Ben
Norton of the RealNews
spoke with scholar Baris Karaagac about Turkey's economic ills, Recep
Tayyip Erdogan's party (AKP) neoliberal nationalist policies, and the
repression against Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), Leftists, and
Kurds.
Karaagac
reveals that there is a wider battle behind the rise of
ultra-nationalism in Turkey, concerning the dominant ideology of
neoliberalism. Neoliberalism's brutality is now quite evident in
Turkey as the big capital is taking advantage of Erdogan's permanent
state of emergency, in order to suppress workers' resistance and any
demand for upgraded labor rights or other progressive policies.
Karaagac
explains:
Erdogan
sees the Kurdish movement and its political party, the HDP, as its
most critical of opponents. That is the decisive force in terms of
whether or not the AKP and Erdogan will remain in power, both in
parliament and presidency.
The
leader of the HDP has been in prison for more than one year, and
there’s no basis for that. There’s absolutely no legal basis as
to why this person, Demirtas, has been in prison in Edirne that
neighbours Greece, in Turkey. So, the reason is that Erdogan is
really afraid that the HDP will again pass the 10 percent threshold,
and will destroy an AKP and MHP majority in parliament. So he’s
really scared of Demirtas. And this is what Demirtas actually
emphasized in his talk from prison yesterday.
There is
significant concern both within Turkey and on the international
level, that Turkey is becoming more and more authoritarian, day by
day. And this process has been led and cultivated and engineered by
particularly Erdogan, who is running for president again this week.
Another important point is that this authoritarianism has
particularly hit people on the Left and Kurds.
What
Erdogan - and the people around him within the AKP - has implemented
in the past 15 years, is a very specific form of neoliberalism based
on cronyism, but it’s neoliberalism. Since 2016, Turkey is under a
state of emergency. Even the state of emergency has made many
neoliberal reforms possible. And when Erdogan faced
some criticism from certain parts of Turkish capital, he responded by
saying, ‘Why do you guys complain? No one can go on
strike in state of emergency. This is the best moment for you to do
business.’ So, he basically told them to shut up.
It’s a
very difficult situation for people on the Left in Turkey, but
particularly for Kurdish Leftists in the country. Selahattin Demirtas
is leading a party that is known as pro-Kurdish. But Demirtas wanted
to create a party for Turkey that embraces different segments of the
population, and that it agrees or that has a consensus over a number
of issues, a number of policies, a number of principles that the Left
has held dear for more than a hundred years. So it’s very
important that Demirtas is not only the leader of Kurds in Turkey,
but he’s also embraced as a leader by many Turkish Leftists, and
rightfully so.
As has
been already pointed out in previous
article, the neoliberal establishment of the West
may find a suitable model in the way Erdogan acts inside Turkey, in
order to dictate the most brutal form of neoliberalism inside Western
societies.
On the
occasion of the first anniversary of last year’s failed coup
attempt in Turkey, “Turkish authorities have sacked nearly 7,400
civil servants for alleged links to terror groups”, while the
“total number of state employees dismissed for alleged terror
links reaches 110,000”. The massive layoffs under the pretext
of terrorism tends to become an epidemic in Turkey.
Well,
this is the exact picture that the neoliberal fundamentalists would
adore!
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