Why Did So Many Cheer Turkey's Democracy While It Was Dying?

Claire Berlinski’s excellent account of the Western (and domestic) observers who cheered on as Turkey was sliding into authoritarianism reminds me of a point I long wanted to make.

There was in Erdogan’s early years some reason to be confused as to what was going on. Was he a Muslim democrat who was essentially the Turkish equivalent of a European Christian Democrat? Or was he an authoritarian at heart who would resort to repression as soon as he had sufficient control?

We know the answer now. But at the time there was perhaps what an economist would call an “observational equivalence” between the two scenarios.

In his early years, Erdogan was not sufficiently secure in power. Remember that as late as 2008, his party barely escaped closure thanks to a very narrow constitutional court decision. The first five years or so of his coming to power were years of transition, from the secular elites to the AKP-Gulenist alliance. During the transition, Erdogan naturally sought allies among the liberals and the West. But beyond that, the transition opened up space for political discussion and debate in ways that had long escaped the country. The old guard’s power was weakening while Erdogan had not yet consolidated his power. The former could not put the lid on the new developments, while the latter was not strong enough (yet) to crush all potential opposition.

So at the time it may have been genuinely hard to tell where Turkey was really headed – greater democracy or simply a new set of authoritarian elites.

What also contributed to this was that Erdogan, whose reference point was Islam and Ottoman flowering rather than Turkish nationalism and the Young Turks, did not share the secularists’ taboos on two long-festering issues – the Armenian genocide and the Kurds’ demands for greater autonomy. This allowed much greater freedom to discuss those issues than had been the case under the secularists, adding to the appearance of democratic flowering.

To distinguish between the two scenarios, you’d have to look very carefully beneath the surface. Until 2010, I was among those who gave Erdogan the benefit of the doubt. But then I was not writing on Turkey’s politics and did not feign any expertise in it. When I started to pay more attention as a consequence of the Sledgehammer case in early 2010, the true nature of the Erdogan and his Gulenist allies became alarmingly clear. This was not just a massive power play aimed at current and potential opponents. It represented the wholesale undermining of the rule of law. Erdogan was at worst behind it, at best knowingly complicit in it.

In any case, by 2011 there was absolutely no excuse for the commentators Berlinski mentions (and many others) to be singing the democratic tune. I have yet to see a single one of them provide an apology or an honest account of how/why they got it wrong.

Comments

[EYILDIZOGLU]

Dear Mr Rodrik
I am quite a fan of your articles on economy, globalization and development as well as the ones on the notorious show trials. But I am slightly disappointer to read that you too were giving a benefit of doubt to AKP until 2010. Because, if you were giving benefit of doubt to AKP during 2007 elections, I am afraid, you were well behind the curve... By then AKP power had already been consolidated.
AKP was not just a party. There were at least 90 years old networks of social religious structures behind it. AKP leadership were seasoned İslamists.
I was one of the few, may be the only one in Turkey, who tried to bring this fact to the attention of the liberal intelligentsia (in my Columns in Cumhuriyet and in my other writings- the title of one of my articles was “the slow suicide of the liberal entelligentsia”-2007) who were then very enthusiastic about AKP and argued that what we were witnessing was a kind of “passive revolution” ( a la Gramsci), a process of “molecular transformation” in the civil society and in the state bureaucracy. It was going to end up badly for Turkey.
To the people who asked me whether I expected Turkey to become another Iran, I said no, and advised them to go and study the Muslim Brothers in Egypt. Also apart from the historical example of the Muslim Brothers movement, the critical concepts like “habitus” (Bourdieu), “truth regime” (Foucault) were very helpful to understand what was the AKP (Who were these people? What did they want? Did they have a discernable project?) and what was going on in Turkey under he AKP governments.
Now (probably since the “Gezi Event”) we may need yet two other concepts to be able to continue to analyse AKP: Totalitarianism (Arendt) and Fascism.

[Jacky]

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[0batasamlambung]

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[Jacky]

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[Axel Arnold Bangert]

To EYILDIZOGLU:
I very carefully read this article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Turkish_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt

In my opinion Mr. Erdogan planned the deep state kemalist removement with the help of the gülen deep state as well as the then following gülen deep state removement as well as the substitution of the kurds in Afrin and sorrounding by the 3 million syrian refugees (EU contract).

What he is planning concerning nato and russia, Powertrans, Koç Holding, Oyak, Sabancı Holding and the armaments industry, which tries to build up, will be a very, very important developement for this region.

Axel Arnold Bangert - Herzogenrath 02.2018

[D]

Dear Rodrik,
I think as before, you are wrong on your analysis. Let me give you a little perspective as an AKP and Erdogan supporter for your future posts on Turkey.
First I see the Turkish population very broadly as
AKP and SP supporters: Muslims (most Turks and Kurds, there many different groups),
MHP supporters: nationalist-muslims (muslims but also kemalist),
CHP supporters: secular Turks (some nationalist, some globalist, but mostly not democrat and anti-religon),
secular Kurds (mostly kurdish nationalist, and mostly not democrat).
Although not openly discussed, this view is shared among many in Turkey. And I think it explains the reason why we as muslims support fellow muslims.
For the last 16 years;
most AKP MPs in 2002-2007 were Muslims (a westerner would also call them islamists). Since they did not vote for to allow US to invade Iraq via Turkey, they could not become candidates in 2007 election. After that, bureaucracy mostly controlled by gulenists, until 2010. When erdogan started to openly criticize israel's bombardment of gazza, the gulenist supported by globalists in america gave up supporting erdogan and aligned themselves only with america to undermine his power. This lead AKP and Erdogan to consolidate the power to minimize the risk of being overthrown: eg. Gezi park riots (supported mostly by secular Turk allevites), coup attempt (coordinated in Incirlik). These difficulties have also made AKP and MHP allies (I should note that 98% of population against gulenists and more than 90% thinks america was behind the coup attempt.).
New alliances have brought many distrusts in bureaucratic decisions which made the president simply want to see every decision.

[sanny raskiny]

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