The deepening Ukrainian crisis is placing Turkey in a difficult diplomatic position. At stake for officials in Ankara are Turkey’s commitments to its Western allies and its cultural kin, Crimean Tatars, against its economic and political relationship with Moscow.

Turkey’s diplomatic dilemma intensified in early May amid a rapid escalation of tension between Crimean Tatars and Russian officials. The early May troubles were triggered by the banishment of Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Jemilev.“The crucial question is ‘What does Putin want to do? Does he plan just to stay in eastern Ukraine, or does he have plans on [sic] the Caucasus?" -- Atilla Yeşilada

Tatar protesters conducted several rallies seeking to have the ban on Jemilev lifted. Local Russian officials responded with a threat to prosecute Tatar leaders and ban their civic organization, the Mejlis.

Prior to the protests, Jemilev lobbied Turkish officials directly for support. “I told the Turkish government that I was banned from entering Crimea under fictitious pretexts,” Jemilev said on May 3 when speaking to reporters in Kyiv.

Ankara did indeed speak up on Tatars’ behalf. But the Turkish statement was carefully worded, indicating that Ankara is wary of angering its powerful Russian neighbour. “We expect the legitimate body of the Crimean Tatars to get the respect they deserve,” said the May 5 Foreign Ministry statement. The statement also criticised Jemilev’s banishment.

“Turkey is taking a cautious approach,” observed Turkish foreign-policy specialist Sinan Ülgen, a visiting scholar at the Brussels-based Carnegie Europe think-tank.

“On the one hand, it attaches importance to territorial integrity of nation states; it has a kinship with the Crimean Tatars and it is a NATO member,” Ülgen continued.

“But on the other, there is a deep economic engagement with Russia and, on top of that, there is a personal relationship between [Russian President Vladimir] Putin and [Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip] Erdoğan. That’s why it didn’t go as far as the U.S. in terms of imposing sanctions against Russia.”

The caution exhibited on Crimean Tatars is uncharacteristic for Erdoğan, who prides himself on a firebrand reputation – never more so when it comes to defending Muslims abroad. But the Turkish government claims its approach toward Russia is working.

Officials cite as an example President Putin’s Apr. 21 decree that rehabilitated Tatars repressed under Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin and promised a “national, cultural and spiritual renaissance” of Crimea’s minority groups.

In a move that was widely interpreted as a goodwill gesture to Moscow, the government-run national air carrier Turkish Airlines has announced that it will resume flights to Crimea in June.

An investigation into Crimean Tatars’ alleged “illegal mass activities” is also raising questions in Turkey over Ankara’s approach.

Jemilev “carries potential for political embarrassment for the [Turkish] government,” noted Semih Idiz, diplomatic columnist for the Turkish newspaper Taraf. “Erdoğan has said he has discussed the issue with Putin and he has been told that Moscow has said they will be more careful about it, but the leader of the Crimean Tatars is barred from Crimea and there is nothing really Ankara can do.”

A Turkish Foreign Ministry representative could not be reached for comment.

Moscow’s real leverage over Ankara is natural gas. In 2013, Turkey received roughly 60 percent of its natural-gas imports from Russia, according to the International Energy Agency.

“I am sure Turkey can’t start a new cold war,” said Umut Uzer, an assistant professor of international relations at Istanbul Technical University. “The fact that Turkey is so dependant on natural gas from Russia …. [means that] Turkey definitely has to take that into account.”

The dependency on Russia seems set to continue for the foreseeable future. “Given the fact that our hydro-electric dams have completely failed to produce electricity because of the drought, even in summer, any cut-off in supply [of gas] could have a drastic effect on the Turkish economy,” warned Atilla Yeşilada, a political consultant at Istanbul’s Global Source Partners, an investor consultancy.

Elsewhere, the Ukraine crisis is encouraging European Union states to lessen their energy dependency on Russia, thus presenting Ankara with opportunities to expand its role as a transit state. The recently launched Trans-Anatolian Natural Gas Pipeline project will cross Turkey to bring 16 billion cubic metres of Azerbaijani gas per year to Greece, Italy and Balkan customers. More projects would follow, if Turkey had its way.

