Erdo\u011fan is not the requiem for Turkey, he is its reckoning.<\/p>\n
While it is tempting to agree with the wailing Western think tank literati and NGO industrial complex that authoritarian Erdo\u011fan has finally killed off \u201cTurkish democracy\u201d, the unfortunate reality is that there was nothing left to kill. Since its foundation, the Turkish Republic has been more akin to a large crime scene with its own flag, metaphorically built with the bones of its genocided victims and serenaded with the screams of those \u2018heretics\u2019 it tortured. Such sadism was foundational, as Turkey\u2019s creators knew they were constructing an artificial \u2018Turkish identity\u2019 based on the idea that language alone can confer ethnicity, and armed with the cruelty to destroy any group who challenged such an absurd lie or tried to preserve their own indigenous culture.<\/p>\n
In fact, the nightmarish actions of the Turkish state can often be so cartoonishly evil, that if one accurately reports on the matter, it sounds like you are describing a ghoulish serial killer in national form. So no, rather than destroying \u201crule of law\u201d in Turkey, Erdo\u011fan\u2019s dictatorship<\/a><\/span> is its inevitable personification. Vicious, spiteful, paranoid, ignorant, conniving, and egomaniacal \u2013 the century of generational rot that spawned from the Republic\u2019s founding has left a trail of tears and blood strewn all the way up to the gilded doors of the new Sultan\u2019s 1,100 room Palace<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n Rather than viewing Erdo\u011fan as an individual, he should be seen as an historical amalgamation of Turkey\u2019s crimes, with every brutality fusing together to form a \u2018body politic\u2019 with him as its crowning conclusion. Allegorically, Erdo\u011fan is every gasp of air from the drowned and burned Greeks of Smyrna<\/a><\/span>. Erdo\u011fan is every drop of sweat from the Armenians death-marched<\/a><\/span> out into the Syrian desert. Erdo\u011fan is every fleeing mother\u2019s scream in Dersim<\/a><\/span> as they jumped to their deaths off of mountain cliffs. Erdo\u011fan is the rope tightening around the necks of Seyid Riza, Sheikh Said, and Deniz Gezmi\u015f. Erdo\u011fan is the bullets that riddled \u0130brahim Kaypakkaya\u2019s body and the flames that melted away Mazlum Do\u011fan\u2019s flesh. Erdo\u011fan is the ashes of the 4,000 burned down Kurdish villages, the ink from the kill lists used by J\u0130TEM death squads, and the sobs of Saturday Mothers<\/a><\/span> who still plead for the bones of their disappeared children. Erdo\u011fan is the smile on the face of the assassins who shot Hrant Dink, Sakine Cans\u0131z, and Tahir El\u00e7i. Erdo\u011fan is the prison cell that once held \u0130smail Be\u015fik\u00e7i, and currently holds Abdullah \u00d6calan, N\u00fbdem Durak, and Osman Kavala. And perhaps most poignantly, Erdo\u011fan is every agonizing scratch on the blood-stained walls of Diyarbakir No. 5 Prison<\/a><\/span>, living hieroglyphics that one day may be decoded by historians to understand the diabolical nature of a sadistic entity called \u201cTurkey\u201d.<\/p>\n Stage Productions are not Elections<\/strong><\/p>\n But perhaps the most surprising dynamic in the Turkish state\u2019s recent sham \u2018elections\u2019, is the naivet\u00e9 of anyone who actually believed it was possible to vote Erdo\u011fan out of office. When history unequivocally shows that you do not jail the opposition, remove all of the HDP mayoral candidates<\/a><\/span> who disagree with you, stack the courts, gut the judiciary, confiscate the banking sector, suppress civil society, jail<\/a><\/span> all the honest journalists, seize control of the media, embezzle billions into Swiss bank accounts, and literally sit atop a golden throne<\/a><\/span> \u2013 but then voluntarily allow yourself to be replaced. And just for extra assurance, Erdo\u011fan changed the electoral laws, censored social media, criminalized all criticism of his rule, purged the state audit boards, and hand-selected the chair and many judges of the Supreme Election Council (YSK) \u2013 which oversaw the entire election process and essentially barred his stronger competitors (like Ekrem \u0130mamo\u011flu and Selahattin Demirta\u015f) from running against him.