state of emergency

Some Monday Links

Michalis Trepas Links , , , , , , , , ,

Burning the witch (New Humanist)

Not as funny as it may sound.

Will nudge theory survive the pandemic? (UnHerd)

From an ex-member of the UK Nudge Unit:

[I]t may be worth reflecting on where we need to draw the line between the choice-maximizing nudges of libertarian paternalism, and the creeping acceptance among policy makers that the state should use its heft to influence our lives without the accountability of legislative and parliamentary scrutiny.

Why Do We Return to the Greek Myths Again and Again? (LitHub)

Olympus, Texas?

French Socialism Embraced Neoliberalism and Signed Its Death Warrant (Jacobin)

The usual disclaimers on the use of term neoliberalism apply.

The Periodic Table of Commodity Returns (2012-2021) (Visual Capitalist)

Coup and Counter Coup VI: Presidential Authoritarianism in Turkey

Barry Stocker Current Events, Law, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , , ,

(Previous posts here, here, here, here and here). The state of emergency proclaimed by President Erdoğan in Turkey on 20th July last year, in response to the coup attempt of five days before, is not a situation that will come to an end in a return to normality. It is the model for the presidential system that Erdoğan has been pushing for since 2007, when he was still admired by many liberal minded people inside Turkey (though not me) and abroad. One of the key provisions of the state of emergency is that the President can issue decrees with the force of law. There are doubts about the constitutionality of this form of ‘law making’ but two members of the Constitutional Court were arrested after the coup attempt and the chances of the court starting up to executive power are now extremely remote. Judges and prosecutors have been demoted and even arrested after making the ‘wrong’ decision during the state of emergency and I do not think Erdoğan and his associates would have any scruples at all about further arrests of judges in the Constitutional Court.

The Presidential system, or one person rule system, which Turks will vote on, will retain the decrees as law powers of the Presidency. There are some limits on the decrees issued, but as the President will control the appointment of most of the senior judiciary there are serious questions about whether the Constitutional Court will put any effective break on these powers to legislate through decree. There is no sign of the state of emergency ending, though at least now everyone can see the deception in the original decision to declare a state of emergency for three months only instead of the six months maximum allowed in the Constitution. The state of emergency is renewed every three months with no debate and no indication of when it will come to an end. Does Erdoğan have any intention of ending the state of emergency before he becomes a President elected with the new powers? In principle these powers should only be implemented after the next presidential election in 2019, coinciding with elections to the National Assembly. Erdoğan may wish to bring these elections forward, particularly for the National Assembly if he loses the referendum. While it may seem outrageous for the Council of Ministers to keep prolonging the state of emergency until 2019, the AKP government has been doing more and more previously outrageous and even unimaginable things now for some years, particularly since the Gezi protests of 2013.

What the state of emergency also means is that suspects can be held without charge and access to lawyers if charged with ‘terrorism’, which is defined in absurdly broad ways to cover any kind of contact with the Gülenists or sympathy for the Kurdish autonomy movement. Torture has been making a return in Turkey after becoming relatively unusual since the PKK terror campaign began again in 2015. The state of emergency conditions have now normalised it completely and though the government denies torture charges, in the normal manner of authoritarian regimes, claiming the charges are terrorist propaganda, you have to wonder how seriously they expect anyone to take the denials. Photographs of the alleged coup plotters immediately after the coup attempt showed they had been badly beaten, though of course this is explained away as the result of ‘resisting arrest’, another time-honoured evasion. Consistent reports suggest prisoners are denied food, placed in stress positions for long periods of time, beaten and sexually assaulted. In the more moderate cases, the prison officials merely restrict prisoners to a diet of bread and bad quality tap water in conditions of psychological abuse. There is amongst everything else in Turkey a growing problem of mental and emotion health problems amongst the survivors of these ordeals, which are of course excluded from the mainstream media.

The rhetoric and abuse used by police ‘special teams’ invading the media and political offices of ‘terrorist’, that is Kurdish autonomy and other leftist groups, involve extreme nationalism and Ottomanism. Kurds are insulted as covert Armenians. Actual Armenians are told that the Ottomans destroyed the Armenians and that Turks are the masters of Armenian. A particularly disgusting reference to the massacre of 1 500 000 Armenians during World War One. These are not aberrations, this behaviour reflects the deep ideology of the AKP, mixing extreme nationalism and Ottomanism, of course ignoring the tensions between these positions. The torture and abuse is legitimated in the minds of perpetrators by a political rhetoric and government measures which present opponents as terrorist and part of international conspiracies against the ‘innocent’ Turks who are so good they are naive. This I am afraid is no exaggeration of the political discourse of the moment.

There is no reason to think the abuse and political extremism will end, though of course we should hope it does. If all Gülenists – real and imagined – and all sympathisers with Kurdish autonomy or the far left are targeted, then there are essentially endless opportunities for authoritarianism, polarising dehumanising rhetoric and abuse. I can only presume the current atmosphere will last indefinitely, as Erdoğan has found it a successful strategy for staying in power and increasing his power.

