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Turkey Protests: the Start of Turkey’s “Arab Spring?”

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Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAE
Paresh Nath, The Khaleej Times, UAE

As the demonstrations grow in Istanbul, the question is now being raised. Is Turkey — a country vital to President Barack Obama’s foreign policy, just as it has been vital to the foreign policy of many earlier administrations — heading into it’s version of the “Arab Spring?” Some use the comparison, some reject it. Events are unfolding quickly.

Cable networks are now covering live demonstrations. Expects are being hauled out to talk about the political context, Turkey’s history, and what could happen if the demonstrations peter out or are violently repressed. A cross section (go to the links to read the full stories):

—The AP:
—

Riot police stormed Istanbul’s Taksim Square on Tuesday, using tear gas and water cannon to scatter protesters demonstrating against plans to redevelop a nearby park.

“Now that the theater is over, I don’t know what will happen now but we are waiting and we are trying to save the park still,” said Nuri Kayserilioglu, 24, an economics student sitting at the edge of the square, who says the show of force was a play for the camera but he and his friends intended to occupy Gezi Park until forcefully removed.

Television cameras captured images of molotov-cocktail-throwing demonstrators who confronted armored police vehicles. By mid-afternoon, demonstrators inside Gezi Park tried to distance themselves from the violence, accusing police of using provocateurs to make sensational images of violence.

RAW VIDEO: Police move in:

The BBC’s Mark Lowen:

What began as a demonstration by environmentalists has mushroomed into something far bigger: a fight by disparate groups for greater freedom in Turkey and a preservation of the country’s secular order.

They see a government with an authoritarian, neo-Islamist agenda: the highest number of journalists in the world in prison, restrictions on alcohol sales, massive construction projects prioritised over human rights.

“This is not an Arab spring”, one protester, Melis Behlil, told me.

“We have free elections here. But the problem is that the person elected doesn’t listen to us.”

…….And what of the timing? The police clear-out came a day before Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan was supposed to hold talks with some protesters – a potential chance for dialogue. That prospect now seems in tatters.

But Mr Erdogan has stood firm throughout.

AND:

I have spent days in Taksim and Gezi Park and have met mainly young leftist Turks enjoying a largely festive atmosphere here – the petrol bomb-throwers are the fringe”

He has called the protesters “vandals” and “terrorists”.

On Tuesday he told parliament that the movement was an international conspiracy against Turkey to destabilise its economy.

He lashed out at the foreign press for launching “comprehensive attacks” on the country and warned protesters that they were pawns in a wider game. “We won’t show any more tolerance,” he said.

Vast swathes of the country still back him. The protest movement has made the headlines – but another side of Turkey exists. Mr Erdogan’s support base is conservative and more religious.

The Guardian:

There is a bitter irony to events in Turkey. The man who told the Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak before his fall that “no government can survive against the will of its people” dismissed his own civil movement as looters, riffraff and foreign agents. The man who sent the army back to its barracks, and pushed back the power of Turkey’s deep state, sent in riot police yesterday to arrest more than 50 lawyers protesting at police brutality. The man whose reforms instituted unprecedented democratic freedoms in Turkey can not, apparently, cope with their consequences.

For the second time in 10 days, the response of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an to appeals to listen and compromise has been defiance, teargas and water cannon. Answering the charge that his own reaction to the protests in Gezi Park and Taksim Square in Istanbul have turned a local environmental protest into a national crisis, Mr Erdo?an did a Margaret Thatcher: “If you call this roughness, I’m sorry, but this Tayyip Erdo?an won’t change.” Turkey, on the other hand, has changed.

One has to define which Turkey. There are several of them residing within one land. But to take just one of the causes of this crisis – the restrictions on the sale and advertising of alcohol which were signed into law yesterday – the Justice and Development party measure was a solution to something that was not really a problem. According to the government’s own surveys, only 6% of households spend enough on alcohol to affect their budget. The rest are social drinkers or non-drinkers. In one blitzkrieg of a week, Mr Erdo?an has made selling beer at night at the height of the tourist season an act of political defiance.

Police forces in Italy, Britain and the US have had their own well-documented problems in dealing with political protest, especially in the runup to G8 conferences. But in Mr Erdo?an’s mind, something other than genuine political protest is happening. There is a conspiracy, too. “The big picture” behind the protesters, he reportedly told members of his party executive, is the forces that want to scupper his historic deal with the Kurds, profiteers upset by government moves to push interest rates below 5% and foreign powers who cannot accept Turkey becoming an international power. That’s a big list.

Russia Today video:

Aljazeera English analysis of events:

The Economist:

It Bega with a grove of sycamores. For months environmentalists had been protesting against a government-backed plan to chop the trees down to make room for a shopping and residential complex in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. They organised a peaceful sit-in with tents, singing and dancing. On May 31st riot police staged a pre-dawn raid, dousing the protesters with jets of water and tear gas and setting fire to their encampment. Images of the brutality—showing some protesters bloodied, others blinded by plastic bullets—spread like wildfire across social media.

