{"id":28030,"date":"2016-04-08T22:25:20","date_gmt":"2016-04-08T22:25:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/?p=28030"},"modified":"2016-04-08T22:25:20","modified_gmt":"2016-04-08T22:25:20","slug":"polarization-is-no-longer-just-about-politics-in-turkey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/polarization-is-no-longer-just-about-politics-in-turkey\/","title":{"rendered":"Polarization is no longer just about politics in Turkey"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have now reached the point where there is no longer any pretense that Turkey can be considered a democracy. Even the long-term allies are publicly calling on its government to respect democratic norms. The European Union, while bending over backwards to brush over inconvenient truths about its controversial refugee deal, urges Turkey to share their common European values.<\/p>\n

Dismantling the democratic system in Turkey is set to continue with further consolidation of Mr. Erdogan\u2019s executive power and increasing pressure on other civil actors. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has already started to collect signatures for a constitutional amendment in order to remove parliamentary immunity and if the President has his way, to strip citizenship from people it considers sympathetic to its broad description of terrorism.<\/p>\n

The Washington-based rights organisation Freedom House<\/a> has called this \u201ca chilling escalation that should put the international community on notice that Turkish democracy is at breaking point\u201d.<\/p>\n

The fact of the matter is; it is not just the democracy that has reached a breaking point.<\/p>\n

After years of a massive, sustained and relentless policy of political, social and religious polarisation, commonalities that underpin the public life have all but vanished in Turkey.<\/p>\n

Shared values that united the citizens of the country, such as decency, honesty, fairness, tolerance and civic pride have largely eroded along with equality, justice and liberty.<\/p>\n

You only have to look at the current debate generated by the recent child abuse scandals<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After allegations that eight or more male students were raped by their teacher at a private foundation with close links to the government had surfaced, the authorities reacted, not with a compassion for the victims and a determination to prevent further incidents, but with a clear concern for their own reputation. They launched various damage limitation exercises, followed by the customary news black-outs. They obstructed inquiries demanded by the opposition.<\/p>\n

The minister responsible for Family Affairs and Social Policies said one single incident did not justify the criticism of the Islamic foundation in question. When she came under fire from the leader of the main opposition for shielding those responsible, she responded by suing him for libel.<\/p>\n

The President called the leader of the opposition a \u201cpolitical pervert\u201d; the leader of the opposition retorted that the President himself was not only a political but also a sexual pervert.<\/p>\n

Abused children ceased to be the focus of attention; instead, obscenities directed at opposition politicians became the headlines.<\/p>\n

A commentator at the Hurriyet Daily<\/a> summarized it succinctly, that political language in Turkey has degenerated to a new low.<\/p>\n

It is not the first time the government is failing to take responsibility for the inadequate administration and inspection of state and private institutions. \u00a0After all, out-sourcing education and welfare to Islamic foundations and associations have become a pillar of their long-term aim of creating a \u201cpious\u201d generation of loyal supporters.<\/p>\n

The government controlled media either ignores or manipulates the information. If the story becomes too difficult to cover up, they counter-attack by blaming an unspecified foreign mastermind being behind the scandal. It is deemed another conspiracy to undermine the government.<\/p>\n

This utter lack of interest by a large part of the general public, their unwillingness to engage and more importantly, to be enraged that really matter.<\/p>\n

We have already seen greed becoming the common denominator in society, with widespread acceptance of sleaze and corruption.<\/p>\n

But it is painfully difficult to fathom how large sections of the population have become insensitive to child rape and incest, why they remain oblivious to domestic violence, child marriage and, increasingly, polygamy.<\/p>\n

It is always more difficult to confront majorities that consent than the regimes that coerce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We have now reached the point where there is no longer any pretense that Turkey can be considered a democracy. Even the long-term allies are publicly calling on its government to respect democratic norms. The European Union, while bending over backwards to brush over inconvenient truths about its controversial refugee deal, urges Turkey to share […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[4],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28030"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28030"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28030\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28032,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28030\/revisions\/28032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}