Originally published in Cumhuriyet.
Why was President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's supposed ally forced out of the Prime Minister post? The answer lies in the particular ambitions of this Turkish leader.
ISTANBUL — Good thing that Davutoglu kept his silence.
The die-hard supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan were on the verge of calling outgoing Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu a “coup conspirator.” For you never can tell what those surrounding the President might end up doing once accusations start circulating about being “Germany’s man” or “America's man.”
This is how things are in Turkey right now: You can't tell who might be run off the path at any given moment. The answers to the question: "What was Davutoglu's crime?" come from the people of his own party, his own political mission. His crime, fault, sin was this: the level of "compliance" was not sufficient.
“He did not understand that the system had changed,” one observer said of Davutoglu, a longtime ally of Erdogan.
Well, to be truthful, we are having a hard time gauging this “system change” too. There is a major change underway in Turkey, but it has nothing to do with any kind of a system — but in fact is the lack of one. Let us remember that scene years ago when Erdogan was Prime Minister, and as part of the tradition on the Turkish children's annual holiday, a child symbolically sits in the Prime Minister's seat. “Now, you have the authority," Erdogan told the child. "You hang whoever you want, you slay whoever you want. You have everything.”
It was understood in time that the office of prime minister, or even now the presidency, were never enough for Erdogan. These positions still do not let you to hang or slay at will. And thus, a “Turkish-style presidency” is now being born.
I don't know if Erdogan's ambitions have anything to do with Turkishness. It reminds me of the “Eastern despotism” imagined in the heads of Orientalists in the West. We have been forced to argue against these ideas that despotism, or "sultanism," is somehow exclusive to the East or to the Ottoman Empire. The truth is that there was political and institutional order that enabled the reign over a vast geography for centuries. But, it is clear that our political Islamists, just like western Orientalists, believe our “historic legacy” was the arbitrary rule of an individual. Now we hear people calling this a “Turkish-style presidency.”
Full compliance
And yet now we see the transformation, of which even Davutoglu became an obstacle, into a total arbitrary approach to governance; a call for full compliance that can be summed up as: “Allah is great, Erdogan is our leader.”
It's almost surprising that they haven't sought to eliminate the parliament, constitution and the supreme judiciary because, ultimately, Erdogan believes he knows better than everyone about everything. All those institutions would be unnecessary within the scope of the ideas of the presidency they are throwing around. Of course, parts of those institutions must remain so there are positions and opportunities to hand out to the loyalists, to keep alive the “who is more loyal to the chief” race — always run under the disguise of “the cause.”
Now Davutoglu, who might have been considered the last check on power, at least in terms of foreign policy, is gone. I am afraid that the sequel in the Turkey film series will be highly violent. Children should be kept away.
