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Coin­cid­ing with the 100th anniver­sary of the Repub­lic, Turkey has just lived through a his­tor­i­cal elec­tion to which every anti­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic method was applied. In the sec­ond round of the Pres­i­den­tial elec­tion, the Pres­i­dent of the AKP, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, despite the fact he could bare­ly stand upright, was re-elect­ed Pres­i­dent after using every means pro­vid­ed by the State. I don’t write that “he won” because if this elec­toral cam­paign had been devoid of fraud, and been car­ried out in an equi­table man­ner, Erdoğan’s gov­ern­ment would prob­a­bly have not received more than 40% of the votes.

Erdoğan and his team who have fre­quent­ly under­lined the impor­tance of 2023 for them ever since attain­ing pow­er in 2002, put in place a chain of ille­gal­i­ties dur­ing the elec­toral process. Erdoğan and his allies com­mit­ted a num­ber of infrac­tions, rang­ing from the pub­li­ca­tion of videos that had been mod­i­fied of his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu,to the arrest of the HDP’s par­lia­men­tary can­di­dates, the simul­ta­ne­ous broad­cast­ing of iden­ti­cal pro­grams on all the tele­vi­sion net­works, the ston­ing of can­di­dates at meet­ings of the oppo­si­tion. Süley­man Soy­lu, the min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or, worked as AKP’s par­lia­men­tary can­di­date in order to achieve this.

By pro­nounc­ing ser­mons in mosques, Erdoğan clear­ly trans­formed these elec­tions into a polar­iza­tion between a regime dic­tat­ed by polit­i­cal islamists and an oppo­si­tion call­ing for a demo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tem. I leave it then to your judg­ment whether these were tru­ly demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions! If truth be told, The Econ­o­mist’s democ­ra­cy index pro­vid­ed the answer to this ques­tion. Accord­ing to its inves­ti­ga­tion, Turkey is ranked 104th out of 167 coun­tries as per­tains to democracy.

The coun­try is expe­ri­enc­ing a major eco­nom­ic cri­sis, yet it takes the risk of an “offi­cial recog­ni­tion” of polit­i­cal Islam. It is clear that the eco­nom­ic cri­sis is not the absolute pri­or­i­ty for either Erdoğan’s par­ti­sans or his oppo­nents. Some are fight­ing for the charia, oth­ers for the pro­tec­tion of the most fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms in the con­sti­tu­tion­al framework.

No mat­ter what it will do, the AKP gov­ern­ment rep­re­sents a great dan­ger par­tic­u­lar­ly for chil­dren, women and youth and is inca­pable of total­ly intim­i­dat­ing the oppo­si­tion. Accord­ing to offi­cial fig­ures, half of the coun­try wants noth­ing more to do with Erdoğan. Aware of this dan­ger, Erdoğan has imme­di­ate­ly invest­ed in the upcom­ing local elec­tions, sched­uled for the ear­ly months of 2024.

In the hope of cre­at­ing a more pos­i­tive atmos­phere, it appears that Erdoğan and his team will both run with the hare and hunt with the hounds until they have crossed the crit­i­cal point. How­ev­er, it must be men­tioned that this point is not far removed!

There­fore, Pres­i­dent Erdoğan announced the com­po­si­tion of his “new cab­i­net” on the evening of May 3. As a reminder, it is a cab­i­net with­out a prime min­is­ter accord­ing to the new con­sti­tu­tion and its presidentialism.

One can state that the most obvi­ous indi­ca­tor of Erdoğan’s efforts to cre­ate a pos­i­tive atmos­phere is in the nom­i­na­tion of the new min­is­ter of the Econ­o­my. Erdoğan had to accept the fact that the country’s econ­o­my has been dete­ri­o­rat­ing for a good while, day in and day out, while he was respon­si­ble for all mon­e­tary and finan­cial deci­sions. Rea­son for which he nom­i­nat­ed Mehmet Şimşek to the posi­tion of min­is­ter of the Trea­sury and of Finances. One might think that Mehmet Şimşek, con­sid­ered to be “favor­able to the mar­kets” in for­eign pol­i­cy will pro­gres­sive­ly mod­i­fy the eco­nom­ic poli­cies applied over the past two years, by return­ing to more ortho­dox ones in eco­nom­ic mat­ters. When one takes into account the inter­ests of Erdoğan and of his entourage,  one has no dif­fi­cul­ty under­stand­ing that the only solu­tion is the tem­po­rary end of his gov­er­nance in eco­nom­ic matters.

It should also be not­ed that Erdoğan did not include the ex-min­is­ter of the inte­ri­or, Süley­man Soy­lu who was con­stant­ly in search of provoca­tive oppor­tu­ni­ties by com­mit­ting any num­ber of ille­gal actions against the oppo­si­tion, and behav­ing almost like a mafia capo.

