Dictatorship In Erdogan's Turkey – Part II: The Domestic Scene On The Eve Of Crucial General Elections

The 12-year rule of Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) is becoming defined by pan-Islamism in domestic and foreign policy, an authoritarian single-man/single-party rule, Turkey's transformation into a police state, mass arrests, curbs on press freedom, elimination of the judiciary's independence, nepotism, and societal polarization. The June 7 general election will determine whether Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan can become a constitutional absolute ruler as he seeks to do, or whether his era has come to an end. 

Turkey's AKP party emerged in 2002 promising much-desired democratic reforms that would put Turkey on a fast track to become a EU member state. To date, the party has won three general elections and two local elections, but democracy and freedoms in the country have been progressively lost. The authoritarian, and oppressive approach of the ruling AKP discourages any form of dissent, while nepotism and corruption have peaked. Although Turkey has a parliamentary system of government, in which the president is a nonpartisan figurehead, and although at his August 2014 presidential inauguration he swore to defend the constitution and to remain apolitical and unbiased, Erdogan has violated all these, and operates as if he is still chairman of the ruling AKP, undermining Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu (also AKP) in his function as head of the executive branch. Nearly every day, Erdogan addresses mass election rallies on behalf of the AKP, as does Prime Minister Davutoglu; he attacks opposition parties, and is currently seeking votes that will give AKP a supermajority in the next parliament, so that it can singlehandedly change the constitution and the system of government to one headed by a super-presidency that would make him an absolute ruler with no checks and balances. While Erdogan is already operating like a super-president, he wants this anchored in the constitution.

Erdogan's sectarian Islamist policies have divided the country, and his neo-Ottoman and pan-Islamist foreign policy has transformed the NATO-member, EU-member-candidate Turkey into a country sympathetic to and supportive of terrorist organizations and at odds with the West and Western values. As the country faces general elections on June 7, 2015, the once secular, democratic, and Westernized Turkey that the West had hoped would be a model for the rest of the Middle East is fast becoming an undemocratic, Islamist, country itself.

The following report summarizes the AKP's takeover of Turkey's democratic institutions, including media, judiciary, education, and more; its suppression of criticism of it; Erdogan's vendettas and fears and the adulation accorded to him in the AKP; and the elections that will determine the future of Turkey. 

Turkey's Democratic Institutions Fall Under One-Party Rule


Taking Over The Media
Throughout the 12 years of AKP rule, and particularly in its most recent term since the 2011 parliamentary elections, Erdogan has intimidated mainstream media, arbitrarily imposed billions of dollars in penalties on media group owners, had prominent journalists fired by blackmailing their employers, taken over large media groups and had them purchased by his Islamist friends and relatives so that they could be turned into AKP government mouthpieces and pro-AKP organs. The pro-AKP media act as the government's arm, threaten opposition voices, and display hostility towards minorities. Often, 10 different newspapers have the same government-dictated front page headline.[1]


Taking Over The Judiciary
During the AKP's 12 years of rule, democratic institutions in Turkey are increasingly losing their independence and impartiality; the most important of these is the judiciary. Erdogan has appointed hundreds of high-court judges and prosecutors from within his own circle to replace those he does not like – leaving the citizens of the country with nowhere to turn in seeking justice. After it removed and imprisoned the prosecutors who in December 2013 investigated Turkey's most extensive corruption and bribery cases ever, implicating government ministers and their family members as well as Erdogan himself and his family, the government had the cases closed, and imposed a strict gag order. Later in 2014, the implicated AKP government ministers were whitewashed of any crime via parliamentary vote. In May 2015, two judges were arrested and imprisoned for ordering the release of a detained media figure and of a number of police officers accused of affiliation with the Gulen movement – headed by Erdogan's former ally and now foe, the U.S.-based Turkish Islamist cleric Fethullah Gulen. The ruling, which angered Erdogan, was not implemented because the judiciary's computer network was immediately shut down by the government and, on Erdogan's orders, the ruling was hastily overturned. The judges, now in prison, are the first in Turkey's history to be incarcerated for their rulings; they are being charged with "belonging to an armed terrorist organization."[2] Additionally, the physician wife of one of the judges was fired from her position at a university hospital following her husband's arrest, with no reason provided other than that the request had come from very high up.
Many prominent jurists and other legal and constitutional experts in Turkey have lamented the demise of the rule of law in the country, and the judiciary's bowing to the AKP. According to the recently published "Democracy Inspection Report 2015," prepared by the European academic project Democracy Meetings with Young Citizens, which met in April in Istanbul, Turkey has reached a stalemate regarding the separation of powers, independence of the judiciary, freedom of expression and thought, and existence of an independent media. The report also stated: "The new legislation and the amendments to the laws has brought the judiciary under the control of the government, which is against the basic principle of the separation of powers in a democracy."[3]