Within hours thousands of outraged citizens were streaming towards Taksim. Police with armoured personnel carriers and water cannon retaliated with even more brutish force. Blasts of pepper spray sent people reeling and gasping for air. Hundreds were arrested and scores injured in the clashes that ensued. Copycat demonstrations soon erupted in Ankara and elsewhere. By June 3rd most of Turkey’s 81 provinces had seen protests. A “tree revolution” had begun.

In fact these protests are not just about trees. Nor is Turkey really on the brink of a revolution. The convulsions are rather an outpouring of the long-stifled resentment felt by those—nearly half of the electorate—who did not vote for the moderately Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party in the election of June 2011 that swept Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s combative prime minister, to a third term. The most popular slogan on the streets was “Tayyip Resign”. Millions of housewives joined in, clanging their pans in solidarity and belying government claims that the protests had been pre-planned rather than spontaneous.

It took 24 hours for Mr Erdogan to respond—whereupon he called the protesters “louts” who were acting under orders from “foreign powers”. The wave of unrest evidently caught his government off guard. “The limits of its power have now been drawn,” said Kadri Gursel, a columnist for the daily Milliyet. By June 5th at least three people had died and thousands of others had been hurt; students referred to their bruises as “Erdogan’s kiss”. The Istanbul Stock Exchange fell by as much as 12% on June 3rd, before recovering slightly the next day. Barack Obama’s administration expressed “serious concerns”.

—Foreign Policy blog:

On Tuesday morning, police attempted to drive protestors out of the park with water cannons and tear gas — perhaps signaling an end to the popular and mostly peaceful demonstrations that have spread across Turkey over the past two weeks. But the issues that have fueled the turmoil — from complaints over the Islamist government’s conservative social policies to demands for greater democracy — are not likely to dissipate so quickly. And that is particularly true of one issue that has inflamed many protesters’ anger at Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan: The government’s stance on the war ravaging Syria, which has now claimed over 80,000 lives.

The war in Syria is polarizing Turkey. According to a recent study by MetroPOLL Strategic and Social Research Center, based in Ankara, only 28 percent of the Turkish public supports the prime minister’s policies on Syria. Since the start of the conflict, the government has strongly condemned Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. From early on, Erdogan has vocally supported the Free Syrian Army (FSA), the rebel group battling the regime, and has urged the United States to supply them with weapons and to establish a no-fly zone.

Turkey is crucial for the rebels. It offers refuge for their families as well as a safe zone where they can plan and launch attacks over the border. Turkish businesses supply the rebels with everything from medicine to uniforms to cigarettes. But many Turks have long worried that this would make them subject to retaliation by the Syrian government — a fear that, for many, was confirmed by the attacks in Reyhanli. The leader of Turkey’s main opposition has repeatedly confronted Erdogan over his pro-rebel policies, accusing the prime minister of supporting Syrian “terrorists.”

Indeed, protests against the government’s Syria policy actually predate the broader demonstrations of the past two weeks. Thousands of enraged residents took to the streets in Reyhanli in the days after the bombings, citing what they perceive as a growing lack of security and a job market now favoring Syrian refugees willing to work for less than Turks.

–-4 News:

The police operation came after Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan agreed to meet protest leaders, having initially refused to engage with the growing protest movement.

However, Erdogan has backed the police actions, declaring: “They say the prime minister is rough. So what was going to happen? Were we going to kneel down in front of these (people)?”

“If you call this roughness, I’m sorry, but this Tayyip Erdogan won’t change.”

NBC News:

Under Erdogan’s leadership, most here agree, Turkey has become an economic success and a force to be reckoned with in the region. But his construction mania and a series of new laws have angered secular Turks, even as they have pleased his growing power base – the conservative, Islamist middle-class.

“People are fed up with Erdogan’s approach,” said Ali Orcunos, a 64-year-old pensioner who was protesting in Taksim Square with a group younger than his own children. “Which is ‘I decided this, so I will do it this way because the 50 percent who support me want it so; and the other 50 percent don’t count.’’’

In recent months Erdogan has imposed restrictions on the sale of alcohol, a drawing down of social security, the separation of boys and girls in primary and secondary schools, and an emphasis on religious – over national – holidays.

And after the initial clashes, Erdogan, rather than seek a conciliatory tone, skewered the protesters, calling them looters who were “arm in arm with terrorists.”
“I was stunned,” said Begum Uzun, one of the protesters on the square. “I expected Erdogan to say something that would slow down the protest, to be more rational.”

The Washington Post’s Max Fisher:

It’s amazing to watch this video and compare it to the images from Istanbul’s Taksim Square just two weeks ago, when the protests began. In those first days of protest, the square looked more like an outdoor jazz concert, with urbane young locals lounging in the square’s park and waving signs.

Now, as the above video shows, the square is filled with riot police, trucks blasting water cannons at protesters, tear gas and young, gas mask-wearing demonstrators who looked like they just stepped out of Cairo’s Tahrir Square. That doesn’t mean Turkey’s protest movement is akin to Egypt’s – for starters, Turkey is a democracy that freely elected its current, Islamist government – but it is jarring to see how quickly Taksim has been Tahrirified by protesters and police alike.

A few Tweets as Twitter belches out its quick coverage: