Jan 26, 2017

There is a new theme these days in Turkey's hard-core pro-Erdogan media: The unreliability of opinion leaders or activists who have led Turkey’s Islamist movement for decades, and who have also been strong supporters of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Lately, some prominent Islamists have raised criticism about “corruption by power” in the ruling circles. The Islamists also have criticized the pro-Erdogan propaganda machine, which intimidates, threatens and libels any critic of the president. Although all these Islamist critics used as friendly and respectful a tone as possible, they could not escape being labeled as disloyal or treacherous.

One dramatic example of this Islamist disenchantment with Erdoganism was a piece by Ismail Kilicarslan, a veteran pundit in Turkey’s Islamist movement, in the daily Yeni Safak. Titled “O Chief, we are so depressed,” the piece was an emotional open letter to Erdogan — who is now commonly called “the Chief” by his supporters. Kilicarslan listed a few recent examples of “immorality” he saw in the rhetoric of some hard-core Erdoganists and noted that he feels “shame” to be in the same camp with those people. He also said that he is sick of being called a traitor (or “crypto Gulenist”) from the ruling zealotry whenever he raises such complaints.

Erdogan naturally did not give any answer to this open letter, which went viral in social media. But the hard-core Erdoganists in question gave an answer: Kilicarslan’s dissent was just another example of how unreliable some of these Islamists are. They are arrogant people who don’t understand the value of Erdogan, and who do not appreciate the privileges they have “only thanks to Erdogan.”

A particular website that carries out this hard-core Erdoganist propaganda is www.duvardibi.tv, which is conspicuously anonymous, but it is widely believed to be the “killer website” of the clique that had also penned the mysterious blog that practically ended Ahmet Davutoglu's time as prime minister in May. Its posts are all about exposing and defaming the covert dissidents of Erdogan in the AKP universe. Besides Kilicarslan, their recent targets include Ahmet Tasgetiren, a very prominent Islamist writer and community leader, who also dared to raise in his column constructive criticism of Erdogan in the daily Star. Another usual target is the daily Karar, a mildly pro-AKP newspaper that was founded in early 2016 by prominent journalists in the Islamist movement such as Mustafa Karaalioglu and Yusuf Ziya Comert. The Duvarbidi website condemns the daily Karar team as “Davutoglu fans” who act as a Trojan horse within a movement whose sole leader is, and must be, Erdogan.

Does this mean that Turkey’s Islamists are no longer supporting Erdogan? No, that would be a misleading conclusion. Most Islamists still support the Erdogan regime, at least publicly, and the hard-core pro-Erdogan propaganda machine includes some Islamists as well. But the same propaganda machine also includes some overtly secular people — former Marxists, nationalists, mere opportunists, some Kurds and even an Armenian. Their common ground is not Islamism, but Erdoganism, which is now an ideological position of its own.