Category Archives: Istanbul

Erdogan sworn in – but Turkey may face turbulent times

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Recep Tayyip Erdogan  was sworn in as Turkey’s president on Monday, assuming new powers that consolidate his power, already strengthened by post-coup purges and a long-running media clampdown. I covered June’s presidential and parliamentary election for RFI. Here’s what I found on my latest visit to Erdogan’s Turkey.

AKP voters welcome Erdogan to the rally in Eyüp Photo: Tony Cross

”So, are you going to say bad things about our president?” the young man asked, smirking.

He was part of a crowd gathered in the Istanbul district of Eyüp to see Erdogan on his eve-of-poll tour of the city.

The fact of being both a journalist and a foreigner is a guarantee of suspicion in a crowd of the president’s supporters – an indication of the mindset of many of the 26,324,482 who voted for him the following day, 24 June 2018.

In Eyüp the Muslim traditionalism can be seen in the women’s headscarves and long coats, the defensive nationalism makes itself heard in the mistrust of foreign media and the credulous acceptance of conspiracy theories, and the devotion to the leader in the rapturous cheers when he appears.

Waiting for Erdogan in Eyüp Photo: Tony Cross

A call to prayer echoing over the rally failed to put an end to proceedings, although Erdogan himself was careful to leave a decent interval before his appearance on stage.

But there is no denying his supporters’ attachment to their Islamic identity, in defiance of the cosmopolitan middle class that make up the bulk of supporters of Erdogan’s principal opponent, Muharram Ince, who turned out in vast numbers in Istanbul Ankara and Izmir.

Erdogan voters’ nationalism is less easily detected by the naked eye. But it, and an acute case of strong-leader syndrome, are key elements in his appeal.

Economic woes and conspiracy theories

Feeling the pinch – shoppers in Eminömü Photo: Tony Cross

The election result surprised me. Opinion polls had indicated shrinking support for Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). That confirmed what I’d observed last year, when I covered the constitutional referendum: signs of discontent among taxi drivers and small businessmen – surely classic Erdogan supporters – over a worsening economic situation.

Despite growth of 7.5%,  a full-blown crisis has developed, with 12% inflation, the lira tanking on the money markets and the current account deficit ballooning.

I should have made more attention to the interviews I did with shopkeepers in Istanbul’s Eminönü district a week before the election. They were feeling the pinch, especially if they sold imported goods, but most were still keeping the faith.

Sales are always down during Ramadan, which had just ended, some assured me, adding that once the uncertainty of the election had lifted business would look up.

And then there were the conspiracy theories.

“The reason is foreign powers,” audio equipment shop owner Muhammed Akcotoya insisted, echoing Erdogan’s own explanation. “They’re trying to harm Turkey. That’s why they’re making the dollar and the euro higher.”

We’re in the Middle East, whether the Ince crowd like it or not, so conspiracy theories abound on all sides. They did so long before algorithms put us all on a dripfeed of the fake news most suited to our susceptibilities and they show no sign of abating now.

Although the lira perked up after the election, the economic problems are unlikely to go away. So how long will AKP voters carry on making excuses for the leader?

Indefinitely in some cases, one supposes, but the wallet is a sensitive organ. An important part of the AKP’s social base is an Anatolian bourgeoisie that has done will during its years in power and may not look kindly on its living standards being squeezed.

The AKP has also won support for providing social benefits for the poor, whom the secular parties, including the “social democratic” CHP, neglected and often treated with contempt.

The underpriveleged, too, cannot all be expected to remain faithful if inflation continues to eat away at their living standards.

Describing the growth rate as artificially induced “hormonal growth”, economist Mustafa Sönmez told me he expected a slowdown in the second half of the year and predicted big trouble because of the current account deficit.

Fear of such problems was the reason Erdogan brought the election forward by more than a year, according to Sönmez and most other commentators, but the political manoeuvre may not spare him social unrest.

The uses of nationalism

Young men at the pro-Erdogan rally in Istanbul Photo; Tony Cross

The AKP’s religious inspiration is well-documented but its nationalist discourse receives less attention.

Anti-imperialist rhetoric is employed to deflect criticism, economic problems and embarrassing revelations are attributed to foreign plots, and nostalgia for the Ottoman era is invoked to inspire a dream of revived national glory.

Of course, this sort of demagogy is not unique to Turkey. It is increasingly employed by fundamentalist and majoritarian movements in India, Russia, the Philippines, Hungary, Poland … one branch of it is known as “what-aboutery” in Pakistan. The Turkish version means that the excesses of the state of emergency can be dismissed with the observation that France took a similar measure after the Paris attacks.

