Tolga Inci, one of the founders and interim chair of the Atheism Association, outside the association’s office in Istanbul. Credit: Nick Ashdown/IPS

By Nick Ashdown
ISTANBUL, Jun 24 2014 (IPS)

“Being an atheist isn’t something you can easily express in Turkey,” says Sinem Köroğlu, a member of the Atheism Association, the first official organisation for atheists in the country. “It’s becoming more difficult with the current government as well,” she adds.

Set up earlier this year in Istanbul, the aim of the Atheism Association is to give a voice and support to non-believers in Turkey, a country not known for its fondness of atheists.

Politicians in the religious conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) have been making hostile comments about atheists. Last year, a high-ranking member of the party, Mahmud Macit, used Twitter to attack “spineless psychopaths pretending to be atheists”, saying that they “should be annihilated.” Prime Minister Erdoğan himself has also insulted protesters by calling them “atheists and terrorists”.

“It’s just really degrading,” says Köroğlu, speaking from the group’s small office in Istanbul’s cosmopolitan Kadıköy neighbourhood, known as a stronghold of secularism. But she says politicians’ comments reflect the larger views of Turkish society. “This is the mentality of the majority of Turkish people, and we need to break this.”"In the public consciousness, mostly among religious conservatives, atheists are seen as immoral and dirty – all of the negative things you could imagine" – Mustafa Akyol, Turkish writer and advocate for a tolerant form of Islam

A survey carried out by Istanbul’s Bahçeşehir University in 2011 found that 64 percent of respondents would not want to have an atheist for a next-door neighbour, 72 percent would not want someone who drinks alcohol, and 67 percent would not want an unmarried couple.

Mustafa Akyol, a Turkish writer and advocate for a tolerant form of Islam, says atheists are seen as the “ultimate other” in Turkey. “In the public consciousness, mostly among religious conservatives, atheists are seen as immoral and dirty – all of the negative things you could imagine.”

Such vitriol can result in serious harassment. Barbaros Şansal, a prominent fashion designer and activist, is also a well-known atheist. “I receive lots of messages with threats all the time because I’m an atheist,” he says. “They want to kill me, they want to torture me, they ask me to leave the country, and so on.”

The Atheism Association has also received threatening phone calls, which members say they had expected all along. “I didn’t take them too seriously,” says Tolga Inci, one of the founders and interim chair of the association.

Part of the reason for this, says Akyol, is the vicious way non-Muslims, especially atheists, are often treated by conservative religious media outlets. “They demonise atheists, and treat them as valueless, immoral people.”

Inci says his organisation has already been attacked in the press by religious papers such as Haber Vaktim and Milli Gazete.” They said we will attempt to spread atheism and wage a war against religion,” he answers with a laugh.

Köroğlu insists that the association is not trying to start a war or convert anyone. It just wants to spread awareness about atheism and to support Turkey’s non-believers.

“We’re not trying to take anyone’s religion away from them. We’re just trying to defend atheists,” she says. “We need to teach them that we’re human as well.”

According to Inci, religious discrimination in Turkey has increased in recent years, coinciding with the rise to power of the AKP. But he thinks that now the situation “has become worse.” Noting that “with the AKP, they talk about religion all the time.” Inci says this makes not only atheists, but many less devout people and religious minorities uncomfortable.

Turkey was established as a staunchly secular republic in 1923, but Inci thinks that it is becoming more publicly religious. “We want our secularism back,” he says.

Of Turkey’s 74 million people, 99.8 percent are Muslim, and 80-85 percent of those are Sunni. However, there are also 10-15 million Alevis, a heterodox sect of Shia Islam known for its more relaxed religious customs, and smaller numbers of Christians, Jews, and atheists.

A Eurobarometer poll in 2005 found that 95 percent of Turkish respondents believe in God, while a Pew poll of 2006 reported that 69 percent said religion is “very important” to them.

Turkey’s educational curriculum includes a mandatory religious class that focuses almost exclusively on Sunni Islam. All citizens must carry ID cards declaring their religion, and being an atheist is not an option. State-provided burial services exist for Islamic funerals only, with cremation forbidden in Islam – but many atheists do not want to be buried in Islamic cemeteries.