“Turkey would like to become a regional energy hub in the region,” said Emre İşeri, an assistant professor of international relations at Izmir’s Yaşar University.

For Turkey, there are two significant obstacles standing in the way of realizing its pipeline ambitions – high costs and Russian interests. Moscow clearly would prefer to maintain its strong energy position in Turkey and the EU.

In April, for example, the deputy head of Russia’s state-run energy giant Gazprom, Alexander Medvedev, met with Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız to explore the possibility of expanding the company’s exports to Turkey, which, at 26.61 billion cubic metres, currently ranks second only to Germany (40.18 bcm) as a GazProm market.

Ultimately, the Ankara’s hand could be forced by Russian leader Vladimir Putin. “The crucial question is ‘What does Putin want to do?’” said Yesilada, the political consultant. “Does he plan just to stay in eastern Ukraine, or does he have plans on [sic] the Caucasus? Does he want to integrate [Turkish ally] Azerbaijan back into Russia’s sphere of influence?”

At present, only Putin knows the answers to such questions. Depending on his choices, Turkey may feel compelled to harden its line on its relations with Russia.

Editor’s note:  Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The Russian-Ukrainian crisis over Crimea is forcing Turkey into a delicate balancing act: Ankara feels a need to be seen as a protector of the peninsula’s Tatar minority, yet it does not want to vex Russia’s paramount leader Vladimir Putin in a way that complicates Turkish-Russian economic arrangements.

There are abundant reasons why Turkey is taking a close interest in Crimean developments. Crimea operated as a vassal khanate of Ottoman Empire from the 1470s until 1783. In addition, Turks are bound by a strong cultural connection to Crimean Tatars, an ethnic minority group that comprises roughly 15 percent of Crimea’s population.It would be difficult for Erdoğan to adopt a more aggressive stance toward Russia that would satisfy his domestic audience without risking a major disruption in bilateral trade.

The number of ethnic Tatars now living in Turkey — most of them descendants of those who left Crimea following its 1783 annexation by the Russian Empire — is estimated in the hundreds of thousands.

For all the historical and cultural factors in play, though, it may be domestic political considerations that are the primary factor in shaping the government’s posture on the Tatar-Crimea issue.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been seriously wounded politically in recent weeks by allegations of large-scale corruption within his inner circle and family. He is now scrambling to reinforce his political base as he prepares for his first electoral test since the corruption scandal broke, local elections slated for Mar. 30.

Since Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) draws significant grassroots support from nationalist elements, top government officials are playing up Ankara’s role as a defender of Crimean Tatar interests amid Russia’s armed occupation of the peninsula, which has belonged to Ukraine since 1954.

“Don’t let it cross your mind that our prime minister and president will be indifferent to any issue affecting our people of kin in Crimea and anywhere in the world,” Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu on Mar. 3 assured Tatar association leaders living in Turkey.

Davutoğlu’s comments came a day after hundreds staged a protest in the capital, Ankara, while smaller demonstrations were held in other Turkish cities that have large Tatar communities.

“Today, what’s happening in Crimea is terrifying all of us,” said Zafer Karatay, the Turkish representative of the Crimea-based Crimean Tatar National Parliament, CNN Türk reported.

Already hard-pressed by the fallout from the ongoing corruption scandal, as well as lingering resentment relating to the Gezi Park protests last summer, it could be politically crippling for Erdogan’s government to be deemed at home to be soft on issues regarding Turkic kin.

“They [AKP leaders] don’t want to be criticised by the nationalist constituency for having failed to protect the Tatars,” Sinan Ülgen, a visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe in Brussels, said of the Turkish government. “It cannot be seen to be indifferent to the fate of Tatars, its own kin, at a time when it portrays itself as protector of victimized people in the Middle East.”

Despite strong statements of support — as well Davutoğlu’s early March visit to Kyiv, during which he met with representatives of the Crimean Tatar community — officials in Ankara are striving to contain nationalist fervor.