A foreign journalist gets fallout from this – in a far gentler form than our colleagues who have been arrested in successive purges of the media – not only in suspicion from the crowd at Erdogan rallies, but also in AKP MPs’ assurances that we wouldn’t be asking certain questions if we understood Turkey properly, or in police and other officials’ obstruction when we try to interview voters on polling day.

Is its virulence in Turkey, which doesn’t just concern AKP supporters, affected by the origins of the modern Turkish state – the expulsion of the Greeks – admittedly an echo of the Greeks’ expulsion of Muslims when they won independence from the Ottomans – the Armenian genocide, the persecution of the Alevis, and the denial of Kurdish identity and rights?

All-embracing Ince

The crowd hears Muharram Ince in Izmir Photo: Tony Cross

What about the opposition? Is Ince all he’s cracked up to be?

He’s certainly a good public speaker, as I saw when he captivated an enormous crowd on the shore at Izmir.

And, being the son of a farmer who became a physics teacher, he has a welcome common touch in a party seen as the mouthpiece of the cosmopolitan elite.

But what was he actually promising?

An end to the state of emergency, the arrests of thousands, the sackings of thousands more, a free media, to be sure. But what would he do for the ordinary Turks who support the AKP because it has given them access to health care, brought electricity and roads to their rural homes, or helped them set up small businesses?

Difficult to say, in particular because, in an effort to differentiate himself from Erdogan’s cronyism and represent “all Turks”, he proposed to form a government of all parties, including the AKP.

Perhaps he hoped such a proposal would further deepen divisions in the party but what policies could such a heterogeneous cabinet – which would also presumably include the hard-right Iyi Party of Meral Aksener, the MHP, which she split from, and the Islamists of Saadat – carry out?

“An excellent question,” according to former diplomat and CHP MP Osman Faruk Logoglu, who talked to me the day after the election. Triangulation can work for the right, he argues, but no necessarily for the social-democratic left, where he situates his party.

In fact, Ince’s support was also heterogeneous, attracting former MHP voters, attracted by his secular stance and seeing him as a viable alternative to Erdogan.

The secular parties are also pretty nationalist, the MHP and Iyi particularly, but the CHP as well.

Izmir may see itself as a progressive stronghold but it is also the port from which the Greeks were expelled after the war of independence.

The town is built around a bay, which is plied by ferries. Football fans taunt their rivals with threats to throw them into the sea “like Atatürk did to the Greeks”, I was told while I was there.

And several Izmiris expressed hostility to Syrian refugees, a hot-button issue that has aroused resentment and rumours similar to those now widespread in Europe. Like Aksener, Ince promised to send them home, insisting that reestablishing relations with President Bashar al-Assad would make this possible.

The HDP offices in Istanbul Photo: Tony Cross

Ince also attracted support from left-wingers, who voted for him as the candidate with most hope of beating Erdogan but for the left-wing pro-Kurdish rights HDP in the parliamentary elections.

That the HDP – whose leader Selahattin Demirtas contested the presidential election from jail much to Erdogan’s disgust at the election board’s “emotional” decision – managed to break the 10% barrier to holding seats in parliament is in part evidence of a radical left among young Turkish voters.

Several non-Kurdish young people told me they were backing Ince for the presidency and the HDP for parliament, in part because they believed the Kurds should have a voice in the country’s politics and in part because they support its progressive stance, which includes endorsement of LGBT rights and male-female parity in all posts, despite the social conservatism of some of the Kurdish electorate.

Turkey’s economic turbulence may mean political turbulence, regardless of Erdogan’s electoral victory.

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Turkey referendum – Not a fair fight for No campaign

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I arrived in Turkey just over a week before 16 April’s referendum whose aim was to put the popular stamp of approval on the de-facto concentration of power in the hands of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The odds were stacked against the opposition, to put it mildly. Here’s my account of the first leg of my reporting assignment.

No campaigners in Istanbul’s Isli district Photo: Tony Cross

Friday 7 April 2017, Istanbul

There’s no escaping the fact that Turkey is holding a referendum. Hundreds of banners are draped across the road from Atatürk airport and billboards address their message to the passing traffic.

It’s not immediately apparent that anyone opposes Erdogan’s proposed constitutional reform, however.

