Divided they stand

Marc Champion of Bloomberg recently wrote an eloquent and well-balanced article explaining how this move had tipped the scale for him on "that old hidden agenda question." Many people who had hoped the Justice and Development Party (AKP) would take Turkey further down the road toward democratization, myself included, have at some point in the recent past wondered if they had gotten it wrong all along.

But it is not quite so simple, especially if you look back at the pre-AKP period and the evolution Turkey has undergone in the past 15 years. Right now, from a liberal point of view, it is undeniable that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has become more of a liability than an asset on the march toward a more democratic Turkey. His famed pragmatism has turned into a cynical use of social polarization to win votes -- a "divide and rule" method long favored by state institutions that created enemies, real or imaginary, to maintain their powerful position. Once seen as a man of the people, set on challenging the condescending approach of the state toward its citizens, the prime minister is now routinely using disparaging terms to describe dissidents.

But the secularists who, today, gleefully say "we told you so" don't acknowledge that they carry a share of responsibility for the current situation. If the prime minister has become so powerful, it is largely because they have done little to develop a serious political opposition in the past decade. His most serious challenge came from the Gezi protesters, a motley crowd that proved effective in the streets but has yet to find a political channel. Given the growing number of people concerned about patriarchal government policies and the prime minister's authoritarian style, it is astonishing that 11 years after the AKP came to power, its political rivals appear no closer to presenting a serious threat, partly because they deny important achievements of the past decade.

The Republican People's Party (CHP), stuck in a time warp, offers no coherent democratic vision for the future. Dealing with non-Kemalist political actors used to be outsourced to the army and other state institutions, which acted as de facto opposition. Once the AKP established its control over these institutions, it became evident that no one had the political muscle to maintain a degree of balance. The ease with which Mr. Erdoğan, who used to be an anti-establishment figure, was able to become a man of the state without losing his core constituency also point to other issues that run deeper in the society.

Turkey's governance system is based on unconditional allegiance to a leader or an ideology, rather than on consensus building and participation. The notion of constructive criticism is all but non-existent in Turkey's political culture, and the prime minister, echoing George Bush, expects people to be "either with us or against us." The state, for all its negative connotations, remains an untouchable entity in the eyes of many.

Turkey is now polarized between those who support imposing their conservative views on the rest of the population, whether it is on co-ed student housing or women's place in society, and those, at the opposite end of the spectrum, who still wish to promote a repressive ultra-secularist agenda. Only a rather slim -- but very vocal -- segment appears in favor of a loose constitutional framework that would allow people to coexist peacefully, irrespective of who they want to be or how they want to live.

Government pressure and policies that particularly affect women and young people negatively are the most pressing issues, but unless Turkish society as a whole can boost its more tolerant middle ground, foster a culture more critical toward authority and respectful of people's individual rights, the country will continue to be torn between camps seeking to impose their own reality on others.