Economics is the reason. Turkey relies on Russia for over half of its natural gas supplies. The country, which ranks as Turkey’s sixth largest export market (worth 7.2 billion dollars in 2013, according to Turkstat), is also important for many Turkish companies. By the end of 2012, Turkish foreign direct investment in Russia was worth nine billion dollars, according to the Ministry of Economy.

With Turkish-Russian relations already tense over differences on Syria policy, Ankara seems reluctant to push Russia too hard at this time on Crimea. During a Mar. 5 telephone call between Erdoğan and Putin, the Turkish prime minister, according to an official statement, placed responsibility for the Crimea situation “foremost” on those now in charge in Kyiv.

Erdoğan added that “instability would negatively affect the entire region.”

In Mar. 6 comments on state-run television, Turkish Energy Minister Taner Yıldız played down any concerns that Russian gas supplies would be disrupted, adding that there was no need to seek alternative supplies from countries, such as Azerbaijan.

Keeping the proper diplomatic balance may get trickier for Erdoğan in the coming weeks and months. Crimea’s recent referendum, which voiced a desire for the peninsula to be annexed by Russia, could create a dilemma for Ankara, said Ülgen, the analyst.

Turkey’s emphasis on Ukraine’s territorial integrity and concern about the persecution of the Crimean Tatars under both Russian and Soviet rule mean that “Turkey would need to become much more critical of Russia, if Crimea was to secede to Russia,” said Ülgen.

At a Mar. 6 news conference in the Crimean capital, Simferopol, Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Jemiliyev claimed that the Turkish foreign minister told him Turkey “would immediately get involved,” if the Crimean Tatars found themselves at risk.

Any clash involving Crimean Tatars and the local Russian population on the peninsula would stir up nationalist passions in Turkey and up the pressure on the government to take some sort of action.

“There would be certain nationalist individuals [in Turkey] who might be willing to go there [Crimea] and fight,” said Ümut Uzer, an expert on Turkic peoples and Turkish nationalism at Istanbul Technical University.

It would be difficult for Erdoğan to adopt a more aggressive stance toward Russia that would satisfy his domestic audience without risking a major disruption in bilateral trade.

A more confrontational position “poses a fundamental difficulty because [Turkey] doesn’t want its political and economic relationship with Russia endangered … especially as Prime Minister Erdoğan and Russian President Vladimir Putin appear to share a good relationship,” Ülgen said.

Editor’s note:  Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The escalating turmoil over corruption allegations against Turkey’s political elite is now threatening the ruling Justice and Development Party’s greatest achievement – Turkey’s economic growth. With national elections looming in the future, that threat could affect the party’s 11-plus-year hold on power, some local observers believe.

The scandal erupted in December following the detention of scores of people, including government officials, over the alleged payment of millions of dollars in bribes for state contracts. Ten ministers have resigned or been removed from office – either because of family ties to the scandal or at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s initiative.

Amidst an in-house political fight over the allegations, nearly 2,000 police officers and 20 senior prosecutors have been reassigned, while new investigations against alleged government misdeeds continue to be opened.

In the Istanbul headquarters of Erensan International Industrial Boilermakers, Chief Executive Officer Ali Eren watches the latest TV news about the government’s dismissals with concern. “Our biggest fear [is] that this confrontation may lead to the destruction of the state system, destroy our businesses and there will be chaos. There is [a] one-percent risk but it is a risk and it is a big worry,” lamented Eren, who sits on the executive board of Istanbul’s powerful Chamber of Industry.

That worry has prompted Turkish and foreign businesses to “hold their decisions to buy or to sell, to go into partnership or any kind of important business decisions,” he claimed.

With half of its markets overseas, Erensan is better off than many Turkish companies. But much of his company’s growth in the past decade has stemmed from the runaway construction boom that has marked the rule of Prime Minister Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2002.

That boom not only involves most of the corruption allegations against senior government officials. It also remains “the driving force” behind the “Turkish economic miracle,” pointed out political scientist Cengiz Aktar of Sabanci University’s Istanbul Policy Center.

Under the AKP, Turkey’s GDP nearly tripled to stand at 789 billion dollars in 2013, according to the World Bank. The more than 50 billion dollars that Turkey spends each year on public procurement “is almost exclusively about [the] construction industry,” Aktar noted.