Apart from the huge portraits of Erdogan that have become a sort of Great Leader mood music in today’s Turkey, the vast majority of the posters, flags and whatnot tells you to vote “Evet” (Yes).  It takes some time before you spot the jaunty sun with multi-coloured rays of the “Hayir” (No) campaign.

As we swing by an improvised structure on the banks of the Bosphorus, the taxi driver, with whom I have been discussing the day’s truck attack in Sweden with the help of a translation app on his phone, tells me that it is for a Yes rally to be addressed by Erdogan the following afternoon.

Shock! Horror! Clouds over Istanbul Photo: Tony Cross

Shockingly, by the time I reach my hotel the sky is overcast. I thought it was always sunny here!

Saturday 8 April, Istanbul

The ferry stop in Istanbul’s Karaköy district on a damp Saturday morning Photo: Tony Cross

Up early to talk to our morning broadcasts, I leave the hotel at about 9.00am in search of vox pops and campaigners.

The latter are a slack lot, clearly not judging it worth facing the public before midday.

And it starts to rain.

Finding English-speakers is not that easy – I’ve foolishly decided to do without a fixer/translator in cosmopolitan Istanbul –and, anyway, fewer people seem ready to speak to reporters than during my previous visits.

Eminömü market Photo: Tony Cross

But some are and the first of those are No voters.

Erman, an Armenian, has voted for Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the past because, as with the Kurds, the party used to be more accommodating to his community than the secular nationalist parties.

“They built new churches, new schools but I don’t think this will happen again,” he explains. “Because with one leader everything will involve him and if he says anything everybody will think it is true. But I don’t think one man will change everything. This is not credible to me.”

Some other traders and customers in the bazaar at Eminönü are also in the No camp, one accusing Erdogan of wanting to be a dictator and a “new Sultan” but there are also Yes men, fans of Erdogan who say the extra powers the reform will give him will mean a “strong Turkey”.

Adulation of the president and a desire to see the country walk tall on the world stage are the two main refrains of Yes supporters, repeated as a crowd of thousands descend on the rally at 4.00pm.

“I love you Recep Tayyip Erdogan! I love you Binali Yildirim! Yes, government OK!” cries Ahmet in a not uncommon outburst of enthusiasm.

AKP supporters pose for selfies in front of a montage of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in martial mode Photo: Tony Cross

A little closer to the rally a crowd has gathered in front of a montage of an action film poster with the heads of Erdogan and other AKP leaders on the bodies of the battle-fatigued, gun-toting heroes.

This could be taken for satire but the loyalists posing for selfies in front of it seem to find it a congenial portrayal of their heroes.

Prime Minister Yildirim is warming up the crowd in a turkey-voting-for-Christmas contribution to a campaign whose success would mean the abolition of his job.

That’s a role his predecessor Ahmet Davutoglu declined to take on, putting him in the company of a small number of AKP dissidents that includes Abdullah Gül, a cofounder of the AKP along with Erdogan who alternated as president and prime minister with him between 2003 and 2014.

Deadlines and editing requirements mean I must leave before the president himself arrives in a helicopter to violate his current constitutional obligation of neutrality and speak forcefully in favour of a Yes vote.

The dispatches report that he called for a strong Turkey.

To read my report for RFI of Saturday’s rally and campaigning click here

Sunday 9 April, Istanbul

A Yes campaign boat Photo: Tony Cross

Sunday means another desperate search for people willing and able to speak to a radio reporter.

Several analysts I have interviewed previously don’t answer their mobiles, maybe because it’s the weekend or maybe because they fear joining the ranks of university professors purged since last year’s coup is unclear. The two who answer tell me they are not in Turkey at the moment.

I criss-cross the city on foot and by ferry, metrobus and taxi.

At the suggestion of colleagues I track down activists of the biggest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP).

With balloons, flags, leaflets and the sort of stirring music beloved of Turkish political campaigners, they seem a jolly lot.

But they are not happy with the way the campaign is playing out.

“AKP uses everything, especially money, and they don’t give any money to CHP,” said CHP veteran Kamer Demir“So we cannot talk to our people, we cannot tell our things to people.”

CHP No campaigners at Kadiköy, Istanbul Photo: Toy Cross

One casualty of an ambient self-censorship is the 2012 film No that credited an advertising agency with the result of Chile’s 1988 plebiscite.

CHP leaders are reported to be trying to emulate the strategy outlined in the film and their logo is clearly lifted from it, which may explain why the Digiturk digital platform dropped No from its lineup in February.