The colossal government department responsible for religious affairs – the Diyanet – only promotes Sunni Islam. Since the AKP came to power in 2002, its budget has more than quintupled and the number of employees has increased from 74,000 to over 141,000.

The government has passed laws that critics accuse of being religiously inspired. Last year, a bill restricting alcohol sales was passed, legislation that Erdoğan said was “something that faith orders.”

The current Law 216 on hate speech makes it illegal to insult religious values and has been used to prosecute several high profile figures such as world-renowned classical musician Fazıl Say, and linguist and writer Sevan Nişanyan. Both were prosecuted for online comments deemed to be offensive towards Islam.

“I think that law is very questionable,” Inci says. “It’s like a rubber band. You can stretch it any way you like. Maybe saying that I’m an atheist is considered putting down religious values.”

Akyol believes that Law 216 has an important value in suppressing hate speech, but that it should not be used to target people like Say and Nişanyan. “Criticism of religion should not be a crime,” he says.

Akyol, himself a devout Muslim, stresses that Islam has been historically accepting towards non-Muslims, citing the Ottoman Empire’s tolerance towards religious minorities. He notes there are still many young Muslim intellectuals who do not demonise atheists and are willing to engage in civilised dialogue.

For Akyol, the Atheism Association can play an important role in fostering such dialogue. “I support their [atheists’] right to exist. I think it’s good that they exist so Muslims can see these people and maybe converse with them.”

Meanwhile, the Atheism Association is planning to provide free legal support to anyone charged with blasphemy, organising seminars, and conducting a survey on religious beliefs in Turkey. They want religious classes in school to be optional, state-provided funeral services for non-Muslims, and crematoriums to be opened in Turkey.

The announcement this week of the personality chosen by Turkey’s opposition parties to run for the office of the President of the Republic has taken the majority of the Turks by surprise.

Following tight and discrete negotiations, the Republic People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) have appointed the 70-year-old former Secretary General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), Ehmeleddin Ihsanoglu, as their joint candidate for the country’s highest political office.

Ehmeleddin Ihsanoglu. Credit: www.kremlin.ru

With 56 Muslim member states, the OIC is the largest international organisation after the United Nations. Its headquarters are in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

For the first time in the Turkish republic’s history, the presidential elections – which are scheduled for 10 August 2014, with a second ballot two weeks later in the event of a tie – will be held by direct popular vote, instead of traditional election by members of parliament.

The nomination of Ihsanoglu has finally endowed the opposition with a plausible representative to the contest. However, members of the CHP and MHP have not yet expressed enthusiasm for the choice, because Ihsanoglu’s doctrine seems to be incompatible with the parties’ historical role in local politics.

The emergence of Ihsanoglu as a challenger to their own candidate is also bad news for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which had speculated that the march towards the presidential palace would have been uneventful.

The AKP had said a week earlier that the name of their nominee would be announced just before the July 3 deadline for candidate registrations. AKP’s leaders may now have to show their card earlier than they hoped.“Political forces should not put pressure on religion. Similarly, pressure should not be put on politics through religion” – Ehmeleddin Ihsanoglu [presidential candidate for Turkey’s opposition parties], commenting on Turkey’s status as a secular state

The general public and observers, local as well as international, were until the beginning of this week convinced that current Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan would be the man to seek and obtain the presidential position, against a cosmetic competitor from the opposition, running for the sake of democratic practices. IPS has leaned that such certainty is now being called into question.

The CHP is the party founded in 1923 by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, who established the Turkish Republic. Its followers are generally referred to as ‘Kemalists’ and aspire to a socialist, pro-western society. Ataturk is widely revered to the present day as the father of the nation.

The MHP was founded in 1965 on an ultra-nationalist and pan-Turkish doctrine, which contemplates the unification of all Turkic ethnic groups in the Caucasus and the Middle East under Ankara’s rule. It has a record of anti-leftist and anti-Kurdish activities.

Both parties support the secular state, as designed by Ataturk and his successors, although in certain periods MHP has had radical Islamists amongst its members and MPs. Ultra-nationalism and activist Islam have often coexisted in the Turkish political universe.

This is where the controversy with Ihsanoglu’s appointment begins.

Ihsanoglu’s appointment in 2003 as Secretary-General of OIC was proposed and sponsored by Erdogan’s government.  In his ten-year tenure as the organisation’s head, he has cultivated an image of a discrete, but committed, Islamist whose vision of Turkey’s future as a secular society is unknown.

In reality, most CHP voters had never heard of Ihsanoglu until this week. Those who did believe he belongs to those among the AKP followers who would like to progressively erase Ataturk’s memory from public life.

Although his manners and interpersonal skills project him as a smooth transnational diplomat with a broad world-view, his persistent lobbying for a decade of U.S. and European governments to pass legislation that would limit freedom of expression by their respective citizens in issues relating to Muslim immigrants, on the grounds of fighting ‘Islamophobia’, has made an increasing number of CHP cadres reluctant to welcome his nomination.

In a meeting with CHP executives on June 18, the party’s former chairman, Deniz Baikal, expressed his reservations on the rationality of the decision, but asked them to support any presidential candidate that the current leadership of CHP would confirm.

In an attempt to reassure his critics, in an interview with the daily Cumhurriyet on June 18, Ihsanoglu said that “Ataturk has a special place in the hearts of the Turkish nation” but that he “should neither be consecrated nor rejected.”

Commenting on Turkey’s status as a secular state, he stressed that “political forces should not put pressure on religion. Similarly, pressure should not be put on politics through religion.”

In past presidential elections, the CHP and the MHP have always presented separate candidates. In the municipal elections of March 2014 they changed their electoral strategy and presented a single candidate in Ankara. The experiment was positive, with their common representative losing the contest by only a few dozen votes.

This strategy may be more rewarding in the presidential elections. Taking as a basis the national results of March, an AKP candidate is likely to receive 43 to 44 percent of the total votes in the first round, while the CHP/MHP joint ticket is likely to secure 44 to 45 percent. The winner, however, needs 50 percent plus one vote in order to claim victory.

With the two pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy (BDP) and People’s Democratic (HDP) parties also planning to present a common candidate, it is unlikely that a winner will be proclaimed after the first round. The BDP and the HDP received an aggregate of 6.28 percent of the votes in the March elections. A merger of the two formations is likely to occur later in June.

This factor confers upon the pro-Kurdish parties the power of king-makers in the second round of the elections. The AKP has understood this for some time and has tried to lure Kurdish voters through a process of political resolution of the 30-year-long armed conflict between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the state. No tangible results have been obtained so far, however.

The BDP and the HDP are aware of their bargaining weight ahead of the elections and will try to extract a maximum of concessions from AKP and CHP/MHP. These include, but are not limited to civic freedoms for the Kurds, equal citizen rights with those enjoyed by the Turks, autonomous-region status for the south east of Turkey, amnesty for PKK fighters who live in exile, and freeing PKK’s founder Abdullah Ocalan, who has been sentenced to life imprisonment and is kept in solitary confinement on Imrali island.

CHP and MHP leaders have already shown moderate support for the reconciliation process between PKK and the state, but they will have a hard time to persuade their respective members on Kurdish autonomy and Ocalan’s future status.

Still, the direction and eventual outcome of the August elections lies on one key factor only: who will be the AKP candidate?

If Erdogan puts his name forward, the game is over for all other aspirants to the throne, according to the most seasoned local analysts. The Prime Minister’s personality attracts followers by the millions, in spite of the flawed policies of his government and corruption allegations about his close entourage since December last year.

But Erdogan, who has so far not commented on Ihsanoglu’s nomination, seems to be prudently weighing all the implications of his candidacy. These are directly related to his political future and to the future of his party.

If he is elected president of his country, he will have to step down from the chair of AKP and also leave the Prime Minister’s job to someone else. Under the current Constitution, the Prime Minister is the head of the executive, while the president’s role is ceremonial.

