What will Erdoğan do?

Emre Uslu

There is nothing Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can do to hurt the societal groups that oppose him if he acts within the law, because his opponents have not committed any crime. Opposition to Erdoğan is not a crime. However, it is obvious that Erdoğan will not remain within the limits of the law.

During his election campaign, Erdoğan hurled threats at the Hizmet movement and opposition media and business circles during rallies. All opposition groups, from the Doğan Media Group to Koç Holding and the Hizmet movement as well as the country's liberals, received their fair share of threats.

Many people believed that these threats were being used as a political instrument to cover up corruption and graft allegations against the government. In reality, Erdoğan's plans to target opposition groups, primarily the Hizmet movement, Koç Holding and others, had been decided long before the elections.

As a matter of fact, voice recordings that were leaked prior to the elections made it clear that Erdoğan had already made his move to finish off the Koç business group, taking a number of steps to cancel a contract won by Koç as the result of an open tender process. Erdoğan himself has admitted this.

The cancellation of that tender and it being subsequently awarded to a businessman close to Erdoğan was interpreted as support from Erdoğan to businesses who support him. This is far from the truth. Erdoğan couldn't have possibly had that tender cancelled in an attempt to support his own. If that had been his aim, he would have told his chosen businessman to enter the tender and helped him win it. At the very least, he could have made sure that Koç doesn't get the contract. But in the voice recording, Erdoğan is talking with a businessman who did not bid in the tender at all and asks him to apply and request a cancellation. Similarly, the highway tender was first given to the Koç group and then cancelled after intervention by Erdoğan.

This is tantamount to an attempt to finish off the Koç group, which Erdoğan sees as his enemy. In other words, the decision to destroy the Koç group was made long before the elections. He was going to do this not openly but covertly, by gradually producing various excuses. But when resistance against him during the election period from some groups was strong, he started to vocalize this plan. He will likely continue voicing this with the same insistence.

Things are no different for the Hizmet movement. Erdoğan started his attempts to end the Hizmet movement long ago. Erdoğan confirmed the decision to finish the movement, which was first taken during a National Security Council (MGK) meeting at 2004, at the 2007 Dolmabahçe meeting with the top military officers of the time, stating that this would be done gradually over a long period of time. As it turned out, by forming a database of bureaucrats in 2009, they started taking steps in that direction and blacklisting officials in the bureaucracy. Neither Erdoğan nor Justice and Development Party (AKP) deputies hide this. Erdoğan declared this intention more clearly during the election process.

This also applies to the Doğan Group. Unlike the situation with other media groups, he could not appoint a government representative to lead Doğan Group newspapers. More correctly, he did -- but he still failed to mold the media group into the shape he wanted. In fact, he knew that the next step after finishing off Koç would be finishing off Doğan.

So what will Erdoğan do, now that he has won the election?

After taking some measures to shore up the economy, he will act quickly and carry out new operations. He has already started to lay the “legal” groundwork for this. After turning the country into a state run by intelligence units by changes to the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) law, he will try to chop the head off his opponents. After the MİT law is implemented, unsolved assassinations might be part of chopping off heads, because MİT will be accountable to no no one once the law comes into effect.

It is now apparent that Erdoğan will use the court that was established in Ankara by the redesigned Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) to suppress the opposition. As a matter of fact, Erdoğan's lawyers have been visiting prosecutors' offices in the case of the most nonsensical matters. For example, criticism directed by a writer toward Erdoğan is taken to Ankara courts on the charge of “insulting” the prime minister in an attempt to ensure that such cases are heard at Ankara courts. However, in Turkish law, the local court at the location of the publication that ran the article that is the subject of the court proceeding should hear such lawsuits. This example is clear enough to show the degree of pressure on the opposition.

The political climate needed for pressuring every group which Erdoğan deems is in opposition has been created using the MİT law. We can completely forget about the perfunctory democracy and legal order of Turkey.

Published on Today's Zaman, 02 April 2014, Wednesday