June 10, 2013

Taylan Acar is a leading member of the Teaching Assistants' Association, the union of graduate employees at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Before moving to Madison for his studies, he was a revolutionary socialist activist in Istanbul and member of the Education and Science Workers' Union. Here, he provides the background to the political situation that gave rise to Turkey's rebellion against the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

WHEN I was participating in the Wisconsin Uprising against Gov. Scott Walker in winter 2011 as a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a member of the Teaching Assistants' Association, the Arab Revolutions were also unfolding. I asked myself: "Why not Turkey?" I was lamenting the fact that Turkey remained calm while the Middle East, North Africa and Europe were being shaken by popular uprisings and resistance.

I only needed to wait for two more years for the Turkish people to rise up against the oppressive policies of their government. The uprising started in the last days of May, and it is still ongoing. The Turkish people have finally begun a popular uprising similar to those in the Arab world and across the globe. It has spread from the Taksim's Gezi Park to other parts of Istanbul, then to other big cities like Ankara, İzmir and Bursa, and then to the entire country. As one comrade put it on its first day, this uprising gave us all a little taste of Tahrir.

In this article, my goal is to draw a picture of the political environment in which the current uprising is unfolding. To do this, I first analyze the character of the AKP regime as a staunch neoliberal government, becoming increasingly repressive after taking over the state bureaucracy. Then I provide a short overview of the ways in which the policies of the AKP have affected Turkish society, leaving a variety of discontented groups whose grievances underlie today's uprising.

Turkish police fire tear gas into a crowd of protesters on a street near Taksim Square (Alan Hilditch)

Turkey is a parliamentary democracy, with free elections--this system was interrupted by several military interventions, the last in 1980. The ruling Justice and Development Party, after a self-proclaimed break from its religious fundamentalist roots, first came to power after the 2002 election. The party steadily increased its votes in two successive elections, winning 50 percent of the popular vote in 2011. The AKP also controls the vast majority of municipalities.

The AKP won its hegemony and electoral invulnerability in the past decade when it managed to sweep the secular Kemalist elite--so named in reference to Turkey's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, after the founding of Turkey as a republic a century ago and the country's dominant political force since then--from the ranks of both the civilian and military bureaucracy.

I will discuss the impact of this on the unfolding mobilization in more detail below. For now, I should emphasize that any analysis of Turkish politics must take into account the character of the AKP's rise to power and its regime. It was a movement with strong popular support for ousting the traditional Republican elite, which then decimated its opposition through the use of an aggressive law-enforcement apparatus. If revolutionaries cannot understand the ways in which the AKP exercises power, they will not be able to develop the necessary tactics and strategies to bring it down.

AS MANY people have already pointed out, the ostensible reason for the uprising is the demolition of a public space to build the replica of an old Ottoman barracks, a condominium complex and a shopping mall. But the notion that Taksim Gezi Park is a rare oasis in the center of Istanbul is incomplete. In fact, there is another and much larger green space around half-a-mile away from Gezi Park. Another forest around the same size is located within two miles of Taksim Square.

The catalyst of the Gezi mobilization was the impending destruction of Gezi Park, but it expressed anger with a much broader attempt by the AKP to unilaterally seize and privatize public land. The plan to build a third bridge on the Bosphorus and a gigantic mosque on the Çamlıca Hill, the evictions of poor families from the neighborhoods around the Golden Horn, large gentrification plans for the entirety of Istanbul: all are attempts to remake the city into a space under the hegemony of the AKP.

Taksim--being the center of cultural life and nightlife, Istanbul's art district and a center for progressive political organizations, such as socialists, feminists, LGBT rights groups and Kurdish organizations--is everything that Erdogan despises. He even ordered a ban on street-seating, much to the chagrin of owners of bars and coffee shops.

In addition, Taksim Square is perceived by the left and other progressive movements as a symbolic space for celebrating May Day, ever since the bloody May Day celebration in 1977 when security forces opened fire and unleashed their brutality on a demonstration of half a million--some 40 people were killed and hundreds were injured. Remaking Taksim Square and its surroundings is therefore a cornerstone of the AKP's plan for the transformation of the country.

