Turkey Is on the Path to Rogue Dictatorship
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Should President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's AK Party not win a majority of
seats in the Nov. 1 vote, the mainstream media hold that his power will
diminish. The headline of a much-circulated Reuters
analysis sums up this view: "Erdoğan seen with little choice but to
share power after Turkish vote." Agence
France-Presse predicts that winning less than half the seats
"would again force [the AKP] to share power or call yet another
election." Almost identically, Middle East
Online sees this situation forcing the AKP "to share power
or organise yet another election." And so on, almost invariably
including the words "share power."
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The Supreme Election
Board (Yüksek Seçim Kurulu) oversees voting in Turkey; will it be
forced to rig the election on Nov. 1?
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But what if Erdoğan chooses not to share power? He then has two
options. If the results are close, election
fraud is a distinct possibility; reports suggest sophisticated
software (think Volkswagen) to skew the results.
If the results are not close, Erdoğan can sideline the parliament, the
prime minister, the other ministers, and the whole damn government. This
sidelining option, which the press ignores as a possibility, follows
directly from Erdoğan's past actions. Since he left the prime ministry in
August 2014 to become Turkey's president, he has diminished his old
office, depriving it of nearly all authority. He turned it over to a
professorial foreign-policy theorist with no political base, Ahmet
Davutoğlu, and controls him so tightly that Davutoğlu cannot even decide on
his own aides (who also double as Erdoğan's informants).
At the same time, Erdoğan built himself a 1,005-room presidential
palace housing a staff of 2,700
which constitutes a bureaucracy that potentially can take over the other
ministries of state, leaving a seemingly unchanged government in place
that behinds the scenes follows orders from the palace.
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Turkey's President
Erdoğan (l) gives Prime Minister Davutoğlu (r) his marching orders.
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Erdoğan will surely sideline parliament as well; not by turning it
into a grotesque North Korea-style rubber-stamp assembly but into an
Egypt- or Iran-style body consumed with secondary matters (school
examinations, new highways) while paying close heed to wishes of the Big
Boss.
Then, to complete his takeover, he will deploy his many tools of
influence to control the judiciary, the media, corporations, the academy,
and the arts. He will also shut down private dissent, especially on
social media, as suggested by the many lawsuits
he and his cronies have initiated against ordinary citizens who dare
criticize him.
At this point, the Hugo Chávez/Vladimir Putin of Turkey, the one who
compared democracy to a trolley ("You ride it until you arrive at
your destination, then you step off") will truly have arrived at his
destination. As a reward, he may even declare himself the caliph
of all Muslims.
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Chávez of Venezuela
(l) and Putin of Russia (r) in each other's arms: But where's Erdoğan?
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Returning to the present: The number of AKP seats in parliament hardly
matters because Erdoğan will do what it takes, legally or illegally, to
become the new sultan. He will not have to "share power," but
will seize more power by hook (sidelining parliament) or crook (electoral
fraud). Foreign capitals need to prepare for the unpleasant likelihood of
a rogue dictatorship in Turkey.
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