QAMISHLI, Syria (North Press) – Ten years ago, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan saw the most serious challenge to its reign throughout the two decades it has been in power. In a sense, it was an aftershock – not of an earthquake – but of the popular revolts that had rocked Wall Street, southern Europe, and the Arab world in previous years.
As part of one of Erdogan’s first so-called ‘mega projects’, he had planned to bulldoze Gezi Park at Taksim Square in the heart of Istanbul to replace it with a luxury mall. The site served as crucial spot wherein thousands of angry citizens could gather and make themselves heard – as Erdogan would soon find out. Replacing it with a monument to capitalist consumption also served to preclude such dangerous exercises in democracy.
What started as a limited sit-in by environmentalists soon turned into a country-wide insurrection. Football hooligans of different Istanbul teams, famous for their belligerence, stood shoulder-to-shoulder demanding reforms. Empowered by social media, denizens turned Gezi Park into a democratic space for free expression over several weeks; even Kurds were able to speak openly about their oppression. Similar protests mushroomed across Turkey.
Eventually, the government cracked down on the protestors, leading to a dozen deaths and several thousand injuries. Yet the Erdogan’s victory was not total: the protests dealt a fatal blow to the Islamist leader’s self-styled title as a populist champion of the people – and Gezi Park remains to this day. In mid-2013, the now-president came face-to-face with Turkey’s thriving civil society. The story of Erdogan’s reign since then has been a partly-successful attempt to hollow out Turkey’s society – at times quite literally – and to centralize power in his hands.
The earthquakes that hit Turkey’s southern provinces on February 6, mere months before presidential and general elections in the country, has accelerated the anti-democratic tendencies of the ruling government. Its botched response to the catastrophe, which to date has killed over 45,000 people, showcases how a third Erdogan presidential term will likely develop.
No matter of class
The standard retelling of Erdogan’s rise to power is that of a champion of the silent Muslim underclass, carried to power on the people’s backs, in defiance of the corrupt secular elite which had ruled the Turkish Republic since its inception. The liberal government’s graft and unpreparedness, revealed by the disastrous 1999 Izmit earthquake, served as a turning point. In 2002, Erdogan’s conservative AK party won a plurality of votes.
The narrative holds true to a certain extent. Before Erdogan, the CHP, the torchbearer of Kemalism; the army; and the secret service formed a powerful liberally-tinged ‘deep state’. When populist Islamist figures, or left-wing leaders, became too powerful, the army would step in to restore ‘order’. In the republic’s young history, the country has seen three military coups, and a number of failed attempts.
Erdogan changed that. Through an alliance with Fetullah Gulen, a powerful Muslim cleric, as well as conservative business interests, Erdogan was able to establish a parallel ‘deep state’. Between 2013 and 2016, Erdogan then turned on Gulen. After the armed forces attempted another coup in 2016, the president was able to crush and rebuild the army and secret services, as well as the judiciary and other public offices, staffing it with loyalists.
Yet the Islamist/secular divide Erdogan harnesses for votes should not be confused with an actual class shift in Turkey, much less with a democratization of Turkish politics. Erdogan has surrounded himself with powerful Muslim business interests who rode the populist wave to power with him – he serves them primarily. Corruption has flourished under the new regime.
Like it’s 1999?
The 2023 earthquake crystalized this. Gonul Tol, a Turkey analyst with the Middle East Institute, compared the quake response in 1999 with the current efforts on a recent Al-Monitor podcast. Tol, who was part of a student network mobilizing to help rescue efforts in Izmit, said that, back then, there were “government agencies and civil society groups working [together] on the ground – but not this time [in 2023].” Civil society, she said, has been “wiped out.”
Similarly, the corruption revealed by building code violations and a failure to punish contractors in 1999 seem to have gone unchanged after two decades of AKP rule. A 2018 amnesty on building regulations introduced by Erdogan made earthquake-proofing a private matter, with no government oversight. The full extent of the catastrophe has yet to be tallied, but already it is becoming apparent that thousands of deaths in February were a direct consequence of government corruption and negligence.
The state agencies tasked with rescue efforts have been weakened. The Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilay), a formerly Kemalist-aligned agency, is a shell of its former self. Much of the work it used to carry out was transferred to AFAD, Turkey’s Emergency and Disaster Relief Agency, which was established in 2009 and is tied directly to the presidential palace. Critics say Erdogan has staffed Kizilay and AFAD’s leadership with loyalists who have no background in disaster relief (the latter is led by a religious scholar), leading to a large brain drain and ineptitude. Both organizations soon became embroiled in corruption scandals; Kizilay stands accused of having sold tents meant for earthquake victims in February. More importantly, the agencies became more centralised, as Erdogan attempted to bring the state under its control, stymieing its ability to coordinate emergency relief efforts.