While the economic growth rate has slowed in recent years, grandiose infrastructure projects, such as the construction of the world’s largest airport in Istanbul, and of a third bridge across the Bosphorus, remain in the works.

But whether or not that pace can be maintained in the wake of the construction scandal is now in doubt. Even though many of the corruption investigations have been brought to a halt, with the government reassigning investigating prosecutors, the suspicions already have impacted the construction sector.

“Some of the construction companies who are implicated by the corruption probes could well see their access to credit curbed because of the negative publicity,” predicted İnan Demir, chief economist at the private, Istanbul-based Finans Bank. “And a lot of the big projects these constructors are undertaking require external financing. Because the projects are too large for the local banking system.”

Since 2009, Turkey’s foreign-denominated corporate debt has doubled to 170 billion dollars, just over 20 percent of its GDP.

But amidst the ongoing depreciation of the lira – it has lost 10 percent of its value since the corruption scandal broke – that debt places an increasingly heavy burden on Turkish corporations.

“This is a very important threat,” said Demir. “With a Turkish lira depreciation of 20 percent since last May, the corporations are writing FX [foreign exchange] losses to the tune of $35 billion.”

Demir claims that, based on financial reports, that sum equals the total profits for publicly traded private Turkish companies in 2012.

That means Turkish companies now face a double-whammy – fewer existing funds for future projects and greater difficulty borrowing fresh funds for new investments. Adding to that difficulty is the US Federal Reserve’s decision to reverse a policy (quantitative easing) that reduced the cost of dollar-denominated borrowing.

Meanwhile, Turkey’s consumer confidence is falling as fast as its currency. Between December 2013 and January, the Turkish financial news network CNBC-E recorded a 17-percent decrease in its monthly consumer-confidence index, the biggest decline since the 2009 world economic crisis.

Nevertheless, the government continues to stand by its prediction of four-percent economic growth for 2014. But some analysts now expect a slowdown, with a figure half that number more likely, or even a recession.

“I think we are looking at less than two-percent growth. We are going to lose more [than] half a year,” warned Eren.

A widely accepted economic rule of thumb in Turkey is that five-percent growth is needed to absorb the million or so young people entering the job market each year.

But with nationwide local elections slotted for Mar. 30 and a presidential poll in August, few Turks expect immediate, radical policy changes to pump up the economy in the wake of the corruption scandal.

“We are facing elections until August. No one is going to make a move until they’ve passed,” said Eren.

Opinion polls – often of questionable accuracy in Turkey – still give the AKP a commanding lead for these elections. But with unprecedented political uncertainty casting a shadow over future prosperity, Prime Minister Erdoğan could have good reason to worry.

“The only serious factor that would undermine the ruling party’s future is the economy,” noted analyst Aktar. “If there is a slowdown, at the end of the day, Turks vote with their wallets, like so many other countries in the world.”

Editor’s note:  Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

The Mar. 21 ceasefire in the battle between the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Turkish state offers Turkey not only the hope of peace after decades of bloodshed, but poses profound implications for the region at large.

“If this [peace] process is successful, Turkey will be in a position to overcome its most strategic vulnerability” – its roughly 30-year-long fight with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) over greater rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority – claimed Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based research institute Edam.

Under the proposal, announced by jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, the group would pull thousands of its fighters out of Turkey and start disarmament.

Ending the conflict with the PKK, which has cost tens of thousands of lives, “would put Turkey strategically on a very different level and would imply that Turkey is becoming a more assertive, influential and confident player regionally,” Ulgen said.

Any such newfound confidence could help temper not only Turkey’s suspicions of its ethnic minorities, but of its neighbours as well.

Ultimately, the diplomatic peace dividend could extend from Cyprus to the disputed territory of Nagorno Karabakh in Azerbaijan, pointed out Attila Yesilada, a political analyst at Global Source Partners, an Istanbul-based research firm.

“If we solve our Kurdish problem, it will serve as a role model,” predicted Yesilada. “If we finally deliver in deeds rather than words.”

