tag:theconversation.com,2011:/fr/topics/turkey-coup-29363/articlesTurkey coup – The Conversation2018-02-09T10:14:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/914302018-02-09T10:14:34Z2018-02-09T10:14:34ZRobots, kittens and Netflix: Turkish curbs on the media reach ludicrous levels<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/205664/original/file-20180209-51703-o5pcdd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EvrenKalinbacak/Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Regulation and censorship mechanisms have recently reached absurd levels in Turkey. Two stark recent examples illustrate the banality of the recent creeping controls. </p>
<p>On February 6, a robot was reformatted in Ankara because it warned the Turkish Transport, Maritime and Communications Minister Ahmet Arslan to speak more slowly during his speech. Upon interruption, Arslan, jokingly, said: “Dear friends, it is clear someone should get the robot under control, do what is necessary.”</p>
<p>Ironically, the well-functioning robot was instantly controlled at an event that aimed to celebrate the internet and technology; it was muted for the rest of the day.</p>
<p>And on January 31, Ali Erbaş, the head of Turkey’s Directorate of Religious Affairs (Diyanet) slammed the controversial TV celebrity and creationist Adnan Oktar. Oktar’s TV shows, which are broadcast on his own A9 TV channel, as well as Daily Motion and YouTube, feature controversial religious references. He famously calls his female devotees on the shows his “kittens”. Erbaş denigrated the “perversity” of Oktar’s TV shows and recommended that “the authorised institution should do something about it”.</p>
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<h2>‘Just for monitoring’</h2>
<p>Against this backdrop, perhaps it is no surprise that new laws concerning internet and television regulation <a href="https://tr.sputniknews.com/turkiye/201802051032119770-dijital-servislere-rtuk-denetimi-geliyor/">are now being issued</a>. The aim is to grant extensive powers to the Radio and Television Supreme Council (RTÜK). </p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.diken.com.tr/buyuk-sansur-kapida-goruntulu-ve-sesli-internet-yayinlari-rtuke-tabi-olacak/">draft decree</a>, no internet platforms, including global streaming services such as Netflix, Spotify and YouTube, as well as the national internet TV stations such as BluTV or Puhu will be able to broadcast without relevant licenses from the RTÜK. These global and local platforms have bestowed great amounts of freedom for media consumers in Turkey so they can get round the TV shows on mainstream media. Deputy Prime Minister Bekir Bozdağ commented: “The upcoming decree is not for limiting the freedom of expression, it is just for monitoring.”</p>
<p>In fact, television has been “monitored” in Turkey since the establishment of the RTÜK by the Radio and Television Law in April 1994, initially designed to regulate private broadcasting and to enable the compliance of broadcasts with the “legal” framework. The RTÜK has since issued penalties to broadcasters and has even suspended TV and radio channels. </p>
<p>But all of the RTÜK’s previous activities concentrated on the circulation of offline content. The new decree, however, aims to give sweeping powers to the RTÜK over the online domain. This signals a new beginning for digital surveillance in Turkey. And according to the 2017 world press freedom index, Turkey is already doing pretty badly, ranking <a href="https://rsf.org/en/ranking">155th</a> out of the 180 countries listed. </p>
<h2>Internet menaces</h2>
<p>In the aftermath of the failed coup of July 2016, AKP, the current government of Turkey, has consolidated its efforts in collecting personal data and regulating digital platforms. The government declared a State of Emergency for three months immediately following the attempted coup and <a href="http://www.euronews.com/2018/01/09/turkey-extends-state-of-emergency-for-a-sixth-time">has renewed it since</a>. This enables the AKP to legislate using decree laws, that don’t require parliament to grant approval. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has constantly warned society of the menace of social media, particularly Twitter and Facebook. And mainstream newspapers and television channels (which mainly consist of the allies and family members of the AKP in power positions) act as a propaganda device for the government, portraying internet regulation as a way of coping with “external” threats to “Turkishness”, family values, national security and political stability. </p>
<p>In 2017, the government blocked <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/turkey-blocks-wikipedia-expanding-censorship/a-38637455">all access to Wikipedia</a>, banned <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/no-dating-shows-on-turkeys-tvs-this-season-top-media-watchdog-official-says-117046">dating shows</a>, and shut down <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/30/turkey-closes-20-tv-and-radio-stations-post-coup-clampdown">over 20</a> television and radio shows. Meanwhile, in just the last couple of weeks, <a href="https://ahvalnews.com/afrin/afrin-day-17-afrin-locals-mobilise-defend-hometown-against-turkey">449 people</a> were taken into custody for writing social media posts that criticised the government’s recent military operations in Afrin Canton in the north of Syria, a region that Kurdish forces captured from Islamic State. </p>
<p>This current witch hunt, combined with the influence of the new decrees, could potentially lead to unprecedented amounts of self-censorship, reducing people’s freedom or willingness to express their political views on social media. </p>
<h2>Absurdity breeds creativity</h2>
<p>But we should not despair. I hope that these new infringements on freedom of speech will lead to new waves of cultural and digital activism by tech-savvy generations. Continuous censorship and regulation is a potential catalyst for creative dissidence. Filmmakers in Turkey have already found creative ways to cope with censorship in recent years, for instance by using black screens stating “these parts cannot be shown because of the censorship by the Culture and Tourism Ministry”. </p>
<p>In a recent interview, for example, Kurdish director Kazım Öz told me how he has coped with censorship by not stepping back and explicitly exposing it in his last film <a href="http://povfilm.se/12/current-state-of-filmmaking-in-turkey/">Zer</a> (2017). Öz used a dark screen in place of the censored images. Showing the name of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism on all these dark scenes, Öz explicitly displayed the absurdity of these regulations. </p>
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<p>Citizens of Turkey have long bypassed existing internet regulations by using VPN (Virtual Private Network) and other methods to get round the blockage of certain websites. The latest draft decree certainly points to a further step towards a dystopian future for Turkish freedom of expression and human rights, but it could also instigate new imaginings for the future of social and digital change.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/91430/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ozge Ozduzen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>New, extreme levels of censorship in Turkey could lead to waves of digital activism by tech-savvy generations.Ozge Ozduzen, Visiting Research Fellow at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/901972018-02-06T13:41:36Z2018-02-06T13:41:36ZIs Turkey really facing an ‘exodus’? It’s not that simple<p>The decline of Turkey’s democracy has become a well-worn theme, and for good reason. The country has now jailed more journalists on charges related to their work than <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/13/world/europe/journalists-jailed-committee-to-protect-journalists.html">any other in the world</a>, and many <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/dec/11/erdogan-turkey-academics-terrorism-violence-kurdish-people">academics</a> who’ve criticised the government’s policies towards the “Kurdish question” are now on trial. But recently, media observers have seemingly identified another <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-42433668">alarming trend</a>: a “Turkish exodus”. </p>
<p>With the failed coup attempt of 2016, the ensuing crackdown, and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s moves to consolidate his power, it seems many Turks are moving abroad to make new lives elsewhere. Some are <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2018/01/turkey-turkish-refugee-flow-to-europe.html">suggesting</a> that this amounts to a “new wave” of refugees fleeing the country. </p>
<p>The truth is rather more complicated. It’s too early to call this an “exodus”; many migration concepts, such as refugee, are regularly misused, with “flows” of people often exaggerated and romanticised. But nonetheless, the <a href="https://www.politico.eu/article/turkey-failed-coup-purge-scholars-loses-its-brains/">testimonies</a> of those who’ve left and who’ve stayed, as well as the statistics recorded so far, show alarming signs. It’s clear that years of intensifying polarisation have left a certain segment of Turkish society tired of living in their country. </p>
<p>Many people in the opposition think the rule of law is being eroded, that elections are not fair, that secularism is being replaced by a creeping Islamism (especially in the education sector), and that their lifestyles are in danger. As long as this disaffection persists, more emigration from Turkey to the West seems inevitable. And if the result is a steady outflow of privileged, educated citizens, it might cause a significant brain drain, with severe long-term consequences for Turkey’s society and economy. </p>
<p>Each of Turkey’s various military coups has triggered a surge of conflict-induced emigration, and the events of 2016 fit that pattern. But at the same time, much of this migration was underway before the coup attempt. </p>
<p>While it’s very hard to put a definitive number on how many Turkish citizens have left for political reasons – whether before 2016 or after – a heavy outflow is well underway. Some media outlets claim that more than 1,000 Turkish citizens are <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2017/12/27/571842458/turks-fleeing-to-greece-find-mostly-warm-welcome-despite-history">seeking asylum</a> in Greece. In Germany, some <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/hundreds-of-turkish-officials-seek-asylum-in-germany-report/a-40949657">600 senior-ranked Turkish officials</a> have sought asylum. </p>
<p>Some <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-42433668">news sources</a> also reported the overall migration flows from Turkey to Europe during the last five years: 17,000 to the UK, 7,000 to Germany, and 5,000 to France. Numerous academic and non-academic <a href="https://www.birgun.net/haber-detay/darbe-sonrasi-beyin-gocu-133592.html">experts</a> are underlining that many who haven’t left yet are still considering it. </p>
<p>But who are these people who’ve already left? Is Turkey really facing a “brain drain”?</p>
<h2>Why are they leaving?</h2>
<p>Despite the country’s deep polarisation, the 2016 putsch met resistance from all sections of society. It was the first coup attempt in modern Turkish history to be thwarted by masses of citizens pouring into the streets, while secular army officers stayed loyal to the government. And yet, life in Turkey was never going to return to normal afterwards. </p>
<p>The coup attempt left behind a degree of trauma that’s hard to understand from abroad, and which is one of the main reasons for the so-called exodus. The government used the coup attempt as a pretext to impose a never-ending <a href="https://theconversation.com/france-turkey-and-human-rights-is-a-state-of-emergency-the-new-normal-62913">state of emergency</a>, whose provisions it has used not only to fight against putschists, but also to suppress the democratic opposition.</p>
<p>A recent <a href="https://tr.boell.org/tr/2018/01/10/olaganlasan-ohal-khklarin-yasal-mevzuat-uzerindeki-etkileri">report</a> has shown the damage that emergency decrees are causing to Turkish democracy and discussed its long-term consequences. The impotence of parliament, the lack of judicial control, and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/erdogan-declares-victory-in-his-pursuit-of-one-man-rule-76032">controversial 2017 referendum</a> to greatly enhance the president’s power, which Erdoğan won by a tiny margin – all these have left a great many Turks hopeless enough to leave.</p>
<p>The emigrants who usually make the headlines are putschists seeking asylum in countries such as Greece. Their applications have caused <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-greece/turkey-says-doesnt-want-greece-to-become-safe-haven-for-coup-plotters-idUSKBN1CT1VM">serious tensions</a> between the Greek and Turkish governments. Some might claim that there is a need to draw a demarcation line between those and the others who are leaving: among the ones who left are very probably people who were members of the Gülen Movement, which is <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/16/12204456/gulen-movement-explained">blamed</a> for the coup attempt, whereas other citizens leaving now have nothing to do with this movement but are obliged to bear the consequences of its activities. </p>
<p>In fact, the Gülen movement’s elite began to leave the country long before the coup, when their relationship with the AKP government began to deteriorate. Some of the ones who stayed are now trying to leave, sometimes resorting desperate measures; at the end of 2017, one <a href="http://greece.greekreporter.com/2017/11/22/bodies-of-family-fleeing-persecution-found-on-lesvos-turkish-media-says/">family</a> drowned in the Mediterranean. </p>
<h2>Starting again</h2>
<p>Other specific groups are under pressure too. After the government and judiciary cracked down on more than a thousand academics who signed a <a href="http://criticallegalthinking.com/2017/12/11/trials-begin-turkey-academics-peace/">petition </a> to call the government to end its security operations in south-east Turkey, many of the signatories applied for scholarships or found jobs abroad, and they left the country. It is <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/01/04/575682505/turkish-government-crackdown-forces-intellectuals-to-flee">claimed</a> that 698 of them applied for scholarships from the international network <a href="https://www.scholarsatrisk.org/">Scholars at Risk</a> in order to find a temporary academic position elsewhere. Some of those academics are also applying for asylum abroad as their passports have been annulled.</p>
<p>There is also an increasing tendency for secular, white collar university graduates to look for job opportunities abroad. Some wealthy citizens purchase property in Spain, Portugal or Greece to obtain European resident permits. It’s now common on Turkish TV to see commercials from estate agents offering so-called <a href="http://www.goldenvisas.com/portugal/">golden visas</a> (a visa through wealth or investment in real estate). Golden visas provide a safe way for the privileged to escape.</p>
<p>Some of the emigrants are finding jobs abroad before they leave; others are testing the waters by immigrating temporarily to try their luck at making a life elsewhere. As the Turkish diaspora grows, it increasingly reflects the contours of the various conflicts at home. </p>
<p>This is not without its complications. Naturally, some who left don’t want to engage with politics at all, preferring to make a fresh start. But for the Gülenists, things aren’t so simple. They are marginalised by the diaspora more generally, as many opposition groups remember how the Gülenists persecuted them when they still had good relations with the government.</p>
<p>It’s crucial not to neglect the dissenting who remain in Turkey, whether or not they have the means to leave. They are resisting the state of emergency while trying to push the government to lift it and restore democratic principles. Their stories matter – and not least since they have more leverage in pushing their country towards a more democratic future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90197/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Yes, a lot of Turkish citizens are looking for a chance to start new lives abroad – but not all of them are doing it for the same reasons.Bahar Baser, Research Fellow, Coventry UniversityEmre Eren Korkmaz, Post-doctoral Researcher in Migration and Refugees, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/896762018-01-11T12:17:53Z2018-01-11T12:17:53ZTurkish decree on coloured uniforms for coup suspects could sow seeds of future unrest<p>When a suspect of Turkey’s July 2016 coup attempt wore a t-shirt to court that said “hero” in the summer of 2017, Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, quickly <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/aug/07/turkey-coup-suspects-brown-uniform-court-recep-tayyip-erdogan-hero-t-shirt">declared</a> that detainees would no longer be able to come to court “wearing whatever they want”. </p>
<p>In late December, the government issued an <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/58-500-arrestees-convicts-to-wear-single-type-uniform-before-courts-in-turkey-124836">executive decree</a> detailing what certain prisoners can wear in court. Detainees charged with involvement in the 2016 coup attempt – and those accused of links to the cleric Fethullah Gülen who the state <a href="https://www.vox.com/2016/7/16/12204456/gulen-movement-explained">alleges</a> was behind it – will soon have to wear a brown uniform in court. Those charged under the terrorism law, which also includes members of the Kurdish militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), will now have to wear a grey one. </p>
<p>Since the peace process with the Kurds <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-turkey-kurds/turkeys-erdogan-peace-process-with-kurdish-militants-impossible-idUSKCN0Q20UV20150728">ended in mid-2015</a>, a large number of activists, politicians, civilians and even academics who signed a peace <a href="https://barisicinakademisyenler.net/English">petition</a> have been accused of terrorism. Some are in <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/20/turkey-crackdown-kurdish-opposition">jail</a>, while others are <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/arrest-of-hdp-deputies-necessary-appropriate-turkey-tells-echr-124140">awaiting trial</a>.</p>
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<h2>Sparking resistance</h2>
<p>Reading the executive decree reminded me of a story recounted to me by a man I interviewed back in 2014 during research about Dersim, an eastern province of Turkey. It has been an area of conflict since the late 1800s and multiple insurgent movements <a href="http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/mec/2016/04/20/dersim-region-the-switzerland-of-turkey/">continue to struggle</a> against both the state and each other, often in violent confrontations. </p>
<p>This man was born in the early 1970s in a village in Dersim. At the age of 14, he came to Istanbul to stay with one of his older brothers. He was a regular high school kid, interested in literature, and even published a literature journal at school. Another of his brothers was in prison due to his illegal political activities. My interviewee visited him in 1989 in Metris prison, which he described as “a place like a graveyard”. He recounted the visit:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They sat us at a long desk, a soldier standing behind each visitor and another one behind each prisoner. The prisoners were protesting against one type uniform, so they came in their underwear – this had affected me so much. My life after my visit to Metris prison changed completely. Now studying was pointless for me, so immediately I began searching for [illegal] organisations. Soon after, I joined an armed organisation as a courier. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Then he told me about a number of different illegal, armed organisations he got involved in, trying to ease his anger, “to blow out the fire” inside him after seeing those prisoners, including his brother, in their underwear. In the end, he established his own armed, leftist, revolutionary organisation, which robbed banks, threw Molotov cocktails and acted pretty much as a “radical group”. </p>
<p>Eventually, he became a target for not only the state but also for other leftist and radical organisations. He was caught in 1992, at the age of 19 and received a life sentence for terrorist activities. He stayed in prison for more than ten years until he was conditionally released in 2002 on the 71st day of a hunger strike. A year later, he fled to Europe where he was granted political asylum in Switzerland. Had he not fled, he would have had to go back to prison until 2029.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201339/original/file-20180109-36012-h5v0db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/201339/original/file-20180109-36012-h5v0db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201339/original/file-20180109-36012-h5v0db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201339/original/file-20180109-36012-h5v0db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201339/original/file-20180109-36012-h5v0db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201339/original/file-20180109-36012-h5v0db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/201339/original/file-20180109-36012-h5v0db.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Haydar Karatas.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AHaydar_Karata%C5%9F.jpg">Mukaddime via Wikimedia Commons</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Today, this man – whose name is <a href="https://twitter.com/karatash20?lang=en">Haydar Karatas</a> – is an acclaimed novelist, who now lives in Zurich with his family, where he works at Switzerland’s Federal Supreme Court. </p>
<p>But had he not seen his brother resisting wearing one type of uniform by staying in his underwear, he may have had a totally different life story. </p>
<h2>Humiliation breeds more dissent</h2>
<p>The latest executive decree approved by the parliament is another step towards a dark future for the state of law and human rights in Turkey. But it also sows the seeds of humiliation, anger, and frustration among the ordinary people in Turkey. </p>
<p>It will have an impact on those who will see the people whom they admire, respect, love – even voted for – be humiliated. Some may choose to go naked rather than wear a uniform which depicts them as guilty before they are convicted. </p>
<p>There are <a href="http://www.kronos.news/tr/tek-tipe-karsi-direnis-gerekirse-durusmalara-ciplak-cikacagiz/">early reports</a> of prisons not allowing boxer shorts and vests into prison to avoid any mass protests of prisoners in court. In December, the imprisoned leader of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), Selahattin Demirtas, who is awaiting trial, declared that he would <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/we-would-rather-wear-a-shroud-than-a-uniform-in-court-imprisoned-hdp-leader-124720">not wear a uniform</a>, preferring to wear a shroud. In early January, the imprisoned German-Turkish journalist Deniz Yucel <a href="https://turkey.theglobepost.com/deniz-yucel-turkey/">said that he</a> would not wear a uniform. </p>
