In the memory of Mehmet Ayvalitas, Ethem Sarisuluk, Abdullah Comert,
Ali İsmail Korkmaz, Ahmet Atakan and Medeni Yildirim respectfully.
Turkey became the one of the most popular issues of world politics in last June. The struggle to secure Taksim Gezi Park in İstanbul from bulldozers sparked the uprising and the world witness to the mass revolt against Justice and Development Party (AKP) rule. The struggle took a month at least and came out “almost” whole of country[1].
In this little piece, I prefer to talk about the
reasons of uprising rather than give details of clashes. How did Turkish people
decide to revolt against ruling party which had % 50 votes of 2011 elections?[2] Was
the matter about trees of Taksim Gezi Park or more than ecology? Of course the police
raid with tear gas in the 31 May sparked off a reaction against police and it
made a multiplier effect but protestors without any other motivation could not
survive the demonstrations about one month.
I think there are two major reasons to explain June
uprising in Turkey. First of all, foreign policy of AKP era which named “new-Ottomanism”[3]
was failed in Syrian issue. Especially with Reyhanli bombings in 11 May[4]
convinced Turkish people about problems of Turkish foreign policy. With the
help of “imperial (big) Turkey” rhetoric, AKP could mesmerize masses. But when
the Syria issue started to show inability of AKP, the magic was gone.
The second reason of uprising is the refutation of “new
Turkey”. Turkish people resisted to the transformation of the Turkey by AKP.
Some policies to Islamize social life and pressure to woman caused reactions
before but with the new constitution debates a new problem was emerged: Turkey
is not a country such as surrender “retrogressive” transformations. There “must”
be a mass resistance to second republic[5]
era. So the Turkish people found a way out to struggle against AKP with Taksim Gezi
Park.
This two major reasons give us the key to understand
June uprising in Turkey. But I know that there are many other effective events behind
the people. This two, are only the main source of motivation of the people.
An important “additional reason” to these must be
problems between AKP and her allies. Turkish bourgeoisie, Islamic communities (especially
Gulen movement) and of course USA were the allies behind of AKP era. But the
awkwardness in the foreign policy and problems about the transformation of
Turkey made AKP government more precarious for her allies. So they left AKP
alone in face of mass movements in June. Without her allies support AKP became more
aggressive and it helped to new faults to crisis management.
PM Erdogan saw that he was alone with problems of
transformation and her allies are waiting for defeat of him. This explains why
Erdogan did not retreat. If he was retreat he could be defeated by people
easily. So, he decided to resist both people and her allies. But his aggressiveness caused more anger to him.
These two major and one additional reasons explains
June of Turkey mainly. I will try to give details of them in my next bloggings.
[1] For
details of June of Turkey you can check Timeline page from wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2013_protests_in_Turkey
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_general_election,_2011
[3] For more,
please read my older piece about this: http://politicsofturkey.blogspot.com.tr/2011/11/arab-spring-and-turkey-us-relations.html
[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Reyhanl%C4%B1_bombings
[5] http://politicsofturkey.blogspot.com.tr/2011/09/second-republic-of-turkey-what-is.html
