Erdogan chooses repression

Now, when three weeks have gone by since the Turkish crisis began, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has definitively opted for confrontation. Sunday’s disturbances in Istanbul, with further large numbers of arrests and renewed police brutality, mark a new low in the story of the protests over the planned development of Gezi Park. Erdogan’s incendiary language, and the fact that he is resorting to mass mobilization of his own adherents through counter-demonstrations, point to a dangerous escalation of intimidation. The situation is growing darker as we see the first confrontations, in Istanbul and other cities, between Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development party sympathizers and anti-government demonstrators.

A crisis that ought to have been handled with moderation has heated up to a level of polarization and violence that portends no good for a country that holds immense geopolitical importance; whose government cultivates the image of being a model of Islamic democracy combined with booming regional power. Erdogan is now using what is frankly an unacceptably insulting and combative tone. On Sunday he promised severe punishment, not only for the demonstrators (“terrorists”), but also for the doctors and nurses who have given them first aid, and for the hotel owners to have given them shelter. This punishment is to be administered “one by one.”

Arrogance prevents Erdogan from rightly appreciating the depth of the rift in Turkish society between the religious and political conservatism that basically supports him, and the widespread secularism of an urban middle class that forms the center of gravity of the protest. The people who have been coming out in the streets in recent days at grave risk to their own safety (those injured already number in the thousands) are citizens who are fed up with the threat to basic liberties represented by the governing party and its drift toward the imposition of Islamist social mores on the people (almost half of the electorate) who did not vote for it.

The protest that began in Taksim Square has contributed to a decisive drop in Erdogan’s international credit. Even among his acolytes, doubts are beginning to arise as to whether the most popular of Turkish politicians is fit to remain at the helm. Events point clearly to the undesirability of Erdogan’s becoming the next president of the Republic, with executive powers made to his own measure — an outcome that seemed likely just a few weeks ago. The demagogic instinct for confrontation he has since shown is incompatible with the role of statesman and arbitrator demanded by such an office.

Turkey has never been a democracy in the strict sense of the word. Nor is it a democracy under Erdogan, even if he enjoys the backing of large numbers of voters.