Turkey: a protest worth heeding

From micro issues to large ones, the common denominator is Mr Erdogan's and the AKP's overbearing personality

Editorial
The Guardian, Monday 3 June 2013

"There are many ways of reacting to the scenes on Istanbul's streets, if you happen to be the prime minister of Turkey. You can send in the riot police, and fill those streets with tear gas. You can denounce Twitter, and hope that no one observes that your aides tweet too. You can blame the opposition. Or you can ask yourself questions: what makes a localised and relatively peaceful campaign to save an inner city park balloon, in just a few days, into a national protest that has spread to half of Turkey's provinces ? And why is this urban revolt happening to a leader who has won three elections, each time by an increasing majority?

To answer these, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has to look at himself clearly. He has to dissociate himself from his legend. For the tall, swaggering, broad-shouldered man, who is famously proud and prickly, this will be difficult to do. For much of the last decade, his leadership has been legendary. It has seen strong economic expansion accompanied by waves of reforms; the military forced back into its barracks; the opening of EU accession negotiations; the end of torture in prison; a peace deal with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which, if it succeeds, would be historic in itself. When the eurozone faltered in 2008, Mr Erdogan had little difficulty refashioning Turkey as a champion of the Middle East. With the opposition in disarray, there was nothing to stop Mr Erdogan contemplating a new constitution with enhanced powers for the presidency, a role which he, naturally, reserved for himself.
But that was then. What of now? The mushrooming protest has temporarily united a suspiciously wide spectrum of grievance – from those who object to their favourite Gezi park being turned into a shopping mall, to those who object to restrictions on the sale of alcohol, to the decision to name a third bridge over the Bosphorus after an Ottoman ruler responsible for the massacre of thousands of Alevis, the largest religious minority in Turkey, to those who object to Turkey's proxy war in Syria. From micro issues to large ones, the common denominator is Mr Erdogan's and by extension the AKP's overbearing personality. They are no longer seen as the facilitators of individual freedom but big brothers interfering in them.
The jury is still out about the ambitious marriage of forces that the AKP seemed to have achieved – Islamism as a reformist vehicle in a democracy under a secular constitution. But one thing is clear. Democracy is not just about elections and it is not, as Mr Erdogan once said, a means to an end. It is an end in itself. Mr Erdogan has done his job application for president no favours. He should react to this protest with humility and listen to what it is telling him. He has yet to do so."