Financial Institutions Under Pressure
In February 2015, Erdogan harshly attacked Central Bank Governor Ethem Basci for failing to lower interest rates to the level that he had demanded; faced with the criticism that the central bank must remain independent, he called Basci a "traitor," saying that he was "under the influence of external forces" and "dependent on foreign elements and interest lobbies [in Western countries] that are plotting against Turkey's economy." His weeks-long relentless attacks on Basci and also on Deputy Prime Minister for Economic Affairs Ali Babacan caused the Turkish Lira to plummet against the dollar, and brought the two officials to the brink of resignation.[4]


Erdogan's Political Vendetta Against Once-Staunch Ally, The Fethullah Gulen Movement
Since the December 17 and December 25, 2013 probes for corruption and bribery, Erdogan has conducted a fierce witch hunt against Fethullah Gulen and his followers, removing thousands of bureaucrats suspected of ties to Gulen from the country's security apparatus and judiciary. Hundreds of security officials and police chiefs are being arrested and prosecuted for allegedly belonging to the Gulen movement. Naming the Gulen movement the "parallel state," Erdogan has designated it an "armed terrorist organization" and "a threat to national security that works to topple the government," with the help of the U.S. and of Israel's Mossad.[5] He said that the government was now entering Gulen's "dens" and swore to fight every member of the movement, including businessmen, journalists, civil society and charity organizations, teachers, imams, donors to charities, and all others inspired by Gulen – who were in fact instrumental in bringing the AKP to power in the first place.[6] In dawn operations all over Turkey, hundreds are currently being arrested and charged with "membership in an armed terrorist organization, and plotting a coup to oust the government." The government also is demanding that the U.S. extradite Gulen for leading such an organization, describing him as a "No. 1 criminal."[7]


Islamization of Education
Under the AKP, Turkey's educational system has been transformed, and is now largely Islamized. Compulsory religious education, which exclusively teaches Sunni Islam, now begins in elementary school, and madrassa-like Imam Hatip schools are fast replacing the secular schools. The number of students in Imam Hatip schools has climbed to over one million, and the government is urging that this number be quintupled in the next five years. Erdogan's own son Bilal is operating as an education minister, organizing meetings facilitated by governors, with regional educators of the Islamic schools and other Islamist foundations. There is also a plan to separate the sexes in non-Islamic schools and student residences, and to deny requests for permits for building new coed schools. In 2013, Erdogan publicly opposed coed accommodations for university students.[8]
On February 19, 2012, Erdogan openly announced his vision for the creation of a devout Muslim youth, a youth that "claims his religion, language, brain, science, honor, home, hatred and revenge." He was quoting from a poem by Necip Fazil Kisakurek, an idol of his, who had shaped many of Turkey's Islamists. The idea of a "hating youth," which disturbed many in Turkey, referred to a youth that hated the West and non-Muslims.[9] Such sentiments, and the general atmosphere in the country, have surely contributed to the emergence of nine million Islamic State (ISIS) sympathizers in Turkey.[10]
Additionally, Erdogan has recently promoted the compulsory teaching of Ottoman Turkish, that is, with Arabic script, in all high schools.

Intimidation Of Erdogan's Critics
Journalists, citizens of all walks of life, including academics, actors, artists, students, and young teens who criticize the government and its policies on social media, even by "liking" another person's post, have found police at their doorstep or in their classrooms with an arrest warrant for "insulting" Erdogan.[11]


http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/8598.htm


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