Another, according to the Turkish Minute website, has been an anti-smoking campaign in the city of Konya.

Its slogan “If you say ‘no’, you have gained your future” appears to have displeased the city authorities and no longer appears on the city streets.

Media harassed

AKP members campaigning for a Yes vote in Karaköy Photo: Tony Cross

Government harassment of the media started well before the referendum campaign and has been particularly intense since last July’s failed coup.

Hundreds of media outlets have been closed since then and dozens of journalists are in jail, described “hostages of this referendum” by Erol Onderoglu of Reporters Without Borders, who has served several months in prison himself.

The majority of media that remain open make no effort to hide their bias.

The satirical paper Penguen says that the Yes campaign has received 10 times more live airtime on television than the No campaign, while the Washington Hatti site has calculated that from 1-20 March the AKP had over 300 hours of national television coverage, “with the 169 hours clocked by President Erdogan alone almost three times that of the [secular] MHP and CHP combined”.

Thousands of people have been purged from their jobs in the public and private sectors since the coup attempt and thousands jailed.

Some of them were involved in the conspiratorial Fehtullah Gülen movement, which the government blames for the failed putsch but others, as I found when reporting from Turkey last summer, were trade unionists, left-wingers and other members of the awkward squad framed by employers or hostile colleagues.

Kurdish left-wingers jailed

An HDP stall in Karaköy Photo: Tony Cross

The left-wing Kurdish-based People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has been hard hit, although few would suspect it of Gülenist sympathies.

Hundreds of its members are in jail, including its co-presidents, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yüksekdag along with 11 other MPs.

Demirtas’s absence from the campaign is a particular blow, with many commentators seeing him as the natural leader of the campaign, a far more attractive figure than the CHP’s bland and inconsistent Kemal Kiricdaroglu.

The atmosphere is rendered even more oppressive by the rhetoric employed by the president and his supporters, who warn that a No vote is a vote for “terrorists”, a term that is even more catchall in Turkey than elsewhere, applying in Erdogan-speak to coup plotters, PKK guerrillas, Islamic State and other armed groups, and anyone suspected of collusion with any of the above.

The bias in the media is also visible in the civil service, No campaigners tell me.

Government supporters can campaign for Yes during working hours, Emre a doctor and CHP member tells me, but No campaigners are certain to be fired if they do the same.

To read my report of the No campaign struggling to make its voice heard on RFI click here

Monday 10 April, Istanbul

Yasemin Bektas Photo: Tony Cross

Feminist Yasemin Bektas repeats some of those complaints when I meet her in a café in the hip district of Cihangir, where I am staying.

She has two hats, one as a member of an organisation encouraging women to vote in the referendum, the other encouraging them to vote No.

I would say the No hat is on today.

“We are not in equal conditions now,” she says. “It’s easy to say ‘Yes’, it’s so hard to say ‘No’.”

She point to the disparity in posters and other material from the opposition.

“It doesn’t mean we are not working. They are not giving us permission to work.”

She gives Erdogan credit for taking an interest in the women’s vote, despite cultural barriers to women’s involvement in politics.

“I remember in the first meeting he made about the AKP he asked the men ‘Take your wife with you’,” she says. “Some of them came, some of them stayed at home.

“In the second meeting he said “If you don’t take your wife, don’t come,’. He’s a clever man, He knows we’re half of the public.”

It was the first time women could enter the political arena but that didn’t mean the AKP intended to liberate them from traditional gender roles, according to Bektas.

Gender politics and violence against women

“For the first issue is mothering. We are mothers and we have to bear children, we have to care for children. But there’s also gender equality. I don’t have to have a child. Maybe I don’t want to be a mother, maybe I want. Maybe my love is not to a man, I love women, maybe I don’t love anyone.

“We are killed, we are raped. In the past 15 years every day five women [have been] killed in Turkey. There has been significant increases in child abuse, female murders, violence rates.”

The conservative discourse, pushing women into the home and blaming them for rape and other assaults because of their clothing, for example, has empowered men inclined to violence, she argues.

I ask if I can take a picture of her and she leaps up to arrange her hair in a mirror.

I think she’s happy with the result.

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Two rallies and a purge – Istanbul after Turkey’s failed coup

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Patriotism was on show everywhere in Istanbul a week after the 15 July coup attempt, cars flying Turkish flags blasted out songs praising President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. There were nightly rallies on Taksim Square, whose edifices were covered in huge banners declaring a victory for the nation. All parties had opposed the putsch … but there were fears that the ensuing purge could go further than supporters of Fehtullah Gülen, the US-based imam alleged to be behind the power grab.