It is of course not just a question of his own political power. There is the question of how his family occupy places of privilege in large Muslims NGOs (at the same time as non-AKP oriented NGOs come under increasing pressure) with huge budgets and sit on the boards of major companies in Turkey. Erdoğan does not envisage any situation in which these activities are placed under mainstream media examination, and even less legal investigation. The issue of legal immunity is a huge one in Turkish politics. The amended constitution would allow the President to appoint anyone to two vice presidential positions and to the cabinet. Like the President all these people would have lifetime immunity from prosecution for activities undertaken while in office. Though the National Assembly would have the power to send the President to the Constitutional Court, this requires a very high threshold, clearly designed to protect Erdoğan even if the AKP loses a large part of its support.

As mentioned above, there is an expectation that Erdoğan will call an early National Assembly election if he loses the referendum. It seems likely on current polling that two out of the three opposition parties currently in the National Assembly would fail to meet the electoral thresh hold of 10%. This means the National Action Party, which has split over the referendum, and the Kurdish radicals who have lost some of their more moderate support since the revival of PKK violence. In such a National Assembly, the AKP could certainly put any constitutional proposal to referendum and very possibly could have enough votes to amend the constitution without referendum. So even if Erdoğan loses the election, he could get the same measures, or close enough, through other means.

(Last post in the current series, though I will post an appendix on Ottomanist and Atatürkist legacies in Turkey, along with comments on related political thought.)

Coup and Counter Coup III (Gülenists and Kemalists)

Barry Stocker Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , ,

My last post established the party structure in Turkey. The flow of events since the attempted coup of fifteenth July and the emergency regime instituted on twentieth July is that of a government assault on opposition. Democracy as liberal democracy continues to give way to illiberal majoritarianism. Liberal democracy has never existed in its purest form in Turkey, but there was more of it ten years ago and it looks like becoming further diluted. Initial indications that the state of emergency would be three months only, rather than the constitutionally allowed maximum of six months have been undermined by constant renewal with no debate and no indication of when the renewals will end.

When the AKP first came to power its campaign materials included claims that it would end the use of the state of emergency as a tool of government. A long period of emergency rule in the southeast (that is where ethnic Kurds are a majority) had only recently ended. The AKP is now the party that has turned the state of emergency into a permanent state tool for the whole of Turkey. If it ends, it will only be if next month’s referendum gives President Erdoğan the further powers he is seeking, and he sees that as sufficient to compensate for the loss of emergency powers. The ‘presidential’ regime proposed, in reality a regime of elective authoritarianism with an enfeebled National Assembly and judiciary, would turn some emergency powers, particularly rule by decree with the force of law, into ‘normal’ practices.

Not only was the three month period of state of emergency a mislead to dissipate any opposition to the emergency regime, it was dishonestly presented as purely a means to crack down on the Gülenists (followers of the religious community leader Fetullah Gülen who lives in the United States) involved in the coup attempt. The investigation of the coup quickly turned into broad persecution of any associate of the Gülen movement, along with any one connected with Kurdish autonomy movements and the far left in general.

Anyone too loudly questioning the government’s methods, going back to criticisms during the night of the coup with regard to using the mosques to call people to protest and encouraging civilians to put themselves in danger at such protests (hundreds did die), or the mob violence atmosphere of that night, has been accused of Gülenism and been persecuted. Persecution has taken the form of loss of employment, arrest, detention and prison sentences, all relying on emergency powers. Opponents of the AKP have been very willing to believe accusations of Gülenism and to ignore, or downplay, the injustices taking place.

The role of the Gülenists in the coup is debated, though mostly outside Turkey. Most people in Turkey, including myself, have observed the power and ruthlessness of the group, and do not see another plausible candidate. If the idea of a Gülenist conspiracy seems like conspiracy theory, there are real conspiracies and only conspiracy theory could explain why the coup is believed to be Gülenist, if it is not true there has been a Gülenist conspiracy. It was pointed out years ago by the well known Turkish-American economist and Harvard professor Dani Rodrik that Gülenist police, prosecutors and judges had falsified evidence of an army coup with civilian collaborators and given long jail sentences, enabling officers to rise up who participated in the July coup attempt. Ahmet Şik, a journalist now in prison, wrote a well known  book exposing the Gülenists in their infiltration and manipulation of the state and was imprisoned himself now. Amongst the twisted actions of the emergency empowered states, Şik has now been imprisoned on charges of Gülenism.

Maybe other malcontents including some hardcore Kemalists participated, but the initial reaction of hard core Kemalists after the coup was to support Erdoğan. In one case this appears to have meant a radical move from complete opposition to Erdoğan to complete support. That is Doğu Perinçek, one of the most extraordinary characters in Turkish politics, a marginal figure in prison under more than one regime, who has never gained real electoral support who nevertheless finds his way to the centre of events. Perinçek has renamed his ‘Workers Party’, ‘Nation Party’ and may have acted as a contact with Putin through Aleksandr Dugin, a Russian nationalist thinker who enjoys an ambiguous relationship with the Russian President. Perinçek is a novelistic parody of a Kemalist who somehow found his way into real life. He does act as a point of reference for an ‘anti-imperialist’, that is anti-American and anti-EU form of Kemalism, which sees the Baath party (that is the authoritarian pan-Arabist ‘Renaissance’ party of the Assad regime in Syria and in the past of the Saddam regime in Iraq) as a natural ally.

