From the oppressed to the oppressor

Only a little more than a decade ago, voters in Turkey embraced a new political organization, cheerfully welcoming a party whose leader was previously jailed for reciting a poem as the most popular of its kind on the political scene.

The Justice and Development Party (AK Party) of charismatic former İstanbul Mayor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan garnered more popular support every single time it was subjected to an antidemocratic move by the old establishment, starting with its first election victory at the end of 2002.

When the then chief of General Staff of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt, threatened the party with an e-memo in 2007, people only loved Erdoğan and his team more. The following attempts by what is commonly referred to as the “deep state” to prevent the party from nominating its own presidential candidate the same year made it even more the people's choice for the country's future government. Just a year later, a closure case was brought to the nation's agenda, yet it was rendered totally ineffective as people stood by their electoral preferences. As a result, the party's share of votes in parliamentary elections increased from about 35 percent in 2002 to almost 50 percent in 2011. That was a clear mandate for the party to also fight the old establishment in the name of the people.

Today, however, we are watching an unusual episode to the same story, with the AK Party totally unheeding calls from the people, and instead turning its back on them. A series of developments in only the past month demonstrate the scale of what we are talking about here.

On Nov. 14, the Zaman daily ran a story on a draft law in which the government details a plan to shut down privately owned prep schools. Pro-government newspapers claimed the report was a lie, but the following day but it turned out to be the very truth itself. The government said it wanted to close those institutions because they were no longer needed. But it is obvious that the schools are in fact necessary given the fact that more than 100,000 students are now enrolled in more than 3,000 such schools countrywide. All the objections regarding violations of the fundamental freedom of enterprise and education fell on deaf ears. A futile public discussion dragged on, with no sign of a clear understanding on the part of the government about why students, teachers, jurists and social scientists were against its plan. Many suspected that the government's real intention was to deal a blow to a civil education movement called Hizmet, which runs about a thousand of those schools.

On Nov. 28, the Taraf daily ran a story on a 2004 National Security Council (MGK) decision signed by Prime Minister Erdoğan that says an action plan should be readied to crush the Hizmet movement. The same newspaper later unveiled the fact that supporters of this movement were profiled by the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) up until very recently. The party's spokesperson, Hüseyin Çelik, acknowledged the profiling and said, “No matter who you put at the head of this organization, it would not be correct to claim that MİT got rid of its decades-old habits overnight.” Hearing these words from a credible mouth, everybody expected there to be an investigation to find and punish those “rogue” elements within the Turkish intelligence establishment. However, what happened was that Prime Minister Erdoğan called the publication of those reports “treacherous” and asked the prosecutors to do their “constitutional duty.” A prosecutor's office launched an investigation into Taraf and its reporter Mehmet Baransu on charges of “treason against one's homeland.”

And lastly, İstanbul police raided the homes and offices of a number of top businesspeople and bureaucrats -- among them the sons of three of the ministers in Erdoğan's Cabinet and the general manager of a state-owned bank -- on Dec. 17. The police operation followed a year-long judicial investigation into a network of corruption and bribery. The following day, five police chiefs involved in the operation were sacked. It goes without saying that this is a cover-up attempt by the government.

It remains to be seen if Erdoğan's government can win another election after it changed its fight from “in the name of the people” to “against the people,” but this much is clear: Its popular perception has forever been changed from being the oppressed to being the oppressor.