{"id":62066,"date":"2013-01-02T00:40:11","date_gmt":"2013-01-01T22:40:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/?p=62066"},"modified":"2023-07-26T11:03:32","modified_gmt":"2023-07-26T08:03:32","slug":"will-turkey-squander-its-opportunity-to-lead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2013\/01\/02\/will-turkey-squander-its-opportunity-to-lead\/","title":{"rendered":"Will Turkey Squander Its Opportunity to Lead?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"27rdv-Rohde1-tmagArticle\"<\/p>\n

Demonstrators attacked billboards advertising Turkey\u2019s most popular soap opera \u201cMagnificent Century\u201d in Istanbul in 2011.<\/p>\n

Instead of Turkey leading the post-Arab Spring Middle East, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is setting a new standard of intolerance. Fourteen months after he touted Turkey as an example for the region, Mr. Erdogan is polarizing politics in his country and squelching dissent.<\/p>\n

Turkey is, at last, in a unique and enviable position on the world stage: sitting astride Europe, Asia and the Middle East, culturally as well as politically, and relatively strong economically. As post-Mubarak Egypt grapples with old demons in new forms, Syria approaches a bloody denouement, and Saudi Arabia and Iran offer little in the way of viable paths to progress, this could be Turkey\u2019s moment.<\/p>\n

\"AAhmed Jadallah\/Reuters A picture of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was riddled with bullets on a wall of an infantry college near the city of Aleppo in December.<\/div>\n

But experts and human rights groups say leaders in the region need to tolerate more dissent, not less. And Turkey appears to be heading in the wrong direction.<\/p>\n

More than 10,000 members of Turkey\u2019s Kurdish minority \u2014who account for 18 percent of the country\u2019s population \u2014 languish in the country\u2019s jails on various terrorism charges. And Turkey now has more journalists in jail \u2014 49 \u2014 than any other nation, according to the\u00a0Committee to Protect Journalists. That is more than Iran, which has jailed 45, or China, which has imprisoned 32.<\/p>\n

On Dec.7th<\/sup>, Mr. Erdogan threatened the makers of Turkey\u2019s most popular soap opera \u2014 \u201cMagnificent Century\u201d \u2014 \u00a0for the second time in a month. He complained that the series, which exaggerates the palace intrigue, romance, and sex life of Suleiman the Magnificent, a revered 16th<\/sup>\u00a0century Ottoman leader, was historically inaccurate and called for the series creators to be \u201ctaught a lesson.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AKhaled Elfiqi\/European Pressphoto Agency A protester held a sign reading \u201cno to constitution\u201d during a rally against Egypt\u2019s contentious new fundamental law before voters backed the document in a referendum in December.<\/div>\n

More alarmingly, the daily Hurriyet reported\u00a0that the ruling party was laying the groundwork for a law that \u201caims to forbid humiliation of historical figures or perversion of real facts.\u201d As Dan Bilefsky reported here, the law would apply to works of fiction as well.<\/p>\n

Culture wars, of course, are fought in every country. And the portrayal of revered historical figures, from Abraham Lincoln to Suleiman the Magnificent, can spark angry debate. But what is so troubling about Mr. Erdogan\u2019s behavior is the heedless example it sets at a vital time in the region \u2014 and the world.<\/p>\n

To be fair, Turkey endured decades of Western-backed military rule and is a relatively new democracy. A Kurdish insurgency has claimed 40,000 lives since 1984. And other nations making the transition to democracy \u2014 or facing insurgencies \u2014 have struggled with dissent, with leaders seeing it as disloyal rather than legitimate.<\/p>\n

Tom Carothers, an expert in transitions to democracy at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said some countries, such as Brazil, Ghana and Mongolia, have welcomed a shift to bracing debate. But others, particularly countries with no history of strong opposition parties, struggle to accept it. In the end, according to Mr. Carothers, it often comes down to the disposition of individual leaders.<\/p>\n

\u201cPutin can\u2019t stand dissent,\u201d he said, referring to the Russian leader. \u201cYeltsin could.\u201d<\/p>\n

While Mr. Erdogan\u2019s actions rankle Turks, the stakes are far higher in Egypt, where Mr. Erdogan has some sway and vital precedents are being set. So far, in terms of the news media, President Mohamed Morsi is proving more tolerant of dissent in some ways than his Turkish counterpart.<\/p>\n

While Mr. Morsi\u2019s rushed Constitution has created deep division, he has generally allowed open political debate and a basic level of press freedom in Egypt. Since the dispute over the country\u2019s Constitution began, Mr. Morsi\u2019s opponents have freely and fiercely criticized him in the Egyptian media.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, as Nathan Brown, a professor at George Washington University and an Egypt expert, says, Mr. Morsi\u2019s supporters have savagely beaten his opponents in the streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Egypt, the rules of political discourse and contestation are unclear and contested,\u201d Mr. Brown said in an e-mail exchange. \u201cWhere shrill speech ends and seditious speech begins is being worked out in practice \u2014 and in very harsh practice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Experts on Turkey say that Mr. Erdogan\u2019s tone and tactics are lamentable because they are unnecessary. He remains genuinely popular in the country and is likely to be elected president when his second \u2014 and he says final \u2014 term as prime minister ends in 2015. Instead of keeping a promise to try to resolve the country\u2019s Kurdish insurgency, he is sowing division over social issues.<\/p>\n

In June, he sparked a furor when\u00a0he called\u00a0abortion \u201cmurder,\u201d reigniting a debate that has largely quieted since abortion was legalized in Turkey in 1983. Last month, he called for the\u00a0re-imposition of the death penalty, which his own government banned in 2004. The comment sparked tension with jailed Kurds, in particular, who could potentially face the death penalty.<\/p>\n

All the while, the Obama administration continues to support Mr. Erdogan, according to Turkish analysts.<\/p>\n

While human rights and press freedom groups question whether Mr. Erdogan\u2019s Turkey is, in fact, a model for the region, the United States remains silent.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in Washington last week and no one gives a damn about whether or not the quality of Turkish democracy has declined,\u201d Soli Ozel, a professor of international affairs at Kadir Has University in Istanbul, said in a telephone interview. \u201cSo long as it does not hurt essential American interests \u2014 and I don\u2019t think it will \u2014 nobody is going to talk about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
\n

David Rohde is a columnist for Reuters, former reporter for The New York Times and two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize. His forthcoming book, \u201cBeyond War: Reimagining American Influence in a New Middle East\u201d will be published in March 2013.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/archive.nytimes.com\/rendezvous.blogs.nytimes.com\/2012\/12\/30\/will-turkey-squander-its-opportunity-to-lead\/<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Demonstrators attacked billboards advertising Turkey\u2019s most popular soap opera \u201cMagnificent Century\u201d in Istanbul in 2011. Instead of Turkey leading the post-Arab Spring Middle East, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is setting a new standard of intolerance. Fourteen months after he touted Turkey as an example for the region, Mr. Erdogan is polarizing politics in his […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":62067,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[7534],"class_list":["post-62066","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-turkey","tag-magnificent-century"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62066","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62066"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62066\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62066"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62066"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62066"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}