And yet, does this mean that the new Turk­ish min­is­ter of the inte­ri­or, Ali Yer­likaya, is some­thing of an inno­cent dove? No. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, one must describe him as the “shield of ISIS”. In 1993, Ali Yer­likaya was named gov­er­nor of the Felahiye dis­trict in Kay­seri. In 2003, he was legal coun­sel to the min­istry of the Inte­ri­or and, in 2004, he took over the gen­er­al direc­torate of human resources for the min­istry of Health. In 2007, he was named gov­er­nor of Şır­nak, then gov­er­nor of Ağrı and of Tekir­dağ respec­tive­ly. Ali Yer­likaya was also gov­er­nor of Antep (Gaziantep) between 2015 ans 2018 and at the cen­ter of crit­i­cism over the events that occurred in Antep, when the town became the aux­il­iary HQ for ISIS and the epi­cen­ter of its pro­ject­ed attacks. This same Ali Yer­likaya also occu­pied the post of gov­er­nor of Diyarbakır, when ISIS attacks were com­mit­ted in Diyarbakır on June 5th 2015, in Suruç on July 20 2015, at at the Ankara sta­tion on Octo­ber 10 2015, not to men­tion the bomb explo­sion dur­ing a wed­ding in Gaziantep on August 20 2016.

One of the faith­ful is thus pushed aside, who will prob­a­bly be put to  use in oth­er tasks, while reward­ing a per­son­al­i­ty who has ren­dered many ser­vices and who will be com­pat­i­ble and close to rad­i­cal nation­al­ist Islamist allies.

Anoth­er notice­able selec­tion in this new cab­i­net?  Mahin­ur Özdemir Gök­taş of course, as min­is­ter of Fam­i­ly and Social ser­vices, the only woman in the 19 per­son cab­i­net. One can say that this cab­i­net clear­ly demon­strates the pur­suit of the AKP’s dis­crim­i­na­to­ry pol­i­cy con­cern­ing women. It is well known that women have not left the streets for a sin­gle day, despite the con­stant­ly heav­ier oppres­sive poli­cies put in place since    2016. Erdoğan’s enmi­ty against women is huge, but women are not giv­ing up!

Anoth­er nom­i­na­tion worth men­tion­ing is that of Hakan Fidan as min­is­ter of For­eign Affairs, the man Erdoğan describes as his “box of secrets”,  the somber direc­tor of the Nation­al Intel­li­gence Orga­ni­za­tion (MIT) for 13 years, who was nev­er a can­di­date at elec­tions, nor nom­i­nat­ed to any min­istry pri­or to this one. Turkey’s diplo­ma­cy will thus always remain one of its occult “net­works”.

So, in whose hands were placed youth, stu­dents who rep­re­sent the country’s future?

Yusuf Tekin is the new Turk­ish min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion. With 12  years expe­ri­ence as a bureau­crat, Yusuf Tekin of course declared, as expect­ed by polit­i­cal Islam, that he does not con­sid­er a co-edu­ca­tion­al edu­ca­tion sys­tem as manda­to­ry. At the sym­po­sium held on Imam Hatip reli­gious schools, to which he par­tic­i­pat­ed in 2013, Tekin declared: “In the 1930s, the lan­guage of reli­gious ref­er­ences was tam­pered with and these insti­tu­tions were then trans­formed into polit­i­cal instruments.”

But what will be Erdoğan’s new Kur­dish policy?

In fact, it is crys­tal clear: by includ­ing in his alliance HÜDA-PAR, the “Par­ty for the Free Cause”, for­mer­ly “God’s Par­ty”, the legal and polit­i­cal arm of the ter­ror­ist Orga­ni­za­tion of the Turk­ish Hezbol­lah, and by allow­ing 4 par­lia­men­tary shares to the extreme right-wing Islamist par­ty, devoid of any real elec­torate, Erdoğan revealed his new pol­i­cy as per­tains to the Kurds. It amounts to “mak­ing Kurds strike Kurds”. Erdoğan’s new plan con­sists of deal­ing with Kurds in the frame­work of his polit­i­cal Islam pol­i­cy.  The pres­ence of 4 Kurds in his cab­i­net and the quick invi­ta­tion extend­ed to Netchir­van Barzani,  fol­lowed by a meet­ing on May 17th, are also part of this plan.

n clos­ing, although there was drop in the voic­es of Kur­dish demo­c­ra­t­ic pol­i­cy which par­tic­i­pat­ed in the elec­tions under the sword of every appa­ra­tus of State-direct­ed repres­sion, there is no exag­ger­a­tion in say­ing that the sal­va­tion of the peo­ples of Turkey depends on the eco­log­i­cal and demo­c­ra­t­ic par­a­digm, that of women’s lib­er­a­tion and of the Move­ment for Kur­dish Freedom.

Ley­la İnanç

Trans­la­tion from French by Renée Lucie Bourges


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