By Gokce Aytulu, Kansas City Star
Americans rarely talk about foreign politics. In daily small talk, overseas matters don’t come up for discussion too often. Yet when I tell someone I am from Turkey, they immediately ask me, “Hey, what is wrong with your country?”
Almost 10 years ago Turkey was a dazzling country in the eyes of its allies. It had a giddy and growing economy, and it was a bridge between Western values and Islamic tradition. It also was the only secular Muslim government that had tried to engage with the European Union.
Today, the same allies discern that Turkey is becoming ruled by one man instead of being a decent democracy.
What went wrong?
Well, everything began with economy.
After the financial turmoil in 2001, Turkey started an International Monetary Fund program aimed at an economic recovery. But the fiscal problems helped overturn Turkish politics.
All five parties in the Turkish parliament were bludgeoned in the general election in 2002. Only two managed to pass the 10 percent threshold — the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and People’s Republican Party (CHP).
The AKP government pursued the IMF program and oversaw an economic recovery and started negotiations to gain membership in the EU. The AKP and Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan pledged to destroy the “ancient establishment” in Turkey to make people more equal, happier and wealthier. They promised to fight the three symbols of the obscene political culture of the past: poverty, corruption and strict laws against people’s rights.
The AKP government started a new, breathtaking diplomatic policy called “zero problem with our neighbors.” Turkey also attempted to moderate peaceful talks between Syria and Israel. Ironically, today it has big issues with both nations.
After the AKP’s second election triumph in 2007 with 47 percent of the vote, things changed.
Some big lawsuits were filed between 2008 and 2013 against military figures, Kurds, journalists and even soccer teams. All of the prosecutors of those lawsuits allegedly were members of an Islamist community (Gulen Movement) that supported the AKP government.
At first, Erdogan supported those trials. But after a corruption inquiry against four AKP ministers in 2013, Erdogan claimed all the lawsuits were a “cruel hoax,” and he accused the Gulen Movement of trying to establish a parallel state in Turkey.
In the last 10 years, it seems the “zero problems” diplomacy is a failure. Turkey now has no allies among its neighbors.
Unlike a decade ago, Turkey is not shining in its allies’ eyes as a “partly free” country as rated by Freedom House. Turkey ranked 151st out of 180 countries in the World Press Freedom Index.
The Kurdish issue has turned again into an endless battle inside the country. Human rights issues are worse than in the 1990s. And the Turkish people are more polarized than they have ever been.
There is only one victor in this process: Erdogan.
In 2014 he became president with 52 percent of the vote. He left behind liberals, an Islamist community and his colleagues. And last week, Prime Minister Ahmed Davutoglu stepped down under pressure from Erdogan.
This week, new Prime Minister Binali Yildirim kowtowed to Erdogan in public, saying, “Mr. President, we promise you that your passion will be our passion, your cause will be our cause, your path will be our path.”
In President George W. Bush’s second term and Barack Obama’s first term, Americans thought Turkey could be a model for Muslim countries because of its secular and democratic system.
Is that still true?
Prominent Turkish journalist Nuray Mert wrote: “In our case, a peculiar Islamist ideology seems to have replaced the role of secular totalitarian ideologies of the past. It may be that Turkey is becoming ‘a model for Islamist totalitarian politics’ as a novelty of the new century.”
But that’s not a model Americans — or many Turkish people — once had hoped to see.