<p>Haydar Karatas’s story shows that decisions about how prisoners and suspects are treated cause harm not only to individuals but to society at large. The Turkish government should reconsider its decision: it is repeating past mistakes but expecting a different outcome.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/89676/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pinar Dinc receives funding from the Swedish Institute for her postdoctoral research at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund University. </span></em></p>Those accused of involvement in the 2016 coup in Turkey must wear brown uniforms in court, while those accused of terrorism must wear grey ones.Pinar Dinc, Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Middle Eastern Studies, Lund UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/762892017-04-17T01:43:31Z2017-04-17T01:43:31ZTurkey’s constitutional referendum: experts express fear for a divided country<p><em>Unofficial results from Turkey’s April 16 constitutional referendum show that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2017/apr/16/turkey-referendum-recep-tayyip-erdogan-votes-presidential-powers?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Australia+Morning+mail+new+030615&utm_term=222026&subid=2689150&CMP=ema_1731">won the right to expand presidential power</a>.</em></p>
<p><em>The “yes” campaign has won <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39617700?ocid=global_bbccom_email_16042017_top+news+stories">51.37% of the votes while “no” has secured 48.63%</a>, with 99.45% of ballots counted. The electoral board has declared a victory for the former but the country’s two main opposition parties are challenging the results, demanding a recount of 60% of the votes. Official results are expected in 11 to 12 days.</em></p>
<p><em>Erdoğan can now create an executive presidency that will make him the head of state and head of government, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/16/world/europe/turkey-referendum-polls-erdogan.html?emc=edit_na_20170416&nl=breaking-news&nlid=64524812&ref=cta&_r=0">ending the country’s current parliamentary political system</a>. The changes could mean that Erdoğan retains power until 2029 in the highly divisive country that has been further polarised in the run-up to the referendum.</em></p>
<p><em>The Conversation Global asked scholars what they made of the results and what lies ahead for Turkey.</em></p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Ihsan Yilmaz, Professor & Research Chair in Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue at Deakin University</strong></p>
<p>Despite controlling 90% of media coverage, using all sorts of stick-and-carrot mechanisms via the state, imprisoning the leaders and parliamentarians of Turkey’s third-largest party and more than 200 hundred journalists, Erdoğan could not get a clear win. </p>
<p>He has reached the limits of his electoral power and, in the 2019 presidential and parliamentary elections, he may lose all power. But, as this referendum has shown once more, he is not prepared to lose and electoral fraud will likely take place in 2019. </p>
<p>Despite the clearly-worded law that was enacted in 2010 upon the request of the ruling <em>Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi</em> (AKP), which Erdoğan co-founded, the <a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/turkey-referendum-opposition-slams-poll-board-over-last-minute-changes-demands-recount/story-g0AqNnAvq0sA9dLfe48g9N.html">High Electoral Board made a last-minute change</a> that validated 1.5 million unstamped ballots. The margin between the “yes” and “no” votes is less than this figure. </p>
<p>The opposition is contesting the result and Erdoğan’s first speech shows he is concerned that the international community may not accept the results as legitimate.</p>
<p>Instead of bringing stability, the referendum has divided the already polarised country further. Secularist and Westernised sections of society (about 30% of the population) hate the AKP. Around 15% of the country’s non-Sunni Muslims (Alevis), who have a hybrid faith of Shia Islam, Turcoman Shamanism and Anatolian Sufism, are afraid that a Salafised, increasingly Sunni-ist AKP will crush them. And the majority of Turkey’s Kurds (around 20% of the population) who voted “no” will never vote in favour of Erdoğan and AKP. </p>
<p>Turkey’s fault lines have deepened and the now undemocratic country, without EU membership aspirations, is no longer unified – if it ever was. </p>
<p>Erdoğan is left with around 45% to 50% of a coalition of conservative, Turkish nationalist and practicing Muslim voters. Even many of those who voted for him for economic reasons may prefer a potential centre-right party if it can be established. </p>
<p>Erdoğan cannot blame the country’s forthcoming economic troubles on the “no” vote as he won. So he is likely to do two things. </p>
<p>First, he may continue to suppress Kurdish dissidents and start seriously crushing the secularist sections (White Turks) in addition to Alevis. The anti-Gulenist witch hunt and leftist purges will continue. </p>
<p>The AKP will be Erdoğanised further and party heavy weights, such as Abdullah Gul (former foreign minister, prime minister and president and AKP co-founder); Bulent Arinc (former deputy prime minister and speaker of the parliament, and AKP co-founder); Ahmet Davutoglu (former foreign minister and prime minister) and their affiliates now face the prospect being purged and even imprisonment. Potential rivals, all were sidelined by Erdoğan and did not vote for the “yes” campaign.</p>
<p>Second, in order to entice Nationalist Movement Party (<em>Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi</em>) and Islamist Saadet Party voters who did not vote in his favour, Erdoğan could increase the volume of his anti-Western and pro-Islamist rhetoric, coupled with some actions along the lines of opening the Hagia Sophia museum as a mosque, declaring his caliphate, bringing back the death penalty, giving up Council of Europe membership and ending the EU membership process once and for all. </p>
<p>He is likely to continue to demonise European countries and will try to get full US support for his undemocratic regime. To secure that, he may well try to deepen his relations with Russia. Buying Russian missiles is one of the options.</p>
<p>Turkey was never a fully democratic country but there were hopes that it could become one. The April 16 referendum showed decisively that Erdoğan will not allow free and democratic elections, independent media and judiciary. </p>
<p><strong>Simon. P. Watmough, postdoctoral researcher in international relations and comparative politics at European University Institute:</strong></p>
<p>Despite a threatened challenge to results from Turkey’s opposition groups, it is clear that President Erdoğan has eked out a narrow victory in the April 16 constitutional referendum. </p>
<p>Make no mistake: this win marks a turning point in Turkey’s political development. Turks have narrowly voted to end their own democratic system and Turkey’s slide into “electoral authoritarianism” has been cemented. </p>
<p>The result will see all executive power centralised in the hands of one man, an unprecedented degree of control not seen since Turkey’s period of military rule in the early 1980s.</p>
<p>In the short run, it is clear that Erdoğan will use this opportunity to strengthen his grip on the state and attempt to advance his vision of a New Turkey. But in the longer term, things may not be nearly as bleak for dissent and political pluralism as they appear at present. </p>
<p>Despite his victory, there are distinct chinks in Erdoğan’s armour. </p>
<p>For one thing, there is a deep tradition of political pluralism and competitive partisanship in Turkey that will not simply evaporate now that Erdoğan is an executive president. The extremely narrow win for “yes” shows that Turkey is deeply polarised and that there is only the slenderest majority in support of this transition. Half the country is ready to oppose Erdoğan. </p>
<p>These factors are likely to underpin a galvanising of political opposition parties in Turkey, particularly the <em>Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi</em> (Nationalist Movement Party) but also the <em>Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi</em> (People’s Republican Party). They will regroup and organise for dissent, prepared to take advantage of any weakness that presents in the president’s standing.</p>
<p>Turkey’s electorate has shown remarkable support for Erdoğan and the AKP (Justice and Development Party), which he co-founded, during the long period of economic growth between 2002 and 2015. But economic storm clouds are gathering on the horizon. </p>
<p>With the economic tide turning, the chances of the country experiencing an economic crisis – as has so often been the case in the past – has increased. A debt crisis and economic collapse could be the trigger for widespread social and political mobilisation against Erdoğan’s New Turkey project.</p>
<p><strong>Ahmet Erdi Öztürk, research assistant in the Faculty of Law, Social Science and History at the University of Strasbourg:</strong> </p>
<p>It is fair to say that Turkey is divided in regard to the results of the referendum. Even though we don’t have the official results yet, it is obvious that the “yes” votes are narrowly leading despite the “no” vote being ahead in the country’s biggest cities – İstanbul, Ankara and İzmir. </p>
<p>It should be noted though that, despite allegations of serious vote rigging, blunders by the High Election Council and strong evidence of undemocratic practices in the run up, the race was very tight. </p>
<p>The main opposition party has objected and this means that even if the result remains “yes” after official results are declared, this will be one of the most debated elections of Turkey. Erdoğan has been controlling the state apparatus for a long time now and would have disallowed any result other than “yes”. </p>
<p>While Erdoğan supporters may see the results as the official kick-off of the “New Turkey” era, their enthusiasm may be premature.</p>
<p>First of all, the results show that polarisation in Turkey has reached its peak. While half of the population is willing to deliver power to Erdoğan, the rest are strongly standing against him and his authoritarian and pro-Islamic policies. </p>
<p>Second, with the results, Erdoğan has indeed constitutionalised the one-man rule, but it is also crystal clear that the educated classes and young generations will still fight him in the months to come. And it might not be as easy for him to run the country with his previous authoritarian habits. </p>
<p>In this regard and against general belief, the result of the referendum is not an end; it is the start of a new era of struggle between pro-Erdoğanists and the rest for the country. </p>
<p><strong>David Tittensor, Lecturer in Studies of Religion at Deakin University</strong></p>
<p>Turkey has, unsurprisingly, voted yes in the referendum to grant President Erdoğan sweeping new powers that includes issuing decrees and the appointment of judges and officials who will scrutinise his decisions. It’s unsurprising because the vote took place in a state of emergency following mass purges that began even before the July 15 2016 failed coup attempt. </p>
<p>Erdoğan and his party waged an aggressive campaign that involved intimidating the opposition. Erdoğan regularly stated that those who vote “no” are terrorist supporters, and limiting the airtime for opponents. And, of course, there are allegations of vote tampering. </p>
<p>But in spite of all these tactics the outcome has been far from resounding, with the “yes” vote reportedly only narrowly carrying the day. </p>
<p>This indicates that there is still staunch opposition to Erodğan’s “one-man rule” and that the further repression that is likely to follow more centralised government will not lead to promised stability. </p>
<p>A more likely outcome is the stoking of further disunity in an already highly polarised society, which will be amplified by the serious challenges that Turkey currently faces. These include the Syrian refugee crisis, two terrorism campaigns waged by Kurdish insurgents and ISIS, and the Syrian war. </p>
<p>While Erdoğan has achieved his aim of using democracy, which he once famously described as a bus one eventually disembarks from when the desired stop is reached, the road ahead looks far from smooth.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/76289/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Experts agree that Turkey is even further polarised after contested unofficial results show President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has won the right to expand his powers.Simon P. Watmough, Postdoctoral research associate, European University InstituteAhmet Erdi Öztürk, Research Asistant, Université de StrasbourgDavid Tittensor, Lecturer in Studies of Religion, Deakin UniversityIhsan Yilmaz, Professor & Research Chair in Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/716102017-02-10T04:15:23Z2017-02-10T04:15:23ZWhy Trump needs the civil servants he wants to fire: Lessons from abroad<p>Like most Republicans, President Donald Trump has made it clear he intends to “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/opinion/donald-trump-bureaucracy-apprentice.html?_r=0">fix</a>” the federal government by “draining the swamp.” Traditionally, the GOP has aimed to <a href="http://www.rollcall.com/news/policy/gop-readies-cuts-federal-workforce-trump">cut the size</a> of the federal government. The president’s freeze on <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/trump-issues-executive-orders-freezing-federal-hiring-targeting-trade-n710886">hiring federal employees</a> is a first step in that direction. And he might go a step more.</p>
<p>The administration is showing signs that it views the bureaucracy as primarily implementers, not creators, of policy.</p>
<p>Evidence of this shift in approach can be seen in White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s response to a <a href="https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2017/01/31/state-department-dissent-letter-draws-signatures/bAoEtqeqEwyfUQoC2uzDgL/story.html">letter of dissent</a> signed by nearly 1,000 State Department employees against Trump’s travel ban to the U.S. from seven Muslim majority countries. He <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2017/01/30/spicer-diplomats-opposed-to-immigration-ban-should-either-get-with-the-program-or-they-can-go/?utm_term=.9915a87def0b">said</a> they should “either get with the program or they can go.”</p>
<p>Trump abruptly ended Sally Yates’ term as attorney general for <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/30/acting-us-attorney-general-tells-doj-lawyers-not-to-defend-trumps-travel-ban.html">refusing</a> to defend the order.</p>
<p>This demand for obedience is most often seen in competitive authoritarian regimes, which I <a href="https://adnankrasool.files.wordpress.com/2017/02/rasoolfairbanks-working-paper-version-2.pdf">study</a>. Such regimes often look like democracies, but don’t actually function like them. Think Turkey and Malaysia, for example.</p>
<p>Such a confrontation between leaders and civil servants leaves the system gridlocked and in chaos. It’s worth understanding the vital role bureaucracies play in the smooth functioning of a government by looking at examples from other countries.</p>
<h2>Lessons from Japan and Turkey</h2>
<p>After the second World War, Japan made efforts to rebuild its economy and revamp its pre-war institutions. Leaders sought to better serve a new democratic country with significantly limited global influence. Civil service reform was a crucial part of this rebuilding process. As a result of these reforms, starting in the 1960s, Japan was effectively <a href="http://www.tokyofoundation.org/en/articles/2008/the-bureaucratic-role-and-party-governance-symposium-report-3">governed</a> by a bureaucracy, while the Liberal Democratic Party ruled.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156313/original/image-20170210-8631-9oubjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/156313/original/image-20170210-8631-9oubjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156313/original/image-20170210-8631-9oubjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156313/original/image-20170210-8631-9oubjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=402&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156313/original/image-20170210-8631-9oubjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156313/original/image-20170210-8631-9oubjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/156313/original/image-20170210-8631-9oubjg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=505&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato’s third Cabinet is inaugurated in Tokyo on Jan. 14, 1970.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/T. Sakakibara/H. Huet</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Prime Minister Eisaku Sato, who was in power most of the ‘60’s and early '70’s, empowered bureaucrats at government departments. For example, under his leadership, the responsibilities of the Ministry of International Trade and Industry were expanded to include building an export-oriented economy that created jobs. This work built the foundations for the modern Japanese economy. </p>
<p>Politicians were able to take credit for economic programs that worked, and distance themselves from those that were unpopular, but necessary. The LDP <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/how-did-ldp-hold-so-long-79091">deflected criticism</a> of unpopular budget cuts, and the restructuring of basic public services implemented by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry. </p>
<p>This division of responsibility allowed nonelected officials to conduct the day-to-day tasks of governing and delivering public services. Meanwhile, party leaders focused on the big-ticket populist items, such as resisting China’s acceptance into the U.N., and committing to a nonnuclear Japan. This allowed the regime to focus on promises that helped win reelection. Civil servants had the autonomy to run their departments in the most efficient way without political blow-back. </p>
<p>The case of Turkey is more complex. It also went through a similar period during the 1980s in which its government – both in authoritarian and democratic forms – relied on the bureaucracy to lead industrialization and development <a href="https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2000/09/turk-s27.html">efforts</a>.</p>
<p>In the late '70’s, Turkey was on the verge of civil war triggered by economic collapse. Democratic government led by Suleyman Demeril unsuccessfully tried to launch a last ditch series of economic reforms which left Turkey unable to buy even the <a href="http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/651731468761064368/pdf/multi0page.pdf">basic commodities</a>. At risk of complete economic breakdown, General Kenan Evren seized power and put in place an authoritarian regime to rule Turkey in 1980.</p>
<p>The new regime pushed a series of <a href="http://www.merip.org/mer/mer122/turkeys-economy-under-generals?ip_login_no_cache=f28c0c3d54a20b0853ae553827d0540c">sweeping changes</a>, including banning unions, controlling wages, banning political parties and removing agricultural subsidies. The push for industrialization was the cornerstone of this strategy. What the regime failed to do was effectively implement the strategy and trust state institutions to do their work. The policies had little input from the bureaucrats who expected to implement them. As a result, real wages were depressed and farming communities suffered losses without subsidies. </p>
<p>In state-sanctioned elections of 1983, Turgat Ozal was elected as prime minister against President Evren’s preferred candidates. Ozal was able to roll back the harsh economic policies and actively push for industrialization. He was able to bring back the professionalization of the bureaucracy by giving them a larger role in policy creation and implementation. Buoyed by the new mediator, newly independent government institutions <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1010748">pushed austerity measures</a> that cut government spending and incentivized foreign investment. Heavy government subsidies for large industries in new economic opportunity zones stabilized and spurred growth in Turkey’s economy.</p>
<p>Meanwhile President Evren, who had <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/02b4a6e4-f6ef-11e4-a9c0-00144feab7de">advocated against</a> this approach to governance approach between 1980 and 1983, seemed to be ready to <a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/03058298900190020601">take credit</a> for it by the time 1987 rolled around.</p>
<p>The common pattern observed in the cases of Turkey and Japan is the government’s reliance on an independent civil service, especially in times of political turmoil. </p>
<h2>Ruling and governing: Marriage of convenience?</h2>
<p>The new administration in the U.S. is challenging the autonomy of the civil service by limiting its role in policy creation and implementation. Trump’s election mandate, with significant support from Congress, is to “change things up” in Washington and push for stable economic growth. To achieve this, the administration will need to find a way to work with the civil service and allow it to do its job, not impede it. </p>
<p>Like in Turkey and Japan, the bureaucracy evolves in times of political change. Especially in times of severe political partisanship, reliance on bureaucracy to deliver on campaign promises increases. Trump’s administration needs the technical policy making expertise of bureaucrats to deliver on those promises.</p>
<p>But what is becoming increasingly clear with the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/02/01/homeland-security-inspector-general-opens-investigation-of-muslim-ban-rollout-orders-document-preservation/">inefficient rollout</a> of Trump’s travel ban is that his administration may lack willingness to work with relevant bureaucrats to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/05/us/politics/trump-white-house-aides-strategy.html?_r=0">implement its vision</a>. </p>
<p>If the administration continues down this path, we may witness more botched implementation of orders like the travel ban. The quicker the administration reformulates its strategy to work with civil servants, the faster we can expect meaningful policies and their implementation.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71610/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Adnan Rasool does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Trump administration may do well to make a friend of the federal bureaucracy it’s so intent on gutting, according to an expert who studies the role of civil servants in government.Adnan Rasool, Ph.D. Candidate, Georgia State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/710792017-01-19T19:08:31Z2017-01-19T19:08:31ZSyria, Russia and Turkey – the uneasy alliance reshaping world politics<p>The end of the Aleppo crisis and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/dec/29/russia-calling-shots-middle-east-syria">Syrian ceasefire</a> has produced an unlikely alliance. The relationship between Russia, Turkey and Syria is pivotal not only for the Middle East but also for global geopolitics.</p>
<p>The leaders of all three countries – Vladimir Putin, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Bashar al-Assad – rose to prominence unexpectedly at around the same time, accompanied by a level of optimism. But over the past 16 years, they have joined the growing club of populist and authoritarian leaders.</p>
<p>Vladimir Putin first became president of Russia in 2000 – young, energetic and promising to raise Russia from the ashes of the failed Soviet Union.</p>
