In the course of the last two weeks in Turkey, the crushing blow of disappointment over the victory of President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, his Justice and Development Party and its ultra-nationalists allies in the June elections seems to have evolved\u00a0 into a widespread apathy.<\/p>\n
Unquestionably, the overarching cause for this detachment was the huge let down of millions by the opposition parties. The energy and civic idealism that were created and mobilized during the election campaign disappeared overnight.<\/p>\n
Opposition supporters, activists, party workers, commentators and journalists, at first, seemed confused and bewildered. Disappointment became anger. Anger turned into cynicism.<\/p>\n
Feeling demeaned and dismissed, many simply decided it was downright hopeless to go on.<\/p>\n
Instead of addressing the indignation and exasperation of their supporters, the paralyzed and dysfunctional opposition chose to be occupied by their own internal squabbles.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, President Erdo\u011fan and his new administration have lost no time cementing and consolidating their new regime with devastating effectiveness.<\/p>\n
While the democracy is dismantled, political landscape is restructured, and institutions are blatantly shattered, the ineptitude of the opposition is mind- boggling.<\/p>\n
But it is not the crisis of various political parties what concerns me the most.<\/p>\n
The self-defeating, bone chilling indifference of some among the opposition supporters, including influential voices in the media, giving up when they need to get up,I find seriously alarming on many levels.<\/p>\n
Turkey\u2019s wretched opposition deserves to be questioned, for sure, but the \u00a0role of a genuine political opposition should not be underplayed.<\/p>\n
As the Gezi Park protests in 2013 have shown, moral outrage over violations of civil rights and freedoms can be politically energizing, but unless the protests and resistance are channeled and organized, they cannot be sustained.<\/p>\n
However, if the conventional political actors do not get their act together soon, there will be others inhabiting the space between the state and individuals.<\/p>\n
On an optimistic note, the recent European history is full of examples of how dissent and opposition led by civil society could effectuate democratic transition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the course of the last two weeks in Turkey, the crushing blow of disappointment over the victory of President Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, his Justice and Development Party and its ultra-nationalists allies in the June elections seems to have evolved\u00a0 into a widespread apathy. Unquestionably, the overarching cause for this detachment was the huge let […]<\/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\/29394"}],"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=29394"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29394\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29397,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29394\/revisions\/29397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.firdevstalkturkey.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}