{"id":1141,"date":"2014-12-16T13:31:29","date_gmt":"2014-12-16T13:31:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1141"},"modified":"2014-12-18T14:03:02","modified_gmt":"2014-12-18T14:03:02","slug":"the-end-of-turkey-in-europe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/covcasbulletin.info\/?p=1141","title":{"rendered":"The End of Turkey in Europe"},"content":{"rendered":"

By NATE SCHENKKAN, Program Officer, Eurasia
\nFreedom House<\/em><\/p>\n

On December 17, 2013, Turkey woke up to mass police raids across the country. The chief executive of state-owned HalkBank was detained, and television stations showed shoeboxes stuffed with millions of American dollars pulled out from under his bed. The sons of three cabinet ministers were also taken for questioning. Investigators would soon come knocking for the son of Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, then the prime minister, now the president, and the most powerful man in the country.<\/p>\n

One year later almost to the day, after 12 months in which the government successfully fought to suppress the corruption scandal by reassigning the prosecutors and police who investigated it, Erdo\u011fan and his allies have taken revenge. On Sunday, December 14, the authorities announced a case against 31 people suspected of \u201cestablishing and managing an armed terror organization\u201d with the intent of seizing state power. The targets are leading members of the Islamist G\u00fclen movement, also commonly called the Cemaat, including the editor in chief of Zaman, one of the country\u2019s highest circulation newspapers, and the president of Samanyolu, a major television broadcaster. Zaman, Samanyolu, and other G\u00fclenist media outlets pushed last year\u2019s corruption investigation onto their front pages and nightly broadcasts, and kept it in the headlines as recordings of high-ranking officials leaked onto the internet all last winter and spring. The corruption investigation and its wall-to-wall coverage in the movement\u2019s press were widely interpreted as a declaration of war by the Cemaat against the ruling party, with which it had long been allied.<\/p>\n

The official charges announced this week apparently allege a sweeping and byzantine plot connected to G\u00fclenist media support for the investigation of a rival Islamist group called Tah\u015fiye that may have been close to the government. The case includes claims that two soapy television dramas carried by Samanyolu were part of the operation against Tah\u015fiye; several members of the shows\u2019 staff have been arrested. Within Turkey, however, there is no question that the true motivation for the probe is revenge for the corruption scandal. Erdo\u011fan himself has left no doubt about his intentions, vowing throughout the year to hunt down his opponents in the so-called \u201cparallel structure.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It is no small irony that the government is deploying such a convoluted case against the G\u00fclen movement and its supporters in the media. Despite their carefully cultivated image abroad as liberal democrats, at home the G\u00fclenists have a record of fighting dirty. The G\u00fclenist press avidly backed the prosecution of thousands of Kurdish activists in the KCK case, and hundreds of members of Turkey\u2019s military and secularist elite on absurd charges in the Ergenekon and Balyoz cases. For many years, the movement cheered Erdo\u011fan\u2019s rise to power as its best chance to break the Kemalist old guard. A popular image circulating on Turkish social media on Sunday showed the now-arrested editor in chief of Zaman together with Erdo\u011fan in 2012, smiling and holding a framed copy of the newspaper with the headline \u201cThe Triumph of Democracy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through their supporters in the police and judiciary, the G\u00fclenists did not hesitate to go after journalists and others who crossed them. For this reason, the most promising development from Sunday\u2019s events is the stirring of solidarity within Turkey\u2019s press. Journalist Ahmet \u015e\u0131k wrote a hard-hitting book on the G\u00fclenist movement and in return was sent to jail on cooked-up charges that Zaman loudly supported. But on Sunday he tweeted, \u201cThe Cemaat was among the forceful supporters of fascism a few years ago. What they are going through today is also fascism. To oppose fascism is a virtue.\u201d Zaman\u2019s Washington correspondent thanked \u015e\u0131k for his support and acknowledged, \u201cWe could never have supported your freedom in such a way.\u201d Leftist and secularist press organizations like the Turkish Journalists\u2019 Association and Turkish Journalists\u2019 Union also condemned the arrests<\/a>. The new press freedom organization P24\u2014which counts among its founders Andrew Finkel, a foreign journalist living in Turkey for decades who was fired by Today\u2019s Zaman when he criticized<\/a> its support for \u015e\u0131k\u2019s imprisonment\u2014issued a statement titled \u201cNo to the Police State!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

It will be up to Turkey\u2019s media and civil society to stop this crackdown. The simple truth is that external actors have lost all influence in Turkey. In response to Sunday\u2019s arrests, the European Union quickly issued an unusually harsh statement reminding Turkey that respect for rule of law and fundamental rights are required for accession to the bloc. Turkey\u2019s membership bid has been officially open but practically frozen for years due to unrelated objections from France and Cyprus. On Monday Erdo\u011fan responded to the statement by saying he was not worried about whether Turkey would be accepted into Europe, and telling the EU to \u201ckeep your advice to yourself<\/a>.\u201d At least one pro-accession member of the European Parliament has already proposed<\/a> officially freezing Turkey\u2019s candidacy. It is time to take this drastic step.<\/p>\n

Proponents of the accession process\u2014myself included\u2014have argued<\/a> that it remains by far the best mechanism for Europe and the United States to promote the sustainable development of democratic institutions in Turkey. But Turkey\u2019s leaders have explicitly rejected the EU, in action and in words. Sunday\u2019s crackdown adds to the agonizing list of the last year and a half: the prosecutions of the Taksim Platform and of the soccer fan club \u00c7ar\u015f\u0131 for an \u201cattempted coup\u201d during the Gezi Park protests, the unapologetic censorship of protected speech online and offline, the empowerment of the National Intelligence Agency to act as an unaccountable tool of executive power, and Erdo\u011fan\u2019s formation of a \u201cshadow cabinet\u201d to rule the country from the presidency in violation of the constitution.<\/p>\n

A European vision for Turkey will never move forward with this government. It is time to freeze the accession process, and to prepare for a Turkey that remains outside of Europe indefinitely. Those who dream of a democratic future for the country need to start thinking differently about how to support the cause.<\/p>\n

Analyses and recommendations offered by the authors do not necessarily reflect those of Freedom House.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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