Turks express anxiety as country enters eve of elections

Fearful, fragmented, resigned and increasingly deprived of access to alternative sources of news. These are the conditions under which Turkey’s citizens will head to the polls on Sunday to vote in one of the most crucial elections the country has held in recent memory, leading to concerns over the legitimacy of the elections and of their potential aftermath.

This tense atmosphere is compounded with the shutting down of the Millet and Bugun newspapers on 29 October. The television stations Kanalturk and Bugun TV were raided by riot police and abruptly taken off the air in September.

All these media outlets belong to the Koza Ipek Group, believed to have close ties to the Fethullah Gulen movement – a movement that has strongly opposed to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2013.

A court placed the business interests of the group under government administration on 27 October and appointed trustees to run the affairs of those companies. The Koza Ipek Group has been under investigation since September for allegedly financially abetting a “terrorist” organisation.

AKP’s critics have expressed outrage over the handling of these publications and say it is a blatant attempt at intimidation.

“This is ridiculous. Such actions have absolutely no legal basis and none of the actions taken by the trustees are legal. If they think they can silence the media in the age of the internet they are sorely mistaken,” Ragip Duran, a veteran journalist who specialises in media and media ethics, told Middle East Eye.

“They have managed to unite the entire spectrum from the extreme left to the extreme right against them. This is a first, despite it not being the first time the media has come under attack in this country,” said Duran.

Ali Bayramoglu, a columnist at the pro-government newspaper Yeni Safak, says that while unlike most of the opposition he is unwilling to exonerate the Gulen community of being insidious, he believes the raids on the media are wrong.

“If we are talking about a state of law then such actions are just as bad and dangerous as what the Gulen community attempted to do,” Bayramoglu told MEE. “This won’t help the ruling party at all.”

“The legal process being implemented is highly problematic and restricts media freedoms. It is not possible to condone this regardless of the extent to which the group being targeted was engaged in illegitimate actions as well,” he said. 

Pro-government media have largely been silent about these developments, but both President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu argued their actions were to provide a judicial process free from political intervention.

Critics have derided these claims and say that the AKP has developed a stranglehold over the judiciary and other state institutions and that it uses them to further party goals.

“For the past two years no one believes anything that comes from that party. The AKP and Erdogan are afraid of the future and akin to cornered and wounded persons will resort to anything due to their deep-rooted fears,” said Duran.

“Is there anyone left who isn’t aware that the judiciary is not independent and acts upon orders received?”

In Bayramoglu’s view, the rewording of the law in 2014 regarding the duties and roles of prosecutors and judges in the country has affected the balance of power and put too much of it in the hands of the ruling government.

“In large part many of these current issues go back to the redrafting of that law and even in this instance of raiding the Koza Ipek media, which is the worst such incident to date, we see that all the trustees appointed are either AKP members or linked to it in some way.” 

Akin Ipek, Koza Ipek’s owner, fled the country a few days before the September raids and has not returned.

Gulen - a preacher who went from being an ardent ally of Erdogan to becoming his arch foe, and who lives in self-imposed exile in the US - is accused by the government of heading an organisation aimed at infiltrating Turkey’s state institutions and toppling the government.

Gulen’s supporters claim their movement has only sought to expose the rampant corruption within government and AKP ranks.

Security concerns

Although curfews imposed in many areas of southeastern Turkey following clashes between the state and the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in July have been lifted, concerns exist about the ability to hold fair elections in a region gripped by fear.

The major political parties active in the region blame each other for this fear, with the AKP pointing fingers at the PKK and what it considers its political wing, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP).

Omer Celik, a spokesperson for AKP, in a recent press briefing said the PKK is responsible for turning the southeast into a war zone and that his party had repeatedly invited the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe to send more election observers to the region to monitor the polls.

“Turkey has always held transparent elections even in worse conditions. It will hold them this time as well. We would like the OSCE to send more observers to the region and see for themselves who is digging trenches and trying to intimidate people to vote the way they want,” said Celik.

In conjunction with clashes with Kurdish forces, fear has spread through three major bombings since June, with the latest one in Ankara on 10 October that killed more than 100 people and has been attributed to the Islamic State group.

Last week authorities made public the details of four potential IS suicide bombers in the country believed to be preparing for a major attack.

In this context, the creation of a website on 28 October by the Interior Ministry of the country’s “most wanted terrorists” and the placing of Fethullah Gulen and some of his affiliates as a larger threat than some suspected IS-linked suicide bombers have also led to an outcry about the AKP’s priorities and threat perceptions.

“The definition of a terrorist has never been clear-cut but labelling Gulen as a terrorist is incredible. In more than 30-odd years neither he nor his associates have been associated with violent activity. In the not too distant past a journalist was arrested and his book about Gulen was blocked from being published by this same government and its Gulen allies back then,” said Duran.

For Bayramoglu, such speculation and trying to determine who poses the larger threat is pointless.

“No court has yet officially designated the Gulen community as terrorist so any discussion in this regard is a moot one,” said Bayramoglu. 

Continued political stalemate

Many fear that the country may be faced with a long spell of uncertainty and perhaps another round of elections if no party fails to garner a majority large enough to form a government on its own.

While the AKP is likely to emerge again as the party with the most share of votes - based largely on the hugely successful people-oriented reforms of its earlier years, particularly its success in providing free and easy healthcare access to millions of people in the villages and towns of Anatolia – its growing authoritarian and antagonistic stance in recent years has alienated large swaths of society. 

Loathe to relinquish absolute power and enter into a coalition with other parties combined with the rejuvenation of opposition parties could cause turbulence for Turkey.

On the other hand, the pro-Kurdish HDP with its inclusive stance and the Republican People’s Party (CHP) with its shift away from it traditional statist and nationalist position to a relatively social-democratic position have given them an increased following.

Duran is pessimistic of what awaits the country on the morning of 2 November.

“The most likely possibility seems to be an AKP-MHP [Nationalist Movement Party] coalition. That won’t last very long - six months to a year tops before the country is dragged into a blood-filled conflict.”

Bayramoglu, too, sees an AKP-MHP coalition as currently being the most likely outcome and also as being problematic for the future of the country, but he believes forming and maintaining a coalition is not the main problem. The main problem, in his view, is the lack of a culture of rapprochement.

“We already know the MHP’s stance on the Kurdish issue. That doesn’t bode well for the future. The ideal way forward for the country’s future is to strengthen our culture of rapprochement.”