Fifty plus

İhsan Yılmaz

I just returned from a trip to India, where I attended a three-day meeting of around 25 academics, ambassadors, former politicians and so on.

The meeting was about Asia's future, but I will write about that in my next piece. Now, I want to focus on a few important issues about Turkey that were raised by some participants during coffee breaks or over lunch, dinner and so on.

I also went to India about one and a half years ago. My observation is that Turkey's image has changed tremendously since my last visit. This is, of course, based on my experiences at academic meetings I attended and the conversations I had with colleagues from 16 different Asian countries. I am in no way suggesting that this is a conclusive and rigorous scientific endeavor, but this should be a starting point for Turkey to ask some questions about its image, both to itself and the outside world.

My recent observations in India reconfirm that Turkey has been losing its glamour, its shining star image and thus its soft power. It is now seen as a country that is drifting away from the European Union, that keeps shouting at others and that is leaning towards an illiberal, even authoritarian democracy.

My colleagues kept asking questions about Turkey's missile “deal” with China, its strained relations with the EU, its worsening relations with Egypt, its perceived bias towards the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), its distant and cold approach to India, its so-called alcohol ban, the debate on university students living in mixed-gender houses and so on. They could not understand why Turkey was so harsh on the brutal Bashar al-Assad regime while it took a softer and much more measured approach and response to the initial phases of the Libyan and Egyptian revolutions. I must note that they were especially struck by the Gezi Park events.

My conversation partners were not the typical men in the street. These people have lived in several countries as ambassadors and diplomats or are professors of international relations, political science or sociology. And they have a fair knowledge of Turkish matters, though they are not experts on Turkey. Yet, they were confused about the Gezi Park protests. Their confusion stemmed from a few issues, such as the fact that Turkey is a democracy, not an authoritarian regime akin to the pre-Arab Spring regimes of Tunisia or Egypt. They also noted that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) commands about 50 percent of the vote, and the opposition parties are very weak. They could not understand why Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could not handle the protests, which started as a reaction to the AKP's plan to build a shopping center in the only green space left in Taksim Square.

Some of my interlocutors suspected that Erdoğan had a grand plan in mind and was playing a larger game. I, however, disagreed with them. I noted that some advisors and columnists close to him suggested that the tension caused by the Gezi protests would increase the AKP's share of the vote. Previously, this was also my conclusion. Erdoğan was trying to polarize society intentionally, in order to consolidate his voters. But I am no longer certain of this.

I am not sure that Erdoğan has a well-crafted strategy. I say this because, just before the elections, he is trying to inflict very serious harm on the Hizmet Movement by closing down its hundreds of tutorial centers and prep schools in Turkey.

Normally one would expect him to do this after the elections, but he has not. Now I will speculate. I think there may be three contradictory reasons behind it. First, he is becoming extremely self-confident, and he thinks that the Hizmet Movement, its sympathizers, active members, Zaman's readership, which is 1 million, and STV's audience will trust him over Fethullah Gülen, Zaman or STV.

The second contradictory reason is that if President Abdullah Gül runs as a presidential candidate, Erdoğan will have a tough time, so the latter is trying to create fear among Hizmet members by punishing them and promising more punishment if they do not swear absolute allegiance to him and stay away from Gül.

Third, he is incredibly worried that even if Gül does not run, any other reasonable candidate may be preferred by more than 50 percent of the people, who have had enough of Erdoğan's proud, aggressive attitude of recent times, as well as his advisors, his columnist friends and "his newspapers.”

Published on Today's Zaman, 20 November 2013, Wednesday