Click:CNC machining services
Istar Gözaydin, academic and social activist. On the morning of December 20, Prof. Dr. Istar
Gözaydın, a public intellectual and leading scholar on state-religion relations
in Turkey, was detained
on charges of being a member of a terrorist organization. There was no reason
to believe the accusations or any legal evidence to ground them. She was just
another voice, silenced in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt in July 15.
Not only for the established opposition, but for anyone who voices criticism of
Erdogan´s leadership these days, it is just a matter of time before they suffer
a similar fate.
Who is this lady?
Gözaydın is a prominent advocate of human rights both
through her academic research and as a social activist. Those who know her
public reputation often think of her as a liberal, but those who get to know
her in person cannot miss her inflexible commitment to rights and freedoms and her
determination to protect them. Having worked as a social scientist at various
universities in Turkey (Istanbul Technical, Dogus and Gediz among them) she had
connections
with various groups in the country yet always avoided any form of engagement
that could be described as membership. Despite maintaining a critical distance for
academic purposes she never hesitated when it came to speaking up for the
underprivileged, regardless of their ethnic, religious or other orientation.
Violence has always been her red line. “If we are not going to stand up against
capital punishment and any other kind of violence“, she had said in
an interview shortly before her arrest, “what is it that we do stand for in
life then, as people and academics of this country?” Istar Gözaydin was fired from her post at the
University during the crackdown that followed the failed coup in July and was banned
from leaving the country on September 23. Like every other critical public
figure, she was afraid, but she just couldn’t justify remaining silent in the
face of systematic violations of law. Therefore, she continued to use the democratic
platforms available to speak out.
She offered a moderate yet convincing
criticism of the post-coup crackdown. She was neither a Kurdish politician nor
a Gülen activist, yet she spoke to everyone who valued freedom. Then her time
came; the judicial arm of the Erdogan leadership decided to make an example out
of her: even the most moderate critics would not be tolerated. This was the
highly politicised atmosphere in which she was arrested: yet, her lawyer says,
she has no regrets.
What
happened in Turkey?
Turkey has never been an
easy country to understand but the failed coup attempt on July 15 of 2016 has
made it all much more complicated. It was not the first time the Turkish
military (or rather the junta within it) has attempted a coup but this latest
bid was a curious one. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the presidential and primary target
of the coup came up with contradictory statements on when and how he learned
about the coup. Extreme disorganization on the military side and a surprising
level of calm readiness on the part of the civilians, make it less-than-convincing
that a wholesale coup was attempted of which the government knew nothing in
advance. The single most obvious beneficiary of the coup was Mr. Erdogan
himself who officially
described the coup as “a gift from God”. Various members of the AKP government have publicly
declared that the coup enabled them to do things they could not otherwise have
done, that is to say, in democratic settings.
The huge crackdown after the coup
accelerated the ever-increasing authoritarianism of the Erdogan government and
further distanced Turkey from its democratic allies. More than one hundred
thousand civil servants were fired, tens of thousands of people most of whom
are teachers, doctors, engineers and bureaucrats were arrested, thousands of
NGOs and hundreds of media organs were shut down. The rest are waiting for
their time to come. An interesting way to celebrate the victory
of democracy. At this point one can´t help but ask; what worse could have ensued
should the coup have been successful? The allegations by the government were that
the coup was executed by followers of the Gülen Movement in the army in
cooperation with the western powers most intent on destabilizing Turkey;
evidence has not been forthcoming. The parliamentary committee after the coup
questioned everyone except for three key persons; the chief intelligence
officer, the chief of general staff and Mr. Erdogan himself. Again, a rather
interesting way to seek the truth.
A
country turning into a kaleidoscope
“In Turkey, we are
dramatically putting behind bars all those who struggle for freedom of
expression and criticize the government even slightly,“ said Orhan Pamuk, the
first Nobel prize laureate from Turkey, in an open
letter that warned that post-coup Turkey was “sliding into a regime of
terror”. Indeed countless leading liberals, leftists, Kurds, Gülenists and even
critical conservatives were locked up while those critics who remained at large
were rendered voiceless by the harsh witch-hunt that has also swept through
social media.
Even prior to the coup, politics in Turkey had already become a
one-man-show for all intents and purposes. In the wake of the coup, it started
turning into a kaleidoscope in which you only see the same image and hear the
same voice wherever you go. The extremity with which Mr. Erdogan has embodied
power within his own person is a text-book-example of the state of emergency
which transcends the rule of law. All the current efforts of the president’s apparatchiks
revolve around creating a new regime in Turkey that institutionalizes ongoing
(de facto) one-man-rule. Since Erdogan´s Justice and Development Party (AKP)
lacks a qualified majority in the Parliament (2/3 of all seats), he can´t get
the new Constitution endorsed in the Parliament. Therefore the AKP persuaded
the Nationalist Movement (MHP) to come on side and create a Turco-Islamist
bloc. Still, the bloc can only take the matter to a referendum likely to take
place under the state of emergency. A historic change will be made at a time of
the strictest media control and with very limited access to information that will
say anything critical about the AKP government.
The numbers support this
argument. A recent survey taken by ANAR, a Turkish research company, indicated
that 36% of the population has no idea about the content of the proposed
amendment while 28 % claim to have learned very little about it. This should
strike no one as surprising given the heavyhanded control on the media in a
country which takes
the lead for jailing journalists. The
amendments, which are being pushed vigorously by the AKP leadership, aim to
lodge unprecedented powers in the person of Mr. Erdogan. Deniz Baykal, a senior
politician and former leader of the main opposition party claims
that should the referendum secure these changes, they will make Erdogan more
powerful and less accountable than Bashar Assad of Syria. For example he will
be entitled to make statutory decrees on his own which will by-pass the
parliament, rendering his rule near-absolute. It has been reported that even
AKP MPs have little information on what they are voting for.
Boundless recrimination
Turkey has recently been
going through an unprecedented process of recrimination against whoever might
qualify as the opposition. The collective identities that don’t fit into AKP’s
unspoken yet implemented definition of acceptable citizenship; Kurds, Alevis,
liberals, seculars, socialists, social democrats and most heatedly Gülenists known
for their moderation, are the targets of this systematic and accelerating tide
of recrimination. More than one thousand educational institutions and NGOs of
Gülenists have been shut down alongside seventeen universities by the AKP
because of their alleged involvement in the coup attempt, without any court
decision.
The leader, many parliamentary members and elected mayors of the pro-Kurdish
Peoples’ Democracy Party (HPD) were in turn arrested for their alleged
link to PKK terrorism. Some leading figures in the Erdogan leadership took
this wave of denunciation to a new level by calling the main opposition a
terrorist organisation, under conditions of a generous impunity of course.
In
these circumstances, anti-western and pro-Russian Euroasianists, who are well
organized in the Turkish military and intelligence, make up the only allies of the
AKP in a marriage of convenience. They have two things in common; an appetite
for authoritarianism and hostility against the west. In the near future,
regardless of the referendum results, Turkey can only suffer from the divisions
that the Erdogan leadership has inflicted on its society.