President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s long-running feud with Turkey’s feisty opposition media has descended into open warfare ahead of Sunday’s general election, amid claims that his ruling neo-Islamist Justice and Development party (AKP) is plotting to fix the results and shrill threats to lock up journalists and editors en masse.
But Erdogan’s livid fury with the press may be rooted in a deeper, personal unease. Turkey’s apparently untouchable Teflon president, who has dominated political life since 2002 and now plans to rewrite the constitution, sideline parliament and grab sweeping dictatorial powers, increasingly fears he may have fatally misread the electorate’s mood.
The AKP is still expected to emerge as the largest single party. But opinion polls are showing unexpectedly strong support for opposition parties, notably the pro-Kurdish, secular and progressive People’s Democratic party (HDP). If the HDP gains 10% or more of the vote, thereby thwarting the AKP aim of a “super-majority”, Erdogan’s constitutional coup may be rendered infeasible.
Accustomed to winning easily, Erdogan has been thrown off-balance by opponents empowered by concerns over a slowing economy, unemployment, high-level corruption, the unresolved Kurdish question, and officialdom’s zero tolerance for dissent, as seen in the brutal suppression of the 2013 Gezi park street protests. The president has been ridiculed over his lavish $615m, 1,150-room presidential palace in Ankara, in particular its allegedly gold-plated toilets.
“As he falls from grace, the sense of total exhaustion and loss of prestige is driving him [Erdogan] to excessive aggression,” said Bulent Kenes, editor-in-chief of Today’s Zaman newspaper. “He bypasses the administration of the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, to issue his own instructions for operations. He orders the detention or arrest of dozens of people. He lambasts and threatens those who dare criticise him.
“Threats and insults are tossed around, but Erdogan – who gives the impression of being a paper bully – fails to scare anyone. Honourable people from all ideologies and beliefs … can defy Erdogan and his crime syndicate with the courage of knowing they are right,” Kenes wrote.
“If Erdogan cannot rig the elections, it seems the AKP will not be able to form a one-party government. This would mean the end of Erdogan’s sultanistic aspirations,” said Ihsan Yilmaz in a column headlined “Erdogan’s Jihad”. The ruling party was trying to ready the public for electoral fraud by publishing misleading opinion poll figures, he claimed.
In another widely reported development, a self-styled Twitter whistleblower known as Fuat Avni published the names of 324 polling station clerks who he claimed would help the AKP fiddle Sunday’s count. Avni’s claim that Erdogan is planning a mass post-election round-up of about 200 reporters and editors from leading news media is viewed as credible, given previous purges, arrests and show trials that have left Turkey in 149th place in the World Press Freedom Index.
Erdogan is not himself standing for election and, as president, is supposed to rise above the fray. Instead he has been campaigning relentlessly for the AKP. His statements have become increasingly wild and divisive as he struggles to rescue his dream of an executive presidency.
Erdogan has accused the HDP of being terrorists and atheists, while failing to condemn over 70 violent attacks on HDP candidates and offices that claimed another life on Wednesday.
In a speech in Bingol, he said all journalists, Armenians and gay people were “representatives of sedition”. Stung by taunts by Kemal Kilicdaroglu over his expensive taste in loos, he suggested the veteran Republican People’s party (CHP) leader would be best employed as a toilet cleaner.
In other worrying outbursts, Erdogan has vowed to jail for life the editor-in-chief of Cumhuriyet newspaper, Can Dündar, for publishing video of Turkish intelligence agents apparently delivering weapons to Islamist fighters in northern Syria. This reporting amounted to espionage, he said. “The person [Dündar] who committed this crime will pay a heavy price. We will not let him go,” he said.
The threats against Cumhuriyet and other media have provoked international protests, including from Human Rights Watch and European parliamentarians. Erdogan appears to be past caring. He lashed out at the BBC, CNN, and the New York Times this week, claiming they were the trashy tools of an international, implicitly anti-Islamic conspiracy. “Do you know what their aim is? To weaken Turkey, to divide it, to disintegrate it and then to swallow it.”
The weekend election now looks like a turning point. Columnist Yavuz Baydar summed it up: “In a nutshell, it has turned out to be a simple choice between giving approval or not for all Erdogan now stands for: introducing to Turkey an arbitrary rule, disrespect for human dignity, rejection of supremacy of the rule of law, eradication of rights and freedoms, unaccountability and impunity, and construction of a new system in which there will be no separation of powers.”
If he gets his way on Sunday, Erdogan will be unstoppable. If he is thwarted, his vengeful wrath may be dangerously unconfined.
