Tweet
The Independent: Erdogan is acting more and more like an autocrat
January 28, 2012 - 23:58 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey has been one of the world's great political
and economic success stories of the last decade, an article in The
Independent reads.
`Over 70 million people under quasi-military rule of great brutality
for 80 years appeared at last to be coming under civilian control.
Torture stopped in the prisons. Elections not army coups d'état - four
in Turkey since 1960 - determined who held power in Ankara. The
Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by the Prime Minister, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, first elected in 2002, was just the sort of moderate,
democratic pro-capitalist Islamic party that the West wanted to
encourage. The foreign media boosted Turkey uncritically last year as
a model for the Arab world as police states started tumbling,' Patrick
Cockburn says in an opinion he titled `Tiger Turkey at the
crossroads.'
`There is more substance to the Turkish "miracle" than there was to
most of the over-hyped booms in Europe, from Ireland to Greece.
Political and economic changes here were real. The AKP outmanoeuvred
the military leadership and its powerful allies in the state
bureaucracy and appeared to break their long tutelage. In 2001 the
economy had been a barely floating wreck as inflation touched 80 per
cent a year and the Turkish lira halved in value. Banks closed and
tens of thousands of enterprises went bankrupt. All these disasters
became a distant memory as Turkey acquired a "tiger" economy. In a
decade Turkey's GDP and exports both doubled in value. Small and
medium-sized manufacturers became energetic exporters. Foreign
investment, the key to growth in Turkey, poured in and the economy
became the 15th largest in the world. It is these gains that are now
under threat. Political reforms stalled two years ago. One foreign
observer says "Erdogan decided not to use his political capital to
resolve the conflict with the Kurds, the dispute over Cyprus and
relations with Armenia". Overconfidence in Turkey's new-found strength
diverted attention from crucial questions, the most important of which
is bringing an end to the Kurdish insurgency. Some Turkish liberals
suspect that, after being in power for almost a decade, the AKP has
found it convenient to adopt the mechanisms of repression used by its
predecessors,' he says.
`The clamp down has been severe. This month Reporters Without Borders
(RSF) demoted Turkey to 148th place out of 178 countries in its annual
World Press Freedom Index. Its report said: "The judicial system
launched a wave of arrests on journalists without precedent since the
military dictatorship." Some 99 journalists are in jail, about 60 per
cent of whom are Kurdish. "It is a sort of political cleansing by the
judiciary and the police," says Erol Onderoglu, the RSF representative
for Turkey,' Cockburn says.
`Often journalists are held for more than a year without knowing the
charges against them, and an editor can be jailed for any article
appearing in his paper critical of government policy. In one case a
Kurdish editor was sentenced to 166 years in prison, later reduced to
20 years by the High Court, for such a piece. Osman Kovala of Anadolu
Kultur, a human rights organization in Istanbul, says there is "still
no clear distinction between expression of an opinion and membership
of a terrorist organization". In 2007 the murder of the
Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was widely believed to be their
work and became a cause célèbre. Shot in the back by a 17-year-old
student, his murder had all the marks of a well-organized plot. But,
in January, a court in Istanbul appalled a broad swathe of Turkish
opinion by finding the gunman had largely acted alone,' he says
As to PM Erdogan, Cockburn describes his as `a pious, populist
nationalist of great political skill, who is sounding and acting more
and more like an autocrat.'
January 28, 2012 - 23:58 AMT
PanARMENIAN.Net - Turkey has been one of the world's great political
and economic success stories of the last decade, an article in The
Independent reads.
`Over 70 million people under quasi-military rule of great brutality
for 80 years appeared at last to be coming under civilian control.
Torture stopped in the prisons. Elections not army coups d'état - four
in Turkey since 1960 - determined who held power in Ankara. The
Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by the Prime Minister, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan, first elected in 2002, was just the sort of moderate,
democratic pro-capitalist Islamic party that the West wanted to
encourage. The foreign media boosted Turkey uncritically last year as
a model for the Arab world as police states started tumbling,' Patrick
Cockburn says in an opinion he titled `Tiger Turkey at the
crossroads.'
`There is more substance to the Turkish "miracle" than there was to
most of the over-hyped booms in Europe, from Ireland to Greece.
Political and economic changes here were real. The AKP outmanoeuvred
the military leadership and its powerful allies in the state
bureaucracy and appeared to break their long tutelage. In 2001 the
economy had been a barely floating wreck as inflation touched 80 per
cent a year and the Turkish lira halved in value. Banks closed and
tens of thousands of enterprises went bankrupt. All these disasters
became a distant memory as Turkey acquired a "tiger" economy. In a
decade Turkey's GDP and exports both doubled in value. Small and
medium-sized manufacturers became energetic exporters. Foreign
investment, the key to growth in Turkey, poured in and the economy
became the 15th largest in the world. It is these gains that are now
under threat. Political reforms stalled two years ago. One foreign
observer says "Erdogan decided not to use his political capital to
resolve the conflict with the Kurds, the dispute over Cyprus and
relations with Armenia". Overconfidence in Turkey's new-found strength
diverted attention from crucial questions, the most important of which
is bringing an end to the Kurdish insurgency. Some Turkish liberals
suspect that, after being in power for almost a decade, the AKP has
found it convenient to adopt the mechanisms of repression used by its
predecessors,' he says.
`The clamp down has been severe. This month Reporters Without Borders
(RSF) demoted Turkey to 148th place out of 178 countries in its annual
World Press Freedom Index. Its report said: "The judicial system
launched a wave of arrests on journalists without precedent since the
military dictatorship." Some 99 journalists are in jail, about 60 per
cent of whom are Kurdish. "It is a sort of political cleansing by the
judiciary and the police," says Erol Onderoglu, the RSF representative
for Turkey,' Cockburn says.
`Often journalists are held for more than a year without knowing the
charges against them, and an editor can be jailed for any article
appearing in his paper critical of government policy. In one case a
Kurdish editor was sentenced to 166 years in prison, later reduced to
20 years by the High Court, for such a piece. Osman Kovala of Anadolu
Kultur, a human rights organization in Istanbul, says there is "still
no clear distinction between expression of an opinion and membership
of a terrorist organization". In 2007 the murder of the
Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was widely believed to be their
work and became a cause célèbre. Shot in the back by a 17-year-old
student, his murder had all the marks of a well-organized plot. But,
in January, a court in Istanbul appalled a broad swathe of Turkish
opinion by finding the gunman had largely acted alone,' he says
As to PM Erdogan, Cockburn describes his as `a pious, populist
nationalist of great political skill, who is sounding and acting more
and more like an autocrat.'