Ankara blasts apparently deliberately targeted Kurds and political opposition activity. The Suruc blast was specifically directed at secular, socialist Kurds who supported the defenders of Kobane, and it came in the aftermath of the Battle of Kobane.
In a recent PKK suicide attack a Kurd tried to drive a tractor with two tons of explosives into a Turkish army checkpoint. Different sort of target and it doesn't parse with the Suruc and Ankara blasts. Blowing up crowds of apostates or heathen however is something that Jihadis do, do a lot in fact.
Alas, keeping IS and the PKK as official suspects would help enlisting potential US and European support in "fighting terror" and help split up the notoriously fracticidal Kurds. If the news blackouts are any indication, Turkish authorities like to keep it that ambiguous. It serves their purposes.
And speaking of purposes, it is by now obvious that between Jihadis and Turkey there is a working relationship. Turkey colluded with Jabhad al Nusra to bring Division 30 to their doom. Generally, Turkey has supported various Islamist groups in Syria, notably Jabhat al Nusra. The Turks facilitated IS at Kobane. The Suruc bombing afterwards has apparently been comitted by IS. This list is incomplete.
Turkey clearly sees Islamist groups in Syria as useful and controllable tools to achieve its policy goals there. Why just there? Perhaps such groups had martyrs to spare in exchange for material support? I propose as a working theory that the Turks may be using Jihadis not only in Syria but also domestically. Jihadi involvement certainly would explain the odd, recent spike in suicide attacks against opposition groups in Turkey.
In face of this and an increasing number of Turkish air strikes against Kurdish targets, the Kurds are effectively drifting out of democratic participation back into sectarian and internecine strife and out of the electoral equation. True to form (perhaps nudged by MIT?) the Kurds apparently merrily oblige.
For Erdoğan's plans to remake the constitution, Kurdish abstention can only be of advantage.
Making the Kurds the foreign and domestic enemy again, may even give his reforms a sense of urgency to help hurry them along. By holding up the spectre of Kurdish terror and independence as an internal and external threat, the AKP may even succeed co-opting the nationalists and the military. If the choices are building a heritage by installing an Islamist presidential constitution or being at war with the Kurds again, the latter may just be a small price that Erdoğan is willing to pay.
... to be continued
by confusedponderer
Stonevendor
Having been abused a bit (sob) I take offense easily. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 23 October 2015 at 08:20 PM