Police brutality only inspired more people to join in the demonstrations, which initially grew in Istanbul before spreading throughout the country. Police violence is nothing new in Turkey--the AKP government itself has been operating this way against all democratic opposition for the past six years, after its second electoral victory in 2007. May Day demonstrators, striking workers, student protesters on almost every single college campus in the country, community organizations opposing evictions and, of course, Kurdish activists are often brutalized by the riot police during peaceful demonstrations.

What's more, not only the police but the entire judicial apparatus of the state has been deployed to suppress opposition to the AKP government. Turkey's prisons are full of political prisoners: students, journalists, unionists and community activists, all waiting for their day in court.

As for, arguably, the two most significant forces of opposition to the AKP government, Kurdish activists and members of the secular Kemalist camp have been subjected to mass arrests--the former accused of terrorism and the latter of conspiracy to overthrow the government. In their political trials, what happens in the courtrooms is mere theatrics for a verdict that has already been reached.

The AKP government's reach over the state apparatus and Erdogan's one-man style of politics define the structure of power in Turkey, putting the principle of separation of powers--central to bourgeois democracies--in jeopardy.

The AKP's influence is also felt in the media, demonstrated by the press' humiliating failure in covering the Gezi mobilization. Turkey has never had a free and independent mainstream media, but under the AKP's rule, freedom of the press has become still more severely restricted. Turkey not only became the country with the most imprisoned journalists in the world, but the government reshaped the mainstream media according to its own will, with Erdogan publicly ordering media bosses to weed out "harmful journalists." One by one, reporters critical of the government lost their jobs.

The AKP government's arrogance in power has also been reflected in a foreign policy under which Erdogan has started voicing his imperial appetite toward the Middle East and Northern Africa. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu has been the architect of a policy that has been described as neo-Ottomanism.

THIS IS the context within which the current mobilization is unfolding in Turkey.

Unfortunately, the full repressive weight of the AKP is either overlooked or misrepresented by most of the domestic and international analysts. Yes, Turkey holds free and fair elections, and yes, the AKP received half of the popular vote in the last election. However, Turkish "democracy" has increasingly entailed suppression of legitimate political protest and opposition to the AKP.

As he has made clear in his statements since the beginning of the demonstrations, Erdogan, with the support of the media, reduces democracy to elections, and he claims to represent "national will" based on the outcome of the last vote. Hence, the dismissive attitude toward the protests and the government's brutal crackdown.

Thus, there is a large group of people in Turkey concerned about their democratic rights. It is true that among the protesters are elements of the secular urban middle class that fear the further hold of Islamism on the country, that are disgruntled by the elimination of the secular Kemalist elite from the state bureaucracy, and that interpret every move of the government as a disgrace to founding President Mustafa Kemal's republic. This section of society laments the loss of the Army's power and the hundreds of military officers who rot in prisons after the AKP's rise.

Today, this group still constitutes the vast majority of the base of the Republican People's Party (CHP). They can be heard to chant "We are the soldiers of Mustafa Kemal" on the streets during the demonstrations. That's why Erdogan dismisses the mobilization as yet another conspiracy of the coup-plotting CHP, in cahoots with the "marginal groups."

But the much larger component of the protests has been Turkish youth, hitherto politically unorganized and presumed to be apolitical. In the past 10 years, these youth have been feeling constrained politically under the heavy-handed rule of the AKP and under pressure from its conservative social policies. Faced with growing income inequality in Turkey, they don't see the booming economy that Erdogan claims in his speeches. And every time they have expressed their grievances, they have been teargassed, persecuted and silenced.

According to accounts circulating on social media and what I'm told by friends and colleagues in Turkey, youth constitute the backbone of this movement, and their discontent is rooted in social and economic issues. Young people were at the forefront of the protests that initially claimed Gezi Park in opposition to privatization, and they are leading in the fight to reclaim the streets from the attacks of the riot police.