Ankara’s European and U.S. allies have often touted Turkey as a model of democratic and economic success for conflict-strewn countries in the Middle East and North Africa.

But the consequences of a more assertive Turkey no longer at war with itself may not only be benign, analysts caution. If Kurdish nationalism is no longer seen as a threat to Turkey’s territorial integrity, it also opens the door to a reconfiguration of its stance toward the large Kurdish populations in neighbouring Iran, Iraq and Syria.

“Ankara would naturally be more disposed to establishing alliances with Kurds in the region, be it in Iraq or Syria,” predicted analyst Ulgen. “In a way, there will be implications for the region, especially if we take into consideration the future of nation states like Iraq and Syria, which is very much uncertain.”

With Ankara’s backing, Turkish companies have been signing direct energy deals with Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government and circumventing Baghdad. For months, a massive energy deal involving the construction of gas and oil pipelines has been in the offing between the Turkish government and the Iraqi Kurds.

Washington fears such deals fuel Iraqi Kurdish aspirations for independence, but the Turkish government has rejected these misgivings.

The pipeline agreement is expected to be ratified shortly.

The energy deal not only offers potentially billions of dollars in transit fees to Turkey, along with the prospect of discounted energy prices, but also could solve one of its most pressing economic and diplomatic headaches – more secure energy supplies.

“Currently, we are almost completely reliant on Russia and Iran, which are, to say the least, volatile neighbours, if not hostile,” elaborated expert Yesilada. “And both are bound to use gas delivery as a negotiation [tool] in diplomacy.”

But the success of the deal with the Iraqi Kurds is dependent on peace with the PKK, he cautioned. “Unless the current ‘peace process’ reaches fruition, such pipelines would be lame ducks” for PKK attacks, Yesilada said.

In a televised Mar. 27 interview, Turkish Justice Minister Sadullah Ergin said the PKK is expected to leave Turkey “before the end of summer”, Hürriyet Daily News reported. The PKK, though, has asked for legal guarantees for its fighters’ safe passage into northern Iraq and for the Turkish parliament’s inclusion in the peace process – proposals so far rejected by Ankara.

But if the ceasefire holds, and ends Turkey’s “paranoia” about the Kurds and tensions over their relationship to the Turkish state, “it will help the resolution of other remaining age-old problems,” predicted Cengiz Aktar, a professor of political science at Istanbul’s Bahçeşehir University.

One of the beneficiaries could be neighbouring Armenia, Aktar argues. Diplomatic relations between the two countries broke off in 1993 amidst the war between Turkish ally Azerbaijan and Armenia over the breakaway territory of Nagorno Karabakh. A recent attempt at reconciliation between Ankara and Yerevan has stalled, with both sides blaming the other.

Nonetheless, even with the centenary of Ottoman Turkey’s 1915 massacre of ethnic Armenians approaching, “a Turkey at peace with itself . . . might be tempted to go ahead with Armenia,” Aktar reasoned. As yet, Yerevan has not commented on the PKK ceasefire.

And while the potential fruits of peace with the PKK are undoubtedly considerable for Ankara, neighbouring rivals may interpret them differently, warns analyst Ulgen.

“If Turkey becomes a stronger and assertive player in the region, it will be a serious disadvantage for the countries that are at odds with Turkey in terms of regional objectives,” he said. “That can be Syria, that can be Iraq, that can be Iran. [T]hese countries might want to prevent this rapprochement from happening.”

Whether that prediction will prove to be the case remains to be seen in the months to come.

*Editor’s note: Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

A tactical alliance in Turkey between Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and a movement headed by theologian Fetullah Gülen is unraveling. And the break-up is threatening to turn acrimonious.

Tension between Erdoğan and the Gülen movement heightened with two late-December announcements by the prime minister’s office that listening devices had been found in his private offices. Erdoğan asserted that responsibility for the bugs lies with the deep state, a broad term used to describe reactionary elements within the Turkish political system and military that act outside of the law.

Over the past decade, Erdoğan’s government – with the help of Gülen followers, who are well represented in the Turkish media, judiciary system, and police – has drastically curtailed the political influence of the military. Thus, the bugging incident could well be part of an effort by recalcitrant generals to claw back some of their lost power.