Erdogan’s goal is to vest the presidency with full executive powers. This would require a new or revised Constitution, the process towards which will take time and face strong resistance from the other parties and even from certain MPs of AKP.

The possibility of a presidential, rather than parliamentary, regime is also likely to discourage other AKP leaders from accepting the role of prime minister, because it will consist of merely executing decisions made by Erdogan.

In the event that Erdogan announces his intention to run for president, the forthcoming elections will be no longer a contest between two men, but a vote for choosing between regime change and status quo.

Turkish media close to Hizmet, an Islamist movement formerly supporting AKP but critical of the party’s leadership since the end of 2013, have also expressed support for Ihsanoglu. The number of voters loyal to Hizmet is unknown, but estimates evaluate their influence to be 3-8 percent of the total. They come from the educated middle class, including judges and civil servants.

The CHP/MHP leadership is speculating on Erdogan’s participation. If the majority of citizens remain attached to the parliamentary regime and to the separation of powers, Ihsanoglu seems to have the right profile to represent them.

Moreover, he reassures the Islamist part of the electorate, he is not an immediate threat to the secularists, and he has the know-how and network of powerful personalities around the world to restore Turkey’s image as a balanced and neutral regional power.

While still the OIC Secretary-General, Ihsanoglu fell apart with Erdogan, with the latter and his inner circle in the government accusing the organisation as ‘incompetent’ and with a Turkish minister asking for Ihsanoglu’s resignation from the OIC.

The dispute was over OIC’s silence in respect to Egypt’s July 3, 2013 ‘revolution’ which removed the Muslim Brotherhood from power.

These abilities confirm Ihsanoglu as a °politically correct° future president for Washington and Riyadh, which have been increasingly concerned with Turkey’s recent foreign policy in the Middle East and Northern Africa.

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.

Protestors in Turkey’s Gezi Park show no signs of backing down. Credit: akli denge-Mental Balance/CC-BY-2.0

By Jacques N. Couvas
ANKARA, Jun 8 2013 (IPS)

Now approaching its third week, the “Occupy Taksim” movement, a peaceful sit-in to save Istanbul’s Gezi Park from redevelopment, has taken on a festival-like atmosphere, with protesters organising to stand guard around the clock, provide uninterrupted food and water supplies, and carry out a self-initiated cleaning of the grounds.

As the demonstrators grow more settled, however, the government has not changed its position towards them.

Upon his return from the Maghreb at 1:40 am Friday, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan reiterated his initial decision to demolish Gezi Park. He did not cede to public requests that he apologise for police violence used to disperse protesters and show greater respect for individual fundamental rights and freedom of expression.

“The police are doing their duty. These protests, which have turned into vandalism and utter lawlessness, must end immediately,” Erdoğan declared.

Addressing thousands gathered at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport in the early hours of Friday, he blamed terrorists, Marxists, the opposition and foreign conspirators for the unrest and its immediate economic consequences.

“No power but Allah can stop Turkey’s rise,” he said, in a speech that often referred to the importance of individual and state compliance with divine principles. “May Allah preserve our fraternity and unity.”

In a reference to the chief executive of a leading Turkish bank, who said this week that he was one of the “marauders”, a term Erdogan used to describe the demonstrators, the prime minister said, “If a general manager of a bank voices support for those organising this [Gezi] vandalism, he will find us standing against him.”

Erdogan also condemned intellectuals, saying, “Those who call themselves journalists, artists, politicians, have, in a very irresponsible way, opened the way for hatred, discrimination and provocation.”

Shared blame

Later in the morning, Turkish President Abdullah Gul sent a different message while speaking to a group of visiting foreign students on the importance of the respect of  “otherness”.

“Efforts to oppress one another become the source of many sufferings and conflicts,” Gul said.

On Thursday evening, Fetullah Gulen, a popular Turkish Islamic scholar, made a much-awaited speech on the Taksim crisis from Pennsylvania, where he has confined himself for over a decade.

Gulen urged authorities not to underestimate and overlook protests, saying, “We share blame” for the unrest. He frequently used “we” to refer to members of his movement in particular and repeatedly blamed his movement for doing too little to eliminate problems Turkish society faces, particularly on an ethical level.

