STORM OVER TURKEY

The world will remember last year for the widespread public disturbances known as the "Arab Spring". It removed the authoritarian regimes in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen and continues with the bloody civil war in Syria. The European countries - Greece, Spain and Britain - have been shaken by demonstrations of thousands of workers and the riots of young people against the policy of a rigid economy imposed by governments to try and extricate themselves from the debt crisis. Against this backdrop Turkey seemed a long time to be an island of stability and steady development. However, the events of the past week have seriously spoiled this picture of calm.

It all began with a local protest by a small group of people over a number of trees that had been felled in Gezi Park in Istanbul's Taksim district. According to a plan of the government and the Istanbul authorities, a state-of-the-art shopping centre was due to be built in this area which is loved by the city people, especially the young. But after the brutality shown by the police when clearing the area of demonstrators, tens of thousands of people, and hundreds of thousands throughout the country, mainly young radically minded people, joined the protesters. Particularly ugly clashes took place in Ankara, Izmir and Antalya, as well as Istanbul.

According to official Interior Ministry figures, about 4,000 people were injured (mainly from tear gas) during the disturbances. Some 915 people were admitted to hospital, most of whom returned home after receiving assistance. Some 79 people are undergoing treatment in hospitals and eight are in intensive care: four of them are in an extremely serious condition. A further three, unfortunately, could not be saved. Among those hurt were 516 police officers and the material damage from the riots has been put at over 70m Turkish lira. The number of those arrested has been put in the thousands.

It would be frivolous to explain the protests of such a large number of people just as concern for the future of a small area of parkland in the centre of Istanbul. The social and political dissatisfaction which had been voiced by the educated and successful people of the large cities and towns, especially the young, who have grown tired of the Party of Justice and Development (PJD) and its immovable leader Erdogan being in power, and which had been building up surreptitiously in recent years, finally came to the surface. Under his leadership Turkey has in the past decade made a leap in economic development and strengthened its geopolitical positions. Against the backdrop of the harsh financial crisis in Europe, especially in Greece and Cyprus, which are competing with Ankara, the financial system in Turkey has been revitalized, galloping inflation has ended, and people's real incomes have increased. Not a single objective observer will be able to question this. At the same time, Islamization has intensified in the country and this has been interpreted in a negative way by the educated sections of the urban inhabitants, and first and foremost, the young. 

The generation of the 1990s did not know and does not remember the strict rule of the military. They are different - better educated, well versed in social networks and owning state-of-the-art information technology, have a broader outlook on the world than their parents' generation and are better integrated into modern culture and the system of values, the most important of which are individual freedom, the right of choice and respect for human dignity. The liberally oriented sections of the population are prepared to uphold even those rights which many do not intend to use directly. For example, despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of Turks are virtually teetotal, the government's decision to substantially restrict the sale of spirits has caused displeasure even among slight drinkers. The intelligentsia and students also associated the numerous arrests of journalists and pressure on the media with an infringement of civil liberties.

The protesters claim that during his long years in power Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has begun to behave in a presumptuous manner. He binds the government and society exclusively to his own opinion and avoids a broad dialogue on questions that are important for the country. The ruling party and its leader are trying to subjugate such traditionally auto-nomous self-regulatory institutions as the army and the courts, which has naturally caused alarm among devotees of the secular, republican and nationalistic traditions which were laid down by the founder of modern Turkey, Attaturk. According to a poll carried out on-line by Bilgi University teachers in Istanbul the greatest displeasure among the 3,000 protesters was caused by the prime minister's authoritarian position (92.4%), police brutality (91.3%), violation of democratic rights (91.1.%) and silence of the media (84.2%), whereas only 56.2% were opposed to the cutting down of trees in the park.

The opposition, naturally, is trying to use for its own party interests the public dissatisfaction which came to the surface as a consequence of the heavy-handed actions of the Erdogan government. Very soon deputies from the People's Republican Party (PRP) went to meet the protesters and joined them. The PRP has a strong influence in student circles and the trade unions and it is they who constitute the main section and the organizational resource of the widespread protest actions. Nor should one discount the covert support for the protesters on the part of the military circles who are unhappy with Erdogan. But the importance of these factors and the intervention of external forces should not be overstated. According to the aforementioned poll, only 7.7% of respondents said they were driven to the protest action by a certain political movement, i.e. the protests were of a spontaneous, unorganized nature. Almost 80% said they were against a military coup, 70% said there was not a single political party in Turkey they felt close to, and 37% felt it was necessary to create a new political party.

Meanwhile, Erdogan continues to search for culprits for the protest actions wherever convenient, but not blaming himself. "There are external forces which have a vested interest in the destabilization of Turkey, but there will be no 'Turkish Spring' in the country," he told journalists, and repeated that the opposition People's Republican Party was behind the events in Taksim Square. "The opposition forces, who failed to come to power by democratic means, are trying to do so by destabilizing the country," Erdogan said.

This doesn't sound very convincing. The opposition is acting completely as expected. As far as external forces are concerned, the weakening of the Erdogan government probably plays into the hands of Syria and Iran. A stronger Turkey, which has in recent years started to steer a fairly independent foreign political course, is hardly likely to arouse delight in Washington, the capitals of Europe and Israel. One should not rule out attempts by external players, directly or indirectly, using secret channels of funding and media resources, to exert influence on the processes in Turkey.

