After 15 Years, Is Turkey Saying 'Enough' to Erdogan?*

Haaretz: "If one day our nation says 'enough,' then we will step aside.' Erdogan's gaffe opened the gates of Turkish social media derision and gifted a slogan to a re-invigorated political opposition. But he won't give way without a fight."

"If one day our nation says 'enough,' then we will step aside," Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Tuesday in a speech in parliament, and opened the gates of Turkish social media derision and activism.

#Tamam ("Enough") took off like wildfire and became a trending Twitter topic worldwide, with over two million tweets telling Erdogan that, indeed, they have had enough of him. As journalist Rusen Cakir noted, the increasingly autocratic Erdogan had, strangely, just "offered the opposition a slogan to unite behind."

And they did, with the major political opposition heads tweeting the hashtag and declaring that the time had come.

That rare gaffe by Erdogan may be a sign of an unfamiliar stress the Turkish leader, and that he is, for now, facing the greatest challenge to his political survival since coming to power: Elections, with a newly revitalized opposition, are a month away.

It's almost three weeks since Erdogan declared snap presidential and parliamentary elections for June 24, more than a year earlier than scheduled.

That ended several months of speculation that signs of a major economic crisis in Turkey might trigger early elections. Some predict Erdogan and his party will benefit from the wave of Turkish nationalism that surged in the wake of a general consensus in Turkey that the military campaign against Kurdish forces in Afrin, northern Syria, succeeded in its objectives.

Early elections also will allow the ruling AKP party to pre-empt, if not arrest, the growing momentum of the new opposition party, "Iyi" (Good), led by Meral Aksener.

This party offers a new home to those nationalists who are abandoning the MHP in the wake of its leader’s 180 degree u-turn from opposing Erdogan to becoming his staunch ally. Despite Erdogan’s denials, many believe the speed with which the snap elections were called was an attempt by the AKP to sideline the Iyi party. That went hand-in-hand with speculation that the timing provided convenient grounds to disqualify the Aksener's party from running, because it had been registered less than the mandatory six-month period prior to elections.

Amidst fears the Iyi party might be disqualified, the main CHP opposition party stepped up to ensure Iyi’s participation. The CHP transferred 15 of its own parliamentarians to the Iyi party’s bloc of five (defectors from the MHP) entitling it to run in the election, regardless of its registration date.

Had the AKP been outsmarted? It certainly seems so, but the real importance of the move was that it exemplified a rare moment where the Turkish opposition at long last set the agenda.

The CHP’s move naturally opened the door for an alliance with the Iyi Party, and was followed by them joining forces with two smaller parties, the Muslim conservative party Saadet (the political home from which Erdogan himself emerged before launching the AKP in the early 2000s),  and another smaller faction, the Demokrat Party. Importantly, the alliance will let those two smaller Saadet and Demokrat parties to jump over the decades-old high ten-percent threshold.

The elephant in the room of course is the fact that the HDP, the mostly Kurdish party, was left out of the opposition alliance.

When the HDP crossed the vote threshold in the June 2015 elections, it pushed Erdogan's AKP into a corner for the first time since coming to power in 2002.

Erdogan faced a choice: to agree to be partner to a coalition government or call snap elections. It did the latter, and in the November 2015 elections the AKP swept enough votes to once again rule alone. With renewed fighting between Turkey and the PKK, the outlawed Kurdish separatist party, the HDP has been under attackand all but delegitimized by the state; its candidate for president and former co-chair of the party, Selahattin Demirtas, along with eight of its MPs are all behind bars.        
Bringing the Kurdish-majority party into the alliance may never have been on the bloc’s agenda. But their exclusion was a deliberate ploy by the mainstream opposition parties not to risk losing the nationalist vote, the Iyi party’s main constituency.

If the opposition alliance plays its cards right, a majority vote - or at least a vote that greatly closes the large gap between the AKP and the opposition - could be in reach for the first time in a decade and a half. If the HDP gets makes it, that will cut into the AKP’s piece of the pie in the upcoming parliament, something the opposition alliance itself recognizes.

As much as this election is about each party galvanizing its own constituency, the overriding need to strategize and build informal coalitions is just as important.

That strategic horse-trading is a crucial window into what kind of coalition might be formed after the elections. However, it’s complicated by the fact that there are two election campaigns in train simultaneously, for the president and for the legislature.

The presidential election is even more crucial than usual because the executive presidential laws, legitimated by last year’s referendum come into effect after the elections. That means the president will appoint all government ministers in the next parliament, and that cabinet will no longer be answerable to parliament, which will continue to be the legislative authority despite the limiting of its powers.

Although it seems a long shot in a political and media context that systematically privileges Erdogan, the opposition is also gearing up cleverly for the presidential elections.

First, they rightly refrained from choosing a joint candidate. One of the names floated for this was Abdullah Gul, a founder of the AKP and a former president; however, it was far from clear that this soft-spoken politician, who has opted for a passive resistance to Erdogan, could ever get to the necessary 50% in the first round.

Instead, all the opposition parties will run their own candidates; each camp can rile up their own base without compromising their messages. The thinking is they will then stand a better chance of pushing Erdogan into a second round vote.  