In addition, socialist and other left-wing parties and organizations are major participants of the uprising. These groups are very weak electorally, but played a central role in the initial organization of the uprising. They also have significant opportunities for growth in numbers and strength as the uprising continues.

In the past decade, feminists and LGBT rights groups have reached an unprecedented visibility and activism in Turkish political arena. Labor unions have also continued struggling and are engaging in workplace actions, though less frequently than 10 years ago. Airline workers have been on strike since May 15, and the steelworkers were considering going on strike this summer. All these forces have been participating in the uprising. The involvement of relatively more experienced activists is certainly an important advantage.

FINALLY, THE repressive response from police has had a unifying effect on people from a variety of political backgrounds. The leadership of the far-right Nationalist Action Party denounced the protests, yet some nationalist youth joined the street battles to fight against the police, with whom the nationalist movement had earlier associated itself.

Tweets that describe revolutionaries protecting nationalist youth from tear gas during afternoon prayers, pictures of youth on the barricades wearing rival soccer teams' jerseys--these are powerful expressions of solidarity with a call to the arms to the entire Turkish population. Except for the labor uprising in 1989, the Gezi demonstrations are the first mass mobilizations in Turkey since the military coup of 1980, which decimated the political opposition of the entire country. The Turkish people have woken up unified and strong after a very long hiatus--against a prime minister and government that they see as authoritarian.

I use the term Turkish intentionally, because the Kurdish movement, for its part, has been engaged in a long struggle against the Turkish state, through both democratic political means and guerrilla struggle. That's why the co-president of the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) was not unjustified in his initial skepticism toward the uprising in statements on June 1. Not only has the Kurdish movement faced widespread animosity and even physical violence from the Turkish majority for many years, but the nationalist tone among protesters was understandably worrisome--although examples of this, it should be emphasized, are not common.

More importantly, the uprising began at a time when the Kurdish guerrilla group, Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), had reached an agreement with the AKP government towards ending the armed conflict. The BDP is seeking house arrest, if not release, for PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, who has been living in solitary confinement since his capture in 1999. Political destabilization in Turkey therefore has the potential to rupture the agreement between the Kurdish movement and the AKP-led Turkish state.

Despite this, however, the second statement of the BDP co-president--only days later, on June 4--was more sympathetic and supportive toward the uprising against the AKP. More importantly, Kurdish people are also actively participating in the protests, as was revealed by clashes with police in strongholds of the Kurdish movement, such as the Gazi neighborhood in Istanbul and the towns of Dersim and Cizre.

At this stage, the position of the Kurdish leadership toward the uprising is ambivalent. But there is an opening for growing support for the Gezi Park movement among the Kurdish movement.

BY THE end of its first week, the Turkish uprising was still unfolding and spreading after reaching 77 urban centers in Turkey. As this article was being written, Gezi Park and Taksim Square were occupied by the protesters, who cleaned up the debris and tear gas canisters from earlier confrontations with police. Gezi Park has been transformed into a communal space, with thousands of people there, day and night. There are continuing reports of the clashes between the police and the protesters from the entire country.

The deputy prime minister was forced to issue a formal apology about the clashes during the beginning of the demonstrations, but Erdogan has continued his unabashed dismissal of the uprising and smearing of the protesters. Further demonstrations are taking place in front of the headquarters of TV channels and newspapers that ignored the uprising. Boycott campaigns have spread to banks, restaurants and other businesses owned by the same conglomerates that run these media outlets.

On June 4 and 5, members of the Confederation of Public Workers' Unions and other unions took part in an already planned strike to demand wage guarantees and job security that was moved up by a day and coordinated with the anti-government demonstrations. Then, on June 8 and 9, Taksim witnessed historically large crowds coming out, while the clashes with police continue in other cities like Ankara, Adana and Izmir.

The potential spread of this strike into action by other union and non-union workers will be decisive for the fate of the uprising. I was in Wisconsin when we learned the hard way what happens if workers' power is stifled or misdirected. The world looked to Madison and hopefully learned these lessons as well. Now, the world looks to Turkey.

Her yer Taksim, her yer direniş! (Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance!)