Not long ago, Turkey seemed optimistic about the future. But after clampdowns by strongman president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the rise of fanaticism and the Syrian war breaking out on its doorstep, the country is bitterly divided

Ankara, the city where I spent most of my childhood and early youth, is not only the capital of modern Turkey, and the centre of Turkish politics and the military. It is also home to a vast population – students, white-collar professionals, human rights activists – with a secularist worldview and liberal lifestyle. It was here that a bomb detonated at rush hour on 17 February near the Turkish parliament, killing 28 and wounding more than 60 people. This latest tragedy is yet another in a series of terror attacks that rocked the country since last summer.

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When the news of the blast broke, I was sitting at a table with friends in Istanbul, in a small, bohemian flat overlooking the Bosphorus. On the walls were paintings by Middle Eastern artists and, facing them, a huge portrait of David Bowie that had been imprinted on the kitchen cabinets – an illustration of the many colours and conflicts in Turkish identity. There was a brief silence shattered by a plethora of questions. How could the Turkish intelligence service be so weak as to allow this to happen next door to military barracks and government buildings? Who could be behind the atrocity (later a Kurdish militant group, Tak, assumed responsibility)? Would Turkey manage to pull itself together or would it end up like Syria? Gradually, we went back to our dinner and to other subjects, but inevitably returned to politics, our mood vacillating between grief, sorrow and depression.

“Lebanon used to be like this at the time of the civil war,” said an Istanbul-based artist. “They would talk about death and love, funerals and weddings in the same breath. They would be crying one minute, laughing the next, and then cry a bit more. They could not hold on to an emotion for too long.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Photograph: Yasin Bulbul/AP

“Once we were the envy of the entire Muslim world,” said our host. “We were modern, westernised. Every year, Pakistanis, Iraqis, Iranians … they would come to Turkey to breathe freedom. Not any more. Nobody envies us now.”

One thing is clear: we Turks are collectively depressed. We have become an unhappy nation. Not that long ago, it seemed almost possible that Turkey would join the EU, make a new pluralistic constitution and strengthen its commitment to liberal democracy. The country was regarded as a role model that could bridge Europe and the Middle East. Western democracy and cultural Islam would coexist here peacefully, successfully. Not even the staunch advocates of the government express such dreams any more.

When countries are plagued by terrorism and fear of instability, it is vital that there remains a strong sense of solidarity around shared values. But such national unity does not exist in Turkey. The polarisation that skyrocketed after the 2013 riots – against the destruction of the Gezi park and the increasing authoritarianism of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Islamic-conservative Justice and Development party (AKP) – has reached such a critical level that people do not feel as if they belong in the same society any more. In past decades, Turkey’s splits were more visible: secularists and religious, Turks and Kurds, Alevis and Sunnis, leftists and nationalists, and class differences. Today, things are far more complicated. The main dividing line is now between those who are pro-Erdoğan versus those who are anti-Erdoğan. Many in the former camp regard those in the latter camp as “pawns of international powers”. The moment anyone speaks or writes critically, they are labelled a traitor.

The moment anyone speaks or writes critically, they are labelled a traitor

Turkey is going through a dark, seemingly endless tunnel. The first half of the population reacts to this tunnel in two major ways: surrender (accepting that they live in a turbulent region, leaving things in the hands of Allah) or aggressiveness (holding external and internal enemies responsible). In the meantime, the other half of the population has two responses: deliberate de-politicisation and over-politicisation. The urban, modern Turks either go around doing the same things they always did, talking about children’s schools, gluten-free diets and shopping malls. Or else they harp on obsessively about politics. Hence Turkey is not only deeply, hopelessly polarised. It is also divided into invisible ghettoes – islands of anger, islands of indifference, islands of obedience to central authority.