The stand-out presidential opposition candidate for now is the CHP’s Muharrem Ince. He is a fighter with a sharp tongue who can stand up to the charismatic Erdogan. Close behind is the Iyi party’s Meral Aksener, who would also be sure to keep the government on its toes, and some predict could even lead in the votes. In the 2014 presidential elections the HDP’s Selahattin Demirtas received almost 10% of the vote and it seems that his chances to reach the same number this time, is certainly in range – even though he is submitting his candidature from jail. 

A second-round of voting for the president is thus likely, as long as the parties succeed in energizing each of their bases and the vote is further split with small percentages for the Saadet Party and other minor candidates will attract. That vote would take place two weeks later, on July 8.

And Ince knows that if this happens, his best chance to challenge Erdogan in a run off is to reach out to the Kurdish vote. Since the start of his campaign, Ince has sent strong signals to the HDP; he has publicly demanded Demirtas’ release, and this week held a meeting with him in prison.

While the new opposition stirrings will be brushed off by some as a return to the 1990s politics of endless coalition-building, this old-new dynamic has one cause above all: Erdogan’s usurping of more and more power  to the dismay of many Turkish citizens. Despite Erdogan’s popularity in certain sections of the population, the AKP is very publicly failing to deal with an ever-weaker economy.

That means its veneer of untouchability is tarnishing; and that it is beginning to resemble the very parties it threw out in 2002, who were deeply resented due to their bad economic policies and incompetence at connecting to the electorate.

There are other signs that the AKP’s momentum is stalling. Apart from Erdogan, the main faces of the AKP today are far from being charismatic campaigners or crowd-pleasers, but rather robotic mouthpieces for their boss. That same uninspiring cadre led the AKP to lose the vote in every major city, including Istanbul, in the referendum.  

There is a sense in Turkey that the political winds might be starting to turn against the AKP, and that Erdogan, the leader that has ruled for 16 years, miscalculated the political map when calling early elections.

True, the opposition does not have a magic wand to remove the many obstacles it faces, not least lifting the draconian State of Emergency, effecting the release of the HDP’s presidential candidate Demirtas, or claiming their legitimate right for equal mainstream media time. It also cannot influence the election board’s strangely lenient policy toward counting questionable ballots, as we saw in the last referendum.

However, despite the obstacles, and for the first time in years, the opposition is certainly giving the AKP a run for its money; as the millions who viewed, shared and participated in the #Tamam campaign shows, their grassroots support is substantial and their opposition to the president emphatic.    

But Erdogan hasn’t survived this long and centralized power so determinedly to let that opposition narrative play out. The more he feels the heat, the more efforts will made to delegitimize the opposition and to place new obstacles in their way. 

*This article appeared in Haaretz on May, 10 2018. Click here for the link

Post Turkish Referendum Analysis: Its not Yet Game Over*

Haaretz: "It's too early to declare the Turkish Republic dead and buried. The president's popularity has maxed out at 50 percent of the population, and the anti-Erdogan opposition won't be silenced"

Walking the streets of Istanbul just a week before the country’s fateful referendum, from any and every point I could see the larger-than-life faces of the country’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or his Prime Minister, Binali Yildirim, trying to convince voters to get out and vote “Yes,” for a ‘better’ Turkey. That entirely disproportionate number of “Yes” campaign posters filled the streets of even overwhelmingly anti-AKP neighborhoods; even there very few posters could be seen pushing a “No” vote.  

Nevertheless, I sensed hope among many “No,” voters, who believed that in the end, it was the Turkish people who would decide the fate of the referendum and not posters. Further, what might have appeared to some as a lack of organization among the “No” camp, was actually a strategy; the secular-CHP, the smaller, mostly Kurdish, HDP, and other fringe parties and civil organizations, maintained a significant measure of autonomy, presenting their case to their own constituencies, in place of opting for a unified campaign. Solidifying each voting bloc rather than attempting a one-size fits all campaign.

But it wasn’t only the Yes vote takeover of the public space that constituted an unfair playing field. The whole  referendum process itself took place under a State of Emergency. While the government had a free hand to do what it wanted, some of the strongest voices in the “No” camp were severely constrained: some are sitting in prison, such as the co-chairs of the HDP party, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, together with government critics, not least a slew of journalists, such as Ahmet Sik and Kadri Gursel. 

While the Turkish government claimed foul play in Europe, when some European leaders blocked Turkish officials from campaigning on European soil, ‘No’ campaigners ironically faced bans within Turkey itself. The Ankara rally of Meral Aksener, the rising voice among Turkey’s nationalists, was cancelled by the local authorities unwilling to provide her security. Aksener was not just aiming her opposition at Erdogan, but also her former party head, the nationalist MHP leader, Devlet Bahceli, who repelled many party members with his support for Erdogan, seen as a desperate tactical attempt to hold on to power.  

Another ‘No’ campaigner, Tuna Beklevic, was prevented from holding rallies on the grounds that his party hadn’t been officially recognized, despite fulfilling all the requirements. Beklevic persevered, visiting numerous cities and using Facebook to hold a virtual rally which attracted almost 70,000 viewers.

