Since Gezi Park, repression in Turkey has really started to get going

Endless arrests

The night before this writing, my phone lights up. Three Turkish journalists have just been arrested, reports a text message from Turkey. The reason: reporting on a corrupt magistrate.

Turkish courts are running at full speed. Known court cases against businessman Osman Kavala and lawyer-parliamentarian Can Atalay are the tip of the iceberg of thousands of cases of legal maladministration and political interference. So say also several European legal umbrella organisations, which are closely monitoring their Turkish counterparts.

Trade union representatives are also arrested, including for speaking out against low and unequal wages. And 24 politicians from the pro-Kurdish HDP party are serving prison sentences ranging from 9 to 42 years, in what is internationally considered ‘a manifestly political and unjust trial’. Even Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, the Turkish president’s main challenger and a member of the largest opposition party, the social-democratic CHP, faces a number of court cases. In short, it is not difficult to conclude that Turkish democracy is crumbling.

The question of how much clout Turkish pro-democrats have today is more difficult to answer. The free space is "no bigger than a tile", is part of their answer. But the Turks are somewhat used to it.

Erdoğan’s early years

Burhan Sönmez, president of the international writers’ organisation PEN, leads a nomadic existence between Cambridge, Istanbul and elsewhere. ‘Is there a danger of my being arrested in Turkey? Yes. Am I afraid? No.’ Sönmez says it resignedly rather than toughly, in a late-night Skype conversation from Cambridge. The 60-year-old writer grew up in a small village without electricity, in a state that distrusted him for the simple fact that he is a Kurd. ‘The problems Turkey faces today were there long before Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to power in 2001. So danger has been part of daily life since my childhood.’

Erdoğan came to power after the turbulent 1980s and 1990s. What was striking was how he led Turkey towards greater democratisation with a firm hand in his early years. Even his biggest critics did not hide this. ‘A strong figure like Erdoğan was needed’, the co-authors of a voluminous and highly documented biography on Erdoğan told MO* in 2017. ‘He was not only a rhetorical genius. He wanted to move forward, even with Turkish taboos like the Kurdish and Armenian issues’, Jean-François Pérouse, one of the two biographers, told MO*.

Co-author Nicolas Cheviron recalled the enthusiasm he had felt in those early years of the new millennium: ‘Erdoğan provided reform after reform. He kept piling up his credits.’ Those reforms continued until 2007. But at an increasingly slow pace, due to disappointment with the European Union for halting accession negotiations.

Without Erdoğan’s political weight, there would have been no AKP, biographers echoed about the religious ruling party. ‘No one but Erdoğan has that gift of appealing to the masses, no one can compete with him.’ And that seems to be the case until today. The secular opposition CHP may have won local elections in all major Turkish cities last year, but it has little in the bag.

Challengers to Erdoğan’s success, such as Ekrem İmamoğlu, face fierce opposition. ‘In Beşiktaş, a key district in Istanbul, the local CHP mayor was just sidelined’, says Burhan Sönmez. ‘Frankly, I doubt the CHP will be able to cash in on that political victory last year.’

Journalist Sebnem Arsu, correspondent for Der Spiegel from Istanbul, acknowledges the impotence of local CHP mayors. ‘But the opposition parties’ biggest problem is their inability to unite, which the far-right parties have just been doing.’ If Erdoğan were to suddenly defect tomorrow, the entire Turkish political system would have to reinvent itself, Arsu says. ‘He has left an indelible mark on Turkish politics for so long.’

Gezi as first defeat

The decline of an independent rule of law in Turkey began back in 2012-2013 with the infamous trials of Ergenekon, the “Deep State”, an alleged plot to overthrow Turkey. Even then, observers say, Erdoğan was seeing ghosts.

But with the Gezi protests in 2013 followed a second ghost that continues to haunt Erdoğan: the masses who said no. After all, Gezi was more than one place. In addition to the peaceful demonstrations in Istanbul's Gezi Park, there were the “Gezis” outside the capital, which were more violent and smelled of rebellion. Millions of Turks demonstrated across Turkey; the civic character took on a more political face.

For Erdoğan, it was all rigged. ‘Gezi was his first and biggest defeat, the breaking point of his overall success. He never recovered from that’, Sönmez says of it. ‘Every so often, the Turkish president cites the Gezi protests in his speeches.’

Even now, after 12 years, trials are ongoing against people who took part in Gezi, says Turkish director for Amnesty International Ruhat Sena Akşener. And that perfectly illustrates the new form of state repression, she explains. ‘The 1980s and 1990s were characterised by the arrest of thousands of political activists, torture, by enforced disappearances too. We have much less of that steely physical violence now. But today we see repression against a very wide range of people. You can be arrested for a trifle. We haven’t figured out which is worst: the 1990s or today.’

In Reporters Without Borders’ latest Press Freedom Index, Turkey rose from place 164 to 158. A small improvement? ‘That's just a number’, journalist Sebnem Arsu responds laconically. ‘Press freedom cannot be measured by figures on detained journalists or attacks. It's about so much more: the legal restrictions, the state incorporation of the media, pending court cases against journalists, intimidation causing journalists to quit, steered hate speech on social media. Journalists also face physical violence that goes unpunished’, Arsu says.

She recalls the brutal group attack against Levent Gültekin, a journalist for Halk-TV, two years ago. Despite clear footage on security cameras, all suspects were released for “lack of evidence”. The message is clear, says Arsu. ‘Potential perpetrators of violence are told they have free rein, critical journalists know they are not protected.’

They will continue

How do people persist? Sebnem Arsu herself, as a correspondent in Istanbul for an established international newspaper, calls herself privileged compared to her colleagues in the southeast of the country. ‘I also think we are all past the point of daily anxiety. I trust myself and continue to do what I do: solid journalism with added social value.’ Of course there are challenges, she says. ‘But nothing is more serious than being left behind in a society that no longer asks questions.’

Ruhat Sena Akşener’s daughter is 14 and has no idea things could be different, she says. ‘I myself have known better days and openness in the enlightened 2000s, which may be my personal motivation. I am sometimes afraid, yes. But my conscience is greater than the urge to turn my back when I see injustice. I want to be able to sleep.’

Burhan Sönmez finds the many thickening red lines to speak difficult, but does not want to act on them. ‘On the contrary. We need to speak more and louder about so-called dangerous issues. If we intellectuals - journalists, writers, human rights defenders - don’t speak up, who will? Who will remind society of the principles of solidarity and freedom?’

As soon as the writer can, he seeks out Gezi Park in Istanbul. It is ‘his mirror of Turkish democracy’. ‘The park ground is fed with the blood of eight young people because they stood up for some greenery. But I see how the trees that bear their souls endure. Those trees mark the beauty of this narrow park, represent the audible breath of a city and its inhabitants.’