Gulen supported Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) at its inception but began to distance himself from it in 2010.

Gulen’s speech fell short of admonishing the government for its handling of the crisis and seemed to support Erdogan’s stance – that elections are the only way to change the situation. Many of Gulen’s followers, who include journalists and academics, had expected a clearer position on fundamental rights.

Opposition criticism

Observers here fear that the deadlock between the prime minister and protesters will only prolong the Taksim movement.

Turkey’s political opposition has thus far abstained from adding fuel to the fire through statements or rallies, and in an exclusive interview with IPS, Faruk Logoglu, deputy chairman of the major opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) and vice-chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM), rebuffed Erdogan’s accusations that the opposition had instigated the Taksim demonstrations.

CHP is the country’s oldest political party, established in 1919 by Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and officially registered in 1923.

In the interview (full version available here), Logoglu also outlined the risks for the country should the government continue on its current course vis-à-vis Turkey’s secular middle class.

Logoglu believed the current minimum requirement for restoring social peace would be for Erdogan to personally apologise for the acts of the police and his ministers, governors and chiefs of security responsible for managing the conflict on the field.

He called on the prime minister to officially commit to changing state policies with respect to human rights, privacy of citizens, and freedom of expression, demonstration and choice of lifestyle.

Logoglu, a former career diplomat and ambassador to Washington, also suggested that the current discontent with a large part of the population stems from its frustration with government’s foreign policy.

Logoglu claimed that CHP proposed a detailed plan 18 months ago for a diplomatic solution to the Syrian crisis. “If the Prime Minister had been open to discuss[ing] the initiative,” Logoglu suggested, “Turkey would have gained recognition as a serious mediator and the Syrian population would have been spared destruction and shedding of blood.”

As protests in Turkey stretch into their second week, the precise terms and conditions that could bring the social unrest to an end are unclear, though many speculate about what would end the deadlock between the government and protesters.

In an exclusive interview with IPS correspondent Jacques N. Couvas, Faruk Logoglu, deputy chairman of the major opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), discussed the current crisis in Turkey and the conditions he believed the government would have to fulfill to end the crisis.

Faruk Logoglu, deputy chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) in Turkey. Photo courtesy of the CHP

In the 2011 general elections, CHP received 26 percent of the vote. It is the second largest party in the Turkish parliament, with 134 of 550 seats. Logoglu is vice chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) and a former ambassador to the United States.

Q:  How do you regard Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s accusations that the opposition has been fomenting unrest?

A: This is a ridiculous claim. Demonstrators gathered of their own will and initiative. Neither the CHP nor any other political party has participated in any official capacity.

The protests were a spontaneous manifestation of discontent with the government’s domestic and foreign policies. The population staged a civic uprising to say that enough is enough.

Q: In Tunis on Thursday, the prime minister said that he would proceed with the Ottoman Artillery Barracks project. How do you see this statement as affecting the demonstrators and the crisis in general?

A: Gezi Park is a symbol of a new political dynamic in our country that says, “Either you change and respect democracy and human rights, or we will continue.” The  [ruling] Justice and Development Party AKP had better understand what is happening in Turkey before it is too late. If they take the wrong steps, everyone will pay a high price.

Things were not going so well – before and after these demonstrations – in foreign policy, society, economy and other areas. If the government uses repressive totalitarian methods, my prognosis is that unrest will continue.

Our party has no control over the demonstrators. There are certainly members of our movement who demonstrate in their capacity as private citizens, but not to our knowledge nor under the CHP banner. The same applies to other parties.

Many protesters have no party affiliation but are associated with organisations with professional and intellectual affinities, such as unions, trade associations or universities.

Q: Foreign commentators have likened the Taksim and Gezi Park demonstrations to the Arab Spring’s beginnings. How do you regard this comparison?

A: What is going on these days in Istanbul and the rest of Turkey is not the Arab Spring, the Arab Revolution or the Orange Revolution.

The main difference is that we already had democracy. CHP has underlined the existence of Turkish democracy as a system for months. We already said, before the events, that democracy could not be taken away from us.