But some observers raised the possibility that the bugs could have been planted by Gülenists.

“Those who played an important role in clearing the influence of the military from the deep state might be trying to fill the gap themselves,” former Erdoğan spokesperson Akif Beki speculated on CNN Türk on Dec. 27.

The Gülen movement is known mostly for operating a vast network of Islamic schools around the world, and it also has considerable media holdings. Gülen’s followers inside Turkey were widely seen as a critical force in aiding Erdoğan and his moderate Islamist Justice and Development Party in bringing the military firmly under civilian control and in weakening the firm barrier between mosque and state.

With the generals now brought to heel, the basis for the Erdoğan-Gülen alliance has eroded.

“The trust between the two factions has vanished and now this coalition is not functioning at all because common goals are not as strong at they were once before,” observed Kadri Gursel, a political columnist for the Turkish daily Milliyet. “The common ground has become weak.”

With Erdoğan’s hold on power now secure, the prime minister has less need to seek out that common ground, noted Yuksel Taskin, an associate professor at Istanbul’s Marmara University and an expert on centre-right Turkish politics.

“When fighting against the military and civilian bureaucratic oligarchy, he gave too much power to the Gülen community,” Taskin said. “He does not want to be pressurised by this group. He needs to curb their power. This is the logic of politics.”

The first signs of conflict began appearing nearly a year ago, when, in February 2012, the prosecutor’s office attempted to interrogate Turkey’s intelligence chief, Hakan Fidan, over supposed efforts by his agency, the MİT, to broker an end to the decades-long insurgency by armed Kurdish rebels.

The investigation, which ultimately could have seen Erdoğan in court as a defence witness, forced the prime minister to rush through parliament legislation that gives him a veto on the interrogation of the head of intelligence.

Investigative journalist Ahmet Şık, who has written a book on the Gülen movement, argued that the probe was, in fact, about the power struggle between Turkey’s two most powerful figures, Erdoğan and Gülen.

“Tayyip Erdoğan saw this as an attack on him and he responded with a harsher one,” Şık commented. “That was natural.”

Going from hunted to hunter, the MİT since has been seen as going after Gülenists. Erdoğan “gave orders to MİT to blacklist the bureaucrats close to the (Gülen) community in order to get rid of them,” wrote Emre Uslu, a columnist for Zaman Today, an English-language paper seen as sympathetic to the Gülen movement.

It is not just about purging hundreds of Gülen supporters in the police, civil service and judiciary. Erdoğan is now targeting the private tutoring schools that reportedly provide the movement both with an important source of income and with new followers.

Each year, the schools, or “dershanes”, prepare an estimated 1.2 million students for Turkey’s tough university entrance exam. A study published in September 2012 by the Turkish Chamber of Commerce estimated that the schools, more than 4,000 in number, have become a billion-dollar business, which includes a vast publication and distribution network.

Exactly how many of the schools are linked to the Gülen movement is not known, however.

Yet the fate of the schools is now seen as a litmus test for what direction the struggle between the prime minister and the theologian will go.

On Dec. 7, Education Minister Ömer Dinçer, responding to a question at a school opening, appeared to indicate a slight softening of the government’s stance, pushing back the closure date of the schools to 2014. No explanation for the change was given.

So far, the 71-year-old Gülen, who lives in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, has been careful to avoid confronting the prime minister publicly on any of these fronts. But in a video address to his supporters in November, he exuded an air of determination.

“When they close your homes, you will open dormitories. When they close your dorms, you will build houses. When they close your schools, you’ll build universities. When they close your university you will open 10 more schools,” he said. “You will march forward without stopping.”

*Editor’s note: Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul. This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

Most countries in the world have an emergency telephone number for the police. But in Turkey’s largest city, Istanbul, an emergency telephone line has been launched for victims of police violence.

The İmdat Polis (Help, Police!) initiative comes in response to a spate of highly publicised incidents of police violence in the city.

“We always knew about abuse in the prisons and police precincts, but now there is an increase of [police] attacks against people in the streets,” said criminal lawyer Taylan Tanay, one of the hotline’s creators.

