Eurasia Press & News
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan formally launched his AKP campaign with a big bash in Ankara today. The event was called “Turkey’s Century,” and Erdogan offered a sneak preview on Twitter by sharing a video that will only fuel further speculation that he wants to anoint his younger son-in-law, Selcuk Bayraktar, as his successor. Bayraktar is the brains behind the eponymous drones that have helped Turkey’s allies win wars from Libya to Azerbaijan.
The video is about Sakir Zumre, one of the first private industrialists in the early Republican era whose factory produced rockets and bombs. These were the pride of Turkey at the time, much as Bayraktar drones are today. We are reminded that Zumre was forced to stop producing them and was made to manufacture gas bottles instead, because this was apparently a condition placed on Turkey by the United States for providing Turkey with much-needed aid at the time. In other words, America’s evil schemes to keep Turkey weak and under its yoke were already in play. Enter Erdogan — I leave the rest to your imagination.
And it was yet another horrible week for independent media. Twelve journalists working for pro-Kurdish publications, notably Mezopotamya News and the all-female JINNEWS, which are frequently targeted, were detained on charges of acting on behalf of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), as I reported here. Sibel Hurtas has more on how Turkey’s Broadcasting Watchdog has become a government cudgel, slapping hefty fines on critical broadcasters. The noose is tightening as parliamentary and presidential elections that are meant to be held concurrently by June 18, 2023, draw ever closer.
Nazlan Ertan reports on the case of Sebnem Korur Fincanci, the feisty president of the Turkish Medical Association, who was arrested Thursday and formally charged with spreading PKK propaganda. Fincanci apparently engaged in this crime when she said that militants’ claims that the Turkish army is using chemical agents against them in Iraqi Kurdistan ought to be investigated. The arrest came after Erdogan and his far-right nationalist coalition partner, Devlet Bahceli, publicly maligned the widely respected forensics expert over her comments, with the latter calling for Fincanci to be stripped of her Turkish citizenship.
Andrew Wilks has the story on Erdogan’s trip to Diyarbakir, the Kurds’ unofficial capital in the predominantly Kurdish southeast region, where he announced the news that a prison notorious for the horrors inflicted on inmates — electric shock, anal rape, you name it — was being transformed into a museum that ostensibly will allow future generations to learn about what went on. Of course, the tragedy is that despite Erdogan’s pledges of “zero tolerance for torture,” it remains widespread as I’ve reported here and here.
Wilks also reported on how consumer inflation continues to hit new peaks. One would think that all of this would weaken Erdogan and his party. However, recent opinion polls suggest that Erdogan is recovering lost ground. A slew of subsidies for energy, low-income housing and wiping utilities’ debts for the poor will have helped. And as I sadly keep having to report, the opposition is doing itself no favors with right-wing nationalist Iyi Party leader Meral Aksener sabotaging main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s campaign to become the presidential candidate at every turn. There is mounting speculation that she may well strike a deal with Erdogan to supplant the aging Bahceli as his ally, probably after the elections. Anything is possible. Bahceli used to be Erdogan’s fiercest — and most entertaining — critic.
In the meantime, the largest pro-Kurdish bloc, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), says it will come up with its own candidate for the presidency. That could well sound the death knell for the opposition as the balloting would almost certainly then have to go to a second round. The conventional wisdom is that the opposition’s sole hope of winning rests on beating Erdogan in the first round. In order for that to happen, the Kurds and the other main opposition parties would need to back the same candidate. But who can blame the HDP? Aksener treats them like pariahs and Kilicdaroglu, terrified of being labeled a “terrorist,” has said absolutely nothing that might persuade an average HDP voter that he will improve their lot.
There was a spot of good news this week. Aysel Tugluk, a former HDP lawmaker and a leading figure in Turkey’s Kurdish movement, was freed from prison Thursday after a prolonged campaign for her release. As I previously reported, Tugluk is suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, which some insist was aggravated if not actually triggered by the mob attack she was exposed to at her mother’s funeral.
