Erdoğan's limitations

İhsan Yılmaz

As can be understood by Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's statements during a press conference, the Recep Tayyip Erdoğan government's understanding of human rights is extremely limited in scope.

Davutoğlu told a journalist at the meeting that if the journalist was able to go home safely, that means the press is free in Turkey. This is what I have always maintained about the Erdoğan government: The old oligarchic elite would easily arrange for journalists to be killed but the Erdoğan government has been a little more compassionate -- they prefer journalists to starve, not die. That's why the Erdoğan government has directly or indirectly paved the way for the dismissal of many journalists from their jobs and an overwhelming majority of them cannot find jobs since media owners are afraid of employing them.

On the other hand, when we look at Erdoğan and his advisor's physical attacks against protesters in Soma as well as those murdered protesters -- most probably by Erdoğan's police -- during the Gezi protests and in Okmeydanı on Thursday, it is high time to be concerned that Erdoğan's current furious state of mind may be a harbinger of more terrible news for not only press freedoms but for all sorts of freedoms and liberties. Erdoğan still allows some freedoms, albeit in a limited form, not because he is a democrat but because he has some serious limitations.

First and foremost, the economy is his vital limitation. If Turkey was a petro-state like Russia, Iran or Saudi Arabia, it would already have become a one-party regime with a monolithic Erdoğan media. It has not yet happened as Turkey needs an incredible amount of foreign direct investment, constant cash flow from abroad and millions of tourists. It would only be stretching the truth a little to claim that if Turkey was a petro-state with a lot of oil and natural gas, Erdoğan would try to imitate Adolf Hitler or Benito Mussolini, but we can safely assume that he would emulate the Russian, Chinese or Iranian examples, if not the North Korean one. In this imagined model, it would be Erdoğan and not universal standards that would define human rights and liberties and some people -- members of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), family members and cronies -- would be freer than others. Yet, he cannot establish such a system even if he desperately wants to.

The fact that he attended the opening ceremony of Koç Holding's new automobile plant is telling. Erdoğan has constantly been accusing the group of being behind the Gezi protests, of plotting a coup against him, of siding with Germany and the West to topple him, of being in an alliance with the so-called “parallel state” (the Hizmet movement, his new punching bag), etc. He even repeatedly alleged that the pineapples that were brought from Uganda to Koç Holding by a member of the Hizmet movement was actually a coded sinister message between the Hizmet movement and Koç Holding. After saying all those things he was suddenly pictured smiling and laughing together with the Koç family.

It is clear to many that Erdoğan is an opportunistic Machiavellist who does not care much about ethics, morality, principles, honesty, trustworthiness or coherence. As an Italian social scientist friend reminded me, Erdoğan is the Turkish version of Silvio Berlusconi. Perhaps one of the biggest differences is the fact that Berlusconi is a media mogul while Erdoğan was not but Erdoğan now controls more media outlets that Berlusconi could ever dream of. In any case, the fact that Erdoğan had to make peace with Koç Holding shows that he knows very well if he continues to illegally harass the largest business conglomerate in the country, the economy would be adversely affected in the medium term.

Erdoğan has other limitations as well. At least 55 percent of the people simply hate him and as the Gezi protests have shown, if some of these people decide to pour out onto the streets, Erdoğan cannot manage the country and the economy and this will pave the way for his downfall since at least half of his voters vote for him purely for economic reasons. Moreover, he knows very well he cannot fully control the police, the judiciary, the army and the intelligence services. These state organs are full of democrats, leftists, Kemalists, Grey Wolves (ülkücü), freemasons, liberals, Hizmet sympathizers, etc. and Erdoğan knows they will not follow his autocratic and anti-democratic ways. As the recent decisions of the Constitutional Court have shown, they can tell him anytime that “enough is enough” if he dares to change the political system into an arbitrary one-man regime.

Published on Today's Zaman, 23 May 2014, Friday