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The sun sets behind the Atatürk statue on Istanbul’s Taksim Square Photo: Tony Cross

Friday 22 July 2016

“Erdogan, Erdogan …”

As the sun sets behind the Atatürk monument, Taksim Square fills with a crowd waving Turkish flags – street-sellers are doing a healthy trade – responding to an appeal by President Erdogan to occupy the centres of Turkey’s towns to prevent a repetition of last Friday’s coup attempt.

I’m just off the plane and haven’t met my fixer/interpreter yet, so have to find English-speakers, which rules out a large part of the crowd.

Those who do speak to me, apart from the Algerian woman who tells me in French she has come to see what’s going on, are Erdogan loyalists, proud that a popular mobilisation faced down the tanks and soldiers with deaths and injuries on both sides.

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Flag-sellers make the most of the patriotic mood Photo: Tony Cross

As a new hit song – chorus “Erdogan, Erdogan …” – blasts out, Mesut, an IT engineer, tells me “we are not supporting any party” but he has confidence in the government.

“Because we are living in 21 century, it shouldn’t be, this kind of thing,” he says. “We are supporting our democracy, that’s all.”

Turkey is a European country, he adds, “We are not Middle East any more.”

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Flagwaving in front of one of the big screens ahead of Erdogan’s speech Photo: Tony Cross

Neither he nor Songül, who has come back from Belgium where she lives and works, believe that Erdogan will abuse the powers he has assumed in the aftermath of the failed putsch.

“I think that the people now have the knowledge that Erdogan is for democracy, is not a dictator, which is said by many countries, she comments. “I think he is supporting democracy and the people love him. It is possible that he has more power now but he is not a dictator.”

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Young men pose for a photo during the rally Photo: Tony Cross

As the crowd swells, Erdogan appears on one of the giant screens that loom over the square, giving a speech, which is presumably broadcast to the crowds on the squares of towns across the country, to an audience that claps regularly, more regularly in fact than the crowd on the square.

The speech is long and is followed by music and more speeches that will last all night, as I find out when I return to my hotel, conveniently close to Taksim, inconveniently close to the noise.

I don’t imagine people staying on the luxury hotels that look onto the square, or residents of the streets that surround it, get any sleep at all.

To read my report of the rally for RFI in English click here

Saturday 23 July

Conscripts, cadets rounded up with coup-plotters

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The Istanbul Palace of Justice guarded by the police and army Photo: Tony Cross

There are few people on the vast esplanade in front of Istanbul’s maIn court house.

Barriers prevent access to most of it, behind them sit a couple of armoured cars, down the side of the intimidating structure, in the pompous pomo style, is a long line of buses commandeered to transport police to raids on barracks and military academies.

Amog the few people here – either in the cafés or leaning on the barriers in the blazing sun watching for signs of activity – are relatives of soldiers detained inside.

Most of them don’t want to speak, indeed one man denounces us as interfering foreigners who want to do down Turkey, but one man, who refuses to give his name, tells us that his son, a cadet, was one of 300-400 cadets detained at the air force academy four days after the coup.

Either he has a military family’s confidence in authority or he is anxious not to speak out of turn and jeopardise his son’s chances of being freed, as 1,200 soldiers were in Ankara this morning.

“The state will decide,” he says when asked what will happen to the boy. “The state will interrogate people and the guilty ones will be punished. That is it. But my son is not guilty. Because, he was a student and he was at the school and he was taken together with some 300-400 other students. They took him just to have his testimony.”

Other people we meet have limited sympathy for the detainees.

A couple who run a small restaurant say they were on the streets to oppose the coup.

“You are talking about the conscripts,” says Savas. “They are detained because they have to be interrogated. We saw what happened, they are doing this for the sake of the public. They wll be released after two or three days.”

“No-one will be able to divide this country,” his wife butts in. “We will fight together under this flag.”

“They planned to create panic and turn Turkey into Syria or Egypt,” is furniture-maker Turgay Dogany’s view of the coup-makers. Some innocent people have probably been detained, he admits, quoting a Turkish proverb that indicates a phlegmatic approach to potential injustice.

“For sure! Wet leaves may be burned with dry ones. You cannot choose. It is not all the military, just some gangs in it. It doesn’t mean that all 50,000 people are guilty.”

