Can Dündar: The beginning of the end for Erdogan

27 Apr 2017 | Mapping Media Freedom, News and features, Turkey, Turkey Uncensored

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What is usually the first pledge made by a politician who has won an election in his victory speech?

Erdogan’s was the death penalty.

Before the result of the 16 April referendum, which ended neck and neck, was even clear he came out onto the balcony and gave the “good news” to his supporters shouting “we want the death penalty!” that they would soon get their wish.

By abolishing the death penalty at the start of the 2000s, Turkey overcame an important obstacle in its negotiations with Europe. Now Erdogan is planning to bring back the death penalty, bombarding relations with Europe which are already at breaking point. And it was not just this. Two days after the referendum the government took the decision to extend the State of Emergency by three months. The extension of this emergency regime, which has been in force since 15 July 2016, was a concrete response to those expecting Erdogan to loosen the reins after the referendum. Sadly, Turkey now awaits not a time of relative peace, but a much more intense and chaotic period of repression.

There are a few different reasons for this.

The first is that it has become understood that Erdogan actually lost the referendum… Had the Supreme Electoral Board not taken the decision to count invalid votes as valid before the voting had even ended, Erdogan would not now be an executive president: he would be a leader who had lost a referendum. Since that day, hundreds of thousands of people have protested in the streets, shouting that their votes had been stolen. These protests have frightened the government, afraid they might turn into the Gezi uprisings of four years before. This is one reason for the increase in repression…

Another reason is that Erdogan has lost the big cities for the first time… The AKP, which has held onto key cities such as Istanbul and Ankara throughout its 15 years of power, has been beaten in these cities for the first time in this referendum. If we consider that Istanbul is the city in which Erdogan began his political career, it’s possible to say that his fall has also begun there. This is something that Erdogan will be losing sleep over…

Add to this disgruntlement an economy in the doldrums, especially with the wiping out of tourism revenues, and the withdrawal of the support from European capitals that had been given in pursuit of a refugee agreement, and you can understand why Erdogan is under so much pressure.

Now his only support comes from the Trump regime, which needs their help in Syria, from international capital which prefers authoritarian power to democratic chaos and from the social democratic opposition, still searching for a solution through a legal system that has long ago passed into Erdogan’s hands…

Can Erdogan balance out his shunning by Europe with the relationships he is striving to build with Trump and Putin?

By being part of the Syrian war, can he undo the tensions that are mounting at home?

Can he rein in the growing Kurdish problem by keeping jailed the co-presidents and around 10 MPs belonging to the HDP, the political representatives of the Kurds?

Can he hide the repression, lawlessness, and theft by jailing 150 journalists, silencing hundreds of media organs, throwing the foreign press out of the country and even punishing those who tweet?

I don’t think so.

All the data points to this last referendum being the beginning of the end for Erdogan. He will not go quietly, because he can guess what will happen to him if he loses power. But from here on in, he will pay a heavy price for every repressive act.

Just before the referendum, Theresa May visited Turkey and, turning a blind eye to the human rights violations, signed a contract for the construction of warplanes. Things in Ankara may have changed a great deal by the time those planes are ready.

Maybe in London too…

Yet those in Turkey fighting at the cost of their lives for democracy, a free media, and gender equality will never forget that the leader of a country accepted as “the cradle of these principles” did not even once mention them when she arrived in Ankara to trade arms.

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Turkey Uncensored is an Index on Censorship project to publish a series of articles from censored Turkish writers, artists and translators.

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