"You opened the door to the rise of democracy, equality, and freedom," Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu said following his re-election. "You ignited hope at the ballot box."
Turkey's war on Afrin is an attack not only on Kurdish self-determination, but on democracy and women's liberation in the Middle East.
The narrowness and dubious nature of Erdogan’s electoral “success” is unlikely to make him more conciliatory and, going by his actions after failing to get the majority he wanted in a general election in 2015, he will become even more aggressive in stamping out opposition.
Mr. Erdogan deliberately linked the Gülen movement to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which the Turkish army has attacked in its bases in south-eastern Turkey and in Iraq. To call both the Gülen movement and the PKK ‘terrorists’ is a convenient way to sweep up all Erdogan enemies into one target and use the coup — a “gift from God” — as the opportunity to go after them with vehemence.
With his Justice and Development Party (AKP) controlling a sizable majority in parliament, Erdoğan has been steadily increasing his grip on power, with police raids on opposition media, the jailing of independent journalists on trumped-up charges, severe repression in Kurdish-populated areas and arrests of even moderate non-violent Kurdish leaders for alleged terrorist ties, the undermining of the independent judiciary, and the arrests of political opponents.
In the June 7 election, Erdogan’s AKP lost its absolute majority in the legislature. The defeat was mainly due to a breakthrough by the Kurdish-led, leftist, People’s Democratic Party (HDP) that took 13.1 percent of the vote and won 80 seats, seats that in the past usually went to the AKP. Almost before the final tallies were announced, Erdogan moved to prevent the formation of a government and force another election.
Backdrop to Turkey's elections: Turkish workers have seen their unions dismantled under the AKP government, and many have lost collective bargaining rights. The percentage of unionized workers fell from 57.5 in 2003 to just 9.68 percent today. The Syrian war is not popular with the average Turk. The Army opposes any involvement in Syria, because it sees nothing ahead but a quagmire that would ally Turkey with the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.
In short, from Washington’s point of view, Erdogan has gone off the reservation.
The unrest gripping Turkey has less to do with headscarves and Islam than with politics and economics, fueled by a growing discomfort with the AKP’s policies of privatization, its push to centralize authority in the hands of the country’s executive branch, and its silencing of the media. The three are not unrelated.
Mohamed Mursi, though elected president of Egypt, is no democrat. Democracy for him is a bus ride; when he gets to his stop, he's getting off. Egypt's leading left-wing politician, Hamdeen Sabahi, leader of the Popular Current movement who came third in last year's presidential election, said the army had implemented the will of the people and was not seeking power for itself.
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