<\/p>\n Furthermore, just to be 100% sure of his victory, Erdo\u011fan cranked up his vast state-run propaganda networks \u2013 which would even make Joseph Goebbels blush \u2013 and had them devote 32 hours<\/span><\/a> of TV airtime to himself, for every 32 minutes they gave to his opponent K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu. In describing this phenomenon, the novelist Kaya Gen\u00e7, observed<\/a><\/span>: \u201cIf you were in Istanbul in the same room with me, and if we turned on the news, we would see pro-Erdo\u011fan propaganda around the clock.\u201d So no, I will not insult my own intelligence and dignify the Riefenstahlian<\/a><\/span> performance that Turkey just held by describing it as an election, and neither should you.<\/p>\n Indeed, for more than two decades, Erdo\u011fan has continually showed that he will do whatever is necessary to retain his grip on power, a delirious devotion that entire Kurdish cities learned of with deadly consequences. This led him to destroy 14,000 homes in \u015eirnex<\/a><\/span>, spend 78 days flattening the city of Ciz\u00eer<\/a><\/span> \u2013 while burning alive hundreds of people in basements, demolish the historical UNESCO center of Amed (Sur)<\/a><\/span>, and pulverize Nis\u00eab\u00een<\/a><\/span> into a cement graveyard \u2013 which he then fenced off with barbwire so Kurdish parents could not even pull their dead children from beneath the rubble. Then again, this is a deranged man who has defended incinerating four<\/a><\/span> teenage Kurdish girls playing volleyball with his Bayraktar killer drones<\/a><\/span>, leaving all non-sociopaths to recognize that such a regime is irredeemable.<\/p>\n Yet, some privileged pacifists in the West would argue that oppressed people like the Kurds are still obligated to patiently wait for political power to grow out of their occupier\u2019s ballot box. When reality shows that in such scenarios, human rights are only \u2018granted\u2019 when you have the organized armed force<\/a><\/span> to ensure them. Without organized means of self-defense, spectacles like Turkey\u2019s current \u2018election\u2019 are merely a charade legitimizing your own subjugation. Because if freedom was possible through democratic means, then there would not be a dictatorship to vote out in the first place. And as Frank Schwabe, head of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe delegation acknowledged<\/a><\/span>, \u201c[Turkey] does not fulfill the basic principles for holding a democratic election.\u201d<\/p>\n Rotten Fruit does not Re-Ripen<\/strong><\/p>\n Which is why I am genuinely curious. How do you democratically reform a criminal racist state that throws Kurdish captives from helicopters<\/a><\/span>, floods the ancient ruins of Hesk\u00eef (Hasankeyf)<\/a><\/span>, uses missiles to massacre the people in Roboski<\/a><\/span>, aligns with the Turkish mafia<\/a><\/span> and fascist Grey Wolves<\/a><\/span> to kidnap and murder its opponents, and whose national pastime is arresting Kurds and torturing them<\/a><\/span> while forcing them to sing Turkey\u2019s national anthem? What sort of magical qualities does a ballot box have that it can humanize a state where Kurdish children are routinely beaten by their Turkish teachers for speaking their mother tongue, or reform a state that created a \u2018jihadist highway<\/a><\/span>\u2019 to arm and utilize ISIS as a proxy mercenary force to terrorize<\/a><\/span> millions of Kurds across Greater Kurdistan? How does letting a Kurd stamp their vote on a piece of paper cover up the war crimes of a state that has been using illegal chemical weapons<\/a><\/span> against Kurdistan\u2019s guerrillas, trying to complete the ISIS genocide against the Yazidis<\/a><\/span> in \u015eengal, and unleashing a hellish five-year occupation<\/a><\/span> on the Kurdish region of Afrin in Rojava?