Slightly corrected version of Turkey June 16 Update; nothing substantial, just a few typos. TCG The witch-hunt has begun By Thomas Goltz June 16, 2013 At a mass rally of tens of thousands today in Istanbul at the suburb of Kazilicheshme, with street battles raging near Taksim Square, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan aggressively addressed his conservative supporters to round after round of rapturous applause, repeating allegations that unspecified foreigners working in cahoots with local anarchists and terrorists were the cause of the last 18 days of social upheaval and disturbances in Istanbul and across Turkey. He also promised “a full investigation” into everything from the “provocations” spread through social media, to the principles and teachers in the Turkish secondary school system who released their students to participate in the occupation of now-iconic Gezi Park, which protestors “occupied” on June 1st to save a stand of sycamore trees, thus sparking the current unrest. “We have the evidence! We have the evidence…” growled the Prime Minister to his massed supporters. “It is just a matter of time to sort through the electronic data, street camera data and other material—and we will get to the bottom of it, and the responsible ones will pay!” Looking casual and confident in front of his base, Erdogan played the Islamist-populist, repeating his standard mantra of violation of the public trust by the Gezi occupiers, many points of which have been proven wrong. These include the allegation that Islamic headscarf-wearing women were attacked by the Gezi “mob,” to his claim that “beer drinking louts” entered a mosque “wearing their shoes” during the apparent height of disturbances last week, or June 11th. Despite the fact that the imam of the mosque in question has denied that such an event took place, Erdogan continues to repeat it, and with effect: the howls of outrage from the assembled crowd sounded spontaneous and ominous. Comparing the Istanbul disturbances and the reaction of his police with various other moments of unrest in Europe and the United States (notably the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ movement) and the police response to same, he categorically rejected any and all criticism of the behavior of Turkish security forces in clearing Gezi Park last night or elsewhere. “This is not about Gezi Park…this is not about trees…this is not about the environment…this is not about democracy….this is all about Turkey…and the dark forces trying to destabilize the country and depose this government! Dear brothers and sisters--will you let them?” “NO!...” As I watch this live on TV, the Prime Minister spits out a new quotable phrase every second, many of which require too much explanation for a non-Turkey specialist to understand—but all of which are push-button issues for his crowd: “They march with Turkish flags…and among them are those who burn the Turkish flag!” “The beer & shoes in the mosque…” (for the third time)…”Using mosques as stables!” “Assaulting women wearing head-scarves!” (for the third time) “Terrorists in cahoots with foreign powers…” (for the second time) “They are Greens, right? Environmentalists, right? Let me tell you something about this…” He almost sounds like a Turkish Bill Clinton making a ‘Let me tell you something’ stump-speech. As a speaker, he is slick; he may have those almost invisible prompt-boards that make Obama speeches seem so smooth, but is also able to wander around the stage, ad-libbing at ease. He is, in a word, an almost perfect, post-modern Islamic-style demagogue. And not a word of compromise. Meanwhile, up around Taksim, the cat & mouse game between thousands of defiant protestors and hundreds of police (one might add a zero to both numbers) continues, with the massive use of American-made tear-gas and high-pressure pepper spray, apparently a local cocktail that I got a taste of the other night; it was not pleasant. The elements that went into the “pepper” cocktail are now being investigated by anti-Erdogan chemists. The Prime Minister is now coming to the end of his speech, citing Adnan Menderes, the populist Turkish premier who was hung by the military in 1960 for crimes-against-the-state that Erdogan now links to Menderes’ re-allowing the Muslim call-to-prayer to be made in the original Arabic… “Allah ul-Akbaar!” he crows, and the crowd chants along. It is truly extraordinary how many Islamic/Turkic-historic bullets he can cram into a speech: Seljuk this; Ottoman that—and resonant date after date. Now he is back to Menderes, and his hanging by the (secular) military: “Life is given by God…and no one but God can change the date of death! With His help, we will continue to walk this road together…in drought, in mud! They put barriers in front of us—but we, the AK Party, said no to their efforts!...We will not allow them…” Just who the “them” is hangs in the air, and he never says because all implicitly know: the secular establishment set up by Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk) in 1923, which did everything from ban the wearing of the fez to insisting that the call to prayer be read in Turkish and not Arabic (see above). (Now he is listing airport and university projects in remote parts of the country in provinces where there are no AK Party Members of Parliament, proving that his government is open to all and for all and not vindictive when it comes to the ballot box) “WE---“ (Crowd repeats: “WE!”) “ARE TO-GETH-ER!” (Crowd repeats) “We are not 50%--we are 100%!...Show them your flags! Oh, International Media—look at this! (Crowd: “ONE NATION!”) “Did you note this?” (To the international media) (Now, with much ‘Inshallah!’ he lists where he will be traveling in Turkey—Mersin, Kayseri, Zonguldak, etc) (Now, he is back to flag-fetish, cites the law [a warning to Kurdish flags, I think] and asks everyone to place the Turkish flag on all balconies. This is a bold and likely successful effort to usurp ‘flag as secular symbol/Ataturk’ which is a basic rallying point for his Gezi Park-obsessed, secular and youthful opponents. One has to admit, the guy is good.) “Are we ready to sing?” “YES!” “’’Did we walk this road together, in drought and rain?!’” etc, reciting verses “THANK YOU ISTANBUL!” The crowd goes crazy…and the witch-hunt is on. What I fear is a post-rally confrontation with the Gezi folks. Everyone is so hyped up that it could turn very ugly, very quickly.
Posted on: Sun, 16 Jun 2013 18:58:48 +0000
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