Erdoğan and Gül's futile fight against freedoms

İhsan Yılmaz

By using the recent Internet law signed by President Abdullah Gül, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has tried to silence Twitter.

Gül had been warned about this, but he preferred not to lend an ear to those warnings. He is an intelligent politician from Kayseri; of he course knows what he is doing. He does not want to retire, and he either wants to be re-elected as president or become the prime minister. For both he has decided to rely on Erdoğan's staunch and religiously loyal 30 percent of the vote. He wants to alienate neither Erdoğan nor his voters. Yet he also wants to play the good cop, since he needs 50 percent to be re-elected. Thus, while on the one hand he will not veto any anti-democratic legislation, on the other, he ostensibly criticizes anti-democratic practices. It seems that as in the case of Erdoğan, either his advisers are not giving him good advice or he is not listening to them. Turkey is no longer the Turkey of 2001. Gül and Erdoğan may continue to “convince” rural, uneducated, older and suburban voters with Süleyman Demirel-type tactics, but the millions of young Internet users are not stupid. I am not sure about the local elections, but both Erdoğan and Gül will pay a heavy price for their anti-democratic acts. The president is the head of the executive, but so far he has done nothing but sign every law Erdoğan sends him and then merely complain. The judiciary is no longer independent in Turkey, and this has been done with the help of Gül.

Gül has simply confirmed my prediction. A few weeks ago, I wrote here: “Gül either wants to be re-nominated for the presidential elections or if Erdoğan wants to be the president, Gül wants to be the prime minister. Gül definitely needs more than the [Justice and Development Party] AKP voters. Thus, on the one hand, he wants to stick to his pro-Western, pro-democracy, pro-Gezi, pro-human rights, pro-universal standards and pro-EU image. This gives him huge international and domestic prestige, so that even non-AKP voters have liked him. Nevertheless, on the other hand, he does not want to antagonize the staunch Erdoğan supporters. It seems that about 30 percent of the voters are staunch and very loyal supporters of Erdoğan. This voter base has been radicalized by Erdoğan. They see anyone who objects to Erdoğan as a traitor. Mr. Gül does not want to be seen as a traitor, so he has not sent the Internet bill back to Parliament to be modified. Normally he has the veto power for exactly this reason. He has chosen Erdoğan's 30 percent, not the universal, democratic and human rights-friendly standards.”

I also wrote: “The executive has been accusing the judiciary of staging a coup against a democratically elected government, and it has been trying to control the judiciary. The president's constitutional duty is to sort out the differences so that the state is run smoothly. Yet, despite the calls from liberal intellectuals and several other groups, he has largely been inactive and very passive.”

Erdoğan's Twitter ban has reconfirmed our warnings. This issue is not about a fight between the Hizmet movement and the AKP. It is a fight between Erdoğan and democracy. And unfortunately, AKP politicians such as Abdullah Gül, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu, Deputy Prime Minister Ali Babacan, Numan Kurtulmuş, Deputy Chairman Süleyman Soylu and journalists including Fehmi Koru, Ali Bayramoğlu, Etyen Mahçupyan, Ahmet Taşgetiren and Gülay Göktürk have been lending Erdoğan huge support in his fight against democracy. It is true that they can come up with extraordinarily sophisticated and philosophical language, but when one scratches the surface of their arguments, their distaste for the Hizmet movement allows them to be lenient about Erdoğan's autocracy. Some of them may seem to criticize Erdoğan's actions too, but they are actually paying lip service to criticism in order to be seen as objective. Otherwise they would use harsh language about Erdoğan's dictatorial tendencies, insults and lies, similar to the ones they employ against the Hizmet movement. Yet they have been extremely soft on Erdoğan. One wonders, "Why?"

Published on Today's Zaman, 21 March 2014, Friday