<p>Erdogan rose to prominence in 2003 after a major economic crisis catapulted him to Turkey’s prime ministership, carrying with him the hopes of the Turkish people. His first two terms of government were marked by attempts to join European Union, liberal reforms and economic growth.</p>
<p>Bashar al-Assad replaced his dictator father in 2000. His older brother, who had been expected to take the presidency, died in a car crash in 1994. His youthfulness and Western education gave the impression that he would make Syria more liberal and democratic. However, behind a friendly and liberal facade, Assad continued to run a police state.</p>
<p>At this time Erdogan built a personal friendship with Assad. Erdogan would invite him to have holidays in Turkey, referring to him as “my brother Assad”.</p>
<p>By 2010, Turkey was heralded as a model country where democracy and Islam co-existed. Encouraged by his political success and growing popularity in the Arab world, Erdogan started to show ambitions for the leadership of the Muslim world. He began emulating an EU-like policy, establishing visa-free travel and economic partnerships with other Muslim countries, starting with Syria and Lebanon.</p>
<p>Between 2004 and 2011, Putin also intensified Russia’s relationship with Syria, at the crucial time of the US and international coalition’s invasion of Iraq. By 2011, Iraq was destabilised and polarised along Sunni-Shi’ite sectarian lines. </p>
<p>Unhappy with the increasing US and Western influence over Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Egypt, Putin increased Russia’s presence in Syria by developing and enlarging its Tartus naval base and reinforced his ties with Assad.</p>
<p>Then came the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-12813859">Arab Spring</a> of 2011.</p>
<p>The strategy for Putin was clear: support the Assad regime and from there build up a challenge to the Western dominance over not only the Middle East, but the geopolitical world order. At the same time, this would conveniently divert attention from <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jan/15/observer-profile-vladimir-putin?CMP=soc_568">growing unrest and protests at home</a> and Russia’s aggression in places like Georgia. </p>
<p>In the course of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-26116868">Syrian civil war</a>, Putin has become the custodian of the Shi’ite alliance between Iran, Syria and Shi’ite political forces in Iraq and Lebanon.</p>
<p>For Erdogan, the Arab Spring meant an acceleration of his ambition to gain leadership of the Sunni Muslim world. His “brother Assad” became enemy number one, as a potential Islamist take-over of Syria suited his leadership vision more than the Shi'ite and secular nature of the Assad regime. Erdogan actively supported a number of Syrian opposition groups with logistical presence in Turkey and a constant flow of resources.</p>
<p>For Erdogan, being anti-Assad also meant being anti-Russian – until four of Erdogan’s ministers were hit with <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/26/world/europe/turkish-cabinet-members-resign.html">serious corruption charges in 2013</a>. In response, Erdogan chose a path of authoritarianism, purging and sacking members of the police and judiciary responsible for the corruption probe. </p>
<p>The narrative was simple: foreign powers (that is, the West) do not want a growing Turkish influence in the region, so they have collaborated with internal forces to overthrow the government. Crucially, this stance signalled Erdogan’s departure from the Western bloc.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s relationship with Putin dipped to a new low in 2015 when the Turkish military shot down a Russian fighter jet in Syria. Putin responded with economic sanctions and promoted an international bid <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-releases-proof-turkey-is-smuggling-isis-oil-over-its-border-a6757651.html">to label Erdogan’s government</a> as active supporters of Islamic State (IS).</p>
<p>But an alliance with Russia was essential for Erdogan as he slowly abandoned the Western bloc. In June 2016, Erdogan apologised to Putin and the two men quickly struck a deal that included a partnership to manage the Syrian conflict.</p>
<p>Erdogan’s erratic foreign policy and growing authoritarianism were met with a <a href="http://democracyjournal.org/magazine/43/the-roots-of-the-turkish-crisis/">coup attempt</a> in July 2016. Erdogan survived the attempt and declared it “a gift of God” to cleanse the army and the state of dissidents. </p>
<p>The result was the purging of thousands of government employees, seizing of billion-dollar companies and jailing of more than 120 journalists. This meant <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/14/opinion/sunday/turkeys-relentless-attack-on-the-press.html?smid=tw-nytopinion&smtyp=cur">Turkey had jailed more journalists</a> than any other country.</p>
<p>Erdogan swiftly plunged the Turkish army into the Syrian conflict, signalling he was a player in Syria and the region. It was an act that would have been impossible without the Russian alliance. And an alliance with Putin in Syria means support for Assad as Erdogan’s relationship boomerang returns to “my brother Assad” mode.</p>
<p>It seems that the fall of Aleppo and the ceasefire is a victory for Putin, Erdogan and Assad, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-16/syrian-rebels-to-attend-kazakhstan-talks/8186300">at least in the short term</a>. For Assad, simply being at the international negotiating table is a win. But even if he <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-10/assad-says-ready-to-discuss-everything-vows-to-take-back-syria/8171436">regains control of Syria</a>, he will have to fight a long battle with Islamic State, similar to the ongoing battles with the Taliban in Afghanistan.</p>
<p>Putin will use his expanding influence in the Middle East to weaken Western political and economic influence globally. He will use his relationship with Erdogan’s Turkey to weaken NATO and make it irrelevant in a new world order, or disorder, of populist leaders.</p>
<p>Most interestingly, Erdogan will claim to have brought peace to Syria as the Sunni representative of the trio. His bold efforts <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-politics-constitution-idUSKBN14U0IB?utm_campaign=trueAnthem:+Trending+Content&utm_content=587495b104d3013eef214849&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=twitter">to change Turkey’s constitution</a> to bring in an executive presidential system during a state of emergency could only be understood in terms of his strong desire to lead the Muslim world. He wants an uninterrupted rule with no critical dissidence or political challenge so that he can channel all his energy into the greater Middle East.</p>
<p>As the caliphate concoction of IS leader Abu-Bakr Baghdadi wanes, the world may have to come to terms with a caliphate of Erdogan in 2017, the 500th anniversary of Ottoman acquisition of the caliphate from Egypt in 1517. </p>
<p>If Erdogan takes that step, it will throw the region and the world into uncharted territory.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/71079/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Mehmet Ozalp is affiliated with ISRA (Islamic Sciences and Research Academy), a not-for-profit educational organisation. </span></em></p>Bashar al-Assad, Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan have a long history as leaders of their countries and players in the Syrian war.Mehmet Ozalp, Associate Professor in Islamic Studies, Director of The Centre for Islamic Studies and Civilisation and Executive Member of Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/708562017-01-04T23:21:24Z2017-01-04T23:21:24ZErdoğan could be losing his grip on a dangerous, divided Turkey<p>Turkey’s New Year was marred by a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-38487509">terrorist attack</a>, claimed by the so-called Islamic State (IS), that killed 39 people and injured many more at a famous nightclub in Istanbul. After nearly two years of deadly incidents and alarming political instability, Turks were once again left counting the dead – and wondering how much more their country can take.</p>
<p>In the last 18 months, Turkey has seen 33 bomb attacks that have claimed 446 lives, <a href="http://www.diken.com.tr/bir-bucuk-yilda-33-bombali-saldirida-446-kisi-hayatini-kaybetti-363u-sivil/">363 of them civilians</a>. Some <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/editorials/istanbul-new-year-shooting-nightclub-isis-bosphorus-president-erdogan-troubled-turkey-peace-a7504801.html">commentators</a> even claim that low-level terror is now almost the norm in Turkey.</p>
<p>To make things more complicated still, the latest attack comes only six months after a bizarre <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-struggles-to-make-sense-of-a-surreal-failed-coup-detat-62596">failed coup</a>, undoubtedly one of the most significant events in Turkey’s modern history.</p>
<p>The coup’s planners had little public support, and <a href="http://www.itv.com/news/update/2016-07-16/turkey-opposition-denounces-coup-attempt/">opposition leaders</a> have also constantly underlined that it would have been a tragedy if it had succeeded. So, the aftermath was a huge opportunity for Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Turkish president, and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) to correct the country’s disturbing course: to restore trust between various ethnic and religious communities, to start a new peace process with the Kurds after the last one <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/how-did-turkeys-peace-process-unravel-so-fast-382609585">failed</a> in 2015, and to bring greater democracy to the country. </p>
<p>But instead of trying to put Turkey back on the right track, the AKP government has done quite the opposite. </p>
<h2>Divide and rule</h2>
<p>The post-putsch period has brought chaos and enmity as well as a total crackdown on groups and individuals, including <a href="https://theconversation.com/purge-of-teachers-and-academics-bulldozes-through-turkish-education-62839">academics</a>, journalists, teachers, lawyers and judges. Some of them were supposedly linked to the followers of exiled religious leader <a href="https://theconversation.com/fethullah-gulen-public-intellectual-or-public-enemy-62887">Fethullah Gülen</a>, while others support different opposition groups.</p>
<p>This sort of authoritarianism has been brewing in Turkey for some time, especially since the <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkeys-general-election-upset-the-rise-of-the-akp-interrupted-42942">elections of June 2015</a> failed to hand the AKP a ruling parliamentary majority. There followed an increased level of political violence and terrorism for a period of four months, enough to convince Turkish voters that without an AKP majority, there would be no end to the bloodshed the country was witnessing. After campaigning on that basis for a re-run of the June elections, Erdoğan <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-election-erdogan-and-the-akp-get-majority-back-amid-climate-of-violence-and-fear-49963">won the majority</a> he so badly wanted – but the result did nothing for peace and security.</p>
<p>The coup attempt was the next critical turning point. Erdoğan himself called it “<a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-17/coup-was-a-gift-from-god-says-erdogan-who-plans-a-new-turkey">a gift from God</a>” that enabled the rulers of “New Turkey” to shore up their power with ever harsher policies. Only five days after the attempted coup, the AKP government <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36852080">declared a state of emergency</a>; it was originally scheduled to last three months, but was then extended until mid-April 2017. It has become a useful tool for the government, which is still using the failed putsch as an pretext to crack down on opposition.</p>
<p>Rather than downplaying the divisions among different ethnic and religious groups in Turkey in the post-putsch period, the ruling party and the president are deepening the country’s many divisions, all the while assisted by the mainstream <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/monitoring/turkish-media-reflect-social-divisions">media</a>. They are creating a fractured political environment which will enable them to promote constitutional <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/ahmet-erdi-ozturk-tar-g-zayd-n/turkey-s-draft-constitutional-amendments-harking-back-to-1876">amendments</a>, in the long run presenting Erdoğan’s long-held dream of an <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-10/turkey-s-akp-proposes-amendment-extending-presidential-powers-iwjekh71">executive presidential system</a> as the only thing that can bring Turkey back from the brink. </p>
<p>But the strategy may yet backfire. </p>
<h2>On the brink</h2>
<p>In the broadest sense, the country’s social and political order has proven remarkably resilient in the face of terrorism, disasters and civil unrest, but it is now under more pressure than ever. Despite the strictures of the state of emergency, Turkey clearly remains vulnerable to terrorist attacks. </p>
<p>The violence of the last few years has so far boosted Erdoğan’s already strong public support, with many Turks trusting him to keep them safe – but with fear and uncertainty is on the rise.</p>
<p>Erdoğan is feeling pressure on various fronts. For example, IS recently <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/12/isil-burns-turkish-soldiers-alive-shocking-video-161223035619947.html">released</a> a video in December purporting to show two Turkish soldiers being burned alive in Syria; the authorities could not give a satisfactory answer on whether the claim was actually true. Then the Russian ambassador was <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-and-russias-relationship-is-strong-enough-to-survive-ambassadors-murder-70681">assassinated</a> by a Turkish policeman in the capital city, sending a message that no-one in Turkey is really safe. The continuing insecurity is already devouring the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2016/oct/05/turkey-tourism-industry-reels-year-to-forget-istanbul-antalya">tourism sector</a>, tanking the <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/emerging-markets-idUKL5N1ET1EH">Lira</a>, and undercutting the economy in general (with <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkeys-exports-decreased-to-1426-bln-in-2016-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=108103&NewsCatID=344">exports</a> in particular on the wane). </p>
<p>All this will make it increasingly hard for the AKP to consolidate its voter base. The government seems incapable of safeguarding the basic conditions of security and stability, and if IS and other groups mount further attacks like the one on New Year’s Eve, indecisive voters might actually start to move towards other political parties. The very insecurity that helped Erdoğan strengthen his power base could yet be his downfall.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/70856/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The divisive tactics that put Turkey’s president in control could yet be his undoing.Alpaslan Ozerdem, Chair in Peace-Building, Co-Director of Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry UniversityBahar Baser, Research Fellow, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/668122016-10-31T12:28:17Z2016-10-31T12:28:17ZThe media shutdown in Turkey continues – and silences the Kurdish voice<p>After a period of <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-3305202/PKK-declares-end-pre-election-truce-Turkey.html">relative calm</a> between the Turkish army and the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20971100">PKK</a> ended in July 2015, political tension and military confrontation have returned. Yet the current situation is suffering from a distinct lack of coverage thanks to increasing restrictions on the tools of communication.</p>
<p>Internet connection <a href="https://turkeyblocks.org/2016/10/27/new-internet-shutdown-turkey-southeast-offline-diyarbakir-unrest/">has been cut</a> in the Kurdish south-east of Turkey, following the arrest on October 25 of <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-court-arrests-diyarbakir-co-mayors.aspx?pageID=238&nID=105554&NewsCatID=338">Firat Anli and Gültan Kisinak</a>, the co-mayors of Diyarbakir – which is the main Kurdish city of the country. Both have been charged with supporting terrorism. The internet outage is the latest attempt to silence opposition voices in the country. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.cp24.com/world/turkish-parliament-endorses-extending-state-of-emergency-following-failed-coup-1.3110616">state of emergency</a> declared immediately after the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36816045">failed coup</a> in Turkey in the summer of 2016 sparked a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-coup-erdogan-latest-news-purge-crackdown-gulen-a7141006.html">massive clampdown</a> on a variety of professions. University lecturers, lawyers, judges, school teachers – anyone accused of supporting the <a href="https://theconversation.com/fethullah-gulen-public-intellectual-or-public-enemy-62887">Gülen</a> movement – have been targeted.</p>
<p>The special decree issued in the wake of the failed coup gave the government emergency powers to <a href="https://theconversation.com/in-turkeys-state-of-emergency-social-media-is-more-important-than-ever-65809">close news outlets</a> and confiscate their assets on grounds of “national security”. It led to the shutting down of more than 130 media outlets in July and an <a href="http://europeanjournalists.org/blog/2016/10/24/turkey-107-journalists-in-prison-and-2500-others-left-unemployed/">estimated 2,500 journalists</a> losing their jobs. </p>
<p>Now all opposition voices are being targeted, including Kurdish ones.</p>
<p>At the <a href="https://www.middleeastobserver.org/archives/23728">opening of the new legislative year</a> of the Turkish parliament on October 1, the president, <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rise-and-rise-of-recep-tayyip-erdogan-and-a-slide-towards-autocracy-in-turkey-39456">Recep Erdogan</a>, declared that the day of the failed coup should be considered a “milestone” and urged everyone in the country to “struggle all together in determination against the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party], FETÖ [the Gülen Movement] and DAESH [Islamic State]”.</p>
<p>A few days earlier, the state of emergency had been extended for three months, and 20 more TV channels and radio stations were shut down. More recently, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/30/turkey-shuts-media-outlets-terrorist-links-civil-servants-press-freedom">another decree</a> has shut down two Kurdish news agencies, ten Kurdish newspapers and three magazines – another heavy blow to the idea of a free media in Turkey.</p>
<p>Those targeted in the past month represented some of the last remains of a diverse and free press – including a left-wing channel and cultural magazines, as well as numerous Kurdish channels, radio stations, and newspapers.</p>
<p>Until recently, under the AKP government Kurdish media and cultural production had developed into a flourishing and relatively diverse sector. Unfortunately, attacks on the Kurdish press and cultural producers are now <a href="http://www.pen-international.org/newsitems/turkey-list-of-journalists-detained-charged-before-and-after-coup-attempt/">increasing again</a> under the emergency rules.</p>
<p>The daily newspaper <a href="http://www.ozgur-gundem.com">Özgür Gündem</a>, popular with Kurdish readers, has been shut down, and some of its journalists are still behind bars, charged with supporting terrorism. The famous Turkish writer <a href="https://www.englishpen.org/press/turkey-court-rejects-asli-erdogans-appeal/">Asli Erdoğan</a> and the linguist Necmiye Alpay, both members of the Özgür Gündem Publishing Consultant Board and both fervent supporters of peace, were arrested in August. </p>
<p>Eğitim-Sen, a teachers’ union sympathetic to the Kurdish cause, has had around 10,000 of its members suspended by the government from their jobs or from the union?. At the beginning of October, 15 school teachers were arrested, along with short story writer and web editor <a href="http://www.pen-international.org/newsitems/turkey-more-arrests-leave-award-winning-author-murat-ozyasar-and-poet-renas-jiyan-behind-bars/">Murat Özyaşar, and Rênas Jiyan</a>, a Kurdish language writer and poet and the owner of a publishing house in Diyarbakir. Though both have now been released, fear of being targeted as a writer or journalist remains high.</p>
<h2>Peace at risk</h2>
<p>What is being targeted is not only the last remaining channels for the expression of opposition views, but also the last remnants of the peace process which had been developed progressively under the AKP government since 2009 to find a solution to the conflict between the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-big-question-who-are-the-pkk-and-could-they-draw-turkey-into-the-iraq-conflict-395192.html">Turkish state and the PKK</a>. That conflict has caused more than 40,000 deaths. </p>
<p>It is in this dramatic context that IMC TV had started broadcasting in May 2011, offering another perspective on the Kurdish issue to the general audience of Turkey. Now it, too, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/10/turkey-shuts-tv-channel-terror-propaganda-161004173625008.html">has been closed down</a>. </p>
<p>One of the key political demands of the Kurdish movement is the official recognition of the language and its use in education. Yet we are currently witnessing the arrest of Kurdish language writers and the shutting down of Kurdish language channels, newspapers and magazines. At the end of September, Kurdish theatres, cultural centres and a Kurdish language primary school <a href="http://www.kurdistan24.net/en/news/456ead25-1fc6-424c-97c1-4c3790702def/Turkey-shuts-down-Kurdish-city-theater">were also closed</a> by government-appointed administrators who have replaced many pro-Kurdish mayors in the south-east of the country.</p>
<p>These are risky times for the Kurdish voice in Turkey, which is being increasingly silenced and left unheard. </p>
<p>As one of the IMC TV journalists, Aysegül Doğan, <a href="http://t24.com.tr/haber/kapatilan-imc-tv-programcisi-hepimiz-birer-kadri-bagdu-ya-da-metin-goktepe-olabilirdik,363942">commented</a>: “Being unemployed in these days in Turkey has become something one feels proud about. In Turkey, if you are an unemployed journalist, it means that you are trying to do your work properly. What is really upsetting is not to be out of work. </p>
<p>"The real problems are the pressures and the price journalists have to pay for doing their job.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/66812/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clemence Scalbert-Yucel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The people of Turkey have less and less access to independent news.Clemence Scalbert-Yucel, Senior Lecturer in Ethnopolitics, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/639792016-09-06T10:03:11Z2016-09-06T10:03:11ZSecular Turks may be in the minority, but they are vital to Turkey’s future<p>As the dust settles after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/turkey-coup-29363">recent coup attempt in Turkey</a>, the reality that awaits the country’s secular citizens is becoming clearer. The Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is using the coup as an opportunity to consolidate power as <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/more-than-20000-arrested-over-gulen-links-turkish-pm-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=102973&NewsCatID=338">bureaucracts</a> with suspected links to the Muslim cleric Fethullah Gülen are being purged. </p>
