STEVE PIECZENIK TALKS

Memorandum to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan

From:  Agitprop Blogger-Sympathetic to Secular Turkey.

Subject: Serious Mistake!

Recent Arrest of Dozens of High Ranking Turkish Military Officers;  20 media journalists;  dozens of prominent academics and government critics….(see NYTimes earlier post)

Some of you who have been following my blogs in Turkey know very well that I am a very strong supporter of a secular state that was instituted close to 100 years ago by Mustafa Kamal.

  I have been tracking Erdogan since he was Mayor of Istanbul.

He was, in my opinion, a very good mayor- fair, industrious, and pro-business.   No issues were allowed in his tenure as mayor regarding religion.  He kept his Justice and Democracy Party –nice name for another variation of the ‘Islamic Brotherhood’—out of politics and everyone from the lowest working class to the elite made money.

  No mean feat in a country that had been extremely poor for decades,  rife with corruption and crony capitalism.

  Erdogan even became in public a major proponent of democracy in Turkey.   However,  clearly ‘democracy’ had a different meaning for Erdogan than from most enlightened world leaders.

 

What Erdogan meant by ‘democracy’ was a complete pre-emption of any secular reforms that could be instituted by the formidable Turkish military which had it’s genetic branding from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.    Ataturk was a senior officer in the post-Ottoman Turkish Army,  who had implemented a military coup in order to establish a secular Turkish nation,  bereft of religion or dogma.

However,  in the haste to ‘reform Turkey’,  Erdogan ‘encouraged’  his wife to wear a scarf over head.   This symbolic act ‘compelled’ millions of secular women in Turkey;  who, otherwise, would not have worn scarfs,  to appear in public as ‘muslim women’.

  Erdogan had always mistrusted the formidable Turkish Military which had in modern times carried out three military coups.

  To be more precise,  the number of Turkish Military coups is far more impressive and far more daunting than Erdogan realizes.

 From a cursory summary of Turkish military coups, one can garner the following ‘snapshot picture’:

• 1913 Ottoman Coup d’etat.

• 1960 Turkish Coup d’etat.

• 1971 Turkish Coup d’etat.

• 1980 Turkish Coup d’etat.

• 1997 Turkish Coup d’etat.

Therefore,  Erdogan who saw this impressive array of military coups,  decided to pre-empt the next one.   He arrested General Ilker Basburg,  former Chief of Staff of the military.   He sentenced him to a very stiff sentence of ‘life imprisonment’.

But one coup,  more or less, would not have disturbed many outside observers;  except for the fact that  Erdogan decided to imprison 20 prominent journalists [for 6-34 years] who had nothing to do with the military.   He went even further to imprison any academician or politician,  critical of Erdogan and/or his ‘muslim’ government.

Humanitarians around the world have described that jailing of lay officials and journalists as follows:
"It’s  impossible to talk about a justice system free of politics,  or public trust in justice".

Reporters Without Borders,  based in Paris,  has referred to Turkey as ‘the world’s biggest prison for reporters’ and ranked Turkey 154^th of 179 countries,  behind Iraq and Russia it its 2003 World Press Freedom Index.

As one might have expected, protesters went into the streets outside the prison complex of Siliviri,  a coastal town outside of Istanbul.

In my professional experience,  I think that Erdogan has made a very serious experience.   This is a country that is growing at a respectable GDP [over 2.5%] and is targeted for billions of dollars of foreign investments to build tunnels, bridges , and industrial parks.  Now,  Erdogan had in effect put the ‘fear of God’ into his people and into foreign investors who may have been pro-Turkey.

 

Military coups are not a very precise form of regime change, as we have seen in the recent events in Egypt.    At best,   most military coups are implemented as a way to clear the intended government of any potential problems—primarily corruption,  autocracy, and  political cronyism.   Most coups, are intended to allow a civilian who in principle is designated as ‘competent to run a government’ to become the new leader of the country.   In other words,   a military coup is intended to allow a new,  professional civilian to manage the new government.   Most sagacious military leaders do not want to lead the government because that is not usually their expertise nor their primary interest.

 

By pre-empting a military coup,   Erdogan has placed himself as more ‘hardened military target’ that must be ‘disposed of’ –one way or another.   In simple terms,   Erdogan placed himself,  unwittingly on a Death Sentence—with definite term limits.   Whatever he might have feared would happen in a coup, will probably happen more quickly in an ‘assassination attempt’.

That’s not something you might want to wish any leader.    But unfortunately,  for most ‘despots’,  which Erdogan has evolved into,  an attempt to co-opt political change—including military/civilian/ religious --- places him an extremely vulnerable position where he and his family could be in danger.

Erdogan did not prevent a military coup;  instead  he encouraged the junior officers in the military,  the radical civilian activists to change the way they orchestrated their respective modus operandi and opened it up to ‘Extreme Active Measures’.

Sidebar: Please read Active Measures by Alexander Court--  my closest buddy. 

It’s not a predicament I would want anyone who is serious in managing a ‘presumed democracy and secular state’ to be in.   When a government represses all measures of protest; then the most extreme methods of violence are utilized.

Prime Minister Erdogan , please let me remind of you the famous words of the greatest teacher of power,  Niccolo Machiavelli [ 1469—1527]:

“For it must be noted,  that men must either be caressed or else ANNIHILATED [my emphasis];  they will REVENGE THEMSELVES for small injuries,  but cannot  do so for great ones;  the injury, therefore,  that we do a man must such that we need not FEAR HIS VENGEANCE.”

  Remember Erdogan,  who are the constituents who are ready to KILL YOU:
Kurds; Secular Turks; Muslim Turks –Shi’ite,  Sunni,  Sufi;  students; journalists; business men; your SECURITY AGENCY; your military; and all the other world wide SECURITY SERVICES AND MILITARY SERVICES that find you INCONVENIENT.

  Congratulations,  Erdogan,  on signing  your death warrant!!!!