Turkey (OpenDemocracy) – In post-referendum Turkey, it is not just Erdoğan and his supporters but the opposition as well who refuse to recognize their adversaries as legitimate – an explosive formula. The most significant result of the April 16 referendum in…
Turkey (OpenDemocracy) – Especially for the young generation who believes that there is no legal way to gain rights for the Kurdish people, Turkey’s government policies will inevitably have tragic consequences. The July 15 coup attempt was a nightmare. Kurds remember…
Turkey (Tasnim) – A pro-Kurdish lawmaker has been temporarily suspended from the Turkish parliament for saying the word “genocide” during heated discussions on changes to the constitution. Member of parliament for the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Garo Paylan said four communities…
Turkey (Tasnim) – Turkish lawmakers on Thursday approved three more articles in a hugely controversial bill bolstering the powers of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as lawmakers brawled and threw objects in a session of high tension. Lawmakers have since the start…
On Monday, Wikileaks released a batch of almost 58,000 emails sent and received by Turkish president Recep Erdogan’s son-in-law Berat Albayrak.
The release, termed by Wikileaks as ‘Berat’s box’ includes thousands of emails detailing Albayrak’s dealings as the Turkish Minister of Energy. The emails encompass a span of sixteen years beginning April of 2000 until September of this year. Wikileaks was given the database of emails by a Turkish Marxist-Leninist ‘hacktivist’ group known as RedHack.
RedHack had initially announced that they had obtained the emails in September but their social media accounts and pages containing news of the hack were taken down. Originally the group threatened to release the emails if the Erdogan government wouldn’t release Alp Altınörs, a member of the Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) and a journalist named Aslı Erdogan. Suspected members of RedHack have been threatened since September by the government and subjected to the ongoing post-coup torture.
Turkey is sending a message that its armed forces are still a strong and capable fighting force, despite large-scale purges of officers of the highest ranks.
Turkey, it appears, is itching for a fight in Iraq and Syria. Its August incursion into Syria, through the ongoing Operation Euphrates Shield, was no doubt an important turning point. No longer an active bystander to the conflict in Syria, Turkey became an actual participant in the civil war that has been waging for over five years.
There was a time when opinion polls showed that the military was the most trusted organization in the country, with 89 per cent of the population holding such views. However, this declined to 66 per cent by 2011 after the military was hit by the Ergenekon and Balyoz arrests, trials and convictions which alleged coup plotting within the military’s top brass. According to a recent survey, over the past six months trust in the army has continued to fall. This lack of faith and disappointment for the military has no doubt taken another plunge after the failed coup attempt of 15 July.
Two leaders of Turkey’s pro-Kurdish opposition party have reportedly been detained, along with six party deputies.
“At night in Ankara police detained the party’s chairwoman Figen Yuksekdag, the door was broken during the storming of the house,” said a representative of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).
“Half an hour later, [chairman] Selahattin Demirtas was detained.”
At least six other HDP deputies were also apprehended as part of a “counter-terrorism” investigation, the representative added. Some reports suggest as many as 15 HDP members have been detained
For many, Turkey advances towards a dark future at a fast pace. Having a rather noncommittal relationship with democracy, the Republic has muddled through with significant ups and downs. It still takes a lot of optimism to talk about political power becoming fully accountable to the public.
Politics, already a one-man-show, is becoming increasingly intolerant towards any form of criticism. It pushes dissidents off the stage. Turning the Parliament into a technical apparatus President Erdoğan is moving to lift the parliamentary immunity of deputies. Relying on a judicial apparatus that he formed when he was the prime minister, Erdoğan will target the deputies of the pro-Kurdish, left-leaning People’s Democracy Party (HDP). Following this pattern, he will further target HDP deputies and position them as public enemies in the fight against terrorism. The recent performance of the HDP gives little hope about their remaining fully inside the legitimate political sphere by distancing themselves completely from PKK terrorism. Since the last general election on November 1, Erdoğan seems to be succeeding with his political strategy of pushing the HDP further to the margins and the HDP seems to be taking the bait doubly pressed upon them by Erdoğan and the PKK.
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 Government’s immediate response was to enforce a media ban throughout Turkey, rather than attending to the needs of its beleaguered citizens.
Is Turkey poised on the brink of the violent conflict of the 90s? Or does the entry of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP) into Parliament offer shoots of hope for an alternative path?
At the very moment that critical independent media are needed most in Turkey, we are witnessing a renewed crackdown on media freedom.