<p>While this is the beginning of a new Turkey for supporters of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), for Turkey’s secular minority the power grab raises fears of increasing oppression.</p>
<p>For many secular Turks the difference between Erdoğan and Gülen’s vision for Turkey is not very substantial. Gülen’s desire to save the Turkish nation from <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2045/fethullah-gulens-grand-ambition#_ftnref45">“atheism” and “materialism”</a> and take it back to its authentic self sounds similar to Erdoğan’s goal of raising a <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/debate-on-religion-takes-over-politics-in-ankara.aspx?pageID=238&nID=12814&NewsCatID=338">“pious generation”</a> and saving Muslims from the grasp of <a href="http://www.tccb.gov.tr/en/news/542/34137/president-erdogan-meets-religious-affairs-president-gormez-and-provincial-muftis.html">materialism and social disintegration</a>. Once allies in silencing their secular opponents, both men have been striving for dominance, pushing forward their respective beliefs as the proper way of living an Islamic life.</p>
<p>What makes this perplexing is that Turkey has never been a fully secular society, nor has it ever been consumed by atheism or materialism. On the contrary, the country has gradually become more religious in the last two decades – a process that started well before the AKP came to power in 2002.</p>
<p>According to the <a href="http://www.worldvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp">World Values Survey</a>, the percentage of Turks who self-identify as religious has gradually increased from 74.6% in 1990 to 83.5% in 2011. In the years before the AKP’s rise to power, the share of people who think “religion is important in life” increased dramatically from 61.2% in 1990 to 80.8% in 2001. Belief in God, considered an important indicator of religiosity, has consistently stayed over 95%, and belief in an afterlife has increased by 10% to 90.1% in about a decade.</p>
<h2>Religious belief in Turkey</h2>
<p>Despite the prevalence of religiosity, analysts have commonly portrayed the political struggle in Turkey as taking place between two radically different camps: the secular and religious. While there is some truth to this view, what has been missing from much analysis is an understanding that being secular in Turkey is very different from being secular in the West. Unlike Western Europe where belief and church membership <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-33256561">has declined</a> since World War II, the latest World Values Survey shows that in Turkey of the 14% who identify as nonreligious, almost all (96%) also identify as Muslim and believers.</p>
<p>What mainly differentiates these secular Turks from their religious peers is that they are less inclined to govern their everyday life by religious teachings and are more inclined to reconcile their religious beliefs with mundane activities. For example, it is not uncommon for these Turks to consume alcohol liberally yet fast during Ramadan. They are also more open to different interpretations of Islam and understand belief to be essentially related to one’s conscience.</p>
<p>For this secular minority, years of AKP rule in Turkey has meant the gradual shrinking of living spaces. Practices associated with a secular way of life, such as alcohol consumption, have been aggressively <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/31/turkey-alcohol-laws-istanbul-nightlife">regulated</a>. The cultural scene has been dominated by a nostalgia for the Ottoman era while traditional, conservative values have been exalted in everyday Turkish life. Successive AKP governments have remoulded the national <a href="http://www.turkeyanalyst.org/publications/turkey-analyst-articles/item/437-the-islamization-of-turkey-erdo%C4%9Fan%E2%80%99s-education-reforms.html">education</a> system to fit with their vision of a more religious society.</p>
<h2>The critical minority</h2>
<p>Secular Turks are now coming to terms with their predicament as a social, cultural and political minority. Faced with the undiminishing popularity of the AKP, many are seeking ways of resilience rather than developing practices of resistance. Self-censorship is becoming more common and people are limiting themselves to safe spaces beyond the reach of the religious gaze.</p>
<p>The younger secular generation are less concerned about the <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03906701.2014.894338">headscarf</a>, which was at the centre of the debates about secularism throughout the 1990s and 2000s and is now no longer banned in places of education and public institutions including the <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-hijab-headscarf-police-officers-uniform-approved-muslim-women-a7213861.html">police</a>. Instead, this younger generation is more concerned about protecting their way of life from a very popular government that views their social and cultural identity as a threat.</p>
<p>If Turkey is going to move towards a pluralist democracy that respects the basic rights of all its citizens, its secular minority will play a critical role. </p>
<p>What a decade and a half of AKP experience has shown is that the problem with democracy in Turkey has deep social roots that go way beyond the political power struggles on the surface. Both an authoritarian political culture and conservative social values inhibit the emergence of a pluralist democracy. In the last decade, despite the <a href="http://www.insightturkey.com/the-rise-and-fall-of-military-tutelage-in-turkey-fears-of-islamism-kurdism-and-communism/articles/163">elimination</a> of the military’s influence over politics, Muslim conservative elites have shown little interest in establishing a fully fledged democracy. This is not surprising: <a href="http://ipc.sabanciuniv.edu/en/publication/turkiyede-demokrasi-algisi/">popular support</a> in Turkey for the basic rights that characterise <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-4446.2008.00215.x/abstract">liberal democracies</a> is limited, and democracy is largely understood by most Turks to be just about elections. </p>
<p>The kind of social change needed to foster a healthy democracy is not easy to bring about: it will take years and many generations to come. And right now, the social group that comes closest to harbouring the values, hopes and fears pertinent to such an ideal in Turkey is its beleaguered secular minority.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63979/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Umut Parmaksız does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>There is potential to transform the country into a pluralist and inclusive democracy.Umut Parmaksız, Honorary Research Associate, University of BristolLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/641812016-08-22T13:29:32Z2016-08-22T13:29:32ZTurkey isn’t a failed state, but maybe it should act like one<p>As Turkey recovers from an attempted coup, it has an opportunity to move in a new direction. And while it is neither a failed state nor emerging from a civil war, it might be useful to see itself as such in the transformation process. The state needs to be rebuilt as though part of a post-conflict reconstruction effort. </p>
<p>Turkey is not Afghanistan, Iraq or Somalia. On the contrary, it is one of the strongest countries in its region in terms of its economy, military power and governance. However, the attempted coup against the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan on July 15 exposed a number of significant problems on all three fronts. They are of such a scale and depth that Turkey could, and in fact should, learn from how other countries rebuild after conflict – imperative if it is to avoid future coup attempts and even a possible civil war.</p>
<h2>Cleaning up the government</h2>
<p>Had the coup been successful we would, today, have been witnessing the “Syrianisation” of Turkey. The pro and anti-coup elements in the military, and the coup organisers and the police, would have probably ended up waging a <a href="http://setadc.org/coup-attempt-successful/">civil war</a> against each other. The way in which the public went out into the streets to stand against the coup also indicated that a successful coup regime would have been fighting <a href="http://scroll.in/article/813417/what-if-the-attempted-coup-in-turkey-had-succeeded">opposition from the public</a> too. In short, society would be divided along numerous political, ethnic and sectarian fronts and a bloody civil war might even have ensued.</p>
<p>Consider the huge international security ramifications that the crisis in Syria has already caused. It has turned the country into a centre of global jihadism and driven millions out, sparking a continent-wide <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/migrant-crisis-16372">refugee crisis</a>. A civil war in Turkey – a much more significant country internationally – could have meant even greater upheaval. The failure of the coup was therefore a narrow escape, not only for Turkey, but also for Europe and the world beyond.</p>
<p>As it is, since July 15, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/08/02/world/europe/turkey-purge-erdogan-scale.html">tens of thousands</a> of staff in the military, judiciary, police, intelligence service, academia, schools and various ministries and national authorities have been dismissed or suspended. Nearly <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/world/europe/article/1992119/turkey-fires-25000-teachers-professors-and-others-huge-purge-coup">25,000 people</a> have been detained or arrested and these numbers increase on a daily basis.</p>
<p>This is aimed at weeding out supporters of <a href="https://theconversation.com/fethullah-gulen-public-intellectual-or-public-enemy-62887">Fethullah Gülen</a>, who is accused of masterminding the coup attempt. President <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/recep-tayyip-erdogan-5905">Erdoğan claims</a> that a “parallel state” system had been established by Gulenists who had infiltrated the Turkish government, private sector, media and education system. </p>
<p>However, if these people had been able to infiltrate the state to such a dangerous degree, how they were able to do it? <a href="http://www.dw.com/en/real-and-imagined-threats-the-shared-past-of-akp-and-the-g%C3%BClen-movement/a-19429199">Revelations</a> over the past few weeks point to nepotism, corruption and short-termist political manoeuvring. It is <a href="http://www.meforum.org/2045/fethullah-gulens-grand-ambition">claimed</a> that the Gulenists placed their supporters in key public sectors using various tactics, including stealing questions at national exams for civil servants and blocking promotions for their rivals.</p>
<p>It would follow from Erdoğan’s argument, then, that the Turkish state has been failing to implement the number one rule of good governance: employing public workers on their merits. This should be the most important factor to bear in mind during the post-coup statebuilding process. In replacing thousands of public workers the only criteria that will really matter should be applicants CVs, otherwise many other religious brotherhoods might now see an opportunity to infiltrate the state system.</p>
<p>If the government fails to establish a transparent, accountable and merit-based recruitment and promotion system as the norm in public life, Turkey may not be so lucky in repelling a next coup attempt, be it civilian or military.</p>
<h2>Democratic values</h2>
<p>Turkey also needs to rebuild itself as a state in which legislative, executive and judicial powers are clearly and effectively separated. Otherwise it will continue to be plagued by security threats, including those that target its very existence as a country. </p>
<p>The concentration of power in Erdoğan’s presidency was one of the most controversial issues before the failed coup attempt. If nothing else, Turkey must have now learned that democratic checks and balances and rule of law are a must for the survival of the state. </p>
<p>The accumulation of power in a single office is a sure recipe for societal polarisation. It breeds damaging levels of mistrust between society and the state. There is now an opportunity for Turkey to restructure itself as an accountable and transparent state for all of its citizens. </p>
<p>The failed coup also underlined the importance of secularism for Turkey and why Turkey’s founder, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/ataturk_kemal.shtml">Mustafa Kemal Atatürk</a>, made it the main cornerstone of the Turkish Republic. There should now be no ifs and buts with these principles. The country needs to re-establish, protect and maintain this.</p>
<p>Turkey must become a country where freedom from fear, freedom from want and freedom to live in dignity are clearly ensured and protected. This is the only way to deal with wider peace and security problems, from the <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/kurdistan-12557">Kurdish insurgency</a> to other terrorism risks. In other words, Turkey needs to stop thinking about security through guns and weapons, and come to the realisation that, as Gandhi once said, “peace is the only way”.</p>
<p>After its collapse in 2015, the peace process in Turkey needs to be re-initiated. The Kurdish PKK is killing indiscriminately and the resolution of the Kurdish issue can no longer be postponed, particularly when the country is facing a major security risk posed by Islamic State. </p>
<p>To help with all this, Turkey should use some of the well-known tools for post-conflict statebuilding, such as truth and reconciliation commissions. It might not be possible to identify the full scale of any Gülenist infiltration through purely punitive means. A commission in which everyone is open and honest might be a most effective long-term approach. Similarly, the state needs to investigate itself and its role in the creation of possible security threats. </p>
<p>The way the public and all political parties reacted to the failed coup should be considered a great opportunity to initiate such a reconciliation process. The Kurdish political party, HDP (which expressed clear opposition to the coup attempt), should be brought into the fold in the rebuilding of a new Turkey.</p>
<p>After the IS <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/08/injured-blast-hits-wedding-hall-gaziantep-160820204150494.html">suicide attack on August 20</a> at a wedding in Gaziantep, Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of HDP, called all political parties to mourn for the dead side-by-side. Such opportunities to make peace and reconcile are rare, and therefore, should be seized upon.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/64181/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alpaslan Ozerdem does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Turkey is recovering from a failed coup, not a war, but it could learn from the practice of post-conflict reconstruction.Alpaslan Ozerdem, Chair in Peace-Building, Co-Director of Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/624842016-08-16T03:09:10Z2016-08-16T03:09:10ZTurkey’s post-coup commitment to democracy offers chance to resolve Kurdish crisis<p>Turkey’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-will-turkeys-failed-coup-and-massive-purge-affect-its-economic-future-62947">failed military coup</a> last month rocked the foundations of its political system, yet in some ways the country has emerged stronger and more resilient. </p>
<p>And that’s precisely what Turkey needs to deal with one of its biggest and oldest challenges: the Kurdish minority and the PKK separatists who took up arms against the Turkish military 32 years ago this week. </p>
<p>The popular protests that brought the July 15 coup to an end less than 12 hours after it started evolved into a collective affirmation of Turkey’s commitment to political democracy, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-idUSKCN10I0CZ">culminating in a rally of more than a million people</a> earlier this month. </p>
<p>Although the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-will-turkeys-failed-coup-and-massive-purge-affect-its-economic-future-62947">government’s crackdown</a> on perceived supporters of U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen has raised <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-13746679">some concerns</a> in Western capitals about that commitment, it nonetheless provides an opening to reexamine the current cultural and political status of Turkey’s Kurdish citizens. </p>
<p>President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (known as AKP) has emerged <a href="http://community.bowdoin.edu/news/2016/08/prof-robert-morrison-on-turkey-attempted-coup-leaves-erdogan-in-much-stronger-position/">stronger than before</a>, so he can afford to take a bold step to address the Kurdish crisis, which <a href="http://blog.crisisgroup.org/europe-central-asia/2016/07/20/turkey-s-pkk-conflict-the-rising-toll/">has cost Turkey</a> thousands of lives, millions of internal migrants and billions of dollars in property damage. </p>
<p>But how to do that with both sides so embittered and entrenched after years of fighting? </p>
<p>As an observer of Turkey’s social and political developments for more than two decades, I suggest a fresh approach to the problem that should ease Turkish fears of Kurdish separatism as well as Kurdish fears that they have few rights. It depends on whether Turkey is ready to honor its ideals and fulfill the promise that its founder, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, <a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/A-History-of-the-Turkish-Kurdish-Conflict-20150728-0042.html">made to the Kurds in return</a> for their support for his war of independence. </p>
<h2>From the ashes of the empire</h2>
<p>That’s when the trouble began, as Turkey emerged from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire – known for its <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/group/SHR/5-1/text/rodrigue.html">multiethnic diversity</a> – in 1923. </p>
<p>After the empire’s collapse, Ataturk sought to build a modern republic on <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atat%C3%BCrk%27s_Reforms">two cultural policies</a>. First, he suppressed Islamic and traditional cultures in favor of a Western and modern lifestyle for all citizens. Second, he suppressed ethnic identities and tried to create a unified Turkish identity. </p>
<p>The group most affected was the Kurds. Ataturk <a href="http://www.ssu.edu.tr/uploads/vol_13-no_1-arakon_DLG1DRl5.pdf">had promised</a> to let them preserve their language and cultural identity in exchange for their support in ousting the Allies after World War I but later broke his word and initiated more than eight decades of cultural and linguistic homogenization. </p>
<p>In the 1990s, Turkey’s military <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/12/opinion/the-kurdish-challenge.html?_r=0">engaged in a costly war</a> with the PKK, founded in 1978 and regarded as a terrorist organization by several other countries including the U.S. </p>
<h2>A new policy, negotiations and collapse</h2>
<p>When he came to power in 2002, Erdogan began to gradually reverse these policies. A decade later, he initiated peace negotiations and a ceasefire with PKK leader <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Abdullah-Ocalan">Abdullah Ocalan</a>. </p>
<p>Ocalan agreed to abandon his separatist demands and cease paramilitary operations in exchange for political and social rights for the Kurds. </p>
<p>Unfortunately, the negotiations and ceasefire collapsed after a suicide bombing targeting Kurdish activists prompted a new round of <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/07/turkey-syria-explosion-suruc-150720093632908.html">PKK violence</a> in July 2015. <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/only-solution-is-to-destroy-pkk-erdogan.aspx?PageID=238&NID=98037&NewsCatID=338">Erdogan later pledged to destroy the PKK</a> and all Kurdish resistance groups that resort to violence. </p>
<p>This policy of fighting without negotiations and imposing severe restrictions on the Kurds – such as <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/international-state-crime-initiative/death-of-peace-process-martial-law-returns-to-turkey">long daily curfews and martial law</a> – in my view is not enough to defeat the uprising.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/hdp-co-chair-calls-for-return-to-peace-talks.aspx?pageID=238&nID=102114&NewsCatID=338">Some have been calling on Erdogan</a> to back up his post-coup talk of democracy by resuming peace negotiations. Though renewed fighting has created an environment of distrust, a new strategy to end the crisis is desperately needed. </p>
<h2>A fresh approach</h2>
<p>That brings me to what I call my “max-min proposal” as a step toward resolving this decades-old conflict. A key point is that it would be a unilateral initiative by the Turkish government, without the need for negotiation or coordination with the PKK. </p>
<p>The policy has two parts: the max and the min. </p>
<p>The min refers to a minimum level of tolerance (read zero) for separatism by any ethnic group. It’s a policy already in place and necessary because there is unanimous agreement among Turks on preserving Turkey’s <a href="https://dspace.mah.se/bitstream/handle/2043/16734/Territorial%20Integrity%20of%20Turkey%20and%20the%20PKK%20Peace%20Process.pdf?sequence=2">territorial integrity</a>. Any policy package by the AKP must start with this commitment. </p>
<p>Max stands for maximum respect for political, cultural and linguistic rights of Kurds as an ethnic minority in Turkey. The cultural dimension of this policy recognizes the right of Kurds to preserve their ethnic language and culture identity – while keeping Turkish as the official language. </p>
<p>Providing Kurds with the right to teach and consume media in their own language – as well as equal democratic political rights – would create an environment of fairness and justice in which Kurds would feel confident as equal citizens. </p>
<p>Since taking power, the AKP has initiated several partial steps toward recognition of these rights. These steps, <a href="http://www.merip.org/mero/mero080410">which were mostly introduced in 2009</a>, included a Kurdish language television station and permission to offer Kurdish language classes in universities and private institutions. They were undertaken <a href="http://www.merip.org/mero/mero080410">in an effort</a> to meet the human and minority rights requirements for joining the European Union and to increase the popularity of the AKP in the Kurdish regions. Yet these rights have been only partially implemented. </p>
<p>Successful implementation of these rights, however, would require a change in public opinion. At the moment, expressions of Kurdish culture <a href="http://www.merip.org/mero/mero080410">are perceived as a threat</a> to national unity among a sizable segment of the Turkish population. Success will depend on changing minds. On this note, there’s some reason to be optimistic because there was <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/middleeast/2013/04/19/turkeys-kurdish-peace-process-parsing-the-polls/">little significant opposition</a> to the progress of the peace talks with the PKK.</p>