True, the country’s democracy was never great to begin with. But today’s quagmire is new and untested in several ways. First, there was never a time when national politics and regional politics were so dangerously intertwined. Today, what is happening beyond the borders has a direct impact on what will happen inside the borders. The blend of turbulent domestic politics with turbulent regional politics is a toxic cocktail. Second, the present turmoil triggers a profound sense of deja vu and hopelessness. Many people – Turks and Kurds – are worried that we are going back to the 1990s, a time of political violence, economic turmoil and frightening escalation in Kurdish insurgency, which left thousands killed, wounded and displaced. What is different this time, however, is how despair comes in the wake of years of optimism. Kurds constitute roughly 15% of the Turkish population, amounting to between 10 million and 12 million people. The biggest mistake in the past was to flame the fans of Turkish nationalism and authoritarianism and to invest heavily in military measures in the hope that this would solve the problem. This is a society of collective amnesia. Without memory, it is bound to make the same mistakes again and again.

If history is a weak subject, so is geography. One huge mistake on the part of Erdoğan’s government, which returned to power with an outright majority in November’s election, was to underestimate the complexity of the crisis in Syria. Ertuğrul Günay, a former minister, said in February that he warned then prime minister Erdoğan years ago about not getting too involved in Syria and the need to remain neutral. Erdoğan told him not to worry, the Syrian war would surely end in six months. Five years have passed since then with no resolution in sight.

There are more than 2.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey. Only a small portion lives in refugee camps. The rest are located in Anatolian towns and major cities. Of these, a substantial number are on the streets and in public parks. As one drives across Istanbul, there are Syrian kids at every traffic light, begging for food and money. In one of the city’s most affluent neighbourhoods, Nişantaşi, Syrian youngsters wait in front of luxury stores. They do not have a language problem because the customers shopping at these expensive outlets are mostly rich Arabs. Local Turks have been visibly affected by the economic instability. The consumer confidence index is at its lowest.

Then there are things we rarely talk about. The increase in religious fanaticism goes hand in hand with an increase in sexism. In 2015, Turkey’s constitutional court announced that civil marriage would no longer be required for couples who were married in a religious ceremony. This unfortunate and unacceptable decision made it easier for families to marry off their daughters before they reached the legal age. The outcries of women’s organisations have been ignored. The ministry of women and family was turned into the ministry of family and social policy. The dropping of the word “women” was more than symbolic. Turkey is increasingly becoming more conservative and patriarchal, and a harder place for women’s rights.

Since the Syrian crisis erupted, the number of child brides has escalated. An alarming number of Turkish men are marrying Syrian women as their second or third wives. Even though polygamy is illegal in Turkey, the practice is not discouraged. Nezahat Bölge, a woman’s rights advocate and lawyer, says Syrian girls aged 15 and 16 are married to 50- to 60-year-old Turkish men as their second wives. “Some of these girls are married in return for a golden bracelet or a ring,” says a jeweller in Kilis, a city near the Syrian border. Across Turkey, domestic violence continues to spiral. Although a recent government report admitted that around 40% of Turkish women experience sexual violence, the AKP does not see the fight against gender violence as a priority.

Turkey’s foreign policy is now shaped by ideology rather than the art of diplomacy.

Turkey’s foreign policy is now shaped by ideology rather than the art of diplomacy. In its desire to become a major power player, if not the leading force in the Middle East, the government overemphasises a Sunni identity. Instead, it should have remained a secular, modern and globally integrated nation-state within an international community. Thus, from a “zero-conflict with neighbours” policy the country plummeted into “clashes with almost every neighbour”.

It is yet another moment of deja vu. Generations of people in Turkey have grown up believing they were surrounded by enemies on all sides. “A Turk’s only friend is another Turk,” they were told. In the early 2000s, this paranoiac ultranationalistic rhetoric seemed to be on the wane. But now it is back with a vengeance. Once again the dominant narrative is about how the country is surrounded by enemies both outside and within. The very words Armenian, Jewish, Christian or Alevi are used as accusations for defamation of character. A pro-government paper targeted Selin Sayek Böke, spokeswoman of the main opposition party the Republican People’s party (CHP), claiming she had been secretly baptised. In a powerfully written and courageous public letter, Böke announced that she had both Muslim and Christian ancestry – a fact she was proud of. I wish the rest of the society could follow her example and embrace its cosmopolitan past and cultural and ethnic diversity instead of succumbing to a dangerous ultranationalism and equally dangerous Islamisation. But Turkey has become too isolated. It is demoralising to see the ideological shift from being a country that aspires to be an EU member to a country that sees Saudi Arabia as its only ally.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Police inspect the blast site after an explosion during a peace march in Ankara last October. Photograph: Defne Karadeniz/Getty images