<\/p>\n The Turkish state is a terminal illness in need of a drastic \u2018cure\u2019, and most of those democratic \u2018antidotes\u2019 who may have theoretically been capable of helping construct a new, more just Turkey, have been imprisoned or driven into exile. And this exodus will only continue, with the Turkish journalist Yavuz Baydar positing<\/a><\/span> that Turkey\u2019s younger generations are having their futures \u201cdevoured by doctrines of Islamism and Nationalism\u201d, adding that \u201cI am expecting an escalated exodus of the elite, the qualified, and the disillusioned, who will leave Turkey for good.\u201d<\/p>\n Relatedly, two recent quotes help display the paradoxical nature of today\u2019s crumbling Turkey. The first is a dispiriting remark that displays the alienation and Stockholm syndrome of his battered supporters and comes from a 58-year-old Turkish man in Istanbul named Kadir, who has been driving a minibus for 40 years and told the BBC<\/a><\/span>, \u201cWe are with him every step of the way, whether the price of potatoes and onions rises or falls. My dear president is our hope.\u201d The second, is from a local Kurdish teacher in Amed named Suna, who reflected to Al Jazeera<\/a><\/span>, \u201cI find it difficult to express my feelings, there is a very serious problem of rights, law, justice, freedom and democracy in this country, and the reality of a society that lives on the poverty line.\u201d Unfortunately, since the Turkish lira hit a record low<\/a><\/span> two days prior to Erdo\u011fan\u2019s coronation and the Turkish central bank\u2019s net foreign currency reserves have slipped into negative territory for the first time since 2002, many more people are about to be forsaken to a life of desperation.<\/p>\n Moreover, in a twisted fate, the lawless Kemalist deep-state<\/a><\/span> that previously existed to overthrow and lead a coup against a hypothetical Islamist betrayer of Atat\u00fcrk\u2019s secular ideals such as Erdo\u011fan, has largely been dismantled by him as well. Leaving the coastal urban \u2018white Turk\u2019 elites who like to make jokes to Kurds about state assassins in \u201cwhite Toros\u201d cars<\/a><\/span>, at the mercy of the new \u2018black Turk\u2019s\u2019<\/a><\/span> populist and patriarchal demagogue with his rural-based bearded and headscarved<\/a><\/span> Ummah. The former shadowy Turkish deep state<\/a><\/span> cabal of organized crime, drug traffickers, Operation Gladio<\/a><\/span> NATO-trained anti-communist military officers, and pale Janissary-descended ultranationalists with delusions that they share lineage with Genghis Khan \u2013 have now been replaced by a kleptocratic neo-Ottoman<\/a><\/span> messianic Caliph, who is cocooned by corrupt sycophantic cronies and allied with every Takfiri Salafist<\/a><\/span> head-chopper in the Middle East. From ISIS<\/a><\/span> in Rojava, al-Nusra & al-Qaeda<\/a><\/span> (HTS) in Idlib, the Muslim Brotherhood<\/a><\/span> in Egypt, and the Sultan Murad Brigade decapitators he sent to terrorize Artsakh<\/a><\/span>\u2014 Erdo\u011fan has continually attempted to fulfill his past declaration<\/a><\/span> that, \u201cThe mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers.\u201d Coupling with this mission, Erdo\u011fan has used his state madrasas to indoctrinate a generation<\/a><\/span> of Turkey\u2019s children, who are now young adults and fill the entry levels of his entire bureaucracy.