<p>As for the Kurds, several public opinion surveys indicate that a <a href="http://arsiv.setav.org/Ups/dosya/8504.pdf">large majority would welcome</a> such a unilateral offering of rights. This support would come from moderate Kurdish political leaders such as Leyla Zana, a member of the Turkish parliament who <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2012/06/prominent-kurdish-leaders-statem.html">has rejected</a> the PKK’s separatist goals. Full cultural and linguistic rights would likely empower the moderates and isolate the separatists.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c116413a-5cdb-11e6-a72a-bd4bf1198c63.html#axzz4Ggwwpzmw">political unity that Turkey is currently enjoying</a> in the aftermath of the failed coup creates a unique opportunity for Erdogan to initiate negotiations with other Turkish political parties to gain a strong majority and political consensus for these reforms. </p>
<h2>Bountiful benefits</h2>
<p>Many of the benefits of this proposal are fairly obvious, while others may be more obscure, but they add up to a powerful argument for choosing a unilateral path of cultural accommodation rather than one of war or <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/new-turkey-pkk-peace-talks-an-inevitability-postponed.aspx?pageID=238&nID=96978&NewsCatID=39">endless negotiation</a>.</p>
<p>Besides likely reducing support for the separatists, it’s also a just policy that would earn Turkey international respect at a time <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/09/world/europe/russia-putin-turkey-erdogan-syria.html?_r=0">when it’s feeling isolated</a> after its <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b82ef35a-4cc3-11e6-88c5-db83e98a590a.html">post-coup crackdown</a>. </p>
<p>It would legitimize Turkey’s advocacy for the cultural and political rights of Turkish minorities in other countries. How can Turkey campaign for the rights of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-34910389">Turkmen</a> in Iraq, Chechens and <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/03/turkey-russia-crimea-ukraine.html">Tatars</a> in Russia and the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/world/asia/ethnic-tensions-in-xinjiang-complicate-china-turkey-ties.html?_r=0">Uighurs</a> in China if it’s suppressing Kurds at home?</p>
<p>As for those who prefer a military solution, public opinion surveys indicate that majority of Turkey’s citizens <a href="http://arsiv.setav.org/Ups/dosya/8504.pdf">believe that the crisis can’t be resolved</a> this way. The Turkish military may enjoy complete supremacy, yet peace will remain elusive as long as the underlying grievances persist.</p>
<p>Resolving this crisis is also of regional geopolitical importance. The U.S. relies on Kurdish fighters in Iraq and Syria in its battle to take back ground from the Islamic State. Turkey’s conflict with its own Kurdish population has complicated the war against IS.</p>
<p>And finally, it would be a major step toward fulfilling <a href="http://thekurdishproject.org/history-and-culture/kurdish-nationalism/">Ataturk’s original promise to the Kurds</a>. </p>
<h2>Crucial next steps</h2>
<p>As a final note, it must be acknowledged that enhancing the cultural and political rights of Kurds is likely to reduce their desire for separatism but it is unlikely to end the <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/02/kurdish-autonomy-turkey-risks-consequences.html">Kurdish desire for regional autonomy</a>.</p>
<p>These demands cannot be resolved unilaterally by the Turkish government and would require political negotiations between the government and a representative body of Kurdish political leaders. </p>
<p>Such a negotiation, however, will take place in a more positive and cooperative atmosphere if Kurds already feel confident about the protection of their cultural and political rights in a democratic and tolerant Turkey.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62484/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nader Habibi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The protests that helped end the attempted coup turned into an affirmation of Turkish democracy. Can it help resolve the Kurdish crisis?Nader Habibi, Professor of the Economics of the Middle East at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/637462016-08-10T22:24:26Z2016-08-10T22:24:26ZTurkey’s coup and the call to prayer: Sounds of violence meet Islamic devotionals<p>The sounds of the recent military coup will long be remembered by people in Turkey.</p>
<p>Yet as Turks in Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and other urban centers strained to differentiate the sounds of explosive devices from the sonic booms of F-16s on July 15, 2016, they were most shocked by another sound, at once familiar and deeply startling: the Islamic call to prayer.</p>
<p>As an ethnomusicologist, I <a href="http://cssaame.dukejournals.org/content/31/3/615.short">study</a> distinct and often contradictory ways people make and listen to music and sound. July’s coup created a new soundscape for communities in western Turkey: sounds of violence combined with the call to prayer. </p>
<p>Known in Turkish as the “ezan,” this <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Fejskf0ZFc">intricate, melodic recitation</a> is a quintessential marker of daily life, inviting the devout to pray. In Muslim communities, an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6OvpZ9MFFg">ezan</a>, or “adhan” in Arabic, is heard five times daily: before dawn, at midday, in the afternoon, when the sun sets and at night. In populated urban settings in Turkey, residents will hear multiple calls projected from mosques simultaneously. Some areas in Istanbul are celebrated precisely for their ezan soundmarks, unique places or territories made meaningful by the sounds heard there. Skillful reciters respond to one another in stunning call-and-response <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bm7Nijds-OI">patterns</a>.</p>
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<p>But for all its familiarity, few Turks had ever heard the ezan outside official times. That changed in the early hours of July 16. As members of the Turkish military sought control of the country, Turks began hearing both the ezan and the “sela” (“salat al-janazah” in Arabic) – a prayerful recitation asking forgiveness for Muslims who have died – in a cacophony that lasted hours.</p>
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<p>Turkish listeners were astounded. Were these calls to prayer <a href="http://qz.com/734044/how-opponents-of-turkeys-coup-used-the-call-to-prayer-to-mobilize-protests/">meant to be calls to arms</a>?</p>
<h2>Locating the call</h2>
<p>Several Turkish <a href="http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/ezan-erken-okundu-darbe-girisimi-kinandi-40148505">news outlets</a> <a href="http://www.posta.com.tr/turkiye/HaberDetay/Ezan-erken-okundu--darbe-girisimi-kinandi.htm?ArticleID=353448">reported</a> that religious leaders at mosques throughout Turkey were <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/07/turkey-coup-attempt-erdogan-mosques.html">directly asked</a> to recite the calls by the state-run Ministry of Religious Affairs. In other words, the democratically elected Justice and Development Party (AKP) used the ministry to deploy the ezan as a call for citizens to confront soldiers attempting the coup. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also appeared on <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/video/2016/jul/15/erdogan-facetime-turkey-coup-attempt">CNN-Turk</a> via FaceTime to invite people to gather in public squares to resist the coup.</p>
<p>The last two times that the ezan and the sela were incanted outside of ritual time occurred before the Republic of Turkey’s boundaries were established in 1923. During World War I, as the British and French laid siege to Istanbul at the Battle of Gallipoli, <a href="http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:363131">Ottomans heard the ezan</a> and the sela sounding across the Marmara Sea. In 1922, Greek soldiers retreating from Anatolia ostensibly left the port city of <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1931-0846.2012.00155.x/abstract">Izmir</a> with recitations ringing in their ears. In both cases, the ezan and sela were used to marshal Ottoman Muslims to defend their communities.</p>
<p>Reciting the call to prayer outside of normalized Islamic ritual time rendered this July coup a kind of war against Turkey itself. </p>
<p>During the coup attempt, some listeners found the calls <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ceZ9nDXRxk">inspiring and mobilizing</a>. They believed that answering the call by gathering in the streets demonstrated support for either the AKP or the party’s Islamic roots. </p>
<p>Other listeners – who may or may not support the AKP or Erdoğan – flooded public squares primarily to protest the violence that has almost inevitably followed previous military coups.</p>
<p>And another group of listeners anxiously heard the ezan and the sela in light of the Egyptian coup of 2013, when mosques in Cairo projected <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/africaandindianocean/egypt/10166063/Egypt-coup-July-8-as-it-happened.html">similar recitations</a>. They worried that Turkey now sounds more like the Middle East than Europe, and that their country is leaning more toward authoritarianism than democracy. They continue to question whether this latest coup might initiate a contagion of violence that would further destabilize Turkish social life.</p>
<h2>Listening in Turkey after the coup</h2>
<p>Such differences in the way people listened to and interpreted the sounds of the coup amplify Turkey’s longstanding polarization between state secularism and public practices of Islam. As morning gave way to afternoon, and the coup was formally quieted, Turks took to social media to discuss the recitations.</p>
<p>“In the past, secular coup instigators silenced the ezan,” a politician <a href="http://www.haberturk.com/yerel-haberler/haber/46569187-ak-parti-kars-il-baskani-adem-calkin-eskiden-darbeler-ezanlari-sustururdu-simdi-ezanlar">observed</a>. “Now the ezan silences the coup instigators.” </p>
<p>In the weeks following the coup, the call to prayer has resumed its role in the everyday, yet it continues to haunt the ears of many cosmopolitan Turks unfamiliar with living amidst sounds of violence. </p>
<p>A day after the coup, a man <a href="http://www.fetihtv.com/">was interviewed</a> standing before a tank as police pulled soldiers from it. “You did a coup in the ‘60’s, you did a coup in '70’s,” he shouted at the camera. His words would <a href="https://twitter.com/11_serkan/status/754654682287632384">circulate</a> on <a href="https://fo-fo.facebook.com/VBAskina/posts/1250359601649780">social media</a> in the days to come. “You did a coup in the '80’s. You did a coup in the '90’s. At that time our fathers and grandfathers were silent but we will not be silent!” </p>
<p>This metaphor of sound resonates with our own English language expressions. To “have a voice” is to have political power, whereas “the voiceless” have no political agency or representation. </p>
<p>Refusing to be silent is to take up sound as power. But this coup’s most lasting change will not be found in raised voices, nor in the making of noise. Rather, the coup and its aftermath have engendered new, conflicting forms of listening.</p>
<p>That indeed is something to which we should be attuned.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63746/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Denise Gill is currently a fellow with the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS).</span></em></p>Unexpected calls to prayer from mosques in Turkey caught many off guard on the night of the attempted coup. An ethnomusicologist explains the political and social power of sound.Denise Gill, Assistant Professor of Ethnomusicology, Washington University in St. LouisLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/629472016-07-27T18:03:35Z2016-07-27T18:03:35ZHow will Turkey’s failed coup and massive purge affect its economic future?<p>The failed July 15 coup in Turkey has prompted a tsunami of responses by the government that is likely to have a lasting impact on all aspects of politics and society, including the economy. </p>
<p>The initial arrest of military personnel who were involved or suspected of participating in the coup <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/07/16/at-least-60-killed-more-than-700-detained-as-turkish-military-attempts-coup.html">did not come as a shock</a>. The next phase did, however, as massive waves of arrests and suspensions in the judiciary and government bureaucracy followed, as well as a <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkeys-president-erdogan-uses-emergency-powers-to-close-around-two-thousand-gulen-connected-a7152471.html">declaration of emergency presidential powers</a>. As of July 23, nearly 45,000 government employees <a href="http://aa.com.tr/tr/15-temmuz-darbe-girisimi/kamuda-45-bin-484-calisan-gorevden-uzaklastirildi/613958">have been suspended</a> and close to 10,000 people <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2016/07/turkey-independent-monitors-must-be-allowed-to-access-detainees-amid-torture-allegations/">have been detained</a>. According to Deputy Prime Minister Nurettin Canikly, thousands more are <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36868230">likely to be purged</a> in the coming weeks.</p>
<p>While most analysts have focused on the political and security consequences of the attempted takeover and the Erdogan government’s reaction, it is equally important to examine their impact on Turkey’s troubled economy. And that will depend most on how widespread the purge will be and whether any economic policies will change significantly. </p>
<p>In order to assess the economic impact and identify the key risks, first we must consider the backdrop: How did the coup transpire, what led to it, who is being purged and what was the state of the economy?</p>
<h2>A coup and response</h2>
<p>It is now clear that the coup was planned and carried out <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/18/middleeast/turkey-failed-coup-explainer/">by only a small group of military officers</a>. Officers not involved <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/07/19/how-fighter-jets-almost-killed-a-president.html">played a key role</a> in its failure, as did Erdogan’s ability to get Turkish citizens into the streets. </p>
<p>Thus, within hours of its start, the coup was over, as <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-tragedy-of-turkish-democracy-in-five-acts-62678">citizens</a> and police overpowered those who participated in it, and the government regained full control over the military. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/15/world/turkey-military-coup-what-we-know/">Media reported casualties</a> at 300, with several thousand injured.</p>
<p>Immediately, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (known as AKP) claimed that the coup was orchestrated by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/world/europe/fethullah-gulen-erdogan-extradition.html?_r=0">supporters of Islamist intellectual Fethullah Gulen</a>, a U.S. resident who has denied any involvement. Besides jailing the officers and soldiers involved in the coup, the government began the mass arrest of military personnel perceived as loyal to Gulen. Erdogan then initiated a <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-turkey-wants-to-silence-its-academics-62885">purge of Gulenists</a> in ministries and <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-education-ministry-to-shut-down-936-private-schools-over-alleged-gulen-links.aspx?pageID=238&nID=101951&NewsCatID=509">shut down more than 1,600 private educational institutions</a> due to such affiliations. More than 27,000 of their employees have also lost their work permits. </p>
<h2>AKP and Gulen: from friends to foes</h2>
<p>Since the coup itself failed, its harm to the economy was limited to increased political risks for investors. It is the large-scale purge of Gulenists – once allies of the president – that will have a deeper and longer-lasting effect.</p>
<p>When AKP won the 2002 election and formed a government for the first time, the party leadership <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/10/24/turkey-s-g-len-movement-between-social-activism-and-politics-pub-53397">had close relations with the Gulen movement</a>. </p>
<p>Up until 2013, the AKP actively supported the social activities of the <a href="http://www.guleninstitute.org">Gulen Institute</a> and welcomed its adherents into all ranks of the government. </p>
<p>So who is this mysterious man who supposedly orchestrated the coup?</p>
<p>Gulen can best be <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2013/10/24/turkey-s-g-len-movement-between-social-activism-and-politics-pub-53397">described as an advocate</a> of tolerant and democratic Islam and moral capitalism.</p>
<p>Gulen believes that Muslims have <a href="http://fgulen.com/en/gulen-movement/fethullah-gulen-and-the-gulen-movement-in-100-questions/48357-what-is-fethullah-gulens-view-of-the-market-economy-where-would-he-place-the-state-and-private-enterprise-in-the-economy">a duty to engage in business</a>, work hard and acquire wealth so that they can serve their society by offering charity and helping others. These views have attracted millions of civil servants, intellectuals and religious businessmen to the Gulen movement in Turkey in the past two decades. </p>
<p>Until the feud between Erdogan and Gulen began in 2013, large numbers of Gulenists were employed in military and civil servant positions. They had no reason to hide their affiliation with the Gulen movement. In the past three years, the tensions between AKP government and Gulenists escalated. As a result the government was gradually and sporadically removing Gulen supporters from both military and civilian positions even before the coup. </p>
<p>Indeed some analysts believe that coup supporters <a href="http://www.jamestown.org/single/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=45646&tx_ttnews%5BbackPid%5D=7&cHash=d952a371aaf32bf71ebbe7cb1a4d5093#.V5fROY543Dw">were motivated by a growing fear</a> that they were going to be arrested or expelled from the military within days under such accusations. </p>
<h2>Before the coup, a deteriorating economy</h2>
<p>Until 2014, Erdogan and his party had steered the Turkish economy impressively for more than a decade. Even during the global financial crisis, Turkey was one of the few G-20 countries <a href="http://www.forbes.com/2009/03/11/turkey-erdogan-inflation-lira-opinions-contributors-g20.html">that did not plunge</a> into a severe recession.</p>
<p>But since then, <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/turkey-economy-terrorism-russian-sanctions/3147900.html">economic growth has slowed.</a> This is thanks, in part, to a sharp decline in tourist arrivals because of fears of terrorism. It is also due to disruption in trade with Russia, one of Turkey’s key partners until tensions over Syria emerged. The collapse of peace talks with Kurdish separatists that led to renewed fighting in some provinces, further disrupted economic activity. </p>
<p>The economy was just beginning to recover this year after slowing to 2.9 percent in 2014, with <a href="http://aa.com.tr/en/anadolu-post/turkeys-economic-growth-soars-in-first-quarter-of-2016/587472">growth pegged at a better-than-expected 4.8 percent</a> in the first quarter. Concern about economic hardship was a major motivation behind <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/turkey-russia-israel-relations_us_57716029e4b017b379f6b5cd">Erdogan’s move to ease tensions</a> with Russia, Egypt and Israel in June. He has even <a href="http://en.news-4-u.ru/turkey-after-reconciliation-with-russia-ready-to-compromise-on-syria-learned-media.html">hinted at backing down</a> from his demand that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must go as a precondition for peace. </p>
<p>While the quick suppression of the coup meant economic policy hasn’t shifted, the attempted takeover and the harsh response have hurt investor confidence. </p>
<p><a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/idINFit968095">Fitch</a> and <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/s-p-cuts-turkeys-ratings-deeper-into-junk-territory-1469032326">Standard & Poor’s</a> – two of the leading credit-rating agencies – downgraded their views of the Turkish economy, while <a href="http://www.wsj.com/articles/moodys-to-review-turkeys-credit-rating-for-downgrade-1468878090">Moody’s</a> has left its rating unchanged so far. The Turkish lira plunged as much as six percent in the days after the coup but has since recovered.</p>
<h2>Key risks for the economy</h2>
<p>Nevertheless, <a href="http://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1404436924&Country=Turkey&topic=Economy&subtopic=Forecast&subsubtopic=Policy+trends">investors remain cautious</a> and have adopted a wait-and-see attitude to get a better idea of how far the political purges will go and how they will affect the business community. </p>
<p>Here are a few of the key risks they’ll be following closely to see how Erdogan’s response will affect the economy’s long-term outlook. </p>
<p>First, a widespread purge that reaches into the hundreds of thousands might cause a political backlash and social instability. The remarkable support of opposition parties for the AKP government after the coup might come to an end, while the forced resignation of a large number of university presidents and deans could lead to student unrest.</p>
<p>Second, the removal of thousands of civil servants and their eventual replacement with new employees could affect the quality of government services, which are crucial for a well-functioning economy. Normal operations in some ministries might be affected during this purge and replacement period. </p>
<p>Third, there are signs that the government is going after private businesses affiliated with Gulen, which could adversely affect the economy if it spreads. Some experts <a href="http://www.city-journal.org/html/who-fethullah-g%C3%BClen-13504.html">estimate the followers</a> of Gulen in Turkey at three to five million, many of whom are active in the private sector. The <a href="http://www.haberturk.com/ekonomi/is-yasam/haber/1269385-naksan-holdingten-taner-nakiboglu-yakalandi">first arrest of a businessman</a> with alleged links to the Gulen movement took place in Gaziantep on July 20. </p>
<p>It also appears that some companies <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/hundreds-fired-by-turkish-companies-after-attempted-coup.aspx?PageID=238&NID=102048&NewsCatID=345">are proactively firing</a> staff who might have had any affiliation with the movement. Even before the coup, the <a href="https://www.turkishminute.com/2016/04/18/businessmen-among-88-detained-new-witch-hunt-operation-targeting-gulen-movement/">government was selectively targeting</a> some of these private businesspeople. </p>
<p>It remains to be seen how far the anti-Gulen purge of the private sector will go. A Gulen-affiliated financial institution, Bank Asya, which was seized by AKP government in May, was officially <a href="http://aa.com.tr/en/economy/turkey-bank-asyas-banking-license-cancelled/613864">shut down a few days</a> after the failed coup. </p>
<p>Fourth, the economy will also be harmed by any tensions that emerge with the U.S. or the European Union. With the U.S., the main source of potential tension is over Turkey’s demand for extradition of Gulen, who lives in Pennsylvania’s Poconos region. Turkey <a href="https://next.ft.com/content/7287c982-4da2-11e6-88c5-db83e98a590a">has submitted</a> the evidence against Gulen, and a diplomatic team is likely to visit soon to <a href="http://www.dailysabah.com/americas/2016/07/23/graham-fuller-former-vice-cia-chairman-whitewashes-gulen-man-behind-turkeys-failed-coup">press for his extradition</a>. Meanwhile, the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36861154">EU is growing concerned</a> over Turkey’s post-coup violation of human rights.</p>