Whereas world leaders are so far making only cautious statements, restricting themselves to expressions of concern and appeals for restraint and a dialogue, the influential foreign media are being fairly critical. For example, The Wall Street Journal, the mouthpiece of American business circles, points out that Erdogan has transformed Turkey but success has gone to his head. "He is trying with breathtaking self-satisfaction to concentrate power in his own hands and wants to change the Constitution so he can lead Turkey for another 10 years," the paper writes. The paper advises Erdogan to draw this conclusion: "The Turkish middle class is yearning for a democracy with checks and balances, and not a one-man management." It is echoed by the British Financial Times which carried a warning headline: "Intolerance may be Erdogan's undoing." The comments and articles in the French media were also very scathing.

Meanwhile, two lines of behaviour can be seen in the government's team of the PSP. One of them, more restrained and of compromise, is demonstrated by President Abdulla Gul. "The government has been given a sharp lesson," he said in his address. "Democracy is not just about elections. If there are differences and objections then there are various means of expressing them. Peaceful action is one such means. What has happened in the last few days has proved this. I sincerely want to say that we have taken into account the messages sent to us with good intentions and we shall take the necessary measures. Everyone should calm down," Gul said.

President Abdulla Gul did not confine himself to a soothing address, but directly warned the police department and provincial governors against excessive use of force against the protesters, and on 3 June he held a meeting with the leader of the opposition PRP Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Clearly not without the influence of the country's president, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc received the protesters and apologized for the police's actions. "The disproportionate use of force against the people who initially carried out an act in protection of the environment was wrong and unjust. And I beg forgiveness from these people," he said at a press conference, with the significant qualification that he would not apologize to people who destroy other people's property.

The demands of the protesters, which were expressed in the so-called "Taksim platform", do not seem too radical. According to the Hurriyet Daily News, they consist of six points: (i) Gezi Park must be preserved as it is with building work prohibited in it; (ii) the Attaturk Cultural Centre must not be destroyed; (iii) there must be an investigation into the actions of the police which led to an escalation of the violence and they must be sacked; (iv) the use of pepper gas must be banned; all the protesters who are in custody must be released; (v) all restrictions on freedom of expression of opinions must be removed.

It would seem that by means of talks and the implementation of at least some of these demands it would have been possible to ease the confrontation and resolve the situation by political means and not by using police methods. However, Prime Minister Erdogan, during his visit to Tunisia, said that despite the ongoing protest actions, the Turkish government would not give up its plans to fell trees in Gezi Park and rebuild the Ottoman army barracks Halil Pasha on this site. Erdogan said that the government had proposed holding a referendum on this project, but this initiative was not supported.

I venture to suggest that we will not have a "Turkish Spring", i.e. the ejection from office of the incumbent government, as some analysts are predicting. The fundamental difference between Turkey and the Arab countries is that here there is a democracy of a sort, if not a very liberal one. At the last parliamentary elections the PCP received almost half the votes of the electorate. The ruling party has a lasting majority in parliament (327 out of 550 seats) and controls the majority of local governments. If we are to call a spade a spade, Erdogan has carried out a purge in the leadership of the armed forces and the judiciary, in which people known to be consistent opponents of a departure from the norms bequeathed by Attaturk have been replaced by persons loyal to the ruling Islamists. It is also important that the government has the opportunity directly or indirectly to control the information policy of the leading electronic and printed media.

With all this going on it will not be easy for Erdogan and his party to extricate themselves from this situation. Apart from the actions of the protesters and the opposition other negative factors are also starting to emerge. First of all we can see the alarm signals which have begun to be heard from business and the economy. At its opening on Monday 3 June the Turkish equity market slumped by more than 10%. The exchange rate of the Turkish lira also fell sharply. And literally the other day the international agency Moody's followed Finch in upgrading Turkey's sovereign rating by one point - to Baa3 - with a transfer from speculative to investment. They do not intend to change these assessments for the moment, explaining that along with steady economic growth the level of Turkey's state debt has now dropped to 36% of GDP against the eurozone average of 90%.

The feeling is that Erdogan is tempted to call on his many supporters to repel the protesters. But then Turkey will be cast back to the period of the 1960s-1970s with its endless bloody clashes between right- and left-wing radicals, liberals and nationalists. If events move in that direction it will be very difficult to confine the troops to barracks. Erdogan's fighting qualities are well known, but he has also demonstrated on more than one occasion his ability take snap decisions and transfer a solution to conflict problems to the will of the Turkish citizens. If he cannot ease the tension in the country through concessions on questions which are causing broad dissatisfaction, then there may be reshuffles in the government and in the police. An announcement of early parliamentary elections could be an extreme measure of a way out of the crisis. Erdogan also has in reserve such a strong move as resignation. The parliamentary majority, which bends to his will, allows him to appoint as prime minister someone who is acceptable to him. He could use such an unusual step to change public opinion to his advantage, concentrate fully on the coming parliamentary elections and in time triumphantly return supreme power in the country to himself. The choice of specific actions will be determined by the scale and degree of brutality of the existing confrontation and international reaction.

A few words must be said about what effect the processes in fraternal Turkey may have on Azerbaijan. Every time events of this nature occur (Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan, the "Arab Spring", and so on), the opposition in Azerbaijan gets all excited. Bearing in mind that presidential elections are due in the country in the autumn, one need not be surprised at a revival of political life. But, as in the past, when the revolutionary processes in the aforementioned countries could not be directly projected to Azerbaijan, they are unlikely to do so now. As regards the implementation of the planned great joint energy projects (TANAP, Petkim) and Ankara's foreign political support for Azerbaijan, the risks are minimal whichever course events may take. None of the changes at the top which happened before in Turkey and Azerbaijan had a negative effect on the traditionally solid, allied relations between our countries. At the same time, it is clear that any weakening of Turkey, albeit temporary, would be undesirable for Azerbaijan.