<\/p>\n Thunder Before the Storm<\/strong><\/p>\n Ironically or perhaps poetically, in this way, Erdo\u011fan has done more material damage to the fa\u00e7ade of the modern quasi-European Turkish Republic than any enemy of Turkey ever could have dreamed of. And I am not just referring to the 50,000+ earthquake victims his construction corruption<\/a><\/span> recently condemned to concrete mass graves. Gone are the unrealistic dreams of joining the European Union, and in their place is a pariah nation more akin to Taliban-led Afghanistan, with an increasingly worthless currency that has lost 91% of its value since 2013, and inflation rates on food and energy that routinely exceed 100%. Erdo\u011fan\u2019s blinded faithful are thus left with a scenario where they cannot even afford to buy onions, while the Sultan\u2019s wife collects luxury Herm\u00e8s handbags<\/a><\/span>. But at least they can sustain their hunger with the bodies of dead Kurds who are regularly stabbed to death in nightclubs<\/a><\/span>, parks, and on the street, for playing or listening<\/a><\/span> to Kurdish music, or in the latter case for not singing<\/a><\/span> \u201cI would die for you, my Turkey.\u201d<\/p>\n I sincerely wish I could reassure my many Kurdish friends throughout occupied Northern Kurdistan (southeast Turkey) that it will eventually get better, but I know with every ounce of intuition that in fact it will get much worse. Erdo\u011fan\u2019s lifetime Presidency is now a painful foregone conclusion and only death will remove his fangs from the necks of Bakur\u2019s 20+ million Kurds. The economy will remain in shambles, thousands more will soon join the huddled masses languishing in Erdo\u011fan\u2019s dungeons, and the best two options for Kurds who desire any semblance of freedom will be \u201cheading to the mountains\u201d to join the armed resistance or leaving the country. As Erdem Unal, the CHP chief in Amed\u2019s historic Sur district recently summarized<\/a><\/span>: \u201cThe people are intimidated, there are cameras everywhere. If more than two people gather, the plainclothes police arrive. Erdo\u011fan left Kurds with two options: mosque or prison.\u201d True to Unal\u2019s observation, right before the first round of supposed voting, Erdo\u011fan\u2019s Gestapo arrested<\/a><\/span> 126 Kurdish journalists, lawyers, artists, and theatre actors.<\/p>\n More depressingly, Erdo\u011fan\u2019s death cannot bring deliverance. So even if Turkey had its own principled Colonel Stauffenberg<\/a><\/span> willing to carry out an Operation Valkyrie solution, one of his inner-circle henchmen would simply take his place. Plus, in the long-term, Erdo\u011fan and the AKP\u2019s likely political successors will emerge from the farther-right<\/a><\/span> as a mutated version of the MHP, and be even worse. As they will not have any pretense of caring for the multi-ethnic \u2018Caliphate\u2019 but want an even more racist Turanist<\/a><\/span> Fourth Reich, that is even more anti-Kurdish than the current regime. The seeds of this future ideological mutation are already present in the opportunistic candidate Sinan O\u011fan<\/a><\/span>, who has all of the neo-fascism of Erdo\u011fan, with none of the faux-grandfatherly concern for non-Turkish \u201cMuslim brothers and sisters\u201d. The future shift could also be detected in the hapless candidacy of Kemal K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu, who shamefully tried to outflank Erdo\u011fan from the nationalist right, by pledging to deport millions of Syrians, while referring<\/a><\/span> to them as an \u201cunruly flood of people flowing into our veins.\u201d<\/p>\n Ridicule the F\u00fchrer<\/strong><\/p>\n Could there still be a final 1945 Berlin bunker<\/a><\/span> moment on the horizon? I guess one can hope. But really, nobody should be surprised by the timeline that got us here. As in 2016, Erdo\u011fan cited Adolf Hitler<\/a><\/span> as the example of why Turkey should shift from a Parliamentary system to a Presidential one, while granting him full executive powers. And now that he has five more years<\/a><\/span> to disembowel Turkey in his distorted image, the world will see many more balcony speeches where he spews his demented ire, and flares his nostrils during his own Nuremburg Rallies<\/a><\/span> in Ankara. However, now, just as then, Erdo\u011fan should be greeted by all journalists, academics, and observers with nothing but vitriolic contempt (like I am using in this article).<\/p>\n