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Relatives of soldiers watch the court house for signs of activity Photo: Tony Cross

Many of the 7,423 soldiers detained are conscripts or even cadets of 14-16-years-old, according to Senaly Karatas, who we meet in the poky but centrally situated offices of the Human Rights Organisation in Istanbul.

The organisation is more used to handling the cases of victims of the military’s offensive in the Kurdish-majority south-east, where 100 soldiers are reported to have been detained.

Many families are scared to ask for help, she says. “We have written applications and 30 verbal applications.”

“Military service is obligatory in Turkey and it is not possible for a conscript to disobey orders,” Karatas points out, describing the young soldiers’ fate as “most tragic part of this situation”.

Many families have no news of their sons and don’t know how to find out where they are or how they are being treated.

“One family saw the photo of their son in the newspaper Posta, where it was clear that he had been subject to violence and was being detained,” she explains. “They went to his unit, they said he was arrested, but the family could not find him at places where he could be detained. In the end we found that he was in Silivri prison.”

He has been charged with involvement in the coup.

The family of one high-ranking officer did not dare file a complaint but told the human rights group that they were frequently insulted and obstructed as they trailed round police stations and courts searching for him.

“The declaration of the state of emergency greatly increases our concern,” Karatas says, citing official figures that show 10,410 people detained, 7,423 of them soldiers, 2,014 of them judges and prosecutors, 44,530 civil servants and other public-sector employees and have been suspended from their jobs, and 241 civilians and 24 coup-makers were killed during the coup.

The first measures of the state of emergency, announce today, were the closure of 15 universities and 600 other educational institutions and the extension of the limit of detention without charge from four to 30 days.

To read my report on Cadets and conscripts caught up in Turkey’s post-coup crackdown click here

“Terrorists in uniform”

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The mosque where prayers were said for Senol Sagman in Besiktas Photo: Tony Cross

Late in the afternoon friends of Senol Sagman gather at a mosque in Besiktas district to pray for him.

Two large wreaths of yellow flowers stand by the small cemetery next to the mosque, men perform their ablutions at the fountain in the centre of the mosque’s courtyard.

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Wreaths outside the mosque Photo: Tony Cross

Sagman’s friend Mustafa Gülenc, who ran a catering business with him, describes how his friend died.

“We went out into the streets, the soldiers were in front of us, we were saying ‘Allahu Akbar’, ‘Allahu Akbar’, Gülenc recalls. We told the soldiers ‘Don’t fire on us. A Muslim cannot kill a Muslim!’ They said ‘Don’t say Allahu Akbar!’ First they shot in the air, then they shot at us. I lay down and when I got up I saw that my friend was dead.”

The soldiers were “terrorists in uniform”, he says.

To read my report for RFI on the mosque honouring Senol Sagman click here

Sunday 24 July 2016

“After this they will take us”

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CHP supporters march down Istiklal Caddesi Photo: Tony Cross

Taksim is packed again on Sunday. Coachloads from the provinces arrive, streaming down Istiklal Caddesi in the sweltering afternoon heat, one group in file carrying an enormous banner they will unfold when they arrive at the square.

This rally has been called by the largest opposition party, the People’s Republican Party (CHP), which like all other parties represented in parliament opposed the coup.

CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has called for the national unity in defence of democracy to continue and Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) has responded by declaring its support for the demonstration.

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Women arrive at the CHP rally Photo: Tony Cross

There are no “Erdogan, Erdogan” songs this time, however. The last post for the victims of the coup attempt is head in perfect silence, then part of the crowd joins in with the national anthem.

There are many portraits of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish republic who is the secular camp’s idol and apparently as few AKP supporters as there were CHP supporters on Friday.

Searching for English-speakers, I find a group of Afghans, Hazaras horrified by the Islamic Sate attack on a protest in Kabul that has killed 80 people and injured 230.

Abdurazzak, a Libyan, pays a heartfelt tribute to “the new face of democracy”.

“We are supporting Turkish people who face this army who want to take authority by force because in Libya we are still suffering from this,” he says. “We are still fighting to get our democracy.”

As for the Turks, none of those I speak to have been on the night-time rallies called for by Erdogan during the week.

Many are worried that Erdogan will profit from the boost in his support and the emergency powers granted to the state to clamp down on the secular camp.

“He is more powerful,” comments Hussein, a . “You know the extraordinary situation in Turkey now. They are taking everybody from this corporate [Gülen’s organisation]. But we know that after this they will take us.”