<p>Fifth, while the AKP government so far has remained committed to respecting the lifestyle and cultural values of secular citizens, after the failed coup it might come under increasing pressure (from its conservative base) to impose restrictions on secular lifestyle or favor pious AKP supporters in allocation of public sector jobs and business opportunities. If the government succumbs to such demands, it risks alienating a very valuable class of secular professionals and industrialists who have many options for migration. This could accelerate a brain drain that <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/politics/2014/11/turkey-secular-immigration-exodus.html">has been observed</a> in recent years.</p>
<h2>Sound economic policy is not enough</h2>
<p>The AKP owes its electoral success in the past decade to its ability to improve Turkey’s economy, particularly in the Asian region. Erdogan’s cabinet <a href="http://atimes.com/2016/07/turkey-seeks-damage-control-for-economy-after-failed-coup-attempt/">is very concerned about</a> the adverse impact of the coup and its aftermath on Turkish economy. It is expected to give top priority to economic issues in coming months. </p>
<p>This priority has already been demonstrated by the quick and effective measures in the first three days after the coup, which <a href="http://atimes.com/2016/07/turkey-seeks-damage-control-for-economy-after-failed-coup-attempt/">prevented a financial collapse</a> and calmed the capital markets without imposing any capital controls.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-economy-idUSKCN0YG0NW">government is preparing</a> a major economic reform package to further improve the business environment. Also, after two years of diplomatic tensions with former economic partners (such as Russia and Egypt), Turkey is returning to a business-oriented foreign policy. </p>
<p>These are positive steps that will benefit Turkish economy in the long run although the terrorism risks to tourism and investor confidence that existed before the coup are likely to continue in the new environment as well. However, the government must also be very mindful of how its cultural, political and security decisions in response to the coup will affect the economy.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62947/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nader Habibi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Quick measures by the central bank prevented a financial crisis, but investors are worried. Longer-term economic effects will depend on how long Erdogan’s purge goes on.Nader Habibi, Professor of the Economics of the Middle East at the Crown Center for Middle East Studies, Brandeis UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/628852016-07-27T02:07:03Z2016-07-27T02:07:03ZWhy Turkey wants to silence its academics<p>After the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2016/jul/15/turkey-coup-attempt-military-gunfire-ankara">July 15 coup attempt</a> in Turkey, one of the first actions of the Turkish state and government was to purge thousands of academics and deans <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/07/turkish-academics-targeted-government-reacts-failed-coup">from office</a>. </p>
<p>In a crackdown that rapidly spread across civil and military services, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the closure of thousands of private schools and many universities. Some <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/19/turkey-sacks-15000-education-workers-in-purge">15,000 employees at the education ministry</a> were fired, while more than 1,500 university deans were asked to resign.</p>
<p>So, why did Turkey’s government go after academics, and how were they able to force so many to resign? </p>
<p>I am a sociologist who grew up in Turkey and went through its university system. Even after moving to the United States, I have been in close contact with academia in Turkey – organizing many academic events with Turkish universities and collaborating with faculty.</p>
<p>I believe that the answer to the above question lies in the unique design of the institutions of higher education in Turkey. </p>
<h2>Let’s start with history</h2>
<p>Soon after the establishment of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, a law bringing all educational institutions <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0038012109000238">under state control</a> was promulgated. </p>
<p>Prior to that – in the Ottoman Empire – Western-style institutions of higher education established by the state, by Western missionaries and non-Muslim minorities as well as by religious institutions (<em>medrese</em>) had coexisted. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132046/original/image-20160726-7064-1cukyfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132046/original/image-20160726-7064-1cukyfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132046/original/image-20160726-7064-1cukyfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132046/original/image-20160726-7064-1cukyfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132046/original/image-20160726-7064-1cukyfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132046/original/image-20160726-7064-1cukyfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132046/original/image-20160726-7064-1cukyfp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Istanbul University.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/chemicalbrother/3166337501/in/photolist-5PNiPT-q7mFoX-4kYcE9-7eaa4W-9nsbP6-8Y4kMa-7e6f3x-7e62CK-7e5Xre-7e65E6-6XPZE3-8KgHv8-6N2ENY-7e6bCK-nkxho-5PSz7s-TknsB-nFVkM-6orSqe-q4iHrW-bFDMHT-Z3pM9-9WdddR-bsKbEE-fAaYES-3cGhes-5QHQMF-byMZKv-bsKkgy-bEZChR-ekmkk2-n8eHU-5tPNw5-bs5PNy-9r9Gy-xXkQ1-pv1hi1-n8eHZ-dth97X-n8eHY-bsJUtm-gmKTRz-6PprGV-4o4BNm-b4QvEx-dTfgQ7-nqRTuZ-82bSh4-bFDLbR-bEZGw2">Andreas Hunziker</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/">CC BY-NC-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But, in the newly established republic, the control of all institutions, including institutions of higher education, came to rest with the Republican elite.</p>
<p>Most of the faculty were treated by the state and its governments as state officials. The faculty too often regarded themselves as such. In fact, to this day, they are even issued different color passports to mark their distinction from ordinary citizens. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/1980-coup-facts.aspx?pageID=238&nid=17628">1980 military coup in Turkey</a> further institutionalized state control over higher education institutions. The constitution was rewritten, <a href="http://muftah.org/i-only-remember-fear-the-legacy-of-the-1980-coup-in-turkey/">restricting the rights and freedoms of all citizens</a>. As part of the 1982 constitution, the military-led government set up <a href="http://www.yok.gov.tr/documents/10348274/10733291/TR'de+Y%C3%BCksek%C3%B6%C4%9Fretim+Sistemi2.pdf/9027552a-962f-4b03-8450-3d1ff8d56ccc">the Higher Education Institution (HEI)</a> – an umbrella organization overseeing all universities administratively, academically and financially.</p>
<p>State control over universities had always been substantial, but with this action, it got institutionalized. For even though the HEI, like the judiciary, was in name fully independent, appointments to the HEI were overseen and approved by the state. </p>
<p>For instance, while university faculty voted to elect their chairs, directors, deans and presidents, the appointment of university presidents was contingent on the approval of the president of the Turkish Republic and the appointment of deans contingent upon <a href="http://www.universityworldnews.com/article.php?story=20151114084616491">the approval of HEI</a>.</p>
<h2>Opening up Turkey’s markets</h2>
<p>In 1984, Turkey began a process of economic liberalization. Turkish elites started to gradually <a href="http://jwsr.pitt.edu/ojs/index.php/jwsr/article/view/8">transform the state-controlled economy</a> into a market-centered one. That ended the period of dominance of state-run universities. </p>
<p>Given the vast, unmet demand for universities in Turkey where <a href="http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EXTECAREGTOPEDUCATION/Resources/444607-1192636551820/S._Hatakenakas_report_on_Higher_Education_in_Turkey_for_21st_Century_Nov_2006.pdf">only one in three applicants could get into a university</a>, the state relinquished its control. Many private, nonprofit universities <a href="http://www.academia.edu/201911/Globalisation_higher_education_and_urban_growth_coalitions_Turkeys_foundation_universities_and_the_case_of_Koc_University_in_Istanbul">were established</a>. </p>
<p>Today, there are about <a href="http://blog.milliyet.com.tr/turkiye-deki-universite-sayisi-193-e-ulasti/Blog/?BlogNo=498323">193 universities in Turkey</a>, of which 109 are state universities and 84 private. The private universities in Turkey were established either by wealthy individuals or private foundations. </p>
<p>I would argue that these private universities weakened state control over education – especially research and faculty recruitment. As they did not receive public funds, the internal administration of these universities was somewhat less influenced by the state. </p>
<p>These private universities also strengthened civil society: More faculty came to be involved in education, research and teaching courses that stimulated students to think differently. The faculty could now openly design courses that tackled Turkey’s problems, such as a critical analyses of Turkish nationalism and culture on the one side, and domestic violence and gender issues on the other.</p>
<p>Despite this change, state influence on private universities was still visible to many of us in academia. For example, we would hear about the pressure from the Turkish state to hire former state bureaucrats as faculty and to host conferences where people with particular pro-government views were invited.</p>
<p>So, while all universities and also the HEI were autonomous bodies – just like the judiciary – that was not how things worked in practice. </p>
<h2>AKP and academic control</h2>
<p>When the Justice and Development Party (AKP) initially came to power, <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/07/turkish-higher-education-reform-20147106282924991.html">it did take some steps</a> to address some of the problems in higher education. For example, the ban on women wearing veils on campuses was lifted and funding for scientific research was substantially increased. The tenure process was made more fair and less arbitrary. </p>
<p>However, all universities, including private universities, continued to be under <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2014/07/turkish-higher-education-reform-20147106282924991.html">the constant scrutiny of HEI</a>. And checks on academic freedom continued.</p>
<p>For example, when the the German Parliament passed the Armenian Genocide resolution anonymously on June 2, 2016, university presidents came under pressure to <a href="http://www.milliyet.com.tr/amasya-universitesi-nden-almanya-ya-amasya-yerelhaber-1405333/">issue public statements</a> supporting Turkish foreign policy. </p>
<p>To this day, the <a href="http://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2016/04/armenia-massacre-turkey-kurds-history/">Armenian Genocide of 1915</a> – in which a million Armenians lost their lives – remains a highly sensitive issue in Turkey. This issue is similar to Turkey’s <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-33690060">ongoing conflict with Kurds</a>. Public discussions of such issues have always been problematic. </p>
<h2>Connection of state and knowledge</h2>
<p>It is a truism that knowledge is power. Those who control knowledge have ultimate power in a society. Since educational institutions are among the most significant places for research, their control becomes crucial in autocratic states. Rulers want to closely monitor access to knowledge and therefore to power. </p>
<p>Scholar <a href="https://eksisozluk.com/busra-ersanli--572343">Büşra Ersanlı, a political scientist</a> studying the connection between between state and knowledge in Turkey, <a href="http://www.jstor.org.proxy.lib.umich.edu/stable/3879831">points out</a> how the Turkish state has constantly taken measures to imbue all school textbooks with nationalist discourse glorifying the state.</p>
<p>Schools and campuses are regarded as sites of potential social change in Turkey.
In this context, it is no accident that <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-13503361">the Gülen movement</a> – launched by a Muslim cleric with the professed intent to improve first Turkish civil society and then humankind – started by providing K-12 and higher education to those in Turkey and abroad. </p>
<p>The movement, which today has gained extraordinary influence is allegedly behind the failed coup attempt in Turkey. To this day, it operates thousands of schools throughout the world, <a href="http://gulencharterschools.weebly.com/">including the United States</a>. </p>
<p>President Erdoğan too used schools to start a revival movement in <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/2014/12/26/erdogan-launches-sunni-islamist-revival-turkish-schools-292237.html">Sunni Islamic studies</a>. At one time, in fact, both President Erdogan and Islamic scholar Gulen were <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2014/01/akp-gulen-conflict-guide.html">considered to be allies</a>. </p>
<h2>Stranglehold over academia</h2>
<p>The current Turkish government’s stranglehold over academia started in 2013 when Erdoğan, who had been prime minister was elected president. </p>
<p>Over the past three years, human rights in Turkey have been increasingly curbed, although the president and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have continually denied <a href="https://www.hrw.org/europe/central-asia/turkey">any such restrictions</a>. </p>
<p>I personally felt his wrath in January 2016 when I signed a petition, along with thousands of like-minded academics, calling for the conflict with the Kurds to be solved by peaceful, not military, means. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.telesurtv.net/english/analysis/A-History-of-the-Turkish-Kurdish-Conflict-20150728-0042.html">The Turkish-Kurdish conflict</a> has existed since the establishment of the Turkish Republic. Erdoğan himself started a peace process with the Kurds in 2011, while he was prime minister of Turkey. But after becoming president, he ordered military operations against them. </p>
<p>It was in this context that we protested the violence. Erdoğan’s <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/03/turkey-erdogan-introduces-new-thought-crimes.html">response</a> to our petition was emphatic: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“There is no difference between a terrorist with a gun and bomb in his hand and those who use their work and pen to support terror. The fact that an individual could be a deputy, an academic, an author, a journalist or the director of an NGO [nongovernmental organization] does not change the fact that that person is a terrorist.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He asked the HEI president to investigate, and many university presidents were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/15/turkey-rounds-up-academics-who-signed-petition-denouncing-attacks-on-kurds">forced to fire the signatories</a>.</p>
<p>Having formed a Listserv, we signatories were still trying to decide how to resist this violence wreaked upon us when the new wave of purges commenced. </p>
<h2>Where will Turkey go next?</h2>
<p>I, for one, have decided not to travel to my country of origin this summer for the first time ever for fear of arrest.</p>
<p>Where will Turkey go from here? I spend many sleepless nights, feeling just as I did when I first read <a href="http://www.online-literature.com/orwell/1984/">George Orwell’s “1984.”</a> Just like Orwell’s dystopian society – a society with oppressive controls – the current Turkish state and the government are, it seems, out to silence all people capable of producing new and independent thinking and research in Turkey.</p>
<p>As most of such minds are concentrated in Turkish academia, they will all be destroyed unless they turn into obedient and pious consumers.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62885/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Fatma Müge Göçek does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A scholar who grew up in Turkey explains the important role Turkey’s academics play and why, following the recent coup, the government went after them.Fatma Müge Göçek, Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies, University of MichiganLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/630732016-07-26T16:11:25Z2016-07-26T16:11:25ZTurkey crisis: how will oil and gas supplies be affected?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132023/original/image-20160726-7018-1gjc156.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Bertl123 / shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The Turkish military’s attempted coup to topple president Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t last long. The government restored control the following day and soon declared a three-month state of emergency, with more than 60,000 people since arrested or placed under investigation.</p>
<p>This isn’t just Turkey’s problem. The country’s pivotal position in the transport of oil and gas gives it huge geopolitical significance. Straddling Europe and the Middle East and providing export routes from Central Asia to the rest of the world, Turkey is an important and growing <a href="https://next.ft.com/content/2c4b25f8-c81b-11e4-8210-00144feab7de">energy transit hub</a>. </p>
<p>Shipping in the Bosphorus straits between the Black Sea and Mediterranean Sea was halted in the immediate aftermath of the attempted coup because of security concerns, though it was <a href="http://tass.ru/en/world/888749">soon reopened</a>. Although oil and gas flows were broadly unaffected by the coup, the prospect of prolonged instability raises the spectre of disruption to their transit.</p>
<p>Two major oil pipelines pass through Turkey to the Ceyhan terminal on its Mediterranean coastline. One begins in Baku, the capital of oil-rich Azerbaijan, before passing through Georgia. The other delivers oil from Kirkuk in northern Iraq and has been affected by fighting with Islamic State and <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-iraq-kurds-oil-idUSKCN0W00EU">Kurdish insurgents</a>, and <a href="https://theconversation.com/iraq-what-happened-to-the-oil-after-the-war-62188">disputes</a> between Baghdad and the Kurdish government. When fully operational the two piplines have a combined capacity of 2.7m barrels per day, which is more than three times greater than the UK’s daily production.</p>
<p>The country’s location at the mouth of the Black Sea means it plays an equally key role in the seaborne oil trade. Around <a href="http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis_includes/special_topics/World_Oil_Transit_Chokepoints/wotc.pdf">3% of the world’s oil and petroleum products</a> pass through the Bosphorus from Russia, Ukraine and central Asia. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132024/original/image-20160726-7028-gr5wci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132024/original/image-20160726-7028-gr5wci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132024/original/image-20160726-7028-gr5wci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132024/original/image-20160726-7028-gr5wci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132024/original/image-20160726-7028-gr5wci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=372&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132024/original/image-20160726-7028-gr5wci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132024/original/image-20160726-7028-gr5wci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132024/original/image-20160726-7028-gr5wci.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=467&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Turkey’s pipelines link Europe with Central Asia, Russia and the Middle East.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/analysis.cfm?iso=TUR">US Energy Information Agency</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Turkey is also an important transit state for the EU’s natural gas imports. The Blue Stream pipeline, which runs underneath the Black Sea from Russia, carried 14.7 billion m³ of gas in 2013 – equivalent to <a href="http://tass.ru/en/infographics/7275">9% of the total Russian gas supplies to Europe</a> that year. Blue Stream was built in the early 2000s in <a href="https://www.oxfordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/NG-92.pdf">response to growing disruption</a> of gas flows through Ukraine and Belarus. The recent conflict in Ukraine highlights how Turkey’s importance has grown in recent years.</p>
<p>Further into the future, the planned <a href="http://www.bp.com/en_az/caspian/operationsprojects/Shahdeniz/SouthernCorridor.html">Southern Gas Corridor</a> development would see gas from fields in Azerbaijan flowing through Turkey to the EU by 2018, while the planned <a href="https://www.rt.com/business/348872-turkish-stream-project-financing/">Turkish Stream</a> pipeline across the Black Sea would also circumvent Ukraine.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132042/original/image-20160726-7023-qpuykd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132042/original/image-20160726-7023-qpuykd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/132042/original/image-20160726-7023-qpuykd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132042/original/image-20160726-7023-qpuykd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132042/original/image-20160726-7023-qpuykd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132042/original/image-20160726-7023-qpuykd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132042/original/image-20160726-7023-qpuykd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/132042/original/image-20160726-7023-qpuykd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">This refinery in Izmit, near Istanbul, processes crude oil delivered by tanker.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ARTEM ARTEMENKO / shutterstock</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Turkey’s key location for energy supplies and regional affairs means the EU has always considered it a <a href="http://eeas.europa.eu/turkey/">strategic partner</a>. The country’s accession process for membership started back in 2005. And this same strategic importance may be useful even today – some have suggested Europe’s timid response to Erdogan and his crackdown after the attempted coup is because of Turkey’s <a href="http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/Energy-Is-The-Reason-Europe-Is-Still-Backing-Erdogan.html">crucial role</a> in supplying the EU with energy. Although European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker said Turkey was “<a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-eu-juncker-idUSKCN1050L9?il=0">not in a position to become a member</a>” following the coup, the ongoing <a href="https://theconversation.com/a-law-professor-assesses-the-eu-plan-to-send-asylum-seekers-back-to-turkey-56535">migrant crisis</a> and concerns over energy supplies mean it will be difficult for the EU to take too strict a position.</p>
