When the AKP came to power in 2002, Prime Minister Erdoğan and his party set out on an ambitious mission to remake Turkey’s economy and politics, turn Turkey into a regional power, and step up efforts to join the EU. It was a huge undertaking that was successful in some ways and unsuccessful in others. In recent days, however, the prime minister has embarked on an even greater challenge, since this time he is not content to simply remake Turkey. Instead, Erdoğan has decided to tackle a more global problem, which is redefining words whose definition seems clear in every language but which the prime minister has decided do not adequately reflect realities as he sees them.
Let’s start with the word “terrorist” which is often contested in terms of details but generally means a person who uses violence as a way of causing mass fear and intimidation. It seems relatively simple to distinguish terrorists from people who are not terrorists. For instance, Osama bin Laden is a terrorist for a number of reasons, including bringing down the World Trade Center. The folks who hang out in Franklin Square during my lunch hour are not terrorists since all they are doing is standing around. Erdoğan has apparently decided that the common definition is not good enough because it is too limiting. For him, the word terrorist must encompass all sorts of actions, such as protesting against the government, running away from police who are teargassing you, criticizing the prime minister or the cabinet or the police on Twitter, heading an opposition party, and almost certainly soon to include people who, like the folks in Franklin Square during my lunch hour, just stand around not doing much of anything at all. The new ingenious wave of protests sweeping Turkey encompasses nothing more than standing still, which began with a single man named Erdem Gündüz who spent hours standing silently in Taksim Square and has sparked hundreds of people doing the same (here are some awe-inspiring pictures of the phenomenon, and to see more go to Twitter and search #duranadam). The government claims that it will not intervene in the Duran Adam (Standing Man) protests unless there is a menace to public order, but I have little doubt that in a few days, as this spreads to more cities and grows to even greater heights, that Erdoğan will figure out a way to broaden the definition of “breaking public order” and we will all be enlightened as to how Gündüz is actually a foreign agent acting on the orders of the interest rate lobby, financial lobby, international media, social media, Communists, leftwing terrorists and anarchists, Zionists, foreign provocateurs, and how anyone who emulates him must be a foreign agent as well. And in case you are wondering, yes, he was in fact briefly detained by police for standing, a fate that also met Davide Martello’s piano after he played it for the crowds in Taksim over the weekend. It’s good to know that the piano spent a couple of days in jail, as you can never be too careful when it comes to terrorist musical instruments.
Another term that Erdoğan is having issues with is “democracy.” Just yesterday, we found out from the prime minister that the European Union has no respect for democracy despite it encompassing the largest federation of democratic states in the history of the world. By criticizing Turkey, Erdoğan says that the EU is anti-democratic, which is funny because I was under the impression that democracy had something to do with free and fair contested elections for effective power along with granting and protecting a set of liberties, but apparently democracy is henceforth to be defined as agreeing with the current Turkish government. In fact, while one might argue that the right to criticize, as the EU has done with regard to the Turkish government’s response to the protests, is actually in itself a hallmark of democratic behavior, the prime minister wants to set us straight by letting us know that in fact criticizing the Turkish government is the very definition of anti-democratic behavior. Erdoğan chided the EU for supporting those who attack the freedom of others, since he insists that the Gezi protestors are restricting his own freedom rather than the other way around. Again, I was under the impression that the entity that detains, arrests, beats, teargasses, and chemically burns civilians was the party restricting freedoms, but once again I must be mistaken. Thankfully, Erdoğan has most helpfully educated all of us by instructing the world that it is not the ones who do the detaining, arresting, beating, teargassing, and chemically burning who restrict freedom, but in reality it is the ones who are themselves detained, arrested, beaten, teargassed, and chemically burned who are restricting freedom. As always, good to know. In addition, the prime minister would like us all to be aware that the Turkish police have an “inherent right” to use as much teargas as they please, so I’m happy to see that at least one group’s rights are being zealously protected by the state. And in case you were wondering, Minister for European Affairs Egemen Bağış assures that there is absolutely no state violence in Turkey and that this is all a foreign plot. Phew! I was starting to think that maybe Turkey was having some issues with democracy.
I could go on like this for literally hours, but you get the point. When a government has to resort to the most tortured explanations, absurd rhetorical flights of fancy, and outright dishonesty and dissembling to try and convince the entire world that what it is seeing in the streets is not actually happening, then there is something rotten afoot. I still can’t tell if Erdoğan has completely lost his mind or if this is a deliberate strategy, but no matter what the answer is, the Turkish government is looking more foolish and unhinged by the hour. The government has announced that it is writing new laws to regulate the use of social media in Turkey, and as Yigal Schleifer pointed out earlier today, the irony is thick when a prime minister who was imprisoned for reciting a poem tries to imprison people for exercising their rights to free speech on Twitter and Facebook. As the government moves to arrest people without charges and hold them indefinitely while throwing around vague accusations of terrorism, coup plots, and links to leftwing anarchist groups, it is eerily reminiscent of the prosecutions of the military, which also involved allegations of shadowy conspiracies and detentions without charges. We know how that game ended, and it appears as if the government is once again pulling out the Ergenekon playbook. All the meanwhile, Erdoğan attempts to convince everyone that up is down, black is white, and freedom and democracy mean getting mauled by police for protesting. War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength. All that’s left is for Erdoğan to announce that the protestors will be dealt with by the Ministry of Love. If you can’t convince your citizens that basic terms mean something other than what everyone always thought they meant, then what’s the point of being prime minister anyway?
Ottomans and Zionists 
My question is , are people, his voter base, or whatever segment he is trying to salvage and reach, buying it?
Will they , at some point , wake up from denial?
Or is he just doing the same old thing over and over again.
It is true, that he employs Orwellian measures, eg. ordering the change of the meaning of the word “Chapul” he used for resistance, riff-raf in English, to be renamed something like terrorist.
Whereas, among resistance, this same word became an identity.
It is true that the media, he suppressed, wrote that 1.3M people attended
his demonstration, even though Google earth pictures show 40K people would fit at max to the bordered area in the pictures.
Will the “unstoppable force” or the “Orwellian darkness” win?
Twitter usage already show the winner, by a very wide margin.
“Terrorist” seems to be the word most loved by folks with an authoritarian bent. You have probably seen this story:
Such was the case in Mt. Pleasant as more than 100 residents used the state’s official complaint process to seek help with the poor quality of their water. In fact, residents claim there are often boil water notices and even when there’s no boil warning, children have become sick from drinking the water. Yet at a town meeting, Sherwin Smith, deputy director of Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation’s Division of Water Resources warned residents:
“We take water quality very seriously. Very, very seriously. But you need to make sure that when you make water quality complaints you have a basis, because federally, if there’s no water quality issues, that can be considered under Homeland Security an act of terrorism.”
Excellent post. You correctly identified the bleeding vein. Keep on writing.
And civilians attacking protesters with large knives are set free by the courts manipulated by AKP. A Minister says those civilians’ reaction to protesters was within the law. Another Minister / Mayor says we can not allow these ‘kind of protests’ in a democracy. AKP is redefining what Democracy means and how a society should consume the ideology of Democracy in line with AKP’s procedural code.