FLASH
Shkruar nga Orhan Pamuk
Erdogan has adopted against his opponent the same strategy that was used against him twenty-seven years ago.
Since the arrest earlier this month of President Erdogan’s main political rival, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, on clearly false charges of corruption and terrorism, Taksim Square, the city’s tourist hub and the beating heart of political protest, has been deserted, surrounded by police. In my fifty years of living in Istanbul, I have never seen so many so-called security measures on the streets of the capital as in recent days.
Taksim metro station was closed, as were many other stations, some of the busiest in the city. The regional government has restricted entry into Istanbul to cars and intercity buses. Police are checking incoming vehicles and removing anyone suspected of having traveled to the city to participate in the protests. Here and across the country, television screens remain constantly on so that people can follow the latest dramatic political developments. For a week, the Istanbul governor’s office has banned public protests and political demonstrations – rights enshrined in the constitution.
However, spontaneous and unauthorized demonstrations, as well as clashes with the police, continued unabated, despite internet access being restricted in an attempt to prevent gatherings. The police are using tear gas without scruples and have arrested a large number of people. NATO is asking how this is possible in a country that is a NATO member and is seeking EU membership. While the world is distracted by Trump, by the wars between Palestine and Israel, between Ukraine and Russia, today what little is left of Turkish democracy is fighting for survival.
-Imamoglu's arrest
The imprisonment of Erdogan’s main rival, a politician who enjoys broad popular support, has taken the government’s authoritarian crackdown to unprecedented levels. Imamoglu’s arrest comes days after he was officially nominated as the presidential candidate in Turkey’s main opposition party’s primary election. By now, both supporters and opponents of the government have reached the same conclusion: Erdogan considers Imamoglu a political threat and wants to get rid of him.
Imamoglu won more votes than Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in the last three Istanbul municipal elections. When Imamoglu defeated the ruling party’s candidate in April 2019, Erdogan annulled the result, citing alleged technical irregularities. The elections were repeated two months later. Imamoglu won again, by an even larger margin than in the first vote. In the next local elections in 2024, after five years in office, Imamoglu again defeated Erdogan’s party candidate and was elected mayor of Istanbul for the third time. His solid electoral record and growing popularity have made him the main opposition candidate, the only one capable of successfully challenging Erdogan in the upcoming presidential election.
-Erdogan's strategy
The flip side of the coin is that Erdogan has adopted against his opponent the same strategy that was used against him twenty-seven years earlier. In 1998, Erdogan was the elected mayor of Istanbul and a very popular figure. The secular and military establishment considered his version of political Islam dangerous, and so he was arrested and charged (in his case, with inciting religious hatred after reciting a political poem at a rally). Erdogan was later removed from his post as mayor and spent four months in prison. The arrest However, his imprisonment and his stubborn refusal to cooperate with the authorities and to bow to the military’s repressive demands helped to further raise his political profile. As some commentators have pointed out, the arrest of Imamoglu, who has denied the charges and promised not to “bow” himself, could have the same unintended effect, making him even more popular.
-Study qualification
Today, however, the situation is not quite the same. Imamoglu is the victim of a deliberate and determined attempt to exclude him from the political race. The day before his arrest, pro-Erdogan media and the rector of Istanbul University, appointed by Erdogan, declared his degree invalid, citing alleged irregularities in his transfer from a private university. Since only university graduates can run for president in Turkey, the move is intended to disqualify Imamoglu, who has already announced his intention to challenge the decision. These charges were followed by corruption and terrorism charges.
Labeling political opponents as “terrorists” is a tactic Erdogan has adopted since the failed military coup in 2016, when a faction of the Turkish Armed Forces tried to seize control of the government. In 2019, when Austrian writer Peter Handke, criticized for supporting former Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, won the Nobel Prize in Literature, Erdogan strongly objected to the decision. Caught off guard, ignoring the teleprompter, he declared: “They gave the same prize to a Turkish terrorist!”
That same day, I was returning to Istanbul from New York and was about to cancel my flight, when Erdogan's spokesman intervened to clarify that the president was not referring to me.
-Hands on the finances of the Municipality
An Erdogan-controlled court has now jailed Imamoglu on corruption charges, but without charging him with the crime of “terrorism.” Such a charge would allow Erdogan to install his own candidate as mayor of Istanbul — a position his party has failed to win in three consecutive elections — and, as many fear, to divert some of the city’s tax revenue to fund propaganda and advertising for his party.
By imprisoning Imamoglu, Erdogan is not only marginalizing a more popular political rival, but also trying to seize economic resources that he has been unable to touch for seven years. If he succeeds, in the upcoming presidential election, only the faces of Erdogan and his candidate will fill city walls and municipal billboards.
-No surprises.
No surprises What is happening is not at all surprising to those who follow Turkish politics closely. For a decade, Turkey has no longer been a true democracy, but only an electoral democracy: you can vote for your favorite candidate, but there is no freedom of speech or thought. The Turkish government has in fact tried to reduce the population to a forced uniformity. No one dares to talk about the many journalists and public officials who have been arbitrarily arrested in recent days, both to give more weight and credibility to the corruption allegations against Imamoglu, and in the belief that, with everything that is happening, no one will pay attention.
Now, with the arrest of the country’s most popular politician, the candidate who would have surely won the majority of votes in the upcoming national elections, this limited form of democracy has also come to an end. All of this is unacceptable and deeply intolerable, and is the reason why more and more people are taking part in the recent protests. For now, no one can predict what the future will bring./ Adapted from “Pamphlet” by “Corriere Della Sera”
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