Protests at Turkey’s Taksim Square can turn big
By sending his riot police late Tuesday to clear out Taksim Square, where anti-Government demonstrators have camped for two weeks now, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has forced upon the heart of Istanbul an uneasy calm. But the situation remains unresolved and Mr Erdogan has made clear that he is running out of patience. On Wednesday he asked his party workers: “Were we going to kneel down in front of these (people)IJ” and urged citizens to see “the larger picture” of how Turkey's ‘enemies’ were using the protests as a tool to stunt its growth as a regional power.
There is nothing new about the ‘foreign hand' spin. It is one of the oldest tricks in the book that rulers have often played to justify their authoritarian actions. In fact, right next door in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad is doing exactly that to justify his own murderous campaign. Of course, the situation in Turkey is far from the civil war that has broken out in Syria — and comparisons in mainstream media about Taksim being the new Tahrir or even Tiananmen, are out of place. Still, Mr Erdogan will do well to take a page out of the Arab Spring movement which proved that brute force is not the way to tackle social disenchantment and, if used in a disproportionate manner, does lead to large-scale violent retaliation. To some extent, this is already happening at Taksim.
Remember, when the protesters first gathered there on May 30, it was only to oppose new construction at the adjacent Gezi Park. But it was a harsh police response to the original demonstration led by environmentalists, which brought the anti-Erdogan brigade out on the streets. At the crux of their opposition to the Prime Minister is not just his plan to build a mosque at Gezi Park but his increasingly dictatorial and Islamist tendencies. While Mr Erdogan has insisted that he remains committed to Turkey's democratic ideals, the fact is that his diktats on the consumption of liquor and efforts to restrict abortion, for instance, have not gone down well with the country's moderate Muslim population which is used to a liberal form of Islamic rule.
Unfortunately, instead of taking steps to redress the grievances of his people, Mr Erdogan has been lashing out in all directions with the conspiracy card. Sometimes, it is foreign elements that are plotting to disturb the peace in his country; at others, it is his political opponents at home who are brewing trouble. Most recently, the Prime Minister even blamed international investors for fuelling financial instability. He needs to calm down. He has a mess on his hands but there is no reason why he can't fix it while he still has the time. After all, in this past decade, Mr Erdogan did script Turkey's phenomenal economic growth, which won him and his Justice and Development Party three consecutive elections. One only hopes that he will not eventually fritter away the goodwill that he has so painstakingly gained of his countrymen over the years.
By sending his riot police late Tuesday to clear out Taksim Square, where anti-Government demonstrators have camped for two weeks now, Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has forced upon the heart of Istanbul an uneasy calm. But the situation remains unresolved and Mr Erdogan has made clear that he is running out of patience. On Wednesday he asked his party workers: “Were we going to kneel down in front of these (people)IJ” and urged citizens to see “the larger picture” of how Turkey's ‘enemies’ were using the protests as a tool to stunt its growth as a regional power. There is nothing new about the ‘foreign hand' spin.
It is one of the oldest tricks in the book that rulers have often played to justify their authoritarian actions. In fact, right next door in Syria, President Bashar al-Assad is doing exactly that to justify his own murderous campaign. Of course, the situation in Turkey is far from the civil war that has broken out in Syria — and comparisons in mainstream media about Taksim being the new Tahrir or even Tiananmen, are out of place. Still, Mr Erdogan will do well to take a page out of the Arab Spring movement which proved that brute force is not the way to tackle social disenchantment and, if used in a disproportionate manner, does lead to large-scale violent retaliation.
To some extent, this is already happening at Taksim. Remember, when the protesters first gathered there on May 30, it was only to oppose new construction at the adjacent Gezi Park. But it was a harsh police response to the original demonstration led by environmentalists, which brought the anti-Erdogan brigade out on the streets. At the crux of their opposition to the Prime Minister is not just his plan to build a mosque at Gezi Park but his increasingly dictatorial and Islamist tendencies. While Mr Erdogan has insisted that he remains committed to Turkey's democratic ideals, the fact is that his diktats on the consumption of liquor and efforts to restrict abortion, for instance, have not gone down well with the country's moderate Muslim population which is used to a liberal form of Islamic rule.
Unfortunately, instead of taking steps to redress the grievances of his people, Mr Erdogan has been lashing out in all directions with the conspiracy card. Sometimes, it is foreign elements that are plotting to disturb the peace in his country; at others, it is his political opponents at home who are brewing trouble. Most recently, the Prime Minister even blamed international investors for fuelling financial instability. He needs to calm down.
He has a mess on his hands but there is no reason why he can't fix it while he still has the time. After all, in this past decade, Mr Erdogan did script Turkey's phenomenal economic growth, which won him and his Justice and Development Party three consecutive elections. One only hopes that he will not eventually fritter away the goodwill that he has so painstakingly gained of his countrymen over the years.