Erdogan, dictatorship, wrong policies, family corruption-1

MEDIA HANNAN / NEWS DESK

Erdogan … reaching power and overthrow the allies

Turkey's Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced early parliamentary and presidential elections on June 24 about a year and five months ahead of its scheduled deadline in November 2019 although Erdogan alleged that the early elections came to protect the economy and the country. However, his actions indicate that his attempt is to turn Turkey into a one-man state after he made changes to the constitution that focused the authority at the head of the state and abolished parliament.

Who is Recep Tayyip Erdogan?

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was born on February 26, 1954 in Qasim Pasha Neighborhood in Istanbul; his family is consisted of four members, including a girl. He studied at Imam Khatib Islamic schools in Istanbul and worked during his studies in the sale of water and sweets. He began his studying of Economic at the University of Marmara in 1977 and graduated in 1981.

Erdogan began the political life in 1973 by joining the Turkish National Students Union with the conservative Islamic Caliphate. At the age of 18, he joined the National Safety Party (Virtue and Welfare Party) founded by Najim al-Din Arbakan, but with the military coup d’état of 1980, all the parties were abolished. By 1983, party life returned to Turkey and Erdogan's activity returned through the Welfare Party, especially in Istanbul governorate.

In 1998, Erdogan was accused of inciting religious hatred and he was suspended from his post as mayor of Istanbul, he was sentenced to prison for 10 months because of quoting Turkish poetry while delivering a speech in the city of Sa’rad as he said, "Our mosques are our barracks, our domes are our helmets, our minarets are our soldiers, this holy army guards our religion." Erdogan's view is considered as having a Naqshbandi mystic background.

His foundation of Justice and Development Party

After the ban of the Islamic-oriented Virtue Party led by Najim al-Din Erbakan, Erdoğan and several party members, including Abdullah Gul have split and found AKP Party in 2001. From the outset, Erdogan wanted to push from himself any suspicion of the continuation of the party and the intellectual affiliation with the Islamist movement that infuriated the secular institutions several times, so he declared that his party would maintain the bases of the republican system and would not engage in skirmishes with the Turkish armed forces.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) won in the legislative elections in November 2002, but Erdogan was unable to take over the Prime Minister’s post. He asked Abdullah Gul to take the office so that he could organize his election personally during partial legislative elections which he was able to run for thanks to amendments approved by AKP-dominated parliament. He became the prime minister on March 11, 2003 and continued until 2014 when he was elected as a president.

Thanks to whom Erdogan gained the authority

Erdogan would not have been in power without four people. Erdogan have put them away to rule Turkey and become its first dictator.

The first of these was Najim al-Din Erbakan whom Erdogan had split from his own party. Erdogan has considered himself as a student of Arbakan, and depended that in his propaganda during the legislative elections of 2002 which had an impact on his party winning the highest votes.

"Erdogan was turned to the treasurer of the Zionist Fund. He was one of my students, and I told him what he had to do, but he did not listen to me and did not implement what I said to him," Erbakan said at a conference in the city of Amed." Israel is the one that advises Erdogan to repeat things against it to succeed winning the support and sympathy of the conservative Turkish people opposed to Israel, and that he is an implementer of its policies and the American delegate in the area describing him as the head of the Great Middle East project.

The second person credited with Erdogan's accession to power is Abdullah Gul, a close friend of Erdogan and his co-founder of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). When the Justice and Development Party came to power, Erdoğan was in jail for a poem that incited terrorism. Gul remained the prime minister until Erdogan came out of jail to take over the foreign minister post.

Nevertheless, this did not prevent Erdogan from ousting him although he was the first one that supported him. The differences broke out between them in the beginning of 2013 when the protests of the famous division field objecting to Erdogan's policies launched.

At that time, Abdullah Gul saw the need of understanding with the demonstrators, while Erdogan suppressed them by violence. When Erdogan won the presidency, Abdullah Gul was eliminated and marginalized, and the differences between them continued. When Erdogan imposed the state of emergency after the failed coup d’état attempt in July 2016, Abdullah Gul criticized the imposition of the state of emergency saying, "This decree is worrying at the level of understanding the rule of law and threatens the future developments that may raise our resentment." After Erdogan announced early elections, he sent his army’s chief of staff Khulosi Akar to Abdullah Gul to prevent him from running for the presidential candidacy as a candidate for opponents of Erdogan.