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The crowd listens to the national anthem at the start of the CHP rally Photo; Tony Cross

Turkey has the secularists to thank for its democracy, he argues. “We supported and established democracy in Turkey, not the other people.”

Hayri, a middle-aged man, says he has come to show that he is opposed to the coup but also because he fears Erdogan will take advantage of the situation to make “antidemocratic rules”.

The big powers should learn not to “play with the card of Islam, which they did in Syria”, he argues.

“Everything that is going on from Munich [scene of a recent shooting spree by a teenager] to here is because of this dirty game and Turkey is also partly responsible, with Saudi and Qatar.

“I also believe the European Union should think about Turkey in a very serious way,” he adds. “Because this is a very important moment for the future for the democracy of Turkey.”

The secularists feel threatened, political analyst Behül Özkan told me earlier in the afternoon.

AKP supporters drove through their neighbourhoods chanting Islamic slogans after the defeat of the coup. “The exact word is, the secular people feel trapped.“

To read my report Turkey’s secular opposition rallies for national unity click here

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Peace and authoritarian Erdogan – issues in Istanbul in Turkey’s 2015 autumn election

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Everyone was surprised by the result of Turkey’s second election this year, including, I suppose, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), which won an absolute majority. Erdogan’s gamble of stoking security fears by reigniting the war with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) seems to have paid off and was ably assisted by Isis, IS, Daesh or whatever you want to call the gang that bombed two pro-peace rallies and apparently has cells planning more mayhem currently in the country. Just to prove that I, too, was surprised, here’s my account of my reporting assignment, which ended two days’ after polling day. I’ve already posted reports on RFI English and will include links to them.

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CHP supporters hand out leaflets in Istanbul Photo: Tony Cross

Istanbul 25 October 2015.

It appears that the president in his wisdom has decreed that Turkey’s clocks will go back one week later than Europe’s this year, leading to Turkish Airlines announcing the wrong time on arrival, my personal mobile and my work mobile giving different times and me being late for my first appointment.

A concerned Onur Öymen rings to ask if I’m having difficulty finding the address while I’m time over a Turkish coffee.

I arrive flustered but the former ambassador and MP for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) greets me charmingly.

He’s old-school CHP – while some party members admit it has alienated religious voters with its enthusiasm for Kemalist secularism and has watered down is hardline nationalism, leading apparently to a rapprochement of its youth wing with the pro-Kurd People’s Democratic Party (HDP), he supports the government ending peace negotiations with the PKK, blaming the guerrillas for firing first.

If the election results in no party with an absolute majority, as looks likely, Öymen would like to see and AKP-CHP coalition but admits that the AKP is more likely to want the right-wing secular nationalist Nationalist Action Party (MHP).

“I believe that it is politically possible because, to tell the truth, what’s in common between AKP and MHP is much more visible than what’s in common between MHP and the CHP,” he says.

The MHP, whose members wished CHP campaigners good luck when I first met them both during the 2007 presidential campaign, seems now strongly attracted by Erdogan’s authoritarian turn, which has seen legal and physical attacks on opposition media, AKP links to mafia bosses connected to coup-plotters of the shadowy “deep state” and, of course, repression and a new military offensive against alleged and real supporters of the PKK.

After 7 June’s inconclusive election the MHP refused to join an AKP-led coalition, citing the then-still-extant peace process and Erdogan’s plans for constitutional changes as the reason. It objected to his plan to shift decisive power to the presidency and, perhaps more vehemently, proposals that would have left former AKP ministers off the hook in corruption investigations launched by magistrates, whom Erdogan accuses of being agents of his former ally Fethullah Gülen.

Now the peace talks are off and maybe the MHP could be reconciled with a string presidency, if it goes hand in hand with a clampdown on Kurdish nationalism and the left. In a move that can only have delighted Erdogan, its paramilitary wing, the fascistic Grey Wolves, attacked HDP premises during the election campaign.

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Koray Caliskan in his office at Bogazici University Photo: Tony Cross

The last time I met Koray Caliskan was outside the CHP headquarters on the night of the 2014 presidential election campaign. This time I meet him in his office at Bogazici University, a beautiful campus overlooking the Bosphorus that was once the American University of Istanbul.

He is dismayed by Erdogan’s increasing authoritarianism and supportive of the CHP’s shift to the left.

The MHP is right-wing but will probably not be tempted to support the AKP he says.

“They want rule of law in this country, they want checks and balances to be structured again and they want democracy to work. So there are three forces for democratisation, CHP, MHP and HDP, and the only political party that blocks this is Ak Party. The main division is between democracy and authoritarianism in the country right now.”

