TURKISH DEMOCRACY AT THE CROSSROADS

On April 16^th, Turkish voters will go to the polls to cast their ballots in a referendum on whether to give (even more) extraordinary powers to their current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Or at least that is the ostensible purpose of the plebiscite. But seen from a broader perspective, what the Turkish people will be voting on is democracy itself.

The advances that Erdogan has made toward an autocratic takeover of political power in Turkey over the past three years have been dizzying. Toward the end of 2013, when he was still the country’s prime minister, it looked as if his political career might melt down and end in scandal, after a series of taped conversations appeared to leave no doubt that he and his son Bilal were involved in a vast (and personally lucrative) network of corruption.

But clever and undeniably able politician that he is—with a career spanning two decades, from his days as mayor of Istanbul—and armed with the flourishing power that his profile as an ally of NATO and the West provided him in times when western leaders could ill afford to snub a “friend” whose power straddles the frontier between East and West, Erdogan was able to finesse his way out of the corruption allegations and to come out stronger than ever, winning the presidency the following year. From that point on, his main thrust has been toward consolidating ever greater presidential power, and his clear advances toward that goal have been in obvious detriment to democracy, with both political critics and the independent media being marked as enemies of the State and persecuted as such.    

Throughout Turkey’s history as a republic, following the fall of the 400-year-long Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the Turkish military has acted as an arbiter and circuit-breaker any time that it has judged democracy to be at risk. This is a legacy handed down to the Turkish Armed Forces by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Army officer who was instrumental in creating the Turkish Republic in the years immediately following the First World War. According to that tradition, known as Kemalism, the military has jealously guarded its concept of Turkey as a nationalist, secular and western-leaning democracy—even while imposing repeated modifications and limitations on the system in order to rein in the ambitions of elected leaders and to prevent them from accumulating undue power or dragging the government toward Islamist theocracy.

No matter how democratic their interests have been, however, from a practical standpoint, Turkish democracy has developed within the shadow of the country’s powerful Armed Forces and with the tacit permission of its military hierarchy. Until last year, it was unthinkable that any political leader could effectively rule without the military’s approval. But the current president has defied that belief as well.

Erdogan’s bent for audacious political and diplomatic brinksmanship had, until recently, allowed him to exploit these democratic idiosyncrasies to further his own causes and career, on the one side identifying himself with moderate Islamist political lines, while on the other fortifying the country’s status as a NATO power and as the number one “outsource” for Western Europe’s refugee woes, as proxy wars in the Middle East and Africa have sparked the worst migrant crisis since World War II.

And when the Turkish president’s less than democratic nature, his flirtation with Russian strongman Vladimir Putin to spite the West for disapproving of his heavy-handed tactics, and his apparent tolerance of ISIL militants’ using the country as a point of safe passage dampened hopes of Turkey’s being rewarded for its loyalty to the West with membership in the European Union, a group of military leaders, further prompted by ISIL terrorist acts on Turkish soil, decided enough was enough and took matters into their own hands.

On July 15^th of last year, a determined segment of the Turkish Armed Forces staged a lightning coup in which they sought to overthrow the president and, as in other such military uprisings that have peppered the country’s history, reorder the system and restore it to a semblance of secular democracy. However, they apparently had not counted on the extent of both popular and armed support that Erdogan enjoyed, and the coup was quickly crushed. Thousands were immediately arrested and what followed has shaped up, in the months since then, as a nationwide witch-hunt.

So far—due to European protests and official warnings that doing so would further harm his ever shakier relations with the EU—Erdogan has been unable to find the support necessary for reinstatement of capital punishment in Turkey, which he sought shortly after the coup attempt. He was clearly hoping to underscore his power through exemplary executions that would leave no doubt as to how he would deal with any future challenges to his authority. Instead, he has had to settle for other exemplary punitive actions: 40,000 arrests and removal from their posts of judges, prosecutors, educators, and other government employees suspected of backing the attempted overthrow, some 100,000 of them in total.

Protesters demonstrate for free press

If the Turkish president was already coming under criticism prior to the military uprising for his repressive actions against journalists and media who were critical of his administration, since last year’s abortive coup, his government has nearly obliterated freedom of expression across the country. Erdogan has shut down nearly 180 periodicals, TV stations and websites. So extensive have his attacks on the media been that Turkey is now ranked among the worst repressors of independent news coverage. There are currently some 150 journalists being held by the government in Turkish jails.       

So, how will Erdogan’s power be expanded and democracy curtailed if he wins a majority “yes” vote in the April referendum? To start with, as president or former president, the constitutional reform implicit in the plebiscite will make him immune to prosecution for life. In other words, all accusations of corruption formulated against him would suddenly become moot, as would any other charges of wrongdoing. The office of the prime minister would be abolished and presidents would be able to run for three consecutive terms of five years each. (Presumably this would apply to the incumbent president as well). Intelligence services would answer directly to the president. As head of State, he would have the power to dissolve parliament and to determine the country’s annual budget. And he would have veto power over any and all legislation.

A poster promoting both democracy and militarism

The president would, under the reform, also extend his reach to the judiciary and to education. He would have the power to appoint all university heads and to choose the director for the National Board of Higher Education. The reform would give the president effective power over the appointment of all judges and prosecutors by permitting him to name the head and half of the members of the board that makes those appointments. And the head of State would also be given the power to appoint 12 out of the 15 jurists serving on the Turkish Constitutional Court, the country’s highest judicial body and the court that decides whether or not impeachment proceedings can be brought against the Executive.

In light of all this, the threat to Turkish democracy is obvious, and it is also clear that Erdogan is unlikely to lose the referendum. Turks live in the midst of hostile surroundings, with the devastating Syrian War being fought just across the border, ISIL terrorists active in every direction and using Turkish territory as a semi-safe haven, Russia bolstering its presence in the region and the government engaged in a protracted undeclared war with Kurdish rebels.

Within such an uncertain context—and with the country, according to many observers, almost equally divided between those who adore the president and those who hate him—many Turks see Erdogan as representing strength and stability. Although his current ties with the West may be less cordial than before, his opponents can lay no credible claim to the ability to maintain continuing good relations with the EU and Washington. Furthermore, Erdogan has proven his strength in military action that he has led in Syria, and in diplomatic efforts that he has mounted there in conjunction with Russia. Secular democratic activists mostly form part of the opposition, and although they have drawn much of their thinking from European democracies, few any longer consider as trustworthy the Western powers that have been cautiously ready to continue to back the country’s autocratic leader over any attempt to unseat him.

The referendum is, to a certain extent, a big gamble for Erdogan. An overwhelming “no” vote would seriously undermine his increasingly autocratic power base, and might even garner internal support for a new uprising against him. But in the final analysis, although preliminary polls indicate that the country is almost evenly split between “yeas” and “nays” for the upcoming plebiscite, most indications are that a majority, including many of the country’s up and coming youth, are more interested in a “resilient” Turkey than a democratic one.

The April referendum, then, comes down to a test of strength between those who want to keep Erdogan from wiping out all vestiges of democracy and those willing to provide him with the authority he requires to become a full-blown populist dictator.