Is Turkey Heading Toward Civil War?
The risk of deepening social unrest hovers over Turkey as the prime minister refuses to acknowledge the grievances of demonstrators.
For the past several days, all Turkey held its breath as it awaited Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s return from his North Africa tour to hear what he would say about the ongoing Gezi Park resistance.
While in Tunisia, Erdogan had already given two messages that signaled what his stance would be. First, he confirmed he would go ahead with building a replica of Ottoman military barracks at Taksim Square, which led to the uprooting of trees at Gezi Park and ignited the events that shook Turkey. Second, he declared that “the minority cannot rule the majority” in response to criticism that his rule had become a majoritarian diktat.
The two statements indicated that the prime minister would not back down. They followed a meeting between the Taksim Platform, the group coordinating the protests, and Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc, which had moderated the climate even though it was inconclusive. A striking fact illustrating the scale of Erdogan’s obstinacy was his defiance of a ruling by the Istanbul Administrative Court which suspended the military barracks project.
When Erdogan arrived in Istanbul at 2:30 a.m. on June 7, tens of thousands of euphoric supporters greeted him at Ataturk Airport. In his address to the crowd, he stopped short of saying anything specific about the barracks project, while putting the whole blame of the unrest on others.