The biggest challenge awaiting the country is the failure of the Turkish-Kurdish peace process. Both the AKP government and the Kurdish group, the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) must be criticised for the revival of militarism and violence. Since “the Kurdish problem” erupted in the 1980s, more than 40,000 people have died. Military operations and hawkish policies have not solved anything. Nor will they be the answer this time. What we need is peace and reconciliation, but neither side is ready to acknowledge this.

When the prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, speaking in The Hague, said Turkey was a safe haven for foreign investors, his words were pulled apart on social media. Burak Bekdil, a columnist for Hürriyet Daily News, wrote, “a safe haven that is also fertile ground for a multitude of terror groups?” He added: “Several cities, towns and districts in parts of this ‘safe haven’ look like Gaza or Aleppo.”

While politicians are painting a rosy picture of a gloomy reality, Islamic radicalisation remains a grave danger. Most of the IS-related terror attacks in Turkey have been carried out by Turkish citizens radicalised in Syria. More and more young people are becoming prey to fundamentalism on the other side of the border.

Meanwhile, the security forces seem more focused on hunting critical journalists, academics, cartoonists and writers than clamping down on terrorists. As party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the government is obliged to respect freedom of expression under the European convention on human rights. But Turkey’s record on freedom of speech has taken a nosedive. In a recent report, PEN International said: “The law contains very worrying provisions that empower the police to conduct searches without prior authorisation, detain suspects for up to 48 hours without the authorisation of a prosecutor.” Since the day Erdoğan was elected president in August 2014, more than 1,300 citizens have been prosecuted for insulting him. In the past, based on outdated draconian laws, writers and journalists would be sued for things such as “insulting Turkishness” or “insulting the army”. Nowadays it is all about insulting one person: Erdoğan.

In January, more than 1,200 academics from 90 Turkish universities signed a petition criticising the government’s war on the PKK in the south-east. “We will not be a partner to this crime,” they said. Erdoğan’s response has been fierce. He accused the academics of “high treason”. Both the higher education board and Turkey’s prosecutors immediately launched an investigation into the signatories. Since then, some academics have lost their jobs, others have been arrested.

“From tomorrow onwards, I will stop reading Turkish papers,” says another guest at our Ankara dinner table. “I’ll pretend I am living in Zurich. To keep my sanity when everything is going wrong.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A Syrian refugee and her children in Akcakale, in Sanliurfa province, Turkey, June 18, 2015. Photograph: Umit Bektas/REUTERS

But she knows that the first thing she will do the next morning is to get the papers. Not only that; she will check the internet and her phone several times a day to see what else has happened in the country.

Turkey’s democrats are feeling lonely and depressed. When all outlets for critical opinion have been shut down from above, a climate of intimidation and paranoia dominates the land. But fear is not, and has never been, conducive to stability. The overall feeling among Turkey’s liberals and democrats is that the west, for the sake of keeping the refugees away from European soil, is ready to forsake democracy. In a moving letter addressed to Angela Merkel, the prominent editor of the daily Cumhuriyet, Can Dündar, reminded European leaders of the need to remember that democracy, freedom of speech and human rights should be the top priority in their negotiations with Turkey. On being released from prison last month Dündar, who was arrested after publishing a report alleging that Erdoğan’s government tried to illegally smuggle arms into Syria, said the ruling had opened the way, not just for them, “but for all our colleagues in terms of press freedoms and freedom of expression”.

Turkey’s ruling politicians have long confused “democracy” with “majoritarianism”. As important as the ballot box is, democracy is not about the number of votes political parties manage to get. Democracy is also about rule of law, separation of powers, women’s rights, minority rights, cultural and political diversity, media freedom, freedom of speech, and the right to talk and write without being intimidated. By this universal rule of thumb, Turkey, instead of trying to get involved in Syria or the Middle East, should urgently look within.