Well, the government ended up with a huge surprise last Sunday when - despite some polls predicting an easy victory for them - the opposite occurred. The “No” camp gave Erdogan, and his weak nationalist ally, Devlet Bahceli, a run for their money, with Turkey’s three major cities, Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir (and many other urban centers) going to the “No” camp. Even if the “Yes,” camp won on bare numbers, the outcome of 51.41 percent to 48.59 percent was achieved only among serious concerns of mass voter fraud.

Since the referendum results were released, protesters have taken to the streets across Turkey demanding the Supreme Election Council explain its last minute acceptance of over a million “non-stamped ballots,” and address a long list of documented irregularities. However, the Council has flatly rejected their call, strengthening fears that it too has all but become a government mouthpiece. Unfortunately, the “No” camp has little power to enforce its demands and its attempts to bring it to the Constitutional Court will have a slim chance at best to produce results. However, its persistence stains the legitimacy Erdogan so longs for.  

So where from here? Some analysts have gone so far as to declare the end of the Turkish Republic, reiterating much of their pre-referendum coverage, which characterized the vote as a zero-sum game of dictatorship versus democracy.  

This dichotomy ignores the fact that even if the “No” camp had won the referendum, under the current State of Emergency, Erdogan and his AKP party which has a strong grip over Turkey’s bureaucracy and government offices, would continue to rule solely (and oppressively if they choose to do so) with or without a referendum victory.  

This dichotomy is also problematic due to the fact it transforms the AKP supporters into one unified group, and that their voting “Yes” is a confirmation of their support for a full-blown dictatorship. Admittedly, there are strong political and security arguments why someone might support the constitutional changes. However, in the current political atmosphere, the vote could only polarize the electorate.

On the flip side, this dichotomy robs the multiple oppositions of any agency whatsoever, as if their strong resistance to Erdogan is completely inept and that they are doomed to live under a fascist dictatorship, in which the only hope for them is leaving their homeland.

So, no, it is not game-over for those who oppose Erdogan. Yesterday’s Erdogan is no different than today’s Erdogan, save for the fact that he has received a strong message that, at least for now, his popularity has dwindled and that his popularity has maxed out at not much more than 50 percent of the population. This is not likely to change in the near future, and if Erdogan does make note of the dynamic changes within the Turkish electorate, he might even lose his bid for presidency in the 2019 elections, never having the chance to rule with super-presidential powers accorded to him in the referendum.

For the opposition, the arrests of protesters taking part in post-referendum protests, with one even being charged with “delegitimizing the “Yes” victory", the referendum is not a turning point but rather a continuation of “more of the same.” The victory of capturing Istanbul, where almost 25 percent of the overall Turkish population resides, together with the belief that the vote was stolen, has emboldened them for now, showing that they are very much alive. True, this most likely will not continue, in which case, silent resistance to Erdogan’s power will return, as the risk of arrest outweighs the urge to take to the streets.

Like Erdogan, who needs to reassess his base, the opposition groups need to as well. Will Meral Aksener be able to form a successful party that will replace Bahceli’s MHP, providing a new path for the nationalist opposition? Will a center-right party emerge from former AKP members challenging Erdogan? Will the secular CHP be able to reach out to new groups, create fronts, which will be able to break their normal 25-27 percent of the overall vote in parliamentary elections? Will these parties create a dynamic where the mostly Kurdish leftist HDP can remain a relevant party in light of the mass arrests that have taken place during the last almost two years? These questions are just a few of many pressing questions that could prove a challenge to Erdogan and his AKP party in the future. 

It is for these reasons that the referendum victory of the AKP should not be seen as a turning point but rather a continuation of the standoff between Erdogan’s AKP and different oppositional forces, one that unfortunately promises more instability, a continued sluggish economy, and frustration among those who do not see eye-to-eye with Erdogan and his hard-core supporters.

Nevertheless, one only need to look at Turkey’s shaky history to understand that just as its jails have revolving doors, new political systems, such as the post-referendum constitutional changes, can also be discarded over time. While many can predict what Turkey might look like in two years, what it might look like in a decade is still very unclear. While the path and determination of Erdogan is clear, the opposition could splinter further while the jockeying continues for its leadership, which may result in a force weakened even further and incapable of any real challenge to the newly empowered president.

This article appeared in Haaretz on April 24, 2017, under the longer title of: Wounded but Alive: It's Not Yet Game Over for Turkey's Democracy - or Its Resistance. Click here for the link. 




























*Wounded but Alive: It's Not Yet Game Over for Turkey's Democracy - or Its Resistance

Turkey’s Opposition Fails a Critical Test: To Challenge Erdogan*

Two months have passed since the July 15 Turkish coup attempt and the purge and arrests have continued unabated, with emergency laws striking at not just those accused of plotting the coup, the Gulenists, but also those with suspected ties to the outlawed Kurdish separatist group, the PKK, as well as a swathe of other staunch critics of the government. In some extreme cases, even family members of those suspected of sedition have been detained, as vicarious punishment and to leverage the surrender of suspects in exile or hiding.

Turkey's media: Under lock and key

For example, the world-renowned author Asli Erdogan is being held on terror charges for her work at the banned newspaper, Ozgur Gundem, which the government claims is a PKK mouthpiece. There are fears she may suffer permanent injury due to the conditions under which she is being held.

