The following piece appeared in today's English edition of Zaman newspaper. I'm not commenting - just putting it here with a recommendation that you check it out:
Normalcy, but how?
Markar Esayan
Turkey fell into a
crisis right at a moment when no one was expecting it. While it was clear that
the run-up to local, general and presidential elections might see some
political turbulence, no one thought the country would boil over so thoroughly,
moving a hair's breadth from civil war.
The Justice and
Development Party (AK Party) government must also have been unprepared; it was
seriously shaken by the crisis. What's clear now is that Turkey can no longer
shoulder the politics of polarization, and that the manipulation of said
polarization has become riskier than ever. Many say -- and it's apparent --
that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan tends to handle the politics of
polarization with mastery. This is true.
At the same time,
claiming that this polarization is what Erdoğan wants is skewing the truth.
Since the end of 2002, when the AK Party came to power, the party has been the
focus of constant harassment, its agenda the target of endless attempts to
raise tension. The years 2003-04 saw a series of coup plans that were known to
both the military's General Staff headquarters and the government. The generals
behind these coup plans used military and civilian tools to keep the national
agenda as infused with tension as possible and to try to portray the AK Party
as opposed to secularism. Read
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