Since the arrest earlier this month of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s important political rival, Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, on what are clearly trumped-up fees of corruption and terrorism, Taksim Sq., town’s greatest vacationer website and hub of political protest, has been mendacity empty, cordoned off by police. In my 50 years residing in Istanbul, I’ve not seen as many so-called safety measures on the streets as I’ve over the previous few days.
Taksim’s metro station and lots of the metropolis’s different busiest stations have been closed. The regional authorities has restricted automotive and intercity bus entry to Istanbul. The police are checking incoming automobiles, and anybody suspected of travelling to town to protest is turned away. Right here and everywhere in the nation, televisions are completely switched on so folks can observe the newest distressing political developments. For the previous week, the Istanbul governor’s workplace has banned public protests and political demonstrations – rights enshrined within the structure. But spontaneous unauthorised protests and clashes with the police have continued unabated, although web entry has been restricted in an try to stop gatherings. The police use teargas ruthlessly and have arrested numerous folks.
We surprise how such outrageous issues may occur in a rustic that may be a member of Nato and angling for EU membership. Whereas the world is preoccupied with Donald Trump, with the wars between Palestine and Israel, Ukraine and Russia, what little stays of Turkish democracy now fights for its life.
The jailing of the president’s chief rival, a politician able to gaining mass help, brings Erdoğan’s strong-fisted, autocratic rule to a degree we now have not seen earlier than. İmamoğlu’s arrest got here a mere few days earlier than Turkey’s important opposition get together was anticipated to formally nominate him as its presidential candidate throughout a major. Folks for or towards the federal government now largely agree on one factor: Erdoğan sees İmamoğlu as a political risk and needs to eliminate him.
İmamoğlu has gained extra votes than Erdoğan’s personal get together, the Justice and Improvement get together, in Istanbul’s final three mayoral elections. When İmamoğlu defeated the get together’s candidate within the April 2019 election, Erdoğan had the consequence annulled, citing technical irregularities. The elections have been repeated two months later. İmamoğlu gained once more. Much more, he elevated his margin. On the subsequent spherical of native elections in 2024, after 5 years in workplace, İmamoğlu as soon as once more defeated Erdoğan’s get together candidate and was elected mayor of Istanbul for the third time. İmamoğlu’s electoral monitor document and his rising reputation have made him the primary opposition candidate who may efficiently problem Erdoğan on the subsequent presidential election.
The flip facet to all that is that Erdoğan appears to be utilizing the identical playbook on his opponent because the one used on him 27 years in the past. In 1998, Erdoğan was Istanbul’s elected mayor and a preferred determine. The secular and army institution deemed his model of political Islam harmful. He was additionally imprisoned and charged (in his case it was for inciting spiritual hatred after reciting a political poem at a rally). Erdoğan was eliminated as mayor and spent 4 months in jail.
However his imprisonment and his defiant refusal to collaborate with the institution and bow all the way down to the repressive calls for of the military helped additional increase his political profile. As some commentators have identified, the jailing of İmamoğlu, who has denied the costs and can also be promising not “to bow down”, would possibly even have the identical unintended end result. It may very effectively be serving to to make the mayor all of the extra fashionable.
But the state of affairs isn’t fairly the identical. İmamoğlu is dealing with a deliberate and decided try and take away him from the working. The day earlier than police have been dispatched to İmamoğlu’s home, the pro-Erdoğan press and the Erdoğan-appointed rector of the College of Istanbul declared İmamoğlu’s faculty diploma invalid, citing alleged irregularities in his switch from a personal college. Since solely college graduates are allowed to run for president in Turkey, this might disqualify İmamoğlu, who has stated he deliberate to problem the choice. The accusations of corruption and terrorism adopted.
The labelling of political opponents as terrorists is an inclination the Erdoğan authorities acquired after the failed army coup of 2016, when a faction of the Turkish armed forces tried to take over. In 2019, when the Austrian writer Peter Handke, who had been criticised for backing the late Serbian chief Slobodan Milosevic, was awarded the Nobel prize in literature, Erdoğan sternly opposed the choice. Caught unprepared and with out a teleprompter, he declared that they gave the identical prize to “a terrorist from Turkey!”, in obvious reference to my Nobel win in 2006. I had been attributable to fly again from New York to Istanbul that day, and I used to be nearly to cancel my return when the president’s spokesperson introduced that it wasn’t me the president had been referring to.
A courtroom steered by Erdoğan has now jailed İmamoğlu underneath corruption fees, nevertheless it didn’t press “terror” fees. Such a cost would have allowed President Erdoğan to put in his most well-liked candidate within the function of mayor of Istanbul – a place his get together has did not win for 3 consecutive elections – and thus, some worry, he would be capable of redirect a number of the metropolis’s countless stream of tax earnings into publicity and propaganda actions for his personal get together.
In jailing İmamoğlu, Erdoğan doesn’t simply sideline a extra fashionable political rival – he additionally seeks to get his palms again on a wealth of assets he hasn’t been in a position to contact for seven years. Ought to he succeed, the following presidential election will characteristic solely Erdoğan and his candidates’ faces plastered over town’s partitions and illuminated municipal billboards.
This isn’t a shock for anyone who’s following Turkish politics intently. For the previous decade, Turkey hasn’t been an actual democracy – merely an electoral democracy, one the place you’ll be able to vote on your most well-liked candidate however haven’t any freedom of speech or thought. Certainly, the Turkish state has strived to coerce its folks into uniformity. No person is even speaking about the various journalists and civil servants who’ve been arbitrarily jailed over the previous few days, both in an try so as to add heft and credibility to the corruption fees towards İmamoğlu or on the belief that nobody pays consideration with every part else happening.
Now, with the arrest of the nation’s hottest politician – the candidate who would have gained a majority of votes on the subsequent spherical of nationwide elections – even this restricted type of democracy is coming to an finish. That is unacceptable and distressing, and that’s why increasingly more persons are becoming a member of the newest protests. In the intervening time, nobody can foresee what is going to occur subsequent.
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