Fiachra Gibbons
Turkey's PM has become the personification of the corrupt
despotism of the regime he was elected to sweep away... scrubby little park
into a national emergency.' Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
As the protests in Turkey continue, spare a thought for
the man whose personal tragedy few have the grace to acknowledge – Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan. Until three weeks ago Erdoğan was destined to go down as one of the
greatest reformers in Turkish history alongside Ataturk and Suleiman the
Magnificent, despite all the bullying and the backsliding of the past three
years. Here was a man who seemed to have the power to tackle Turkey's century
of conflict with the Kurds, Armenians and Greeks, and to lead it to a peaceful,
prosperous, and democratic future – a model not just for Muslim countries but
for other rising economic powers shaking off less than perfect pasts.
***
Fiachra Gibbons
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 19 June 2013 11.45 BST
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Turkey's PM has become the personification of the corrupt
despotism of the regime he was elected to sweep away
Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has turned
'an insignificant protest in a scrubby little park into a national emergency.'
Photograph: Adem Altan/AFP/Getty Images
As the protests in Turkey continue, spare a thought for
the man whose personal tragedy few have the grace to acknowledge – Recep Tayyip
Erdoğan. Until three weeks ago Erdoğan was destined to go down as one of the
greatest reformers in Turkish history alongside Ataturk and Suleiman the
Magnificent, despite all the bullying and the backsliding of the past three
years.
Here was a man who seemed to have the power to tackle
Turkey's century of conflict with the Kurds, Armenians and Greeks, and to lead
it to a peaceful, prosperous, and democratic future – a model not just for
Muslim countries but for other rising economic powers shaking off less than
perfect pasts.
But Erdoğan's greatest achievement – greater still than a
decade-long boom that bucked global depression – was his breaking of the power
of the military that had shackled Turkish democracy for so long. In pre-Erdoğan
Turkey, we would have had a coup by now.
Yet the power he concentrated to defeat the generals – by
foul means as well as fair – and the paranoia of that battle, has undone him.
In a matter of days Erdoğan has become the personification of all the corrupt
despotism and violence of the old Kemalist Turkey he was elected to sweep away.
The ironic thing is that he has done this to himself.
Such was his grip on power that only Erdoğan could have destroyed Erdoğan. And
that is what he has done by turning an insignificant protest in a scrubby
little park into a national emergency.
I met Erdoğan twice while he was mayor of Istanbul – and
there was much I liked about him. No other European leader has risen from
humbler beginnings – nor had so much stacked against them.
He had the warmth and emotion of his Georgian roots, and
then at least, an uncommon sincerity. He had a clear vision – to make Istanbul
work and right historic wrongs he believed religious Anatolian conservatives
had suffered at the hands of Turkey's secular elite. Behind this was a hazy
notion of rolling back time to an Ottoman nirvana of what might have been if
Ataturk and the Young Turks – neither much troubled with democracy – had not
existed.
What struck me then was how Erdoğan's telling of his own
story unconsciously mirrored Ataturk's – and the lingering suspicion that he
too believed Turks needed to be told what was good for them.
With Erdoğan's power having become so personalised, and
self-censorship so rife that a press baron openly consulted him last month as
to who should edit one of his papers, it was clear Erdoğan had vanquished the
generals only to adopt their methods. His response to the Gezi crisis came
straight from the old Kemalist coup handbook: brutality, black propaganda,
conspiracy theories and lots of bad faith. Few politicians get into people's
heads the way Erdoğan does. His hectoring manner and his way of tying logic in
knots may play well with his supporters but it drives many more Turks mad.
Just as Erdoğan became all-powerful he also became
personally vulnerable, battling cancer and grieving the loss of his mother who
had shielded him from his frustrated and over-religious father – whose worst
traits his son is now displaying as he tours Turkey to chastise his ungrateful
children at a series of monster rallies: "Look what I have done for them!
And this is how they reward me?" The "pious generations" he had
talked of raising have spoken back.
Islamist hubris alone has not undone Erdoğan; it's more
the mile-wide authoritarian streak he inherited from Ataturk and which runs
through Turkish life, filtering down to humblest officials currying favour by
second guessing and zealously enforcing their superiors' orders.
What we are witnessing here is pure Shakespearean tragedy
but one that threatens to turn into a national calamity. That Erdoğan called
his "people" together on Sunday in Istanbul at the place where Mehmet
the Conqueror gathered his troops for the assault on the old Byzantine capital,
added another layer of foreboding.
Turkey is in a dark place but Gezi may yet prove to be a
turning point on the twisted path to democracy. One thing is for sure, the
broad coalition that brought the AK party to power has been broken, perhaps
forever.
Over the weekend I talked to a textile magnate from
Kayseri, one of the many "Anatolian tigers" whose money has
bankrolled Erdoğan's party. He was sending his workers on free buses to the
first of Erdoğan's monster rallies but his headscarfed daughter was no longer
talking to him over his support for him. "There are arguments in the house
every day."
When I asked if he still backed Erdoğan's campaign to
change the constitution so he could become a French or Russian-style president,
his tone changed: "We cannot make this man president. Not now. Tayyip may
destroy us all yet."
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