Erdogan tells children to stop drawing rainbows in anti-LGBT outburst
Unable to sustain Israel-bashing through the holy month, Turkish president finds new favorite enemy in children’s drawings.
By PINAR TREMBLAYA rainbow coloured placard in the colors of the LGBT flag [Illustrative](photo credit: REUTERS)
Just when you think you can no longer be surprised, Turkish President Recep Erdogan does it again. Even the COVID-19 pandemic can’t stop the drama-loving leader's angry outbursts against his new favorite Ramadan enemy: the LGBTQ community.It all started with the pandemic-controlling measures. Schools transitioned to remote learning. To cheer up the young ones, teachers urged them to paint rainbows and hang them up on their windows.The rainbows angered radical Islamists in Turkey, as media outlets started blaming the LGBTQ community for supposed efforts to poison the youth. The Turkish Education Ministry promptly reacted to save the kids from the tentacles of LGBTQ entrapment, telling schools not to be fooled by perverts and that the kids had to stop drawing rainbows.Even before gay pride marches were banned, and cafes and bars were shut down, the LGBTQ community had been in isolation. They are the ones who know the government-funded hatred hurts the youth. They wanted to show the public their own childhood photos on social media and share their pains of growing up. People who are not members of the community then began showing solidarity in a spontaneous “Gay Lives Matter” movement.On the first Friday of Ramadan, Turkey’s notorious state religious body generated an anti-gay sermon to be read in all mosques. It said the gay community was the cause of spreading disease and corruption of souls. Erdogan backed the anti-gay sermon, saying targeting the chief of the religious authority was the same as targeting the state. And we all knew that criticizing the state could easily turn your world upside down and might even land you in jail for years without ever seeing a day in court.LGBTQ-phobia is deadly in Turkey. Now that Erdogan has almost run out of enemies in the region, he is struggling to channel the anger of his ultra-machismo Islamist base. Erdogan’s favorite Ramadan targets used to be the West and Israel, but those are no longer lucrative options. Erdogan’s fast-declining popularity among Arabs and his unkept promises of glory in the Muslim world makes him look for local enemies more intensely.THE PANDEMIC’S toll in Turkey has primarily affected the economy – which was on life support before the disease spread all around the country. Years of nepotistic investments on mega-projects, which were to put Erdogan in the leadership of the Muslim world, a position that former Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser once hoped to attain. However, the mega-projects have now become a major killer of the Turkish economy.Erdogan promised a huge number of customers for all these mega-projects, like the third airport in Istanbul, bridges, fast-tracked sections of highways, and even hospitals. Five private companies have built ineffective and lavish projects and are now running those operations. If a certain threshold of customers is not met at these projects, the Turkish treasury is to make up the income shortfall.The projects promised such high numbers that even on the busiest days they never came close to meeting their targets. Now with global compulsory isolation, the cost of these projects for public funds has increased significantly.We do not yet know the exact extent of the damage, but sober economists have been warning for years that these mega-projects are doomed for bankruptcy. The pandemic has just brought this inevitable failure closer.
To make matters even worse for Erdogan, the majority of the wealth and domestic production rests in big cities, which are now in the hands of the opposition party’s mayors. Since they won elections by large margins in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir and Adana, the government has been thinly slicing the edges of local governments’ executive powers. These powers were limited to begin with, but are now scrutinized in an effort that could help the locals.That sounds odd, I know. The purpose of the mayors is to serve their cities. Ankara is on a mission to prevent these opposition-party mayors from serving their constituents.For example, during the current pandemic, many of these local governments have organized donation campaigns that feature transparent funding and activities. They distributed free masks for those taking public transportation, ran soup kitchens, even gave small stipends to those in need.Yet even before the pandemic, 20% of Turkish population was below the poverty threshold. Last year, AKP mayors transferred the reins of the Ankara and Istanbul municipalities, with high amounts of debt, to the opposition’s control. So a donation campaign was necessary.To the anger of Ankara, a significant number of people donated. Erdogan declared these efforts an attempt to create a state within the state. He then suspended all the funds and confiscated the money in the national treasury.The Adana municipality attempted to build a field hospital for emergencies, however, Erdogan said that the project was all a show, and shut it down. Those distributing bread were labeled as traitors to the state.An Islamist government banned a local municipality from distributing free bread and soup during Ramadan. As a result, the organizers started selling bread for a penny.These mind-boggling examples reflect the bitter truths about Turkey. The Turkish economy and its national institutions are fast corroding as a result of runaway nepotism and corruption.The government is becoming increasingly less efficient in producing solutions to people’s needs. Instead, it has now shifted to blocking any opposition figure from reaching out to people in dire need. Erdogan is determined to appear as if he is fighting on behalf of the people. Losing on multiple fronts must have finally exhausted him, so instead he is now fighting children’s rainbow drawings!The writer is a visiting scholar of political science in Los Angeles at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and a columnist for Al-Monitor.com.