Q: What tangible remedies does CHP propose to resolve the present conflict?

A: The demonstrations started peacefully and must end peacefully. Those responsible for turning a sit-in into a social conflict should make the first move of appeasement.

When a British solder was murdered in London, the British prime minister, David Cameron, cut short his official visit to France. He did this for a single individual. Yet when Turkey is ablaze, the prime minister went to visit Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. It doesn’t make sense.

The first order of business is for the Turkish prime minister to go on TV and apologise to the Turkish people for the brutal use of force by the police, for his insistence on razing a park in Istanbul to build a shopping centre, and to admit that he was wrong.

He should repent and ask for forgiveness by the people, but that may not be enough to restore peace. He will have to change his policies, which violate human rights in terms of freedom of speech, of media, of communication, of assembly, of demonstration, of individual privacy of life. These are part of the reality of what Turkish people want to live.

We expect that the European Parliament will give clear support to our citizens in this matter.

Q: Supporters of the demonstrators have commented that Turkey’s foreign policy and threats to Syria may have added to the discontent of the middle classes. What is CHP’s policy on foreign relations?

A: From the very start of the Syrian crisis we have taken a position of non-interference in the internal affairs of Syria. Such position aimed at encouraging both the Damascus regime and the Syrian opposition to negotiate in order to chart a peace agreement without foreign intervention.

One and a half years ago, we proposed an international conference, initiated by Turkey, to include the permanent members of the United Nations (U.N.) Security Council, the European Union, the representative of the U.N. secretary-general, the Arab neighbours of Syria, Turkey, and, of course, Iran, the Syrian opposition and the Syrian government. We proposed this not just once, but three times, in writing to the prime minister of Turkey.

Now, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian foreign minister Sergei Lavrov have agreed on a similar plan. We do support this initiative, but had our party been heard a year and a half ago, better results would have been achieved.

At CHP, we value Syrian people as neighbours. We regard them as relatives.  We don’t want foreign intervention and certainly not military intervention in Syria. We believe the best way out of that crisis is through a political process.

Protesters gather in Taksim Square in Istanbul, not far from Gezi Park, where protests were sparked last week against the government's most recent urban redevelopment project. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
ISTANBUL, Jun 6 2013 (IPS)

Few imagined that the symbolic act of standing in front of bulldozers in Istanbul’s Gezi Park in an effort to block a development project near the city’s central square would have caused the reaction it did.

The defiant act – and the Turkish police’s violent response – pushed thousands of Turks out into streets across the country over the last week to decry their government’s increasingly authoritarian controls, lack of public accountability, police violence and numerous urban development projects that are irreversibly changing the face of the country.

For many, the plans to uproot trees in Gezi Park are just the latest in a long string of urban projects that ignore the cultural and historic heritage of Istanbul. More over, these projects are built at the expense of the poor and fail to consider residents’ input.

“The poorer people are being driven out of the centre of the city and pushed to the edges,” explained Kevin Robins, an Istanbul-based urban planning researcher. “On the other hand, [there is] the taking over of more and more inner-city areas for the young, affluent middle-class.”

“The mixture…of classes that existed in Istanbul is now being eroded quite dramatically,” Robins told IPS, describing the phenomenon as “polarisation”."The mixture...of classes that existed in Istanbul is now being eroded quite dramatically."
-- Kevin Robins

“There’s a general feeling that there’s an attack on the way of life,” he added.

According to a report last year in The Guardian, redevelopment projects are slated for some 50 neighbourhoods in Istanbul, and in 2012 alone, 7.5 billion Turkish liras were allocated to urban renewal across the city.

Last week, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister and head of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), unveiled his controversial plan to build a third bridge – a 1,275-metre suspension bridge, with an expected price tag of six billion dollars – across the Bosphorus, linking the European and Asian sides of Istanbul.

Opponents to the plan say the bridge will destroy some of the only remaining green areas in the city and have condemned the government’s lack of consultation with local community groups.