<p>As the EU seeks to become less <a href="http://www.euractiv.com/section/europe-s-east/news/eu-dependent-on-russian-gas-for-foreseeable-future-warns-iea/">dependent on Russian gas</a> it will need to develop supplies from Central Asia through Turkey’s Southern Corridor, while also increasing its supply from global Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) markets. At the same time, Russia will continue to reroute its gas exports away from Ukraine, instead increasing flows through Turkey and through the expanded Nordstream pipeline in Germany.</p>
<p>It is therefore highly unlikely that the strategic nature of EU-Turkey relations will change in the foreseeable future, even if Erdogan’s government places further restrictions on society. But, given further civil unrest or terrorism could increase political instability and threaten Turkey’s energy sector, Europe is right to be worried.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/63073/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Joseph Dutton receives funding from the UK Energy Research Centre (UKERC)</span></em></p>The EU can’t be too tough on Erdogan as it relies on his nation’s pipelines and shipping routes.Joseph Dutton, Research Fellow, Energy Policy Group, University of ExeterLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/628952016-07-26T05:38:32Z2016-07-26T05:38:32ZTurkey coup: why have teachers and academics been targeted?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/131899/original/image-20160726-31198-1exkeum.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Following the failed coup in Turkey, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan ordered the sacking of nearly 1,600 deans, 21,000 teachers and 15,000 education bureaucrats.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tolga Bozoglu/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>In the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-struggles-to-make-sense-of-a-surreal-failed-coup-detat-62596">failed coup</a> attempt on July 15, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has ordered the closure of more than 1,000 private schools, revoked the licenses of <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/07/19/turkey-demands-resignation-of-every-university-dean-in-country-a/">21,000 school teachers</a>, sacked 15,000 education bureaucrats, and asked almost 1,600 university deans to resign from both state and private universities. Turkish academics have also been <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/turkey-issues-travel-ban-academics-failed-coup-160720100811188.html.">banned from travel</a>. </p>
<p>This mass sacking, in tandem with the purges in the military, police and judiciary, has taken the total number of people estimated to have either lost their jobs or be detained within the two weeks post-coup to <a href="http://www.cnbc.com/2016/07/20/turkey-set-for-emergency-measures-to-quell-post-coup-turmoil.html">around 60,000</a>.</p>
<h2>Why have education staff been targeted?</h2>
<p>What do school teachers, bureaucrats and university deans have to do with the senior military personnel that attempted the coup? The short answer is: nothing. There is no direct connection. </p>
<p>But the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36855846">Gülen movement</a>, which is accused of masterminding the coup, is at its core an education-based movement with schools as its major focus. </p>
<p>It is difficult to know how many Gülen schools there are – they are not founded in Gülen’s name, but rather are established under philanthropic foundations. </p>
<p>As such, <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books?id=Oe0GDAAAQBAJ&pg=PA65&dq=number+of+gulen+schools+in+Turkey&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi6xNWym5DOAhVCGJQKHW1qCs0Q6AEIITAB#v=onepage&q=number%20of%20gulen%20schools%20in%20Turkey&f=false">estimates</a> of the number of schools in the academic literature vary quite markedly from around 150 to 500 in Turkey. </p>
<p>Given these numbers, the closure <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/23/turkey-erdogan-closure-of-1000-private-schools-gulen">of more than 1,000 private schools</a> seems a high number and suggests there might be some collateral damage, for <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-23/turkey-publishes-decree-to-close-gulen-linked-institutions">the aim</a> is to weed out all Gülen schools and those associated with them from all aspects of the state. The prime minister, Binali Yildirim, has vowed to remove the Gülen movement <a href="http://in.reuters.com/article/turkey-security-yildirim-gulen-idINKCN0ZZ0TK">“by its roots”</a>.</p>
<p>Such a purge is deeply troubling, especially the sacking of the university deans. </p>
<h2>Seizing control</h2>
<p>It is an extreme measure that seems to speak to a broader agenda of seizing control of all facets of the state and quelling any dissent, as the university sector has historically been a <a href="https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2016/07/20/unprecedented-purge-deans-turkey">stronghold</a> for both liberals and secularists.</p>
<p>Recent history reveals that Erdoğan has a track record of clamping down on those from the higher education sector that critique the government. <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkeys-academics-pay-heavy-price-for-resisting-erdogans-militarised-politics-54088">Earlier this year</a> he came down hard on Turkish academics that signed a petition organised by a group called “Academics for Peace”, that asked the government to end the fighting against the Kurdish militants. </p>
<p>All of the 1,128 signatories, from <a href="http://bianet.org/english/human-rights/171152-investigations-universities-reactions-against-academics">89</a> universities, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/15/turkey-rounds-up-academics-who-signed-petition-denouncing-attacks-on-kurds">were investigated</a>. 33 academics were <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/01/turkish-academics-pay-price-speaking-out-kurds?platform=hootsuite">detained</a> for alleged propaganda for a terrorist organisation. <a href="http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/2016/02/government-turkey-academics-arrested-protest-kurdish-military-action">109 academics from 20 Turkish universities</a> were disciplined, suspended or sacked. Interestingly, this crackdown saw the number of signatories on the petition jump to <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkeys-academics-pay-heavy-price-for-resisting-erdogans-militarised-politics-54088">nearly 5,000</a>, garnering public as well as international support.</p>
<p>While the Gülen movement is certainly the major target of this latest salvo against the education sector on account of its vast network of schools, the sacking of nearly 38,000 staff – many of whom are probably not associated with the movement (something which is difficult to ascertain as there is no formal membership process) – speaks more to a general clearing of the decks to gain tighter control.</p>
<p>It has been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/22/biggest-witch-hunt-turkish-history-coup-erdogan-europe-help">reported</a> that at a funeral for a coup protester, attended by Erdoğan, the imam prayed: “Protect us, Lord, from all malice, especially that of the educated”, to which the crowd roared “Amen!” </p>
<p>This quixotic prayer could be another veiled jibe at the Gülen movement, or it could speak to a broader agenda of control through removing educated dissident voices. This attack is also reflected in the sustained war against the media.</p>
<p>In other words, it seems Erdoğan may be seeking to realise the prayer and protect both himself and his party from the educated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62895/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Tittensor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The sacking of Turkish education staff speaks to a broader agenda of control through removing educated dissident voices.David Tittensor, Research Fellow, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/629132016-07-22T15:00:28Z2016-07-22T15:00:28ZFrance, Turkey and human rights: is a state of emergency the new normal?<p>Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has declared a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/21/turkey-parliament-expected-to-pass-erdogan-emergency-measures">state of emergency</a> in the wake of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-struggles-to-make-sense-of-a-surreal-failed-coup-detat-62596">failed coup</a> of July 15. It’s not yet clear how the President intends to interpret the powers awarded to him in this situation but there are ongoing concerns that his government will clamp down on human rights.</p>
<p>Indeed, explaining the decision, deputy prime minister Numan Kurtulmuş <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/21/turkey-parliament-expected-to-pass-erdogan-emergency-measures">said</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Turkey will derogate the European convention on human rights insofar as it does not conflict with its international obligations. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Kurtulmuş added that Turkey was acting “just like France” in taking this action – referring to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/nice-attack-reminds-france-the-state-cant-keep-you-safe-100-of-the-time-62558">extended state of emergency</a> that has followed the terrorist attacks of the past year there.</p>
<p>A situation that was originally meant to last three months following the Paris attacks of November 2015, has been extended to last another six months following the July attack in <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/nice-attack">Nice</a>.</p>
<p>Both cases raise serious questions about how long a state of emergency is supposed to last in this day and age, and how ordinary people are affected while they are in place.</p>
<h2>What is a state of emergency?</h2>
<p>Under Article 15 of the <a href="http://www.echr.coe.int/Documents/Convention_ENG.pdf">European Convention on Human Rights</a> (ECHR) a country can declare a state of emergency, “in time of war or other public emergency threatening the life of the nation”. Once an emergency is declared, however, a state is not given free rein to do as it sees fit.</p>
<p>The measures taken must still be “proportionate to the exigencies of the situation”. To protect human rights, Article 15 has a triple lock. To derogate from the convention, an emergency must exist; the measures being proposed must be proportionate; and some rights can never be violated. Torture or inhuman and degrading treatment, for example, are never permissible, no matter how extreme the emergency.</p>
<p>The ECHR is vague about the conditions that constitute an emergency, so in some ways, it’s not clear whether what is happening in Turkey constitutes one. </p>
<p>The European Court of Human Rights has never found that an emergency did not exist in a state that declared one. It has taken a very hands off approach to this issue, deferring instead to each government’s assessment of the situation in their country. A large amount of trust is placed in a state’s government on this question.</p>
<p>Emergencies, however, are not just about the facts on the ground that give rise to an extreme crisis; they also reveal a lot about the person or body declaring a state of emergency and what their motivations are. </p>
<p>While the European Court of Human Rights has never found that a state of emergency did not exist in a country, the now defunct European Commission of Human Rights (a tribunal body that prior to 1998 would make preliminary decisions on a case before the Court heard it) has.</p>
<p>The Commission rejected a 1967 declaration of a state of emergency in Greece by the military dictatorship that governed at the time. The Commission found that no “threat to the life of the nation” existed and that the military dictatorship had fabricated the emergency in order to crack down on the communist opposition.</p>
<p>Unlike the government in the Greek case, Erdoğan was democratically elected. But we have to ask ourselves whether we can simply assume that because a state’s government has been elected, it will protect human rights.</p>
<p>Indeed, faced with an emergency, a government might clamp down on human rights to prove to a fearful public that it is “doing something”, whether that something is effective or not. Emergencies are precisely when human rights are needed most. </p>
<p>Democracy also requires respect for the rule of law. All state power is exercised through the law, and nobody is above the law. An independent and functioning judiciary is fundamental to this. Erdoğan’s purging of the judiciary in Turkey is deeply worrying, to say the least. </p>
<p>Democracy likewise requires free speech and the communication of ideas. While Article 10 of the ECHR, which protects freedom of expression, can be derogated from in an emergency, any infringement must still be proportionate.</p>
<p>The decisions to fire and detain academics, and prevent people from travelling abroad are an unprecedented violation of academic and democratic values in Turkey. And it <a href="http://www.cara.ngo/27-turkish-academics-arrested/">didn’t start</a> with the failed coup. </p>
<h2>How long can this last?</h2>
<p>Erdoğan’s declaration of a state of emergency is deeply suspect. Turkey’s emergency has an initial time limit of three months; however, emergencies tend to be perpetuated. France’s experiment with emergency powers – which Turkey is drawing parallels to – is a case in point.</p>
<p>The nature of the terrorist threat facing France makes assessing when it has been defeated incredibly difficult. The terrorist attacks that have caused this situation are not committed by an army in uniform but people only connected in the loosest sense by an ideology. That makes them hard to identify or engage.</p>
<p>In light of the challenges posed by Islamic extremist terrorism, the European Court of Human Rights, in a <a href="http://hudoc.echr.coe.int/eng?i=003-2638619-2883392#%7B%22itemid%22:%5B%22003-2638619-2883392%22%5D%7D">case</a> involving the UK’s declaration of a state of emergency following 9/11, has said that an emergency may be perpetual.</p>
<p>Again, this is reflective of the court’s deferential approach to the existence of a state of emergency. It undermines the entire justification of declaring a state of emergency in the first place, which is to restore the status quo that existed prior to the declaration. </p>
<p>With the introduction of emergency powers comes the temptation for misuse. France’s state of emergency was less than a month old when its emergency powers were used, not in the fight against suspected IS terrorists, but to place climate change protesters under house arrest during the Paris Climate Summit in December. And while the state seems to have made the most of its extended powers in this case, it still wasn’t able to prevent the attack in Nice.</p>
<p>It will take some time before the European Court of Human Rights will get to examine Turkey’s emergency. However, even if the emergency is eventually lifted, it is hard to imagine that “normal life” after the emergency will be the same as “normal life” before it.</p>
<p>States of emergency have a dark history of being used in a transformative sense to usher in tyrannical regimes in the guise of confronting a threat to the life of the nation. It would be wise to recall the warnings of British judge <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2004/dec/17/terrorism.humanrights3">Lord Hoffmann</a> that the real threat to the life of the nation comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62913/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alan Greene does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Emergency laws can sometimes be the biggest threat to a state and its people.Alan Greene, Lecturer in Law, Durham UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/628972016-07-22T06:58:21Z2016-07-22T06:58:21ZTurkey’s almost coup and the need for perspective<p>Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was quick to quell the <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/turkey-coup">attempted military coup</a> on July 15 and to accuse the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36855846">Gülen movement</a> of being responsible. This accusation has since dominated the news on the coup. </p>
<p>Even Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said it was <a href="http://www.juliebishop.com.au/category/transcripts/">speculated that “Gülenists” were behind the attempt</a>. This simple and uncritical reiteration of Erdoğan’s accusations is problematic because Turkey is a land fond of conspiracy theories and Erdoğan’s labelling of people as “Gülenists” may simply be code for anyone who opposes his <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-coup-erdogans-tightening-grip-will-test-relations-with-the-west-62706">autocratic rule</a>.</p>
<h2>What is the Gülen movement?</h2>
<p>So what do we know about the Gülen movement? Founded in the 1960s in Izmir, the movement is led by former Turkish imam <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/16/fethullah-gulen-who-is-the-man-blamed-by-turkeys-president-for-coup-attempt">Fethullah Gülen</a>, who seeks to blend modern secular education with religious values. In 1999, he went to America shortly before being charged for treason. He was tried in absentia and has been living in exile in Pennsylvania, United States, ever since. </p>
<p>Like its reclusive leader, the Gülen movement is a large opaque organisation with operations in around 160 countries and an estimated worth of US$25 billion. It is speculated that the movement may have as many as 8-10 million followers and until 2013 it was closely aligned with Erdoğan’s ruling Justice and Development Party. Given its size and assets, one can understand how such an organisation could make Erdoğan uneasy. </p>
<p>But the Gülen movement preaches neither hate nor violence and explicitly values the democratic process. At its core it is a transnational educational movement with more than 1,000 secular schools around the world. It prizes the combination of science and religious values, and interfaith dialogue, with a view to creating pious yet modern Muslims who can actively participate in and shape the modern world. </p>
<p>This is one reason why Erdoğan’s accusation seems so unlikely. The second reason is that the movement is on its knees in Turkey. </p>
<h2>Sustained crackdown has sapped opposition</h2>
<p>Since 2013, there has been a spectacular falling out and the Gülen movement has been brought low by Erdoğan. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://theconversation.com/rift-with-party-fuels-crisis-at-heart-of-turkeys-government-21665">corruption scandal</a> erupted in December 2013, which saw several ministers resign (and implicated both Erdoğan and his son Bilal in the embezzling of funds). This also resulted in the judiciary and the police force being purged. As with the recent coup attempt, Erdoğan alleged that the Gulenists were behind the corruption probe in an attempt to topple his government. </p>
<p>Following the 2013 scandal, about 500 so-called Gülenist police were sacked or reassigned. The prosecutors who presided over the case were later charged with terror offences and fled the country to Armenia. By early January 2014, at least 2,000 police and prosecutors had been dismissed or reassigned. </p>
<p>Alongside these purges Erdoğan has systematically stripped the Gülen movement of its bank, media holdings and flagship university. In 2015, the <a href="http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2015/02/10/why-did-turkey-seize-bank-asya">government seized Asyabank</a>, which was founded by movement followers, and placed it in a fund that answered directly to the prime minister. The movement’s TV channel Samanyolu (among others) was dropped in 2015 from the Turksat satellite-TV platform as part of a <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2014/12/14/world/europe/turkey-media-crackdown/">crackdown on media outlets</a> that were critical of the government.</p>
<p>Then, in 2016, the Gülen movement’s flagship newspaper, <a href="https://theconversation.com/takeover-of-opposition-newspaper-is-a-death-warrant-for-free-speech-in-turkey-55902">Zaman, was seized and shut down</a>. Hot on the heels of this closure, the movement’s premier university, <a href="http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/06/turkey-university-take-over-trustees-gulen-movement.html">Fatih, was placed in the hands of trustees</a>.</p>
<h2>In no state to mount a coup</h2>
<p>This prompts the question: How could an organisation that had already been humbled so dramatically organise a military coup?</p>
<p>Such a notion becomes even more implausible when one considers that historically the military, a traditionally anti-religious institution in Turkey, has been hostile to the Gülen movement. Suspected Gulenists were systematically purged from both the military schools and the military itself during the 1980s and 90s. </p>
<p>This is not to say that such an alliance is impossible. But strong evidence is required to substantiate such an assertion, because history tends to suggest otherwise. This has been the line of US Secretary of State John Kerry, who has <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/kerry-turkey-send-us-evidence-allegations-gulen-40739179">asked for “evidence” rather than allegations</a> to support the Turkish government’s request to extradite Gülen. </p>
<p>One of the alleged coup plotters has <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36835340">reportedly confessed to being a Gülenist</a>. However, there are also reports suggesting this confession may have been coerced. </p>
<p>Therefore, the need for reliable evidence is paramount. Otherwise it is simply grist for the mill for both Erdoğan and conspiracy theorists.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62897/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Tittensor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Turkish government is accusing the Gülen movement of being behind the recent coup attempt, but there are reasons to doubt the claim.David Tittensor, Research Fellow, Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/628392016-07-21T10:56:35Z2016-07-21T10:56:35ZPurge of teachers and academics bulldozes through Turkish education<p>As news of the <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-struggles-to-make-sense-of-a-surreal-failed-coup-detat-62596">attempted military coup</a> in Turkey unfolded, I was in Pennsylvania. Travelling in the US, I had coincidentally found myself in the home state of Islamic preacher Fethullah Gülen, who Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has singled out as the mastermind of the uprising. Gülen, once a close Erdoğan associate until he fell out with the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/jul/17/fethullah-gulen-alleged-coup-mastermind-and-friendly-neighbour">has lived in exile</a> in Pennsylvania since 1999.</p>
<p>In what Erdoğan calls a “parallel state”, the Gülen movement <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/20/world/europe/fethullah-gulen-erdogan-extradition.html?_r=0">is said</a> to have “infiltrated” state institutions, most notoriously the judiciary and the police. The Turkish government reacted to the coup attempt by arresting tens of thousands of state officials including judges, civil servants, soldiers, and teachers. </p>