Caliskan has had his own brushes with authoritarianism and has three legal cases opened against him for “supporting terrorism” and “libelling the president”.

“In our penal law there is a clause that specifies one to four years for anyone who insults the president, which doesn’t exist in any democratic society.

When Angela Merkel was due to visit Turkey during the election campaign he and other academics published an open letter appealing to her not endorse Erdogan’s rule and giving 10 examples of government actions that, they said,  breach the European Union’s conditions for membership.

That earned him a disciplinary hearing in front of the higher education committee, whose president, he says, is an Erdogan appointee, for “libelling the president” but his university refused to open an investigation into the case.

Most of the students sunning themselves on the campus, several of them petting some of Istanbul’s thousands of stray cats, are too young to vote and don’t expect much change after the election.

Yaran would like to see a coalition but thinks the vote is a “waste of paper”.

“I don’t think there will be much change but the military operations against the PKK and also the other important news, like blasts in Ankara, will really affect the percentages but I don’t think there will be a single winner to govern,” says Volkan, a young man who expresses himself very clearly in English.

He would like to see the AKP win and rule alone, although he is unhappy that Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu allows Erdogan to go beyond his mandate and dominate the country’s politics.

Özgur also expects no big changes but clearly dislikes the AKP.

“From a realistic point of view I’d like to see a working government to be established, wo that this turmoil after the elections will end we could have a ministry that can function,” she says. “Hopefully that will bring an end to all the social turmoil in Turkey right now, so that all these bombings and stuff would end.”

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AKP campaigners in Besikitas, Istanbul Photo: Tony Cross

On my way back to the city centre from Bogazici I come across members of the CHP, the MHP and the AKP campaigning at a busy crossroads in Besiktas district.

The one English-speaker on the AKP stall, where voters can pick up a free sandwich, will not be interviewed without permission, there are no English-speakers on MHP stall but two members of the CHP are ready to speak, the head of the party’s youth wing in Besiktas, through an interpreter, and the vice-president, who turns up later and speaks English himself.

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CHP activist Seçkin Aybar Photo: Tony Cross

“The CHP is the only party with a lot of support that defends social democracy,” says Seçkin Aybar, the youth wing president.

With rousing music non-sectarianly attracting attention to all three parties’s activists, he and his vice-president Ugur Demirckan both slam Erdogan’s authoritarianism.

“The AKP mustn’t rule Turkey,” says Aybar. “Since the 7 June elections 600 people have been killed and there could be more in the next few days … AKP is trying to create a one-party system in Turkey, which can be very bad for secularism.”

“Now there is no jurisdiction,” says Demirckan. “There is no real police … It’s more like hunger for power.”

To read my article on the CHP’s campaign on RFI’s website, click here.

The next day I take to the streets for more voxpops, this time in Osmanbey district.

AKP supporters seem happy with the government’s handling of the economy and have no fears of a slide to Islamisation.

“He doesn’t force me to wear headscarves, for example,” says Zuleyha, a middle-aged woman who runs a lighting business. “Everything is OK for me. No problems.”

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Abdullah and Herdem, a Kurd and a Zaza, in Osmanbey, Istanbul Photo: Tony Cross

Herdem and Abdullah do have a problem with Erdogan and the AKP, however, and she, in particular, is keen to make it heard, dragging him to the microphone.

Herdem is a Zaza, a group that speaks a dialect of Kurdish, while he is a Kurd, and they pose for a picture flashing V for victory signs, having expressed their intention for the HDP, for “democracy, peace and humanity”.

“If the AKP rules again by itself nobody will be able to do anything,” says Herdem.

“We’re stalled and we don’t know why the international remains silent about what’s happening in the eastern part of the country,” Abdullah says. “I have seven family members who have joined the guerrillas. Eighteen have been murdered, we don’t know what’s become of them. I have a wound in my leg because in that region we get hurt. My mother was injured during the fighting in the 90s. But still I call for peace.”

Nihot, a middle-aged businessman, also wants peace.

He supports the CHP and believes the HDP are just PKK representatives in parliament but, reflecting war-weariness among much of the population, as well as the change in his party’s attitude to the Kurdish question, he wants peace talks to be revived.

“I believe that lots of PKK militants want to come to Turkey and live in peace,” he says. “So we want peace and we can do it by negotiation. I believe that.”

To read and hear my interviews with voters in Osmanbey for RFI click here.

 

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