Riots have broken out in the streets of Turkey, as the people of Istanbul are fighting to keep Gezi Park from being uprooted and turned into a shopping centre.
TAKSIM SQUARE in Turkey is Istanbul’s equivalent to Cairo’s Tahir Square, now the epicentre of demonstrations triggered by construction plans for a new shopping mall in one of the city’s few remaining green spaces.
What started as a small sit-in has morphed into a major series of protests. Turkey’s Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, said this was due to ‘excessive force’ by the police. But these protests reflect, in part, the deep ideological polarisation between secular, liberal-minded Turks, and the more pious Turks, representing a quarter and two-thirds of the population respectively (based on the 2011 general election results).
Secular Turks complain that the Islamist-rooted government is intolerant of criticism and the diversity of lifestyles. Mr Erdogan’s robust and muscular stance with demonstrators has reinforced those perceptions.
A typical example cited by detractors is the government’s recent legislative enactment of tight restrictions on the sale and promotion of alcohol, even though the Turkish government’s Household Budget Surveys estimates that only 6 per cent of Turkish households are alcohol drinkers. According to the Turkish economist Emre Deliveli, less than 1.5 per cent of car accidents in 2012 were alcohol related.
At the same time, critics are unhappy at the rapid pace of urbanisation in Turkey’s metropolitan cities. Erdogan is planning to build a third airport, a third Bosphorus bridge and a canal linking the Black Sea with the Sea of Marmara – all of which are likely to destroy millions of trees and a delicate ecosystem in northern Istanbul. A staggering $4.7 billion was spent on ambitious projects last year in Istanbul alone.
Given the litany of grievances and the confrontational nature of Turkish politics, the raging protests may have come as no surprise. They coincide with a rapidly slowing economy that is likely to witness moderate growth rates (at best) for the foreseeable future. Turkey desperately needs a programme of structural reforms if its economy is to fruitfully grow. The Turkish government, however, is not expected to undertake major reform initiatives anytime soon, especially since the campaigning for the local and presidential elections in 2014 and the parliamentary elections in 2015 are already underway.
Despite the rising emotions sweeping Turkey, this is not equivalent to the Arab Spring that led to the toppling of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Unlike Egypt and other Arab countries, Turkey is a functioning, albeit, incomplete democracy, and has been since 1950.
Mr Erdogan received a resounding mandate of almost half the vote in the last general elections in 2011. He still remains by far the most popular politician in Turkey, while the opposition is widely perceived as being weak and ineffective.
The global media coverage of the riots and the disproportionate security response has dented the international image of Erdogan and the governing Justice and Development Party as a progressive force in Turkey’s political scene. Nevertheless, the ultimate determinant of Erdogan’s staying power will be the state of the Turkish economy rather than anti-government demonstrations.
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