Turkey: On The Transformation Of Turkish Democracy - by Shayn McCallum

Istanbul and Aegean Sea

Last week was a rather absurd week for Turkish politics. Events here can often seem mind-blowing, especially if one’s frame of reference is the relatively tame world of European politics (although U.S. politics, at times, puts up a pretty good fight in the race for mind-blowing political insanity).

Last week saw a deepening of the corruption scandal that has shaken the AKP regime, together with a totally new, indirectly related scandal involving a truck supposedly carrying humanitarian aid to Syria but which turned out to be packed with weaponry and munitions. To top off the whole sorry mess, we are now witnessing an attempt by the regime to openly politicise the judiciary and an attempt to create the means to prosecute judges and public prosecutors who “overstep their bounds”. This comes amidst allegations made by former chief prosecutor Zekerya Öz (recently forced out of his position by political pressure) that the PM personally threatened him, allegedly telling him to “call off the investigation or face the consequences”.

It is hard to even know where to begin with the fallout of such an eventful week. As the regime tries to deflect attention from itself by hurling accusations at its opponents and plastering billboards throughout the city displaying photos of the PM with the capitalised slogan “FIRM OF WILL”, as well as (apparently as an attempt to create a political distraction) threatening to re-open the trials of defendants already acquitted from the high-profile Ergenekon and Balyoz (Sledgehammer) cases, (in which a number of prominent military figures and intellectuals were charged with, and, in many cases, subsequently acquitted of, conspiracy against the state) it is also moving to attempt to close down any further possibility of legal investigation into its activities.

Turning firstly to the desultory sideshow of the Syrian-bound truck; what is shocking in this case is not just that a truck allegedly carrying humanitarian aid was actually carrying weapons, but that the gendarmes who stopped it at the border and discovered its cargo were immediately forbidden from further investigation (on the grounds of the contents being a “state secret”) and the officers involved, together with the prosecutor seeking to open an investigation, were promptly reassigned to other duties. The truck, belonging to the I.H.H. organisation (the same ostensibly humanitarian NGO that took the Mavi Marmara ship to Gaza and was violently boarded by Israeli forces just a few years ago) has since apparently disappeared without a trace. 

The I.H.H., although an NGO, is known to have close ideological and organisational links both to the AKP (as well as other Islamist parties such as the Saadet Party) and the Gülenist Movement alike, and comment from the Gülenists, and their allies in the AKP, has been curiously muted. The President, Abdullah Gül, who has tended to be very vocal recently in criticising the actions of his own party, has been visibly uncomfortable in addressing the truck issue. In a single vague statement on the affair he indicated that he was under the impression the truck was “carrying aid to Turkmen refugees” and has refused to say much more than this, even as the story has developed.

Indeed, this embarrassing incident with the truck and its subsequent heavy-handed cover-up, indicative though it is of the “open secret” of Turkish government support for sunni militias fighting in the Syrian civil war, is just one little window into the apparently underhanded and shadowy activities of the administration. As the corruption scandal has come closer and closer to the PM himself (his son, Bilal, has been called in for questioning) he has become openly aggressive towards the judiciary. If the claims of Zekerya Öz are to be believed, the PM has even resorted to direct, personal threats of a shockingly mafia-like nature as he denounces the police and judiciary as belonging to a “parallel state”. To some extent, these accusations may have a degree of truth if the extent of Gülenist infiltration claimed by some commentators is to be believed.

Until recently however, this alleged “parallel state” was something encouraged by the AKP itself although now it seems “Frankenstein has escaped the laboratory” and is running amok.

Certainly, under the AKP watch, there has already been a strong ideological shift in the judiciary. Old Kemalist judges and prosecutors have been slowly pushed aside and replaced by conservatives ideologically more in line with the AKP. We have seen countless examples of what, in most democratic countries, would be considered perversions of justice over the last few years, from the utter miscarriage of justice around the assassination of Armenian journalist and human rights activist, Hrant Dink, to the more recent attempts by the families of youths killed during the Gezi protests to seek legal redress from the police. 

One of the more appalling examples of this latter process occurred at a hearing where the family of Ethem Sarısülük (who had been shot in the head and killed by live ammunition fired by a police officer) were attempting to bring the officer in question to justice. 

The judge hearing the case was photographed sleeping at the judicial bench. The photographer who released the photo was, incredible though it may seem, subsequently charged with the crime of “mocking the judiciary”. This, moreover, is only one of the more recent examples of events of this nature.

Read more: On The Transformation Of Turkish Democracy - Social Europe Journal