How could the AKP radicalize so fast? And what opportunities remain the opposition to win the elections 2019?
In purely formal, the Turkish state prosident Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be at the destination straight. Due to the string reform adopted in a controversial referendum, not only can he wipe all power in the state in his hands bundling, but also the ability of a vamped parliamentary democracy from the table. Purely legally stands the elections in 2019, with which the reform achieved more.
But this little detail does not seem to mean two weeks after the folk decision. Already in early May Erdogan, who actually had to be neutral as a state prassident, returns to his party AKP. On 21. May he should replace Minister Prosident Binali Yildirim as a party leader. This allows the reform – but only in two years.
The Turkey was once, above all due to the reforms of the AKP, a world-mounted example of an Islamic liberalism, the prosperity and democratic basic principles brought with him. But within a few years, the clock was turned back for decades. Today’s "New Turkey", As Erdogan calls her, there is a state without a separation of powers, without press and freedom of expression. A repressive state that lets his critics to tens of thousands disappear in cogs in which is tortured again. A state whose once thriving economy is on the abyss and which is increasingly isolated internationally.
But how could it come so far? And which options remain the opposition, if you might turn the leaf in 2019?
To the question of how it could come after the long reform course for the radicalization of the ACP, there are different explanations. Far widespread is the catch that Erdogan never had anything else in mind from the beginning than the luckless seizure that is currently being controlled at its high point. Unforgotten is that speech at the end of 1997 in SIRT, where he quoted a poem of Ziya Gokalp, in which it is called: "Democracy is only the train we rise until we are at the destination. The mosques are our barracks, the minarette of our bayonets, the domes our helmets and the credans our soldiers."
From today’s perspective, this seems programmatic: first ride Erdogan a modernist course; He maintains the Laizistic basic order of Kemalism, but makes the religious but always small constituents to win them for themselves. At the same time, he bends the country, benefits from the good world economic situation and the weak dollar, so that he can form the Turkey to the Global Player, while he ties with social reforms and money presents the previously underpressant classes of the workers and rural dwellers, without the existing elite all too much. When he believes the majority of the population behind him, he puts on the war against everyone who still stands in the way.
Erdogan has radicalized the discharge on the part of the EU?
But this interpretation has a look. Although the large part of the reforms realized in the early years in the reforms of the EU in the context of the accession negotiations. But, that’s what the accession negotiations said state-of-EU Commissioner Gunter Verheugen on the 5. Marz 2017 in PolitTalk at Anne wants: "Turkey was the country with the large reform dynamics." In 2005, however, in "important European countries" The politics changed, and suddenly the message to Turkey have succeeded: "You can do what you want, in the end we do not want you, because you do not go to Europe. You are another culture. Here I see a causal connection. That did that, as Europe, we lost the influence on the internal development of Turkey."
The keyword was the "privileged partnership". Before that, he had to talk to Erdogan and advise against certain projects. That worked then because Erdogan really believed that Turkey has opportunities to be included in the EU. Verheugen criticizes the policy of the EU against Turkey as "dishonest".
If one follows this perspective, it can be amed that Erdogan was by no means only behind the receiving milliaries from Brussel, but actually aimed at joining as a full member. But however, the reforms had to continue and have stocks. A repressive course, such as today’s, even a longing of the parliament, which Parliament has largely dismissed or the illegal persecution and imprisonment of dissenting goods as EU member has not been possible. In the Ruckschau one has to ame that the ultimately negative attitude of the EU of the Turkey has mimicly mimic for many of the current misstatements.
The question is whether the Gokalp quote ever mirrored Erdogan’s personal attitude or whether he betrayed it from Blober tactics to gather a certain clientele behind him. The latter is quite probable. That Erdogan is so often titled as Islamist has to do above all with his self-inspection. Under the line, the religion seems to be more show as a real conviction with him. So he was able to confess to Laizism in the early days of the ACP and today cooperate with radicalal groups in Syria, if he believes that he has a benefit. Behind it stuck strategy and power policy.