Washington foreign-policy circles have long treated Turkey as a role model — a place where political Islam and democracy live in harmony. Reality just shattered that ideal.
A small protest that started late last week at the heart of Istanbul has spread to Ankara and other cities, mushrooming into nationwide rallies against Turkey’s increasingly imperious prime minister, Recep Tayyep Erdogan.
One graffiti splashed across an Istanbul storefront declared in English, “Tayyep is a d–k.”
A bit crude, but Erdogan was just as insulting on TV Sunday, calling his critics “looters” and vowing never to bow to their demands. And his police were more than insulting: They attacked protesters with tear gas and water cannons, injuring over 100 and, according to some reports, killing at least one.
As Erdogan arrogantly leaves the country for a North African tour, Turkey’s largest trade union is organizing a nationwide strike in solidarity with the protests.
It all began with a rally against the looming loss of Gezi Park, an open space graced with ancient trees near Taksim Square, Istanbul’s liveliest section.
A former Istanbul mayor, Erdogan came up with the plan to demolish the green patch and convert it to a shopping mall designed to look like Ottoman-era military barracks. It’s part of a larger drive to erase all symbols of the secularist past, including the Ataturk Center in the heart of Taksim Square — a building dedicated to the founder of Turkey’s post-Ottoman democracy, which Erdogan wants to replace with a mosque.
That blueprint, turning secular symbols into mosques, is classic Erdogan.
Erdogan first took office in 2002 as his Justice and Development Party (AKP) won a plurality of the parliamentary vote, and has similarly won two elections since — aided by a badly divided, and often notoriously corrupt, opposition.
Over that time, he has remade Turkey: Once a notoriously corruption-prone economic backwater, now it’s a prosperous powerhouse, even as Europe stumbles through unending crises.
He’s also clipped the wings of the once-powerful army, filled the judiciary with Islamist judges, made his allies wealthy and cracked down on the press — with brutal financial pressure as well as (on the pretext of an imaginary secret plot against the state) dozens of arrests.
His sidekick, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, started talking openly of reviving the Ottoman Empire, which for centuries ruled much of the Mideast and North Africa as well as bits of Europe.
And as the Arab Spring spread from Tunisia to Syria, Erdogan lectured Mideast rulers, advising them to listen to their peoples, avoid overreacting to civil protest — and resign.
Here’s an enlightened democratic leader, thrice elected fairly in a majority-Muslim country? Washington took heart, seeing a beacon of freedom for the region.
President Obama is famously an Erdogan admirer; White House aides say he calls on Erdogan for advice more often than on any other leader in the region.
But at home, unease grows daily. He has rounded up critics, intimidated political opponents and gradually forced Islam on Turkey’s largely secular urbanites. (The Gezi Park protesters quickly added anger to a law limiting the sales of alcohol as one one of their causes.)
Erdogan’s term-limited premiership ends next year, but he’s pushing a constitutional revision that would allow him to rule from the now largely ceremonial presidency. That would let him hold authoritarian power for at least another decade.
In the face of the protests, he’s ignoring the advice he’d dispensed so freely to Arab leaders. Indeed, Erdogan’s initial response seems directly lifted from the playbook of beleaguered Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
He called the protesters dirty names, had access to social media cut around Taksim Square and denounced Twitter as a “menace to society.” Turkish TV viewers also noticed that the violent Istanbul drama was widely covered by CNN International, even as Turkish-language CNN has gone on broadcasting cooking shows.
Such self-censorship can’t last long, though. Even Islamist newspapers are starting to criticize Erdogan. The country’s democratic roots remain quite strong.
Which makes Turkey’s protest markedly different than the upheaval in the Arab world. Whereas Arabs yearn for freedom (in vain, for now), Turks just want their country back.
Washington’s initial response was cautious and low-level. Our ambassador in Ankara, Francis Ricciardone, released a statement noting that US foreign policy cherishes the right to peacefully protest — and added, “I am not going to say anything further.”
We can do better, especially considering Obama’s close ties with Erdogan, who had yet another triumphant White House visit two weeks ago.
The protests should serve as a wake-up call: Turkey remains a crucial democratic ally, but Erdogan’s steering it in the wrong direction — which in the future may even turn it against us.