Business as usual
The reconstruction effort, which is as yet in its infancy, has also gone as expected. On Feb. 24, Erdogan issued Presidential Decree 126, which outlined extraordinary “measures for settlement and construction” in the aftermath of the earthquake.
The document, which was passed under earthquake-related emergency regulations, lifts all controls on new developments. Previously-protected pristine lands and pastures will be available for construction with little to no oversight and no public participation. “Authorities allegedly began signing no-bid contracts for reconstruction within days of the quake … Nine companies ‘close to the government’ were named in the document,” the Independent alleges. Geologist and environmentalists have reportedly warned against this rapid and unplanned reconstruction.
For Erdogan, rebuilding the cities is important for a variety of reasons. Being seen rapidly reconstructing can help garner votes in the upcoming elections; the risks are pigeonholed until the next disaster. Reconstruction can also serve to keep the businessmen around him happy. Since he assumed power, Erdogan has gone on a construction frenzy, with (some say unnecessary) ‘mega projects’ being unveiled all over the country. More often than not, they have been contracted out to Erdogan’s associates (as was the Gezi mall).
Finally, Erdogan can also use the opportunity to rebuild Turkish towns and cities in his image. After the Turkish police’s destruction of the historical town of Sur, in Diyarbakir, during a battle with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in 2015, the government bulldozed what remained of the neighbourhood, replacing it with an uninspired, uniform housing grid, with an eye to being “defensible”. The reconstruction also displaced many of the original Kurdish inhabitants. Critics say Erdogan may replace Turkey’s quake-hit cities with the soulless infrastructure pioneered in Sur. “[AKP politicians] don’t care if Antakya ends up being a ‘little Dubai’ with no character and no cosmopolitanism,” an opposition politician told The Independent.
From fourth estate to fifth column
Another principle element of the Erdogan presidency – the crackdown on free press – has been ramped up in the aftermath of the earthquake. Journalists in Turkey have been imprisoned and suppressed especially since the attempted coup in 2016. For a time, Turkey was the biggest jailer of journalists. After the February 6 earthquake, the Turkish government introduced a new law stipulating prison sentences for spreading “fake news”. At least four journalists have been detained; others have been threatened by authorities. Halk TV, Tele 1, and Fox TV – three TV news channels – have been fined for critical coverage of relief efforts, Al-Monitor reports.
The government has also blocked access to Eksi Sozluk, a popular social media site, and briefly prevented users from using Twitter, which was crucial to rescue efforts. “The government’s efforts to pressure and steer [the media] were faster than the search-and-rescue efforts,” one media professional told al-Monitor.
The government has used the emergency situation to further muzzle what remains of Turkey’s free press. With only months to go until elections on May 14, Erdogan is set on crushing critical civil society organizations.
Disaster against democracy
Turkey’s democratic deficiency has directly impacted earthquake relief efforts, especially in Kurdish-majority regions affected by the quake, where elected leaders were imprisoned and replaced by government appointees, the ‘men from Ankara’ have failed to effectively mobilize local resources.
As a previous North Press report outlined, the Turkish government has cracked down on independent rescue and relief efforts in Kurdish regions of Turkey. Similarly, aid convoys sent to disaster zones by NGOs from the Alevi community, a historically-persecuted religious minority in Turkey, have been attacked. Even private initiatives by ethnic Turks have become suspect, such as that of Turkish Workers’ Party (TIP). Police arrested several TIP members as they were loading a donations truck on February 26. In effect, lives were lost due to the Turkish government’s attempts to centralize control in the hands of the president.
Instead, Erdogan and his party preferred to politicize the mechanism for aid provision. As highlighted in a previous report, Erdogan chose to keep mayors of his party in the loop, but not those of the opposition. The president also informed Meral Aksener, leader of IYI, a right-wing opposition party Erdogan wants to court for the upcoming elections, of the government’s first steps after earthquake, which he failed to do for other parties.
Erdogan has so far not used the earthquake to postpone general elections – which observers say will be a close race – indefinitely. Analysts say this is because the president wants the electorate to make a decision before grief turns into anger over the government’s failures. Until May, Erdogan will also be able to postpone the worst of the earthquake’s economic fallout by greasing the economy with foreign financial donations. A recession, however, is inevitable.
What is next for Turkey?
How Turkey’s electorate will vote in May is unclear. One thing is not: should Erdogan win, Turkey is set to continue down the same path towards authoritarianism. In 2013, Erdogan began a decade-long campaign to hollow out and atomize Turkey’s society. The country’s civil society has been branded a fifth column and dealt with accordingly. True community organizing has been replaced by government-sponsored simulacra, which were betrayed as a farce when disaster struck on February 6.
But Turkey’s civil society is still there, even if weakened and in hiding. Every self-organized rescue efforts and aid convoy proved as much. Hooligans have remained defiant, too. At a match last week, fans of two of the country’s ‘Big Three’ football clubs came together to chant for the government to resign over their mismanagement of the earthquake response. Erdogan must be feeling ten years younger.