Similarly, singer Atilla Tas − whose criticism of the nation’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made him more popular as a symbol than as a musician − also has been arrested. He released a defiant comment from prison: "My conscience is clear because I am innocent. My only crime was to criticize the government. I will not be subdued.” 

Then there is the journalist Can Dundar, former editor-in-chief of the Cumhuriyet newspaper, Turkey's oldest and staunchly secular broadsheet, who fled the country and vows to remain abroad as long as the state of emergency is in effect. His wife had her passport confiscated, a violation of her civil rights, effectively blocking them from seeing one another. It's worth noting that even before the coup and subsequent purge, Turkey's press was rated as “not free” by the Freedom in the World's 2016 report, while the World Press Freedom Index by Reporters without Borders ranked it low down, at 151st among 180 countries surveyed.

Post-coup bonus: Purge the Kurds

Having already seized private businesses with assets worth billions of dollars linked to Gulenists, the Turkish government has now moved on to seizing control of municipalities. Last week, democratically-elected representatives were removed from 24 local governments for their alleged ties to the PKK, and four more for their links to the Gulen movement, with state appointees taking the reins.

Along similar lines, the arrest on terror charges of the charismatic politician Selahattin Demirtas together with other leaders of the mostly-Kurdish HDP, the third-largest party in parliament, seem almost inevitable in the current environment. The latest moves against the HDP will only make the situation more precarious in the mostly Kurdish southeast, signaling greater potential bloodshed and unrest there. 

The purge of both Gulenists and activists working for the Kurdish cause (including both Kurds and Turks), should not come as a surprise, since sanctions against them had already begun before the night the coup plotters tried to hijack the country’s democracy with commandeered F-16s and tanks. 

However, the sheer numbers of those purged in the post-coup attempt are testament to its gravity: over 40,000 people have been detained or arrested, and almost 80,000 suspended from their employment. Most recently, in addition to the thousands of educators purged for ties to the Gulenists, over ten thousand teachers with alleged ties to the PKK have been removed from classrooms in Turkey.      

Turkey's opposition fails crucial test

Unfortunately, following the coup attempt the nation’s major opposition party, the CHP, failed the test of working to keep the government in check. Only in the last few weeks have the party members begun to raise their voices against the injustices of the current purge. Last week, its leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, declared that a “witch hunt” was underway: “Those who prevent writers, journalists and intellectuals from celebrating Eid al-Adha with their loved ones have no right to talk about democracy….” The CHP states it has already received 30,000 complaints by citizens of unfair treatment.

So what happened? It seems that immediately following the coup attempt the CHP party was caught off guard, unable to dictate a clear response, adopting instead the positions articulated by CHP-aligned critics of the government in the mainstream media. Even during the first hours following the coup, numerous analysts from their camp were convinced of a Gulenist plot, and ditched more critically-oriented investigative reporting to join the government chorus panning the apparently inadequate Western coverage of the coup. They accused the Western media of not showing solidarity with Turkey. While the unifying of government and opposition voices helped encourage an important sense of national unity, it left the opposition void of any vision for the future. 

This knee-jerk reaction was fed by these journalists’ disdain for the Gulenists due to bad blood between the secular camp and the Gulen movement, which even predates the falling out between the AKP and the Gulenists during the last three years. A few years earlier, military officers, journalists, and CHP lawmakers were wrongly tried on trumped up charges during the Ergenekon trials. Those falsely accused blamed Gulenists for masterminding the proceedings, and they blasted journalists at Gulen-owned media outlets for either remaining silent or even cheering the arrests of journalists. 

In their anti-Gulenist fervor following the coup, it seems that many analysts within the CHP camp, the only substantial and still legitimate opposition voice in Turkey, didn't stop to ask whether they were in dereliction of their democratic duty by not digging into the intricacies of the coup and to investigate the mass arrests of people who appear guilty of nothing more than association. 

Too little, too late

The opposition's lack of strategy was made further evident by the fickleness of its party leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who first turned down an invitation made by Turkey’s powerful president to join in July's truly massive National Unity rally; Kilicdaroglu later reversed course and accepted, despite the purge already being in full swing. This massive rally brought millions to the rally site of Yenikapi, and despite the fact that Kilicdaroglu did use the stage to mark a middle road, his performance was blurred by its weak contrast to Erdogan, who stood firm as the unchallenged President of the Republic.

As the voices of opposition have grown stronger among the CHP, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim has promised that crisis desks will be set up in order to work with people wrongly accused in the purge, a problem that also Erdogan has recognized. However, Yildirim has also discarded the claim by the CHP that the decree laws set out by the state of emergency are unconstitutional, leaving the opposition little hope that they will be able to stop the purges' proliferation. In other words, the CHP’s challenge to the decree of a national state of emergency was far overdue.  

The failed coup attempt offered Turkey’s government the chance to turn over a new leaf; to show a clear legal and moral intention to distinguish, by means of a transparent and fair process, between the Gulenists (and perhaps other factions) in the army and civil arena who were actively behind the coup and those many thousands, or tens of thousands, who were swept up with them. 