Erdogan has also pushed for building a shipping canal across the Bosphorus, calling it “a project of such immense size that it can’t be compared to the Panama or Suez canals”. In May, the government signed a contract to develop a third airport in Istanbul, with a capacity of 150 million passengers.

In recent years, residents of many Istanbul neighbourhoods, especially those home to impoverished, minority groups, like the Tarlabaşı or Sulukule areas, have also been pushed out to make way for real estate developers and luxury housing projects.

So-called gecekondu neighbourhoods – unlicensed shantytowns established decades ago by migrants from eastern Anatolia who moved to Istanbul for work opportunities – are particularly vulnerable to being displaced for the sake of development, with the government and its agencies not only confiscating land but also evicting and sometimes relocating residents to the city’s outskirts.

According to political scientist Mine Eder, the rapid pace at which the Turkish government has launched these urban redevelopment projects is what sets gentrification in Turkey apart from other developing countries around the world.

“There’s a deliberate demolishing to create more money, and really, to create this exclusionary zone for the rich. There is a whole re-appropriation, re-definition, and privatisation of the public space,” explained Eder, who teaches at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University and specialises in the impact of gentrification on minority groups in Istanbul.

“[Erdogan’s] vision is driven by this sort of obsession with tourism and Istanbul becoming this big, giant, commercial centre,” Eder told IPS. “That vision is behind that unquestionable bulldozer construction. ‘Bulldozer neo-liberalism’ is a term that sort of encapsulates the whole thing.”

Nor is the government’s aggressive push for urban development projects limited to Istanbul.

On the road leading from the airport to Turkey’s capital city, Ankara, tall apartment blocks are being erected on numerous hilltops, construction cranes pepper the skyline, and huge billboards, sponsored by the government’s housing authority, TOKI, aim to entice potential homeowners.

“It’s happening everywhere. You see quite dramatic changes going on in Anatolian cities now, making them unrecognisable. Istanbul is clearly the dominant focus, but Ankara also has huge expansions, huge developments, and huge middle-class housing areas,” Robins said.

By 2023, the 100th anniversary of the founding of the modern Turkish republic, Turkey hopes to be among the top ten economies of the world and reach a gross domestic product (GDP) of two trillion dollars and 500 billion dollars in exports annually.

According to Eder, the protests in Gezi Park signal a historic moment in the reign of the current AKP government, forming the strongest and most unified opposition movement in recent years to these unsustainable economic and urban development projects.

“Until now, there was absolutely no one who could actually sit, metaphorically, in front of that bulldozer, and say you can’t go in here,” she said. “Now, they’ve done it.”

“Peace at home, peace in the world” is the official motto of the Turkish Republic. Coined in 1931 by the republic’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, it implies a causal relationship, but the events this week in Istanbul and dozens of other cities of Turkey suggest that causality can work in reverse order, too.

With protests continuing over the past week, two years of Arab Spring and intense socioeconomic unrest in southern Europe seem to be spilling into Turkey, which until now had stayed out of trouble.

Still, the economy is strong, although not as strong as it has generally been in the past decade. As a result, the similarities Turkey shares with northern and southern Mediterranean countries that are also going through a crisis have more to do with poor leadership.

Financial success, fuelled by foreign direct investment (FDI) in luxury real estate in Istanbul and along Turkey’s Aegean coast and by massive privatisation of state enterprises, has given the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) unparalleled popularity as well as an increasing feeling of invincibility."The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has unparalleled popularity as well as an increasing feeling of invincibility."

Since AKP’s 2011 electoral victory, this sentiment has translated into diminishing transparency and accountability by key government figures. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, AKP’s leader and the Turkish prime minister, and a handful of close collaborators have ostentatiously disregarded calls by trusted advisors to consider the average citizen’s concerns and be more inclusive of the 50 percent of Turkey’s population that has not voted for AKP.

Lack of government transparency, such as in southern Europe, and arrogance towards citizens and their fundamental freedoms, such as in the Middle East, have paved the way to an explosive manifestation of the sense that enough is enough, resulting in three deaths, over 1,000 injuries and 1,700 arrests.

