Authoritarianism

A combination of European Union mishandling and domestic developments propelled Turkey to where it is now.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan didn’t just win his constitutional referendum—he permanently closed a chapter of his country’s modern history.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's vision for an executive presidency promises to continue his country's slide toward authoritarianism.

One of the leading sources of refugees in Europe is the impoverished east African nation of Eritrea. Many fleeing describe chronic human rights abuses.

It wasn't so long ago that the Turkish leader was seen as a model democrat in the Islamic world. What happened?

Over the past year, any hopes that Cambodia, where national elections almost led to a change in government three years ago, was headed toward a democratic transition, have been fully dashed. Prime Minister Hun Sen and the ruling Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) are again taking complete control of the kingdom. In fact, as the country prepares for the next national elections, to be held in 2018, Hun Sen appears to be resorting to his usual combination of repressing opposition politicians and co-opting a small number of his opponents. These harsh but skillful tactics have helped him become the longest-serving non-royal ruler in Asia, surviving one of the most tumultuous political environments in the world. To review – following national elections in 2013 in which the new opposition coalition, the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), did much better than expected, Hun Sen appeared unusually subdued. He publicly acknowledged a need for more inclusive politics and he publicly welcomed opposition leaders into parliament. The opposition coalition had relied on support from younger Cambodians who, in many cases, no longer remembered the Khmer Rouge era and longed for better government than that provided by Hun Sen. Perhaps shocked by nearly being beaten by the opposition in 2013, Hun Sen promised a new “culture of dialogue” with the opposition CNRP. Many CNRP leaders took their seats in parliament and prepared for Cambodia to potentially grow into a stable, two-party system. Opposition leader Sam Rainsy, who had been living in exile, returned to Cambodia. That compromise has come completely unraveled, with the government using all its tools to crack down on the CNRP.  Rainsy has fled into exile again after the government produced a warrant for his arrest on old, questionable charges. The government has arrested four human rights workers and an election commission official as part of an elaborate investigation into an alleged affair by top CNRP leader Kem Sokha. It also has detained at least twenty-five opposition politicians on a range of charges, while police have raided the opposition coalition’s headquarters. This crackdown may have economic repercussions as well. As Markus Karbaum notes on New Mandala, Hun Sen’s tight control of politics, combined with a lack of transparency and high levels of graft throughout the economy, are dissuading foreign investors. The country has few comparative advantages over neighboring nations like Vietnam, and its rice sector and garment sector, which are critical to the economy, are facing serious troubles. Rice is becoming too costly to produce, due in part to poor physical infrastructure. The garment industry will shrink if Cambodia loses its priority access to the EU market, which is possible in the next decade or so. Strangely, Rainsy does not seem as alarmed as the situation might warrant. In an interview with Radio Free Asia during a recent visit to Washington, Rainsy was muted in his criticism of Hun Sen. Rainsy further maintained that the opposition continues to “value and hail the culture of dialogue” even as it is battered by the CPP. Hun Sen’s crackdown is part of a regional trend. After being challenged in the early 2010s, anti-democratic forces are getting stronger in many parts of Southeast Asia. In Malaysia, where a 2013 election nearly put the opposition coalition in power, the opposition is in tatters and fighting amongst itself. Former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad has attempted to take the opposition reins, but he is still widely distrusted by many urban and liberal Malaysians. With the opposition split, and the Najib government aggressively pursuing prosecutions of politicians and civil society activists under sedition laws, even the massive 1MDB state fund scandal does not seem to have stopped Najib’s consolidation of power. Although in the long-term, young and urban support for the ruling coalition is waning, Najib’s coalition just won two parliamentary by-elections and looks poised to dominate national elections, which must be held before August of 2018. Given the opposition’s lack of coherent leadership, and the ruling coalition’s two by-election victories, it is highly possible that Najib will call elections in 2017 instead. Similarly, in Thailand the military junta increasingly shows few signs of giving way. Asked this week whether he would step down if the Thai public votes, in August, against the junta-backed new constitution – as Prime Minister David Cameron offered his resignation following the Brexit vote – Thai Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-ocha was blunt. “Do you want me to leave or what? I’m not leaving,” even if the junta-backed constitution is voted down in the national referendum, Prayuth told reporters. “I’m the one who sets the rules.”

The Turkish presidency is seeking to clarify President Erdogan's recent remarks in which he favorably compared his vision of an executive presidency with Nazi Germany. This is not the first time he has said outrageous things only to walk them back.

What can anyone say about Turkey’s new presidential palace that has not already been said? It is enormous. It is gaudy. It is expensive. I am not sure what was wrong with the old place, which is nestled into a hillside in the Cankaya area of Ankara. Inside, it was a tasteful blend of republicanism with a subtle nod to Ottoman greatness, but it was altogether understated. The aura of the old palace seemed consistent with the restraint and above-politics powers that were built into the Turkish presidency. I guess it was no longer right for the times. In many ways, the new building’s size and ostentation befits the castle’s current resident—Recep Tayyip Erdogan—whose charisma, fearlessness, malevolence, and political cunning have made him the most important person in Turkey. He is, in effect, president, prime minister, foreign minister, mayor of Istanbul, and moral conscience to the nation. And therein lies the symbolic importance of this neo-Ottoman monstrosity that has risen in a forest that was once Ataturk’s private property. The new palace is a physical representation of what the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has sought to do since it came to power 12 years ago: Bury Ataturkism, rendering it a historical artifact—a fossil—all the while aggrandizing the new great man, Erdogan, who the faithful refer to as the “Great Master.” The AKP has always paid lip service to Ataturk, but they never had any actual commitment to him. They came to power in antipathy to the “six arrows” of Ataturkism—republicanism, secularism, “revolutionism,” statism, nationalism, and a particular kind of populism. In this opposition, Erdogan and his followers are not wrong. Strict adherence to these principles—or at least the way Ataturkism’s true believers interpreted them after Ataturk’s death in 1938—demanded a political conformity that was not just secular, but irreligious and openly hostile to piety. It was also built on an ethnic chauvinism that could not accommodate Kurds in the Turkish midst. In order to maintain control over pious Turks and the country’s sizeable Kurdish minority, the political system that Ataturk built had to be authoritarian. Ataturkism’s supporters and apologists would vehemently protest this claim, citing the advent of multi-party elections in the 1950s, the dizzying array of coalition governments in the 1970s, and the energetic opposition press, but Turkish politics during those years was played within a narrow band acceptable only to the General Staff. Whenever politics strayed beyond what the officers perceived to be a threat to the republican order the military responded, most famously in the four coups d’états between 1960 and 1997 but also in countless other routine interventions through channels of influence the commanders placed strategically throughout the system. The military’s interventions reveal in and of themselves the weakness of Ataturkism. It never became embedded in the minds of Turks in a way that made Ataturkism “common sense.” Consequently, it was always vulnerable to political challenge, meaning the military always needed to be vigilant in shoring it up through force and coercion. It was a losing proposition, though. Ataturkism was bound to fail. In the nine decades since the implementation of Ataturk’s reforms, Turkish society has become more complex, differentiated, and linked to the world beyond Anatolia. Despite its negative consequences for Kurds and religious Turks, perhaps Ataturkism was necessary at that moment after WWI when Turks found themselves at their greatest peril. Now it just seems irrelevant, which is why Erdogan’s new palace—more a mix of the worst of Dubai and Turkmenistan than Mimar Sinan—is so gratuitous. Ataturkism was already dead; there is no need to bury it again.