The CHP’s inability to seize the moment and strongly condemn the arbitrary extent and nature of the purges from the start was a critical failure, and one that serves to undermine its integrity and sustainability as an opposition force. Despite tentative but welcome signs from the CHP towards highlighting the exponential injustices of Turkey's ongoing purge, it still seems like a classic case of acting too little, too late. 

**This article appeared in Haaretz on September 20, 2016. Click here to link

First They Came for Turkey's Journalists, Then Their Academics*

On one of my last nights during a recent stay in Istanbul, I made my way down to a restaurant, just off the main pedestrian avenue of Istiklal Caddesi in the Beyoglu neighborhood. Arriving a bit late, the table was already full of old and new friends, mostly academics and journalists, some Turkish, and others foreigners. Not surprisingly, in no time the conversation took a turn towards President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s recent attack on the country’s academics, which lead to a wave of arrests and investigations of university professors, and left us debating which of our colleagues could be left unemployed or threatened with sanctions. 

In fact, Turkish academicians could increasingly find themselves in a similar position to Turkish journalists – that is to say, in a precarious and intimidating situation. 

Just two months ago, Can Dundar, the editor of Cumhuriyet, one of Turkey’s leading opposition dailies, was arrested together with his colleague Erdem Gul, for publishing a story on an alleged Turkish arms transfer to Syrian rebels. Both are facing life sentences on charges of aiding a terrorist organization, and threatening to overthrow the government, a punishment the Washington Post recently described as ‘shocking’ and a further sign of Erdogan’s efforts to move ‘away from democracy and into the abyss of authoritarianism and ignorance.’

In addition to journalists, private businesses and media outlets with alleged ties to the Gulen movement have had their companies seized by the government. This is before mentioning the growing number of Turkish citizens receiving jail time and court-ordered financial penalties for crimes related to defaming Erdogan. Earlier this month, a woman was sentenced to 11 months in jail for making a rude gesture at Erdogan at a political rally in 2014.

Academicians have become the latest target of Erdogan, and the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, a professor himself, following the issuing of a petition they signed condemning the Turkish military and state operations taking place in Turkey’s Kurdish regions. In the petition, 1,128 Turkish academics, together with international signatories, such as Noam Chomsky, Immanuel Wallerstein, and David Harvey, stated: “We, as academics and researchers working on and/or in Turkey, declare that we will not be a party to this massacre by remaining silent and demand an immediate end to the violence perpetrated by the state.” The petition highlighted what it described as systematic collective punishment. 

Erdogan lashed out at the Turkish signatories, calling them “academic terror actors,” rhetorically claiming they support PKK terrorist acts. These words come upon earlier statements accusing them of “falling into the pit of treachery”, with him stating, "in a state of law like Turkey, so-called academics who target the unity of our nation have no privilege to commit crimes...they don’t have immunity.”

With the continued strife in Turkey, it is not hard to imagine why the petition was organized. Since the November 2015 snap-elections, when the AKP managed to regain its parliamentary majority, the Turkish government has set at all its energies on rooting out any PKK presence from Kurdish populated regions, at a heavy cost to the civilian population. The government itself initiated talks with the PKK aimed at a peaceful resolution of the decades-old conflict that has led to the death of over 30,000 since the 1980s, reaching a ceasefire in 2013. 

When this peace process collapsed last summer, Turkey’s leaders - rather than working to breathe new life into the talks - opted to take the PKK head on in a military confrontation. However, whereas in the past the Turkish security forces’ opponents were guerilla fighters in the surrounding mountains, the Kurdish resistance is now located in the heart of the cities, often taking on the characteristics of a popular uprising. 

In the numerous major urban centers under curfew, such as Silopi, and Cizre, and the Sur neighborhood of Diyarbakir, to name a few, the situation is dire. According to the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TIHV), between August 16-Janauary 21, a total of 58 curfews have been implemented by the state, leading to the death of at least 198 civilians, among which 39 are children. Amnesty International describes the curfews as “crippling,” and that they “don’t allow people to leave their houses…effectively laying siege to entire neighborhoods,” placing the “lives of tens of thousands at risk.” 

Pictures emerging of these cities show major destruction, such as this video from the Sur district of Diyarbakir, suggestive of a major warzone. Further, personal stories, such as that of Taybet Inan, show us the extent of human suffering. Last month, Inan, a 57-year old mother to eleven children, was shot dead by the security forces. In attempt to retrieve the body, her brother-in-law was also shot dead, while her bereaved husband was wounded. In the end, her dead body laid out in the open for seven days until the family was finally able to retrieve it for burial. In the last two weeks alone, it has been reported that at least 10 people have met a similar fate, with ambulances unable to reach them in time to take them to local hospitals for treatment.  

Any questioning of the government’s policy towards its war on the PKK can lead to serious accusations of supporting the terror group. In one case, in late December, a university lecturer in Amasya was detained as she finished lecturing for allegedly spreading terrorist propaganda. A student had reported to the police her alleged discussion of human rights violations even before the lecture was over. In addition to being detained, her office was searched, and police seized documents. Fortunately, for her, the court found the claim baseless and released her. However, this demonstrates to what extent academics are in danger of having their words twisted, the result of which could even be to land them in jail. 