Some observers claim that the crisis started with a kiss, referring to a ban in May by Ankara’s authorities of displays of affection by couples in public areas that triggered youth demonstrations in the capital. Others point to earlier signs of discontent.

In May 2012 and the following fall, Erdogan challenged women’s rights to abortion and caesarean section for giving birth, repeatedly proclaiming that women should have a minimum of three children. Women’s associations took to the streets.

More recently, the Turkish parliament, where the AKP holds 326 of 550 seats, passed legislation severely restricting the promotion and consumption of alcohol, and Erdogan has promised high taxes on alcoholic drinks.

Secularist Turks, some of whom have voted AKP in past elections because of the government’s economic performance, have begun complaining that Erdogan is interfering with people’s lifestyles in an unacceptable way.

At the same time, citizens are tired of an excessively liberal economy that has increased the income gap between the bourgeoisie and the working classes.

The decision to turn Gezi, the only green park in central Istanbul, into a shopping mall and luxury apartment complex was the trigger rather than the cause of the Gezi revolt. Cumhuriyet Avenue, adjacent to the park, has already been demolished to make way to a large complex of expensive shops, residences and shopping malls, while Taksim Square, a landmark of Istanbul, will be converted to a large mosque.

Independent research by a non-governmental organisation published in 2012 showed that Turkey, with a total population of 75 million, possesses 85,000 mosques, 17,000 of which were built in the past 10 years.

In comparison, the country has 67,000 schools, 1,220 hospitals, 6,300 health care centres and 1,435 public libraries. The annual budget of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism is less than half of that of the Directorate General of Religious Affairs, which represents the Sunni Muslims of the country (80 percent of the population).

FDI that has flowed into Turkey since 2002, mostly from Qatari and Saudi investors and U.S. and Dutch pension funds, has concentrated on speculative high-end real estate projects. The number of shopping malls grew from 46 in 2000 to 300 in 2012. Istanbul alone currently has 2 million square metres of malls under construction, according to CBRE, an international consulting firm.

A series of privatisations announced this year – a railway system, the national airline, major energy state enterprises, the highways and bridges network – will provide funds for undertaking grandiose construction projects: a third bridge over the Bosporus, a third airport in Istanbul, an artificial second Bosporus that will facilitate even more premium real estate developments, and the largest mosque in the Middle East, to be built in Istanbul.

The demonstrations that began ten days ago were spontaneous and peaceful and appeared to reflect citizen frustration with aloof state governance, but the zero-tolerance attitude adopted by the police and incendiary statements by Erdogan and certain ministers have transformed them into an unexpected political crisis that has uncertain implications for Turkish democracy.

IPS has spoken with political personalities and well known journalists who have been reluctant to discuss the situation as it evolves.

The personal secretariat of Fetullah Gulen, a Turkish Muslim theologian and head of a worldwide movement promoting moderate Islam and inter-faith dialogue, told IPS that Gulen will issue a statement at the end of this week. Currently living in self-exile in the state of Pennsylvania in the United States, he is followed by millions of Muslims.

As rallies continued Wednesday and student mobilisation has been announced for Thursday, the Turkish president, Abdullah Gul, and the vice prime minister, Bulent Arinc, both known for political maturity and moderation, have tried to offer limited excuses for police excessive force.

The true litmus test for the evolution of Turkey’s political climate will take place upon Erdogan’s return from North Africa later this week. But statements similar to those he made before his departure, such as “I will press with the Gezi project—if you don’t want a mall I will build a mosque” or labelling the protesters “marauders”, are unlikely to restore social peace.

To old hands in Turkish politics, the current unrest is reminiscent of the hegemonic style of the Democrat Party leadership of the 1950s.

“In 1957, Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and President Celal Bayar were quite confident because they had received 47 percent of the votes in the elections,” said Huseyn Ergun, a veteran politician and current chairman of the Social Democrat Party (SODEP), described.

“They had started to put sanctions on the opposition party and its deputies. They also had an investigation commission in parliament against the opposition and destroyed Istanbul landmarks. You know how all this ended.”

Indeed, their reign ended in 1960 with a military coup, history that Turks are not eager to see repeated in their lifetimes.