The third person was Fatehullah Kolin, the leader of the Sufi service group who was Erdogan's main supporter because Erdogan, without him, could not reach the authority as Kolin played a secret role in helping Erdogan in his first days as the prime minister after his release from prison. Thanks to Kolin's group of mystics who succeeded in penetrating the state apparatus in Turkey, the fears of the state apparatus of the new conservative party that came to power calmed down. Kolin had a huge base of businessmen who provided strong support to AKP Party in the early days of ruling.

But as time passed, Kolin discovered that Erdogan was only a small dictator so he began to attack him accusing him that since 2011, he has been striving to establish a one-man dictatorship and he attacked his involvement into corruption and his family, this forced Kolin to leave Turkey after the crackdown, he is still living in Pennsylvania in USA.

Dawoud Oglo was Erdoğan's last partner who had been expelled. Dawoud Oglo was then the prime minister of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. In 2003, he became the foreign minister. In 2009 he became the foreign minister until 2014. Then, he became the head of the Justice and Development Party and the Prime Minister of Turkey.

As a result of the strong escalation of Dawoud Oglo and the fear that Mr Oglu might turn Erdogan's march to amend the constitution and transfer strong authority from the post of prime minister to the post of president, Erdogan forced him to resign as prime minister six months earlier as Oglu said.

After his resignation, in a rare appearance at the Istanbul Book Fair, Oglo commented on the Turkish policy, "We are in a foggy phase of foreign and domestic policies," referring to Erdogan's political repression, "Turkey was a model of rights and freedoms; it was strong in its foreign policies."

The alliance with the National Movement Party and the transformation of the system from parliamentary to presidential

After the failed coup in July 2016, Erdogan and Daulat Bahjili, the leader of the National Movement, as well as Kemal Klegdar, the leader of the Republican People's Party met in Yeni Kapi square in the European part of Istanbul on 7 August to denounce the coup d’état attempt. Daulat Bahjili was close to Erdogan and recently succeeded in winning Erdogan, both sides passed the changes, Erdogan wanted to make on the constitution by turning the system in the country from parliamentary to presidential.

During Erdogan's attempted to pass a bill to change some clauses of the constitution, he was able to obtain his aims. In April 2017, in the wake of the state of emergency declared by Erdogan after the attempted coup in July 2016, Erdogan presented these changes to the referendum, Erdogan won the referendum by a very small margin.

Among the proposed amendments to the Turkish parliament is the extension of the term of office of the president for seven years instead of five years, the abolition of the post of prime minister, the president's authority to appoint ministers directly, the supreme authority over the judiciary, the supreme authority over the armed forces, security forces and intelligence services under his absolute right to impose the state of emergency without reference to the parliament, in addition to the right of the president to appoint deputies without reference to the parliament. In other words, the state becomes a one-man dictatorship.

Call for early elections

The announcement of the early elections means that they will be submitted for a year and about five months after their deadline in November 2019, this is because of the speed with which the articles of the constitution that were amended after the April 2017 referendum on the transition to the presidential system, as Erdoğan wishes have been applied.

In fact, the support of Daulat Bhajili for Erdogan's early election is due to several reasons, the most important of which is that both use populist political discourse to win the public, both represent a natural development of radical ideas, Erdogan represents the most radical version of political Islam, Bahjili is the most painful of the secular reformer.

The second reason is the erosion of the popularity of Erdogan and Bahjili because of their poor political performance and their efforts to imbue the party and cancel the party's multiple currents; this is explained by the splits in these two parties. The third is the convergence of Erdogan's line with Bahjili's national line in perpetuating violence against the Kurds in Turkey, and Bahjili's support to Erdogan in his aggression on the Syrian Afrin.

Among the other reasons for Erdogan's and Bahjili's rapprochement is condoning the media that has become the exclusive domain of AKP to address Bahjili's repression of his opponents in the National Movement Party, and also Bhjili ignores Erdogan's islamization of state facilities, especially the army and the judiciary, and Bahjili has not wrap to Erdogan's re-building an educational system deviating from the legacy of secularism, and approaching the line of conservative current. This was clearly demonstrated when he did not object to the expansion of the religious Imam schools and the cancellation of the texts on Ataturk's biography.

The agreement between Erdogan and Bahjili is far-reaching. Erdogan knows that his popularity has eroded and that he will not reach the presidency without the votes of the National Movement Party, while Bahjili knows that by agreeing with Erdogan, he can have some personal advantages as his deputy.

Tomorrow: repression and pursuit of dictatorship

H/S

ANHA