Is Washington enabling despotism in Turkey?
Washington's muted response to growing authoritarianism in Turkey under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is spurring accusations that it is empowering him.
"We would expect that Turkey will follow its own democratic procedures … I am not going to speak to the specifics of an internal process there inside Turkey. Gotta go." With these dismissive comments, US State Department spokesman John Kirby ducked questions at a press briefing last week about a Turkish government-inspired bill to strip lawmakers of their parliamentary immunity and clear the path for their prosecution over alleged crimes.
Championed by Turkey's unabashedly authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the legislation targets members of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP). Just days before Kirby's remarks, the HDP's charismatic co-chair, Selahattin Demirtas, was in the US capital where he met with senior State Department and White House staff.
Erdogan labels Demirtas and his colleagues "terrorists" over thinly supported charges that they are acting on behalf of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), the rebel group with which the Turkish government was negotiating until February last year to end a bloody 32-year-long insurgency for Kurdish self-rule.
Coming on top of the collapse of a two-year cease-fire in August and a sharp escalation in violence between Turkish security forces and the PKK, the ouster of the HDP deputies would deal an additional blow to the country's fraying democracy. It would also increase political instability and deepen the chasm between Turks and Kurds, perhaps even thrusting them into the intra-ethnic conflict Demirtas recently warned against.