The phone line, established by the Progressive Lawyers Association, which Tanay heads, is open 24 hours a day to anyone who has a complaint about his or her treatment by Istanbul police. In an emergency, a lawyer from a network of 150 legal volunteers is dispatched immediately to the scene.

The hotline was conceived as a response to a high-profile case of police violence in June, when police in the conservative neighbourhood of Fatih brutally beat a man with batons and belts over a traffic dispute. Using a cell-phone camera, a passerby recorded the beating. The images, accompanied by the screams of the victim’s wife, made headline news and prompted the creation of the emergency line.

Tanay is currently representing the victim, Ahmet Koca, in his case against the police for brutality. He is also helping to fight counter-claims from the police that Koca resisted arrest and used undue force. Such counter-charges nearly always follow a complaint of police brutality, he alleged, with the courts “nearly always” siding with the police.

But, with the hotline, victims can now fight back.

“With more and more people recording such violence with phone cameras and witnesses prepared to speak along with media reports, we can successfully bring cases (against the police),” Tanay asserted.

Observers attribute the perceived increase in police violence to everything from the government’s desire to court nationalist voters by allegedly giving the police a freer hand, to the declining impact of European criticism on halting rights abuses.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, however, has dismissed the claims of growing police violence as “black propaganda”.

His government points to EU-inspired reforms such as introducing cameras into police stations, having zero-tolerance for torture and prosecuting police who mistreat citizens.

Nonetheless, the perception of police impunity persists. Earlier this year, police officer Sedat Selim Ay was appointed deputy-chief of Istanbul’s anti-terrorism department despite a past conviction for torture (a verdict which he appealed) and involvement in two European Court of Human Rights rulings against Turkey for cases related to rape and torture. Yet while some government ministers deplored Ay’s appointment, he was not removed.

Tanay argues that such practices explain why many people in the past have preferred to keep quiet about police abuse.

Not anymore. In its first week of operation this August, the police-violence hotline received 80 calls for help, four of which were deemed emergencies.
Fifty-year-old taxi driver Serkis Yogurtcu was among the first assisted.

“The police were called to my house because of a domestic dispute with my wife. I was standing outside the house and the police immediately handcuffed me from behind and then beat me,” Yogurtcu alleged. “I was then taken to a side street near the police station where they again beat me, kicking, punching and using batons against me.”

Yogurtcu’s wife called the hotline. In response, a volunteer lawyer headed to the police station – a legal presence that, according to Tanay, “always” prompts police to be “polite and cooperative” and ensures that medical tests and forensic reports “are compiled correctly”.

Yogurtcu has now filed a case against the police, as well as fighting counter-charges against him. If he loses, he could face jail time.

But the hotline’s lawyers can easily fall victim to police violence as well. In August, hotline lawyer Sule Erdem was summoned to a textile-factory-worker protest and ended up with a broken arm and fingers from police batons.

“I arrived and identified myself to the police; many knew me already as I had met them in the police stations,” Erdem recounted. “But within minutes of arriving, they attacked the workers, using gas and batons. They beat me to the ground and kept hitting me, breaking my arm and two fingers.”

The experience has not deterred Erdem, who says he has since “opened several cases against the police” for unjustified use of force.

But not all calls are for help. Volunteers claim that 20 percent of the calls they received in the hotline’s first week were threatening calls from people claiming to be from the police.

Undeterred, the hotline is continuing its battle, making headlines earlier this month when it published a list of the top ten worst Istanbul police stations for violence. The number-one, Taksim, is in the heart of Istanbul, in a multi-ethnic district heavily frequented by tourists and known for its nightlife.

But, sometimes, it’s the police themselves who are calling for help. The hotline rings and a policeman asks a volunteer whether the lawyers can help in legal problems with their superiors. “Of course,” Tanay answered.

*Editor’s note: Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.

In a display of muscle-flexing, Turkish tanks this week carried out military exercises on the Syrian border, just a few kilometres away from towns that Syrian Kurds had seized from Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s forces.