Now with this group of academics speaking out against government policy, the threat of sanctions against them seems more real than ever. In the first round, twenty-seven academics were detained for singing the petition; the state prosecution claimed they were promoting terror propaganda. They have been released pending trial, however the Supreme Education Board announced that it would be taking legal action against all the local academics who signed it. Even if the case does not result in official charges, already 29 of the signatories, from among nine public and private universities throughout Turkey, have been suspended from their work place, in what one Turkish news outlet, Diken, is calling a witch-hunt. 

As of late last week, 85 professors and 6 graduate students at Istanbul University and Yildiz Technical University are facing an internal investigation by their universities, with Yildiz’s administration claiming they “publicly insulted the Turkish Nation, the state of the Republic of Turkey, Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Government of the Turkish Republic and the judicial organs of the state as well as propagandized for the terrorist organization.” In such an atmosphere, it is not hard to imagine that many more academics from the 89 universities in which they work are feeling the backlash, not least, for the younger scholars who signed the petition, being blocked from future job opportunities. 

Back at the restaurant, our conversation almost seemed like déjà vu: We had spoken in the past in very similar terms about journalists, in addition to our regular discussions about what the future holds for Turkey, and for those who do not see eye-to-eye with the government. 

Turkey seems to be headed for stony days for both its civilians’ security and for free speech. If its government does not reach some type of understanding with the PKK, the melting of the snow, which traditionally reignites fighting between the Turkish army and the PKK, together with spring’s warmth, could spell much more difficult days than now. This of course is not even addressing the recent ISIS bombing in the heart of the tourist center of Sultanahmet, which killed 11 German visitors, and the serious challenges it poses for tourism, as well as a sluggish economy.  

As we were about to part ways, I sipped my last bit of raki and whispered to myself the Turkish drinking toast: en kötü günümüz böyle olsun (may such times be the worst of our days). Usually, this is meant to be express the sunny feeling that all our days be just as happy like the current moment. But with Turkey’s days looking more and more difficult, I saw it differently, thinking that we should hope that we do not see even worse days than the current ones, with all of us knowing that indeed things can get worse. The days the AKP ruling party provided hope are long over. 

As I made my way back up Istiklal, all seemed eerily normal, as it must in many parts of Turkey. Despite that, as Turkey’s instability becomes more palpable, most Turkish citizens have some awareness that something has gone terribly wrong. That is a feeling that will remain and cannot be conveniently excised, even if the silencing of dissent deepens and becomes even more institutionalized. 

*This article appeared in Haaretz on February 4, 2106. Click here for article

Davutoglu’s Juggling Act: Can Turkey’s Re-elected PM Offer a More Moderate Future?*

This week, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s interim prime minister and the head of the religiously conservative Justice and Development Party (the AK Party), scored an astounding victory at the polls, sweeping almost 50 percent of the vote. 

Few could have imagined that the not-so-charismatic professor turned politician would be able to salvage his party from its poor standing in the June election, when his party received 40.7 percent of the vote, ending the party’s three term, 13-year, sole-rule of the country.  

As for the three other parties, the mostly secular main opposition party, the People’s Republican Party (CHP) faired about the same as it did in June, receiving about 25 percent of the vote. 
The real story of the night, however, was the sharp drop in support for the National Action Party (MHP), which fell over 4 points, coming in with only about 12 percent of the vote. The mostly Kurdish leftist party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (or HDP), which in June shocked all by crossing the ten-percent threshold with 13.7 percent of the vote, this time barely crossed it, with just under 11 percent of the vote. Needless to say, the election results came as a major blow to those voters of the CHP and the HDP, in addition to independent citizens, worried about Turkey’s future as a democracy. 

Furthermore, the initial shock was compounded by the failure of the vast majority of polls to predict that the AKP would repeat its election victory of 2011; the slight upward turn in the pre-election polls turned out to be a major understatement. Indeed, for many in the opposition, the election results were literally a slap in the face. So what happened? How is it that within five months the country’s politics have returned to a very similar place to where it was last June, with both the AKP and CHP having almost the same number of seats in the parliament that they had had before? 

First and foremost, credit for this "regressive triumph" must go to Davutoglu, who led a focused campaign, and understood that Erdogan’s intense campaigning in the months leading up to the previous, June elections did more harm than good. Erdogan then had deliberately overshadowed Davutoglu, undermining his role, and in his usual polarizing way, created a great deal of unnecessary controversy. 

This second round of elections was in effect forced on Davutoglu by Erdogan. After the last elections, which didn't produce the supermajority that the AKP sought, Erdogan pressured the prime minister not to enter a coalition government with the CHP, forcing Davutoglu to take his chances with a new popularity test at the polls. 

But it is Davutoglu who has now created an important balance between the two leaders. On the one hand, Davutoglu provided Erdogan with his due respect as the “leader,” by never short-changing or challenging Erdogan’s quest for extended presidential powers; in return, Erdogan remained “presidential” and more or less above party politics. This agreement seems to have been reached this September, at the AKP convention, when more and more disgruntled voices were emerged in the party, growing impatient with Erdogan’s often irrational behavior.  

