ISTANBUL: While of course the tragedy of the Earthquake in Van and the ongoing operations against the PKK in Eastern Turkey are the biggest news leading up to the holidays in Turkey, I'd like to talk again about the elections in Tunisia and Egypt (and Libya?) that are all using the AKP as a model government. It's a regular conversation piece for people in Turkey, and my own take on it was hinted at in my piece last week. Even the slogans of elnahda in Tunisia were identical to those of the AKP and the idea that Turkey should be the model for the new Arab governments is, as far as I can tell, comparatively unchallenged. It's tough to know exactly what this means. My suspicion is that the AKP is viewed as a “Muslim government” in some way or other, so that modeling a party after the AKP means some level of implicit input from religious leaders, but probably different parties plan on viewing the government differently, and besides Turkey is ultimately secular for the most part. Probably more important for elnahda and others is the AKP's dogged pursuit of improving the GDP of the country, and of course their equally dogged pursuit of enriching themselves. So if a party models itself after the AKP in Egypt, I assume they mean that they plan on pursuing neo-liberal economic policies and pay some amount of lip-service to religion. What AKP proponents fail to notice, however, is that already the Mubarak regime was very similar to the AKP. Under the Mubarak regime, since 2000 the GDP in Egypt grew every single year, at an average rate of about 6% (5.4% in 2000, 3.5% 2001, 3.2%, 3.2%, 4.1%, 4.5%, 6.8%, 7.1%, 7.2%, 4.7% and 5.1% in 2010). The price for this growth was a lack of political freedom or freedom of the press, and also the knowledge that the money flowing into the country was going just to the upper echelons of society, many of whom were regime cronies and where the “average Egyptian” was still highly impoverished. In effect, the shiny malls being built everywhere, the gated communities all over Cairo, the vast levels of construction and money everywhere was untouchable for the majority of society, which as a result revolted against the regime. Turkey's GDP has risen similar since 2001, when it suffered an economic crisis and the AKP was elected. The average growth rate for Turkey is slightly lower than 6% per year (7.8% in 2002, 5.8%, 8.2%, 7.4%, 5.3%, 4.5%, 1.1%, -4.7% in 2010) and the current economic crisis has obviously affected the Turkish economy. But nonetheless, the economy has absolutely boomed (Turkey was the world's 17th biggest economy as of 2010) and led to tons of fancy shopping malls, lavish plans to build a “second Bosphorus”, plans to build a third bosphorus bridge, and a marked rise in the popularity of gated communities. And, similar to Egypt, the influx of money into the Turkish economy is going exclusively to the wealthiest members of society and AKP cronies. Just this past weekend the OECD released a report on its member countries' levels of social equality. Turkey ranked dead last of all 31 countries (Mexico was 30th, America 27th), and was dead last in almost every category analyzed including poverty levels, health and education. While Tayyip and other AKP members have somewhat mysterious fortunes (he is rumored to be a billionaire, which in fairness is impressive for someone who used to reheat stale bread and sell it on the streets as fresh when he was a kid), private debt is sky-rocketing in Turkey and poverty levels are going with it. To make matters worse, the AKP's golden touch with GDP is waning as well, they've managed 1% growth in 2011 so far (the same as Egypt actually) and inflation is growing, as is criticism of the regime's economic policies. This all of course is in tandem with the oppressive nature of this regime, which has imprisoned more journalists than any other country in the world. Not only that, this past weekend more intellectuals were arrested, including prominent professor Büşra Ersanlı and author Ragıp Zarakolu for supposed PKK involvement. The protests today from leftists likely will have as little effect as they've had for the past few years since the alleged “ergenekon” scandal broke. These sorts of stories and problems should be familiar with most of the Arab world's political activists from the past few years. So if Egypt wants to model its new regime on a regime that's been in power for over 10 years, suppresses freedom of the press and freedom of speech, and pursues economic policies that only line the pockets of cronies and the already-wealthy, then maybe there really wasn't a need for the revolution in the first place. BM
