Stop me if you've heard this one before: "In short, a natural politician, Erdogan has a common touch and an ability to communicate his empathy for the plight and aspirations of the common citizen. He projects the image of the Tribune of Anatolia, ready to take on corruption and privilege and to defend conservative traditions."
America's former ambassador to Turkey, Eric Edelman, writing what he thought was a classified memo in 2004, was at least good enough to furnish the U.S. State Department with a few prescient caveats about this natural politician, all related to deficiencies in Recep Tayyip Erdogan's character. The then-newly elected Turkish prime minister was "seriously vulnerable to miscalculating the political dynamic, especially in foreign affairs, and vulnerable to attacks by those who would disrupt his equilibrium." His pride was "overbearing." His ambition was messianic: Erdogan believed himself "anointed" by God to lead Turkey - never a good sign in a freshman head of state. And his "authoritarian loner streak" rendered around him little more than sunken-chested yes-men incapable of controlling an outsized ego and "thin-skinned" disposition. Also, Erdogan had an incurable "distrust of women," which is why there were none in positions of authority in the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) that he co-founded. This is also probably why heterosexual smooching on subway platforms, seven years on, is a major cause of national concern to him.
Turkey is paying a high price for Erdogan's charisma. The Gezi Park protests, which have actually been happening for weeks (complete with chivvying riot police), but which only turned violent last Friday, have nominally been waged over the planned uprooting of trees in a derelict patch of vegetation in Istanbul. The reason for the uprooting was a new construction project that had been rammed through by the AKP-controlled municipality without any consultations with ecologists or urban historians, and it would have remade a 19th-century artillery barracks into first a hotel, then a shopping mall.
Yet the real, unmistakable, origin of this wide unrest was the man who has lately been recast as a combination of Boss Tweed and Vladimir Putin. That Erdogan was last re-elected with close to 50 percent of the popular vote is all the justification his self-conceit needs to keep going. Why should he work for the people when they're happy to continue working for him? To his enemies, however, Erdogan only proves that megalomaniacs with dictatorial tendencies don't necessarily have to seize power - sometimes they win it fair and square.
The prime minister's contempt in the last week was palpable, not only for the Kemalists who never supported him but for the liberals, nationalists, bourgeoisie, and intellectuals who now regret doing so. He didn't even bother to stay and manage the gravest domestic political crisis in a decade - he had a plane to catch to the Maghreb - but not before quitting the country with a few parting insults. Just as the Gezi demos were spreading into a solidarity campaign encompassing 67 cities and towns throughout Turkey, Erdogan offered a contradictory and paranoid array of explanations for what was happening. He said that "extremists" and/or the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) were sowing chaos. He intimated the presence of foreign agents egging the protestors on, and assured everyone that Turkish intelligence would be investigating these fifth columnists. He called Twitter - which for 48 hours had become the only real source of homegrown news - the "the worst menace to society." And he referred to tens of thousands of people chanting for his resignation as "looters," "bums," and alcoholics. Plus, the recent ban on selling booze after 10 PM, and the new zoning restriction on opening bars or drink-friendly restaurants within 100 meters of schools or mosques, helped make Efes (Turkey's national beer) into an unlikely symbol of defiance. As for damage control, Erdogan left Abdullah Gul, his neutered president, to remind the world that democracy isn't just about holding elections, it's also about respecting minority opinions and the right to dissent.
The real picture, if not quite Tahrir or Deraa, is certainly worse than Zuccotti. "Occupy Gezi transformed from what felt like a festival, with yoga, barbecues, and concerts, into what feels like a war - with barricades, plastic bullets, and gas attacks," wrote Elif Batuman in The New Yorker. So far, three people are dead across the country, one of them in Hatay province; which, given its already precarious role as the triage center of the Syrian revolution, cannot really afford further bloodshed or social boat-rocking. Over 1,000 people have been detained by the so-called "Robocops" of the Turkish gendarmerie. According to the Turkish Medical Association (as of Tuesday), close to 3,200 have been injured, and two dozen are in serious or critical condition. At least half a dozen have been blinded by rubber bullets. Tear and pepper gas have enveloped much of Istanbul, and canisters have even been shot into emergency rooms of hospitals treating patients for respiratory ailments, due to prior exposure to these chemicals. Water cannons have been unleashed against the elderly, including some women whom AKP officialdom have deemed in their conservative wisdom "decent" in appearance (for my lira, the best dispatch from Istanbul is Claire Berlinski's in City Journal.)
As is always the case in popular revolts, all of the old scandals and animosities have percolated quickly to the surface, even if accidentally. One journalist who had previously been imprisoned for reporting on the Gulenist infiltration of the police force, was hit in the head with a gas canister - reminding international onlookers of Turkey's status as the worst jailer of independent journalists. Also, one of the documented fatalities from the last few days was 20 year-old Mehmet Ayvalitas, who was run over by a taxi. Ayvalitas was apparently a member of the leftist cyber-group RedHack, which recently published classified state documents about the twin car bombings last month in Reyhanli, Hatay province, a terrorist attack undoubtedly linked to Syria, which killed 51 people. Only 28 percent of Turks believe that Erdogan's handling of the nightmare on his southern border has been sensible.
While justice is severely in question, no one denies the development aspect of AKP's remit. Gezi Park has become a synecdoche for the crony capitalist construction that has helped triple Turkey's GDP. As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan was trailed by allegations that he made a personal fortune from kickbacks and douceurs from party-affiliated businessmen. "AKP enrich their own," Aliza Marcus, a Turkey scholar, told me. She noted that when it comes to construction permits, things tend to happen in about two weeks whereas weightier matters of state, such as Turkish constitutional reform, can miss multiple deadlines.
No doubt a subconscious memory of the former mayor's Tammany-style dealmaking, has attended Istanbul's reaction to the barracks renovation (now cancelled), as well as a host of other controversial efforts to refashion a fun-loving cosmopolis into a pious, neo-Ottoman Olympic village. Tarlabasi, a working-class district home to many Kurds who relocated there after being driven out of the Turkish southeast by the state's now-rescinding war with the PKK, was subject to an urban renewal scheme founded on a wobbly interpretation of eminent domain that forced homeowners to sell at below-market rates to a development company headed by Erdogan's son-in-law. Renters mainly had to move again, this time to apartments 20 miles away from the city center.
For Erdogan, good things in Istanbul apparently come in threes, such as airports and bridges. He once thought another piece of infrastructure over the Bosphorus would mean "massacring the remaining green areas" in the city; now he not only favors the bridge but intends to name it for a 16th-century sultan who massacred Turkey's remaining Alevi population. "He insulted 15 million right there," my friend Ilhan Tanir, Vatan's Washington correspondent, said.
David Gardner of the Financial Times was clearly right when he observed: "Another way of looking at the AKP is as a party of building contractors, who have never seen anything they did not want to build, and have grown accustomed to bulldozing anything in their path."
Except that parks, trees, and low-income housing aren't the only things that got razed. Turkey is now vibrantly alive to the fact, while the Tribune of Anatolia scorns the plight and aspirations of the common citizen.