The seizure of the Kurdish towns sent alarm bells ringing in the Turkish capital. “It took a lot of people by surprise in Ankara. It is one of the toughest and serious issues in the last period of Turkish history,” said Metehan Demir, a military expert and columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet.

“The capture of Kurdish towns in Syria is perceived by Kurdish groups in Turkey as the signal for (a) future autonomous Kurdish region on Turkey’s border, which is seen as the start of (a) wider Kurdish state, including Iran, Iraq and Turkey,” Demir added.

Turkey has a restive Kurdish minority, accounting for around 20 percent of its population of 73.6 million. Since 1984, Ankara has been fighting the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which is fighting for greater Kurdish rights. Many of its fighters are drawn from Syria’s Kurdish minority. Adding to Ankara’s angst, the PKK flag was raised in one of the seized Syrian towns.

“We will not allow the formation of a terrorist structure near our border,” Turkish Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu told a Turkish television channel on Jul. 29. “We reserve every right . . . No matter if it is Al-Qaeda or the PKK. We would consider it a matter of national security and take every measure.”

The tough words are seen as a government attempt to assuage anger, bordering on panic in sections of the country’s often-nationalist media.

“This is because Ankara had not prepared the Turkish public for this event. I cannot believe Ankara was surprised,” said international relations expert Soli Ozel of Istanbul’s Kadir Has University. “Syrian Kurds are going to look after their own self-determination. They will seek to achieve at least autonomy. We had this coming for a long, long time.”

Since the seizure of the Syrian towns, Turkish armed forces with armour have been sent to Turkey’s border with the Syrian Kurdish region.

“Turkey will see and understand whether this territory is a matter of right of the Kurds, or a base of the PKK,” warned Hürriyet’s Demir. “Depending on this situation, Turkey might actually carry out an operation.”

Any military action by Turkey, Ozel believes, would be counterproductive. “I think that would be close to a suicidal move as I can imagine,” he said. “Because I am not quite sure that the Turkish military is ready to take on yet another enemy . . . Turkey would be fighting a war on two, or even three fronts, if the Iraqi Kurds were involved.”

For now, Ankara appears to be looking to diplomacy rather than force. The semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan regional government shares a border with Turkey and the Syrian Kurdish region. In the past few years, Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party has developed close ties with the region and with Iraqi Kurdish President Masoud Barzani.

“There is now a very close dialogue between Ankara and Barzani,” said Sinan Ulgen, head of the Istanbul-based EDAM research institute. “However, in Syria we see two rival Kurdish entities; one dominated by the Kurdish National Council, but the other one is an offshoot of the PKK. There, Barzani does not really have leverage.”

Questions over Barzani’s influence over developments in Syria are increasingly being raised in Ankara. Before Syrian Kurds’ gains in northern Syria, Turkish media broadcast pictures of hundreds of Syrian Kurdish fighters being escorted by Barzani’s forces back into Syria.

Adding to Ankara’s concern is that Barzani brokered a deal between rival Syrian Kurdish factions, including the National Democratic Party, which is linked to the PKK. It remains a point of controversy whether Ankara was aware of this deal, although a regional diplomatic source claims Turkish officials knew about the pact.

On Jul. 26, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned the Iraqi Kurdish leadership that “we are no longer responsible” for what might happen.

But tensions were markedly reduced after the Turkish foreign minister met with Barzani on Aug. 1 in the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil. A joint statement was issued promising to work together on Syria. Ankara’s anger could be tempered by the increasing trade relationship with the Iraqi Kurds. Iraq is now Turkey’s second largest trading partner, of which the lion’s share of commerce is taken by Iraqi Kurds.

Analyst Ulgen said that if Ankara takes steps to resolve its own Kurdish conflict, it will have no reason to worry about Kurds setting up a state across the Turkish border. But he warns that events in Syria threaten to drive up the price for Ankara of any domestic deal.

“It will make it more difficult for Turkey to negotiate with its own Kurds, to the extent (that) each type of development across the border has tended (to make) the Turkish Kurds to raise their expectations as to what they can accomplish,” Ulgen said.

*Editor’s note: Dorian Jones is a freelance reporter based in Istanbul.

This story originally appeared on EurasiaNet.org.