In early August, Turkey’s southern coast was battling wildfires while the east and north were suffering through the floods. The Erdogan government’s indifference to the struggles of the people was shocking for most.
The inferno was too painful to watch. Screams of wildlife on life, people running as smoke engulf them. The images revealed open secrets. Turkey’s forestry services have regressed over time. People in towns responsible to keep the forest clean and organized gradually discarded their duties. Planes used to combat fires were left to rot, and firefighters lacked proper protective equipment and gear. Most were marching into the fires even without a helmet. The hoses were not long enough. The uneven terrain made it simply impossible for “volunteers” to control the fires.
While all this was going on, the government was not just slow, they seemed like they did not care. They were bragging about how they did not need Greek or Israeli assistance, that the air traffic would get too overwhelming if they accepted all these offers. AKP men, of Erdogan’s party, in different settings were on the record laughing, while farmers were watching their futures burn to crisp.
Erdogan visited the disaster zones, with tens of bulletproof cars and hundreds of bodyguards, and promised people more buildings. Buildings to be made by shoddy AKP cronies, those that crumble in the next flood or in a small-scale earthquake. He promised them they could borrow money from the banks. He also played Santa Claus, tossing tea packages from the top of his fancy bus to the heads of people. It was the same rhetoric in flood zones, which vote overwhelmingly AKP; and fire zones that now have opposition mayors. The only difference was that Erdogan shrewdly accused the opposition mayors of their failure to combat the fires. The mayors along with the press were most of the time banned from the fire zones by Erdogan’s decrees. Because the fewer people know the better.
AKP pundits also initiated a campaign blaming the terrorists for the fires. They claimed to have evidence, but we have yet to see it. Overnight vigilantes build roadblocks, asking for government-issued ID cards. If they did not like your birthplace, if they suspected you could be Kurdish, well you might as well be a terrorist.
Soon the hashtag #HelpTurkey started trending on social media. Now Turkish state is chasing down to prosecute those who asked for help for humiliating the state, because Turkey is strong!
Is it? Yes, and no. On the one hand, when you watch the chaos and anarchy during the fires and the floods, the helpless people struggling to survive, and the mob taking over the streets, you would say these are images of a failed state. Most opposition politicians and independent pundits said so. “Erdogan has lost it, these fires will cost him the election, no one trusts the government anymore. This is the end of Erdogan’s story. The situation shows that state agencies are incapacitated.” These observations are correct but incomplete. They are what is visible to us on the surface and what one more time turns Erdogan and his Ikhwani base into victims. And therefore, it is wrong.
Turkey is a strong state when it comes to promptly finding and punishing dissent, in the form of a tweet. In the last three years, since Turkey has switched to the presidential system, over 29,000 people were prosecuted for offending Erdogan. This is just against Erdogan. Thousands more added to this for offending his family members, his close confidants, and ministers.
Turkey is a strong state when it comes to the privatization of lucrative state-owned businesses to Erdogan cronies. Law enforcement won’t help with the fires, but they will assist the mining company cut trees, by arresting the local protesters.
Turkey is a strong state because special forces will blast through a college student’s apartment because a student joined in a peaceful protest on campus. This is terrorist activity in the eyes of the government. But an ISIS suspect would be brought into questioning with great respect, no handcuffs.
Scores of young Afghani men, with big smiles on their faces, march right in from the Iranian border in broad daylight. When people dare to question porous borders and lack of government oversight in illicit entries, its interior minister will boldly state one of Turkey’s strengths is its ability to control the borders.
In sum, the argument over Turkey being a weak or strong state is irrelevant. Turkey is a full-blown authoritarian state, where the Islamist government enjoys a lavish lifestyle. Turkish president, ministers, and even directors of agencies all own private planes, but they can blatantly tell the country there are no planes to extinguish the fires. The day that the fires erupted they can sign a new decree, lifting all oversight to commercialize state lands.
The nanny state in Turkey is working to protect the interests of its own cronies, not those of the public. And the public now asks us to vote for the presidential system because of its promises of efficiency. There is no good in crying over spilled milk. It is efficient and prompt in benefiting the president and his men. That was the silent part of the promise. When Turkish voters handed over their nascent democratic institutions to the dream of efficient one-man rule, they should have known that they can no longer ask questions or hold their government accountable.
Erdogan’s public support may be decreasing; however, this does not mean his political power is eroding. As long as there is no group more ambitious and hungrier for political power than Turkish Islamists, Erdogan will continue to rule!
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