The AKP’s gain can also be attributed to the other parties’ lack of ability in retaining their votes or gaining more electoral traction. Firstly, the AKP successfully pulled votes away from the MHP through its message that the AKP held the key to stability, as fighting between the PKK and the Turkish security forces entered a dangerous new round following the collapse of the peace process. Further, the poor political maneuvering of the MHP leader, Devlet Bahceli, was edged out by the AKP’s hyped-up nationalist rhetoric.  

As for the CHP, even if Kemal Kilicdaroglu, its leader, has consolidated the party’s powerbase, he has not been able to transform the party into one that embraces more conservative voices: He is not much of a coalition-builder and is not a particularly charismatic leader, whose 25 percent seems to be an election ceiling for the party 

The Kurdish-associated HDP, and the other opposition parties for that fact, can breathe a sigh of relief that it was able to cross the threshold for a second time; if it had not, the AKP could easily have reached the 367 seats needed to allot new powers to Erdogan, which would have set the stage for Turkey’s descent into a more authoritarian state than it has already become. 

However, the HDP's image has been badly dented. The HDP was able to create a special dynamic of change and hope for the Kurdish issue in the lead-up to the June elections, but afterwards, once the peace process began to break down, its inability to persuade the outlawed Kurdish Worker’s Party (the PKK) to halt its violence highlighted a major weakness of the party, which led more conservative Kurdish voters to return back to the ranks of the AKP.

At the same time, the attacks against HDP offices and affiliated businesses, even as the police turned a blind eye, coupled with the rampant state of violence in the majority-Kurdish cities, which have been subjected to extended curfews, did not provide the HDP with a chance to relive its impressive pre-June campaign, as it was preoccupied with the daily struggles of its constituency, not to mention the two ISIS-led suicide attacks on HDP-affiliated political gatherings.  

While it is too early to understand the greater trends of these elections, it is clear that the AKP’s winning 317 seats in parliament (a number that is subject to change with later electoral adjustments) returns the party to a very similar bind to the one it was in before. It is still short of the 330 seats needed to bring constitutional changes via a referendum, or the much higher 367 needed for the party to pass constitutional changes without putting them to a popular vote. 

In other words, this election was no more of a landslide victory than past AKP wins. However, only time will be able to answer the pressing question of whether Davutoglu will be able to balance the various factions in parliament and create a new atmosphere of change. He has shown some talent for difficult juggling acts – not least, he has just managed Erdogan's pressures on him and with the electoral need to minimize Erdogan's presence in the election campaign. 

With the increasing polarization of the electorate, the continued clamp-down on the press and personal freedoms, the timing for change could not better. 

*This article appeared in Haaretz on November 3, 2015. Click here for article 

Bombings, Bans and the Ballot-box Turkey on Edge*

No words can express the tragedy that hit Turkey last Saturday, when over 100 people were killed and hundreds more injured following a twin suicide-bomb attack at a peace rally in the capital Ankara. The rally was sponsored by labor unions, heavily attended by the mostly Kurdish left HDP party, and joined by a symbolic representation from the main opposition party, the CHP.

Just hours after the attack, the Turkish government declared an official three-day mourning period in recognition of the nation’s largest terrorist attack ever. The finger of blame is increasingly being pointed at Islamic State, or ISIS, sympathizers. However, rather than uniting Turkey, the bombing only has strengthened existing divisions.  

After the initial shock of the sheer scope of the bombing, anger was the reaction of many to the bombing - directed at the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the religiously conservative AKP interim-election government, led by the Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. For many Turkish citizens it was no surprise that such an attack had happened to begin with.  

Over the course of the last few months, the mostly Kurdish HDP has been the target of violent attacks, including a deadly bomb attack at their election rally just two days before the June 7 parliamentary elections, and an ISIS linked-suicide attack targeting a socialist youth group affiliated with the HDP on July 20, killing 33. These major security breaches made it clear to all that another attack was highly likely. Last month, HDP offices around Turkey were vandalized and burnt to the ground in racist attacks, with the police remaining largely indifferent.

Of course, things soured for Erdogan’s AKP following those June elections, when it lost its parliamentary majority, and the HDP crossed the 10% voter threshold. This lead to political deadlock, since the AKP was not able to form either a coalition with the main opposition CHP, or a narrow government with the nationalist MHP, leading the country to snap-elections to be held on November 1.

Both Erdogan and Davutoglu have done their utmost to delegitimize the HDP, a campaign that began even before the June general elections, once it was clear that the HDP would not support Erdogan’s quest to allocate further extensive powers to the presidency that he holds. Following the elections, the embryonic peace process facilitated by Kurdish MPs between the outlawed Kurdish separatist movement, the PKK, and the Turkish state collapsed, both sides now fully immersed in fighting each other.  

Following the Ankara attack, HDP’s head, Selahattin Demirtas, lashed out at the government claiming not only was it delinquent in preventing the bombing but that members of the state institutions were also complicit in the attack. No evidence was provided, but for some in Turkey such a damning accusation didn’t seem so far from an obvious truth; many others believe that Ankara has consistently turned a blind eye to ISIS sympathizers, with fatal results.

