Will he go first?

by Eze Eluchie

Despite the semblance of peace and tranquility which some level of economic stability may portray for a people, it only takes a little scratch of the surface for true societal feelings to manifest in an environment with an enlightened populace.

For close to a decade since he mounted the saddle of leadership, Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has enjoyed a continuously rising international profile and an uncanny ability to navigate the murky landmines the Turkish Military had always represented in Turkish politics.

By deft maneuvering, Erdogan was able to not only rein in the erstwhile powerful Turkish military which had served as guarantor of the secular characteristic of Turkey, but also proceeded to detain and put on trial several high ranking Turkish Generals – a feat that was hitherto unfathomable. Having dispensed with the guarantors of secularist Turkey, Erdogan embarked on a course to curb freedoms the Turks had over the decades taken for granted.

At the international level, Erdogan leveraged on the strategic importance of Turkey to military campaigns in the Middle East to extract favors at will from the West, sought to position himself as the Global Leader of Islamic states (amongst other things, ensuring that the world media was present when he landed in Somalia to inaugurate Turkish Air’s flights to Mogadishu as the first scheduled international flights to the war-torn country by a commercial airliner) and incredulously pontificates against Israeli treatment of Palestine’s in Gaza whilst at the same time meting out worse treatment to Turkeys minority Kurdish population and aggressively denying the genocide perpetuated against the Armenians.

A further testimonial of Erdogan’s craftiness could be gleaned at by his position on Syria’s al-Assad and the ongoing conflict between the Syrian State and rebel insurgents. Desirous to eliminate his nearest rival in terms of political clout within the region, Erdogan had been in the fore-front of apostles for United States intervention into ensuring the ouster of the al-Assad regime. Amongst other things, surreptitiously ‘helping’ to identify when the Syrian regime had crossed President Obama’s proverbial ‘red line’.  A few days to his State visit to the United States in May 2013 to convince Obama on the need to get more involved in Syria, Erdogan had despite clear indications that elements from Syria could be behind the twin bomb blasts in the Turkish city of Reyhani which had killed over 40 people and injured more than 100 others, publicly affirmed the reluctance of his government to get militarily involved in Syria saying Turkey will “maintain our extreme cool-headedness in the face of efforts and provocations to drag us into the bloody quagmire!”

Really? You do not want to get involved with your neighbors affairs, yet you invite outsiders from thousands of miles away to get involved? Good thinking!

All that guile is apparently being torn to shreds over plans to commercially develop a piece of park land in Istanbul. The initial protest from ordinary Turks which was met with high-handed draconian response from the Turkish police has since snowballed into a national conflagration threatening democratic governance in Turkey. Like all pretenders to democratic leadership, Erdogan has continually described the protesters as ‘terrorists’, ‘political touts’ and ‘misguided youths’.

A close look at the initial days of popular protests throughout the countries affected by the Arab Spring will reveal similar categorization of protesters by the dictators then in office such as Qhadaffi, Mubarak and Ben Ali. These were actually the same phrases used by al-Assad to describe the Syrian rebels over 18 months ago.

For anybody with knowledge of Turkish society, an indication of how deep Erdogans troubles are could be gleaned at from the fact that for once, supporters of the three main soccer teams in Istanbul, Fenerbahce, Besiktas and Galatasaray, have for once in their violent and acrimonious relationship with one another, teamed up to demonstrate against the present Turkish government. The riots keep on spreading and expanding in size.

Will Erdogans police replace tear gas canisters with live bullets?

Will Taksim Square become the next Tahrir Square? The next Tiananmen Square?

It is thus quite germane to inquire if Erdogan will actually go the way of those before him. Will Erdogan go before al-Assad?

Picture: Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey