Erdogan wins again as the people rise up
THE bridge linking Europe and Asia across the Bosphorus was lit up in France’s national colours to mark Turkey’s solidarity after the Bastille Day lorry attack on a festive crowd in Nice on Thursday.
Then, on Friday night, troops took it over in an attempted coup, ostensibly aimed at restoring a secular republic that has been bent into neoIslamist shape by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Soldiers, some in tanks, took over TV stations, airports and bridges. The state broadcaster went off the air.
Erdogan, who has closed dissident newspapers and broadcasters, jailed journalists and shuttered social media, was obliged on Friday night to address the nation via cellphone, through a video app.
This shambolic melange of retro and digital could serve as a metaphor for the way in which he has modernised Turkey while taking it back towards a sort of neo-Ottoman authoritarianism with himself as the contemporary sultan.
Tyrannical in temperament, and bent on untrammelled rule as an executive president under a new French-style constitution he seeks, Erdogan has nevertheless won 10 elections in a row since 2002.
He has a rapport with half the Turkish people and on Friday night many of his supporters answered his call to take to the streets.
One reason for Erdogan’s political success is that liberals and leftists repudiated a political culture that saw a coup each decade, and lent their support to his moderately Islamist Justice and Development Party, or AKP, when it stood up to Turkey’s over-mighty generals.
The army tried to ban AKP after its second general election victory in 2007, but retreated in the face of a massive government purge, which put one in 10 generals behind bars and defanged the general staff.
To do this, Erdogan relied on a strike force of police, prosecutors and spies loyal to Fethullah Gulen, a secretive Islamic imam who now lives in exile in the US.
As the military trials began, AKP came to blows with the Gulenists, who launched corruption probes into Erdogan’s inner circle.
The ferocity of this intra-Islamist civil war has buckled Turkey’s institutions and brought the army back towards the circle of power.
But in the government’s conspiratorial view, it is the Gulenist “parallel state” — once a hammer of the generals — that is behind this attempted coup.
There is disaffection in the army because of Turkey’s Syria policy. The government, until recently, permitted a jihadi pipeline of volunteers and arms into Syria, which has enabled Islamic State to build a network of cells inside the country.
This year Islamic State targeted Turkey, not least with its lethal attack on Istanbul’s airport last month.
Now that the military plot has collapsed, Turkey faces a new purge of its security capacity. — © The Financial Times
Last night, Erdogan called on US President Barack Obama to extradite Gulen to Turkey, Reuters reports. Earlier, Gulen, who has a wide following in Turkey, denied he played any role in the coup attempt and condemned it “in the strongest terms”.
In a statement reported by AFP, he said: “As someone who suffered under multiple military coups during the past five decades, it is especially insulting to be accused of having any link to such an attempt.
“Government should be won through a process of free and fair elections, not force.”
Gulen, 75, used to be a close ally of Erdogan.