While the AKP denies these claims as completely preposterous, Turkey’s long history of its intelligence services working within its own autonomous and unaccountable set of rules fuels such claims. Indeed, on Wednesday an Ankara court upheld the government’s request for a complete media blackout on the bombing (covering “all kinds of news, interviews, criticism and similar publications in print, visual, social media and all kinds of Internet media”) only heightening the suspicion that few details will ever come to light. The ban came into effect just as reports that the suicide bombers had been identified; both were known to the  police and intelligence services, one suspect's brother is said to have committed a suicide bombing blamed on ISIS only three months earlier 

The fear that the full account of the attack will never come to light is hardly unfounded in recent Turkish history: in the past, when the media was banned from reporting on specific events, such as the 2011 Uludere affair (34 Kurdish civilians mistakenly believed to be PKK terrorists killed in an airstrike), or the 2014 alleged transfer of Turkish arms to Islamist radical groups in Syria, perhaps even to ISIS, the censorship seemed to have been aimed at covering up government complicity, with the benefit of a complete lack of transparency.

The media ban is the latest expression of an accelerating clampdown on a free press in Turkey. Just a day before the bombing the editor of the English-language newspaper Todays Zaman, Bulent Kenes, was arrested on live television for allegedly “insulting” Erdogan, while two other journalists joined a long list of other citizens found guilty of insulting Erdogan. Fortunately this week Kenes was released but still faces prison if found guilty.

Sadly, the Ankara bombing victims make up just part of Turkey’s rampant death toll during the last few months. Since the June elections, over 600 Turkish citizens have been killed, whether in terrorist attacks, or Turkish security forces by the PKK, or in operations carried out by the Turkish army in the southeast of the country which is under partial military curfew, or PKK fighters (who are also Turkish citizens) killed by the army. Indeed, during the elections Erdogan insisted that only an absolute AKP majority would ensure Turkey’s “peaceful” transition to a new presidential system, leaving many to believe that he was actually threatening the electorate, and that things could get messy if it did not give the AKP a clear majority. Regardless of what he actually meant, his prediction seems to have been right on.

The AKP has radically failed on numerous fronts. If it had not been for the main opposition CHP leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, whose leadership bridges the country’s dangerous political polarization, and the determination of the opposition parties, Turkey could have very well have run off the rails of democracy by now. However, a culture of fear is consolidating in Turkey, and its effects will reverberate not only over the coming fortnight preceding the general elections, but in the weeks and months following it as well.

This week, Turkey’s national football team took on Iceland in the conservative city of Konya, an AKP stronghold. Jeers and whistles marred the moment of silence for those killed in Ankara. The lessons of the bombing have clearly still not been learnt.

*This article appeared in Haaretz on 15 October 2015, please click here for article.

Turkey's Snap Election: One Month to go (Turkey November 2015 election, part 1)

Turkish Snap Elections 2015: An Intro

In exactly one month, on November 1, Turkish voters will return to a new round of elections, following the failure of the religious conservative AKP to form a coalition government with the secular-orientated CHP, the nationalist MHP, or the mostly-Kurdish leftist HDP. It seemed clear from the past that this was an impossible feat, with the three other parties staunchly opposing AKP’s plan to transfer new powers to the nation’s president (and its former party leader and prime minister), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, essentially creating a “super-presidency.”

The fact that the AKP was not able to form a government was no surprise; in fact the only surprising part of the whole election was the party’s dwindling show at the ballot box, receiving just over 40% of the vote, down almost 9% from the 2011 vote. This of course was caused when the HDP crossed the 10% parliamentary threshold—a remnant of the 1980 Coup—and one that was kept in place by the AKP despite 13 years of single-party rule and promises to rid the country of the remnants of the coup.  

For my analysis of the June elections, please click link

Since the election however Turkey has seen some of its bleakest days in over a decade, once again locked in conflict with the PKK, with the Turkish security forces taking heavy blows. Let us remember that the peace process with the Kurds entitled the AKP and Erdogan continued support; however, as I stated recently in an article in Haaretz (related to the AKP’s Grand Congress):

“the days of hope have been buried with the widespread belief that Erdogan instigated the renewed violence in order to delegitimize the HDP and ensure the AKP’`s stability and electoral support. The question of whether the lives of soldiers, policemen and innocent civilians could have been spared by doing its utmost to keep the peace process on track will forever loom over the AKP.”

Therefore, placing aside whether Erdogan bears some responsiblity for the violence, the quick unravelling of the peace process, the growing number of dead (from among civilians and security forces), and the subjecting of large parts of the population to military curfews, is ample proof that the AKP’s peace process was wrongly mapped out from the start, and despite the best of intentions of many involved, it has turned into a massive failure. 

Nevertheless, even if a failure, on the flip side, the AKP can be credited with placing the process on the daily agenda and thus paving the way for a possible future deal.  

Now to the elections….

So the question is how do you hold elections in this terrible state of violence and turbulent times? Well, the answer is, the show must go on. And, based on most polls, the Turkish electorate is not about to change their vote, with almost all showing a similar outcome to the previous June 7 elections with Turkey most likely witnessing the fact that the days of AKP’s sole rule is over.

Over the next month, I will be covering different aspects of the election, recapping major points leading up to the vote, and highlighting each points related to each party and its leadership, so stay tuned!