Turkey's
Thugocracy Prepares for Elections
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Originally published under the title, "Turkey's
Thugocracy."
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Hurriyet columnist
Ahmet Hakan (left) and the men who brutally beat him last week (right)
shortly before all but one were released.
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In 1908, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP) took control of the
Ottoman Empire and became increasingly autocratic, openly threatening its
critics, especially journalists. In 1910, three prominent journalists who
were leading opponents of the regime—Hasan Fehmi, Ahmet Samim, and Zeki
Bey—were murdered. Several other journalists were beaten by thugs
commissioned by the CUP.
When the CUP's parliamentary majority eroded due to defections and
by-elections, its leaders called for new elections in 1912 and dispatched
baton-wielding thugs to intimidate voters. As a result, the CUP won 269
of 275 seats. Victory, however, did not bring good fortune to the party.
Its leaders would eventually have to flee
the country.
More than a century later, in 2015, Turkey's new autocratic regime,
the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), lost its parliamentary
majority for the first time since it came to power in 2002. Turkey's
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan practically declared the polls null and
void and called for new elections to take place on November 1. And just
as in 1908-1912, journalists are at the center of the government's rage.
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At
left, Turkish MP Abdurrahim Boynukalin of the ruling AKP leads a mob in
front of the offices of Hurriyet newspaper on September 6. At
right, the shattered windows of the building's lobby after the mob
hurled stones.
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On September 6 and 8, 2015, the offices and printing works of Turkey's
biggest daily, Hurriyet, were pelted with stones by hundreds of
club-wielding fans of Erdogan. Video footage from the September 6 attack
shows a Member of Parliament from the governing AKP Party, Abdurrahim
Boynukalin, leading the mob. In a fierce speech in front of the
newspaper's building, Boynukalin vowed that the Dogan media company
[which owns Hurriyet] will "get the hell out of Turkey"
when Erdogan will have additional executive powers "whatever the
electoral outcome on November 1 will be."
Other video footage showed Boynukalin speaking to the same mob that
attacked Hurriyet. Referring to Hurriyet columnist Ahmet
Hakan and Hurriyet's editor-in-chief, Sedat Ergin, Boynukalin
said, "They had never had a beating before. Our mistake was that we
never beat them in the past. If we had beaten them..."
Pro-AKP vigilantism is
increasingly popular among the party's thuggish Islamist loyalists.
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Well, last week, Hakan was beaten by four men, three of whom happened
to be AKP members. The popular columnist, who has 3.6 million followers
on Twitter, had to undergo surgery for his broken nose and ribs. Members
of the group confessed to the police that they had been commissioned by a
former police officer to beat Hakan on orders from important men in the state
establishment, including the intelligence agency and "the
chief." Of the seven men involved in plotting and carrying out the
attack on Hakan, six were immediately released.
It remains a mystery who "the chief" is. It is highly
unlikely that police will find any evidence that the attack was ordered
by the AKP or by any of its senior members. Nor will any police or
intelligence officer be indicted for ordering it.
Pro-Erdogan and pro-AKP vigilantism is increasingly popular among the
party's thuggish Islamist loyalists. Columnist Mustafa Akyol writes:
[I]t is already worrying that the
culture of political violence, which has dark precedents in Turkish
history, is once again showing its ugly face ... the campaign of hate
that is going on in the pro-government media (and social media)
inevitably calls for it. Deep down, the problem is that the AKP era,
which began as a modest initiative for reform, has recently recast its
mission as a historic 'revolution.' Just as in the French Revolution, it
demonized the 'ancien régime' and the 'reactionaries' that supposedly
hearken back to it. And now, just as in French Revolution, we see these
'Jacobin' ideas taking form in the streets in the hands of the vulgar
'sans-culottes.'
Since the beginning of the 20th century, Turkey has seen a
collapsed empire, the birth of a modern state, a one-party
administration, multi-party electoral system, several elections, three
military coups, civil strife along political and ethnic lines, oppression
by one ideology or another, and dozens of political leaders. But one
feature of Turkey's political culture persistently remains: Violence.
President Erdogan is probably not too unhappy. He may think that the
deeper the political polarization, the stronger his loyalists will feel
attached to him. Hundreds of Turkish and Western politicians have
publicly condemned the attack on Hakan. Except Erdogan. Hardly
surprising.
Burak Bekdil is an Ankara-based
columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.
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