Less colourful characters in the army with comparable views, who were sacked or retired during the faked trials orchestrated by the Gülenists, have come back apparently working with Erdoğan on a Eurasian perspective, as an alternative to the EU and Nato. This position existed in some senior army people before the AKP came to power, though the overall army line was to support NATO and the application process for the EU. The alliance with Putin is now looking ragged, as the Russian troops are clearly co-operating with a Kurdish group in Syria, PYD, defined as terrorist partners of the PKK by the Turkish government. The immediate atmosphere in July and soon after pushed some significant proportion of Kemalists towards Erdoğan as an enemy of their two old enemies: Gülenists and the PKK. The mainstream inheritor of the Kemalist legacy, the CHP, has continued to oppose Erdoğan and the emergency regime, even if rather cautiously and in fear of persecution if they go ‘too far’.

(A discursive approach is taking over from narration of events and future posts will probably proceed in the same way as I try to build a rounded account of Turkey since July 2016, with some historical background. The next post should give some account of other aspects of Kemalist legacy along with the polarisations the AKP seeks and uses to maintain its position.)

Coup and Counter Coup in Turkey (first of a series of posts on Turkey since 15th July 2016 and background topics)

Barry Stocker Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

On July 15th 2016, a group of army officers up to at least the Brigadier General (one star general) level attempted to seize control of the Turkish state. On the morning of the 20th it was evident that the coup had collapsed though the government, along with its allies in the media, social media, think tanks and so on was eager to promote the idea of an unended coup which might spring back into life, like the villain in a horror film, at any moment over a long indefinite period of time. No follow-up coup materialised. The most that can be said for that unending coup mentality was that it is difficult to know how much of the army would have gone over if the coup organisation had captured or killed President Erdoğan. What the never-ending coup claims achieved was to legitimise and mobilise paranoia, intolerance, and authoritarian state reactions with regard to anyone who might be in opposition to the Erdogan/Justice and Development Party (AKP) government.

The overwhelming feeling among government supporters and opponents on the 21st was that the coup was instigated by followers of Fetullah Gülen, a religious leader who went into exile before the AKP came to power in 2002. His followers control an international network of businesses, banks, schools, and media organisations. They carefully targeted the most sensitive areas of state employment in Turkey with the goal of creating a Gülenist dominated state and were aided in this enterprise by the AKP governments who wanted a network to rival the ‘Kemalists’, relatively secular people in the state, business, media, and educational sectors. Their relationship broke down in 2013 for reasons which are inevitably obscure at present, but appear to arise from the conflicting extreme ambitions for absolute power on both sides.

The coup may have been joined by Kemalists and the coup organisers gestured towards this position when a television announcement proclaimed that the coup council name referred to a well-known slogan of Kemal Atatürk, ‘Peace at home, peace in the world’. Kemalism of course refers to the ideology of secularist nationalist republicanism endorsed by Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Republic of Turkey. I will return to this topic in a later post, but in brief Kemalism of some kind – and there are many kinds and many grey areas – was the dominant influence in the army and allied parts of the state until recently. It is roughly analogous to the Jacobin tradition in France and in the same way has referred both to popular sovereignty and vanguardism. There are some who promoted the idea in the past that Kemalism was the problem and the AKP was the solution, and they are having difficulty in not seeing the 15th July Coup attempt as at least a Gülenist-Kemalist partnership. However, there is no evidence that Kemalists participated in any more than an individual ad hoc basis. Indeed after the 15th, retired generals associated with Kemalism were called back into service, in a process which now seems to have ended Kemalist sympathy for Erdoğan as a bulwark against the Gülenists and the PKK (socialist-Kurdish autonomy guerrilla/terrorist group), which intensified its activities in the summer of 2015.

Vast waves of arrest began after the coup attempt, which, unlike the coup itself, have not ended. For the first wave of arrests it was just about possible to believe they were genuine attempts to find coup plotters, but it quickly became apparent that the scope of arrests was much wider. President Erdoğan announced soon after the coup attempt that it was a gift of God and showed how he wanted to use this gift on July 20th, when he proclaimed a state of emergency. The state of emergency has become the means for Erdoğan to purge and punish tens of thousands who have no connection with the coup. The AKP supporters who obsessed about the follow-up coup were right, but the follow-up coup came from their own side. The state of emergency is the real coup, though it is also just a moment in the process of the creation of an AKP-Erdoğanist state, designed to facilitate what appears to be Erdoğan’s final goal (though maybe there will be others later): the creation of an extreme version of the presidential political system in which the head of state is more an elected dictator than the head of a system of checks and balances under law. More soon.