Character Assassination

The fault line that has started to move with the Taksim incidents is not a crack that we are unfamiliar with. We have been facing a fault line since the day one of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government. There are certainly adequate numbers of people/groups abroad that buy this fault line which has emerged through deep social and economic differences inside Turkey. The last three weeks have become a case in point for Turkey to see once again the foreign partners of this “fight” that can be dated back to the last period of the Ottomans. Obviously as well, there is nothing attractive to have talks with Turkey through other capitals. We have been subject to this intellectual harassment for over a century. The only thing new is that the already scattered target has been made into a single one through a very professional engineering. We are witnessing for the first time in the history of the Republic that the global elites with the leverage of the Kemalist elites sharing the same frequency have plotted a character assassination against Erdoğan.

At the point we have reached, no matter what is experienced inside Turkey, the “Erdoğan identity,” which has become a reference point through the protests at the Taksim Square, has been transformed into an immutable footnote and a memorization note in every single issue about Turkey for a long time. This was nothing new though. It was tried for the first time when Turkey did not participate in the occupation of Iraq. Since there had been very few reference points about a newly elected government in that period, the verbal attacks, however, usually remained Islamophobic in nature and were reduced to absurdity. The next sortie which had resumed when Turkey clearly stood against the 2008 Gaza massacre was rendered ineffective due to Israel’s illegitimate position. After 2008, the criticisms – targeting Turkey in general and Erdoğan in partial – also turned not much effective as they remained under the influence of Israel. Similarly, the names who could have contributed to the criticisms inside Turkey were roughly the actors of the Israel-Washington line; they failed to create a multiplier effect. Taksim was just sufficient to make many centers, which have been sharpened against Turkey for the last decade, move/mobilize simultaneously.

Following this stage, even if Turkey finds solutions to the biggest democratization challenges; i.e., makes a leap forward in the making of a new Constitution, and goes a long distance in the solution process of the Kurdish issue, the religion-state affairs and in other headings, no one should expect the machine running outside Turkey to calm down. From now on, the only thing that the global hegemonic discourse, which has gained momentum owing to our Liberals who even cannot make a sentence without using the imperatives, will talk regarding Turkey will be nothing but Erdoğan. They are facing, however, an Erdoğan who has survived the Sledgehammer (Balyoz) military coup attempt during the US occupation in Iraq and the April 27 e-memorandum by the military in 2007 (during the presidential elections), the March 14 political assassination attempt and the February 7 sabotage by the Judiciary-Police cooperation which, if it were to be successful, would carry the risk of almost reaching Erdoğan. Erdoğan is not only a man who has survived all these attempts. He is, at the same time, a man who has remained up and running in a period where the lack of leadership had made a peak globally. Erdoğan is a leader who is able to pull up/drag along the people of his country, who is able to make transformational decisions and who is able to take a stand and win in a period where there is shortage of leaders who can generate foundational policies/politics.

THE TAKSIM JUNCTURE

Turkey is a country situated in the middle of European, Caucasian and the Middle Eastern-North African geological systems. The economic crisis in Europe, the political crisis in the Middle East and the Cold War order