<p>In rhetoric reminiscent of the Stalinist purges, <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36835340">Erdoğan promised</a> to “cleanse all state institutions”, rid Turkey’s judiciary of “cancer cells” and purge state bodies of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36818401">the “virus”</a> that has spread throughout Turkish state structures. </p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36835340">numbers of those arrested</a> is on a truly shocking scale. More than 7,000 soldiers have been detained, 8,000 police have been removed from their posts, 3,000 members of the judiciary suspended, and thousands of civil servants in diverse ministries dismissed, including over 15,000 in the education <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36835340">ministry alone</a>. All levels of education have been affected: 21,000 teachers have their licences withdrawn and more than 1,500 university deans have been told to <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36843180">quit their jobs</a>. </p>
<p>These numbers make it hard to believe that the crackdown is not operating according to lists that had been ready already before the attempted coup.</p>
<p>On July 20, a three-month state of emergency <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36852080">was declared</a>. Academics currently on study missions abroad <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36843180">have been told</a> to return home while those in Turkey are banned from travelling <a href="http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSI7N1A3004">abroad until further notice</a>.</p>
<h2>Sustained attacks on academic freedom</h2>
<p>Turkish academics have been targeted before, most recently after a <a href="http://bianet.org/english/human-rights/171097-academics-for-peace-we-stand-by-our-signatures">petition of the Academicians for Peace Initiative</a> was circulated that spoke out against the government’s attacks in Kurdish provinces. The official state reaction <a href="http://www.nature.com/news/turkish-scientists-rocked-by-accusations-of-supporting-terrorism-1.19179">was to sack and persecute</a> academics for “spreading terrorist propaganda”. </p>
<p>The Turkish Higher Education Board (YÖK) and public prosecutors in several Turkish university cities subsequently launched investigations against academics who signed the petition. Signatories of peace petitions were <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkeys-academics-pay-heavy-price-for-resisting-erdogans-militarised-politics-54088">accused by the government</a> of undermining national security and of “supporting Kurdish propaganda”. </p>
<p>The preemptive obedience on the part of university managements was a grim indicator of the state of freedom of speech in Turkey and the erosion of the independence of the higher education sector. Universities started to <a href="http://bianet.org/english/human-rights/171152-investigations-universities-reactions-against-academics">self-censor</a>, reacting with disciplinary measures including forced resignations, suspensions, and the launch of formal investigations.</p>
<h2>Crackdown on schools and students</h2>
<p>The arrest wave following the July 15 coup will only aggravate this clampdown on higher education. Gülen’s movement, also called <em>Hizmet</em>, operates a network of private schools and universities, both in Turkey and abroad. What worries Erdoğan is <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-13503361">Hizmet’s objective</a> of educating its followers “for the common good” and to “build schools instead of mosques”. Hizmet marries its emphasis on education with a moderate and pragmatic approach to Islam. It is accused of working to “infiltrate” Turkish state institutions and the AKP itself by taking up influential positions and undermining, in an almost Trotskyist analogy, state structures from within.</p>
<p>It is this paranoia that explains the Turkish government’s obsession with cracking down on student protests and anti-government rallies at universities. Repression followed the 2013 <a href="https://theconversation.com/after-gezi-turkey-in-media-and-campus-clampdown-18028">Gezi Park protests</a> and subsequent demonstrations at the Middle East Technical University <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkish-students-and-academics-treated-as-states-enemy-within-23952">in 2014</a>. </p>
<p>Erdoğan’s message is unequivocal, <a href="http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/turkish-pm-erdogan-calls-protesters-atheists-leftists-terrorists.aspx?pageID=238&nid=63068&NewsCatID=338&utm_content=buffereb537&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer">lumping</a> student protesters together as “atheists, leftists, terrorists”. Passing bills to shut down private prep-schools, many of which are run by the Hizmet movement, serves the same purpose <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-26397755">of “cleansing”</a> Turkish schools of “unhealthy” elements.</p>
<h2>The world must speak up</h2>
<p>State pressure on students to remain depoliticised is matched by the Higher Education Board’s work to rein in the activities of academics and teachers. Following the coup attempt, the board <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36843180">asked university rectors</a> to “urgently examine the situation of all academic and administrative personnel” with links to what it calls the Fethullah Terrorist Organisation. </p>
<p>The recent clampdown on teachers and education ministry officials in the wake of the coup attempt adds to a depressing list of continued attempts to staunch dissent in Turkish society. Turkey must respect the freedom of speech to which it officially subscribed as a <a href="http://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/turkey">member of the Council of Europe</a> and as signatory of UN conventions that enshrine such fundamental democratic rights as the right to freedom of opinion and expression.</p>
<p>Academic freedom of thought is at the heart of a healthy civil society. Restricting the free movement of academics and curtailing the independence of universities defeats the purpose of scholarship. The exceptional proportions of the recent arrests should be met with a resolute response worldwide.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62839/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Moritz Pieper does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Turkish higher education has got used to repression, but this is on another scale.Moritz Pieper, Lecturer in International Relations, University of SalfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/627062016-07-19T10:58:55Z2016-07-19T10:58:55ZTurkey coup: Erdoğan’s tightening grip will test relations with the West<p>Turkish President <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/erdogan">Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s</a> power grab at the expense of the country’s democratic principles predates the <a href="https://theconversation.com/turkey-struggles-to-make-sense-of-a-surreal-failed-coup-detat-62596">failed coup of July 16</a> by many years.</p>
<p>His creeping authoritarianism dates back at least to the <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/08/20138512358195978.html">Ergenekon</a>, Balyoz and associated trials of members of the so-called <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-what-is-the-turkish-deep-state-and-why-is-it-in-the-frame-for-the-ankara-bombings-49038">“deep state”</a> in 2008. Since then detention of soldiers, but also businessmen, bureaucrats, journalists and the like has led inexorably to trials that have resulted in the imprisonment of hundreds of military officers – many of them senior officials, including Ilker Basbug, the former chief of the general staff, who was sentenced to life imprisonment.</p>
<p>Lawyers and policemen allegedly loyal to the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gülen had provided the momentum behind the demolition of the “deep state” and the weakening of the military’s political power. This very much suited Erdoğan’s ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP), which was fearful that the notoriously secular military might conduct a coup against its hold on office.</p>
<p>Fethullah Gülen lives in exile in Pennsylvania and presides over a vast network of businessmen, journalists, intellectuals, and professionals of all kinds. The tentacles of this network extend to commerce, education, charities and the media, as well as government.</p>
<p>In retrospect, we can see that Erdoğan’s previous alliance with the Gulenists was simply one of convenience. When a group of Erdoğan associates, including his own son, were investigated for corruption in December 2013, again by allegedly Gulenist law enforcement agencies, Erdoğan decided that the network – or hizmet as it calls itself – now constituted a major threat to his hold on and enjoyment of power. He has been relentlessly purging supposed Gulenists from public office ever since, accusing them of having established a “parallel structure”.</p>
<p>The police and judiciary had already lost tens of thousands of alleged sympathisers to the purges in the years preceding the attempted coup on July 16. The foreign, interior, and other ministries have also been extensively purged. In the wake of the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/31/istanbul-protesters-violent-clashes-police">Gezi Park protests of 2013</a>, journalists and academics have been detained, intimidated or sacked. Turkey’s media is cowed where it is not directly under government control, and its intellectuals are frightened.</p>
<p>Erdoğan has also used his years in office to mould his party to his own image. He has ousted or marginalised possible challengers – most recently the prime minister, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkish-prime-minister-ahmet-davutoglu-announces-resignation-after-falling-out-with-president-a7014801.html">Ahmet Davutoglu</a>. Erdoğan’s adoring supporters appear unfazed by such developments.</p>
<h2>A gift from God</h2>
<p>Earlier this year the sentences that had been imposed on military officers following the “deep state” trials were <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36099889">annulled</a>. Even so it is likely that the military remained the government institution that Erdoğan least trusted. This is why the failed coup attempt was described by Erdoğan himself as a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-17/coup-was-a-gift-from-god-says-erdogan-who-plans-a-new-turkey">“gift from God”</a>.</p>
<p>In the wake of the coup more than 100 – almost a third – of the military’s most senior officers were detained, and 6,000 others taken into custody. But that is not all. Erdoğan is using the opportunity presented by the coup to detain or oust from office thousands of lawyers, policeman, interior and other ministry bureaucrats, regional governors, and is also now turning his attention to businessmen, journalists and academics who may have grumbled against him – or, according to Erdoğan, are part of the Gulenist “parallel structure”.</p>
<p>There is even talk of reintroducing the death penalty for the coup plotters. In short, the outcome of the coup attempt’s failure will not be democracy but rather Erdoğan’s ever more tightening grip over all levers of power. It looks like Turkey will find itself subjected to a civilian dictatorship hardly less repressive than a military one would have been – although again, his own supporters might not object.</p>
<p>The reintroduction of the death penalty alone will prove sufficient to put an end to Turkey’s (in any case implausible) EU membership bid. The erosion of liberties will cause problems for relationships with all Western allies. That Gülen lives in exile in the US, and that Ankara has demanded his extradition, will cause particular difficulties for the US-Turkey relationship.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Turkey’s Western allies have only expressed passing concern at the creeping coup started by Erdoğan over the past few years. They have remained silent in the face of the brutal crackdown in the country’s Kurdish south-east. Ankara’s murky relationship with jihadi groups in Syria, and its tardy commitment to the struggle against Islamic State, has shaken but not broken its Western alignments.</p>
<p>The West has preferred to repeat the mantra of Turkey’s strategic significance in the region and as a NATO member. The coming months and years will test whether there is any line that Turkey cannot cross if it wishes to hold onto its Western friendships. There will be tensions with Western capitals certainly; but should we expect more?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62706/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>William Park has received funding from the US Army War College and Leverhulme.</span></em></p>President Erdoğan has described the failed coup as a ‘gift from god’. And we can expect him to make the most of it.William Park, Senior Lecturer, Defence Studies Department, King's College LondonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/626432016-07-18T16:43:53Z2016-07-18T16:43:53ZWhy did Turks react so strongly against anti-Erdoğan coup?<p>Turkey has had its fair share of military coup d’états. The government has been overthrown three times – in 1960, 1971 and 1980 – and several more putsches have been narrowly avoided by the military dropping “hints” that it would step in if things didn’t change.</p>
<p>It was still surprising to see soldiers and tanks blocking the bridges across the Bosphorus in Istanbul on July 15. The coup was destined to fail and those accused of involvement – who apparently number <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36818401">several thousand people</a> – face stiff punishment, and potentially even the death penalty. </p>
<p>But perhaps more surprising was the sight of thousands of Turkish people taking to the streets to take on the plotters. Soldiers were beaten and rounded up by citizens angered by what they saw unfolding around them.</p>
<p>They had answered when President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/7/16/12206304/turkey-coup-facetime">called on them</a> to fight for him. Turkey is a very illiberal place where dissent is not tolerated so it was surprising to see so many people flock to the defence of their widely-criticised leader.</p>
<p>For almost ten years, Turkey has been drifting towards authoritarianism. Life has become distinctly uncomfortable for anyone who doesn’t support Erdoğan and his party, the AKP. The government controls the news media, has undermined the rule of law and clamped down harshly on any kind of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/29/gezi-park-year-after-protests-seeds-new-turkey">peaceful protest</a>. So while Turkey is still democratic – in that Erdoğan is elected – it is not a liberal country. </p>
<p>The military, as a long time stalwart of secular <a href="http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0440">Kemalism</a>, has borne the brunt of AKP illiberality. Coups are of course, not liberal mechanisms for winning power, but in Turkey, they have always been aimed at preventing a drift away from the democratic path envisioned by Ataturk, the hero-worshipped founder of the republic.</p>
<p>The military’s wings have been clipped by a series of <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-36099889">bogus investigations</a> instigated by the state since 2007. Under the guise of looking into supposed anti-government plots, the AKP was able to remove hundreds of senior officers – mostly staunch Kemalists – from the military. Each time, they would be replaced with government sympathisers. Academics, journalists, lawyers and others have all been caught up in these investigations, adding to the general air of intolerance and illiberality in Turkish society. Just under half of the population are not AKP supporters, and many of these people feel alienated.</p>
<p>Erdoğan was able to crush the coup incredibly quickly because he is a master of populist rabble rousing. Just under half the country oppose him and feel alienated by the general direction being taken, but the 50% or more who are loyal to him are very loyal indeed. He has raised living standards and given back self-esteem to the pious, socially conservative section of society undoubtedly neglected by the previously dominant Kemalist secular elite.</p>
<p>The president was able to move his supporters onto the streets with ease because they have waited 50 years for a share of the power in Turkish politics and they are not going to let go of it without a fight. Those on the streets are the most enthusiastic but even Erdoğan’s opponents do not want a return to military rule. The coup plotters were unable to win popular support because while Erdoğan is a loathed authoritarian figure, Turks do not want to return to military authoritarianism either. Its reputation precedes it and Turks have long memories. “The worst democracy is better than no democracy” has been a familiar refrain on social media.</p>
<p>It remains unclear who was responsible for the attempted coup, even as the supposed ringleaders are being arrested. It could have been a Kemalist rump within the military or a cluster of officers supporting dissident <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/18/us/fethullah-gulen-turkey/">Fetullah Gulen</a>. Many Turks believe it was a false flag operation designed to create the conditions in which Erdoğan could launch a clampdown on his remaining opponents. That scenario might seem outlandish, but it’s eerily familiar to anyone who has followed the investigations against supposed dissidents over the past decade. </p>
<p>Ultimately, Erdoğan is the winner of this ruthless political dogfight which has cost 300 people their lives and many thousands more their liberty. He has taken the opportunity to push his Putinesque power grab a stage further. Freedoms of expression and association now only exist if you support the AKP. The rule of law and press freedom are long gone and illiberality in Turkey just got even worse.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62643/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natalie Martin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Their president is notoriously authoritarian, yet the people of Turkey instantly took to the streets to defend him against the military.Natalie Martin, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, Nottingham Trent UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/626002016-07-16T22:54:00Z2016-07-16T22:54:00ZCan you really pull off a coup d'état these days?<p>The military coup attempted in Turkey has failed and its leaders have fled to Greece, where they are seeking asylum.</p>
<p>It took less than 24 hours for forces loyal to the Turkish President to regain control. More than <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/turkey-prime-minister-coup-attempt-foiled-160716001125028.html">200 people have been killed</a> and up to 3,000 military personnel have been detained.</p>
<p>Coups do still happen but they are an increasingly rare event, particularly in the developed world. The modern political landscape just makes it much harder to seize power through military means in the 21st Century.</p>
<h2>International alliances</h2>
<p>Turkey is a member of NATO, which means that its government can expect to be protected by other nations if a coup is attempted. A core principle of NATO is that the organisation sees an attack on one as <a href="http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_17120.htm">an attack on all</a>. Greece put its national army on high alert almost as soon as word of the coup got out. Troops were in a state of readiness within hours.</p>
<p>Then, if NATO does take military action, the UN gets involved to restore peace and security. Ultimately the fate of the military government depends on the UN’s reaction. The UN will step in if an event is considered a threat to international peace.</p>
<p>Although it must be said that the UN has not traditionally ruled military coups to be a threat to international peace, Turkey’s geographical location is an important factor. It is, after all, in the middle of a very volatile region. </p>
<h2>Winning recognition</h2>
<p>Even if plotters succeed in ousting a national leader, they then need to seek international recognition of their legitimacy.</p>
<p>Up until the eve of the coup attempt, world leaders were often either <a href="http://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/05/boris-johnson-wins-the-spectators-president-erdogan-offensive-poetry-competition/">ridiculing</a> Recep Tayyip Erdoğan or at least expressing concern about his authoritarian tendencies. But most are correctly declaring their support for him in the wake of this incident.</p>
<p>It’s difficult to know what would have happened if the coup had been successful but modern leaders aren’t particularly keen to support threats to democratically elected governments – even those with sketchy records.</p>
<h2>Holding on to power</h2>
<p>If a group did secure global approval for their coup, it would still be much harder for it to hold on to power than it might have been in the 20th Century.</p>
<p>Interference from outside – from both enemies and friends – would be unavoidable. Be it human rights, exchange rates, monetary policy, arms control, warfare, environmental control, or minority rights, individual states have less and less meaningful control in this globalised world.</p>
<p>In the UN human rights era, states no longer enjoy unrestricted sovereignty over what happens within their territorial confines. That’s generally acceptable for a democratic government, but makes it difficult for an unelected military regime to impose the kind of control it needs to hold on to power. </p>
<p>As well as the UN, human rights groups such as Amnesty International, the Red Cross, Greenpeace, and Human Rights Watch are more active these days. The ability to drown dissent by sheer brute force is far more likely to be challenged both from within and outside a state.</p>
<p>People who risk their lives to seize power obviously tend to be reluctant to relinquish it immediately, but we live in an era of “third generation rights”. Democratic governance is increasingly seen as a human right – indeed, the UN explicitly states as much. A military junta would face unrelenting pressure to return its country to democratic rule.</p>
<h2>The rights of the people</h2>
<p>Just over 40 years ago, there were fewer than <a href="http://www.state.gov/www/global/human_rights/1999_hrp_report/99hrp_toc.html">30 established democracies</a> in the world. Almost half the world’s countries can now be considered to be democracies, but the number of <a href="http://www.eiu.com/public/topical_report.aspx?campaignid=DemocracyIndex2015">full Western-style democracies</a> is low – only 20 countries.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, this is a phenomenal change on a global scale, and offers compelling proof that the idea of democracy has genuinely universal appeal. Today, more people, and a larger percentage of the world’s population, live under democratic self-government than at any time in human history.</p>
<p>Indeed, the Turkish people reacted very unhappily to the sight of the military on their streets, and have not been kind to the failed plotters.</p>
<p>On the whole, it’s best that the Turkish military coup failed. The universalism of democracy should not be sacrificed on the altar of the unpopularity of current rulers. And international law continues to make it harder and harder for that to happen.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/62600/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gbenga Oduntan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Taking over a country by military force is much harder in this age of globalised rights.Gbenga Oduntan, Reader in International Commercial Law, University of KentLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.