Turkish soldiers on army parade , 2013. Demotix/Yiannis Kourtoglou.All rights reserved.In a recent column in the British newspaper The Guardian, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu argued that by ignoring the humanitarian effects of the war in Syria, western countries ‘may potentially bring out the demons we thought we had buried long ago’. The accusation is an oddly ironic one, as the Prime Minister’s party is currently on a mission to awaken Turkey’s own demons in what can only be interpreted as an attempt to reclaim the faltering majority it once enjoyed in parliament.
The flip side to this gamble, that an already AKP-wary public may see the conflict for what it is, and vote for more peaceful alternatives, may be the only way to steer Turkey away from its current collision course. In a country that prides itself on progress, everyone is currently losing. And as a result, even the infamous slant of majoritarianism in Turkish politics is undergoing a transformation into new and more vocal manifestations of nationalism and militarism. Yet after energizing the nationalist element of Turkish politics, the AKP may struggle to put the genie back in the bottle. For a party that came into power on the promise of peace with the Kurds and a diminished role of the military in Turkish society, the current conflict threatens to undo its decade-spanning political vision.
A curious paradox surrounds the persona of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. On the one hand, his AKP Government has mainstreamed conspiratorial accusations against ‘lobbies’ ‘traitors’ and ‘foreign agents’. Yet alternately, analysts and researchers have become hooked to a narrative of daily outrage in which Turkey’s controversial President is described as ‘sultan’ ‘dictator’ and ‘despot’. This is particularly true in the current climate. Depending on who one believes the country is either on the brink of civil war, or instead heroically participating in the Global War on Terror. In such an increasingly polarized media environment, with tensions escalating on both sides, the fringe elements of Turkish society, both on the left and right have seen opportunity to take centre stage, and the Government has done little to disguise where it’s sympathies lie.
