Turkey’s interim passage to anarchy

State funeral of colonel killed in combat with PKK, October 18. Demotix/Piero Castellano. All rights reserved. The twin
bombings on October 10 at the Ankara Railway Station that left one hundred
people dead were just the latest in a series of terrorist attacks that Turkey
has suffered from recently. In addition, the civil war between the Kurdish PKK
and the Turkish state has been renewed after a lapse of two years thus further
adding to the mayhem, especially in the predominantly Kurdish populated areas
in southeastern Turkey.

The failure of
the Turkish political parties to form a coalition government after the indecisive
parliamentary election of last June has amplified the uncertainty and
instability in the country. The interim government under Ahmet Davutoglu gives
the appearance of near-total indecisiveness as it waits out the time until the
next elections scheduled for November 1. The Turkish currency has fallen
precipitately as a result both of economic slowdown and political uncertainty
thus adding to the woes of the middle class at a time when Turkey has
increasingly become a middle class society. All this portends a gloomy future
for Turkey at least in the short-term and possibly for the medium-term as well.

There are
several interrelated reasons for Turkey’s current predicament. The first is the
civil war and the anarchy prevailing in neighboring Syria. Turkey has been
hosting over two million Syrian refugees. This has strained the economy; it has
also added to the country’s political problems because its open-door policy toward
the refugees has permitted the entry into Turkey of terrorist elements of
various hues, including those owing loyalty to the ISIS. It is these latter
that have been blamed by Turkish officials for the latest Ankara bombings.

Turkish policy itself
has contributed in substantial part to the importation of Syrian terrorism and
violence into Turkey. Ankara stepped into the Syrian quagmire without adequate
forethought. It assumed that the Assad regime would fall in months if not
weeks. Assad still controls parts of Syria, including the capital, after four
years of the outbreak of the civil war. The Turkish government in addition to
being the most vocal proponent of regime change in Syria undertook a very
proactive role in unseating Assad, including acting as a conduit for arms to
the rebels and materially supporting some of the most extreme groups opposing
Assad. Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian civil war almost came to match
Pakistan’s involvement in the Afghan civil war in the 1980s and 1990s. Just as
the latter led to the ingress of the mayhem and terrorism haunting Afghanistan
into Pakistan, Ankara’s deep involvement in Syria has encouraged the entry of
Syria-related violence into Turkey in a major way. My warning to the Turkish
government of this danger three
years ago in an article in the Guardian
sadly fell on deaf ears.

Secondly, President
Erdogan’s short-sighted policy of reversing his stance on the Kurdish issue and
adopting a hardline toward the Kurds’ political aspirations after the June
elections has had major negative effects on Turkey’s security by reopening the
shooting war with the PKK. This has led to killings on both sides and put a
stop to the negotiations between the government and its Kurdish interlocutors.
This change of policy was a result of two factors: one, Erdogan and the AKP
wanted to appeal to the ultra-nationalist Turkish constituency, which has
always been skeptical of negotiating with Kurds, in preparation for the next
round of elections. Two, and equally important, Erdogan could not forgive the
moderate pro-Kurdish party, HDP, for having crossed the ten percent threshold
of votes in the June election thus winning 80 seats and depriving
the AKP of a majority in parliament. His policy on the Kurdish issue seems
to be very much a part of his vendetta against the HDP.

Consequently,
even the most moderate of Kurds now seem to be alienated from the AKP, which
normally captured almost half of the Kurdish vote in past elections. They are
expected to vote en-bloc for the HDP in the November elections thus further
polarizing the Turkish polity. More importantly, substantial number of Kurds
are becoming irreversibly alienated from the Turkish state as they suffer
disproportionately from the bombings and killings now becoming the norm in the
country.

Furthermore,
Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian mode of governance has done enormous harm
to state institutions, the press and civil society in general. His attitude
that “if you are not with us you are traitors to the nation” has not only led
to a high degree of polarization among the secular-minded and religious-minded
Turks but has also alienated Islamists of various hues who do not agree with
Erdogan’s dictatorial methods.

As a result,
Turkey seems to be lurching toward an uncertain and possibly gloomy future. The
current mayhem, if it continues, is likely to once again tempt the military top
brass to stage a coup and take power in the name of restoring order as it has
done several times earlier. The only way this outcome can be prevented is if
the November elections result in a reconfiguration of political forces in such
a way that it leads to the formation of an inclusive government that is able to
reverse the current polarization in country, address the Kurdish issue wisely,
and restore the democratic process in its entirety so as to ward off all
authoritarian tendencies whether they emerge from the civilian or military
sector.