Barack’s Best Friend Erdogan Not Looking Pretty
” Violence in Istanbul is threatening President Obama’s relationship with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. What started out as a protest against the development of a park has morphed into a show of much wider discontent. Over the weekend, more than two weeks after the protests started, police used tear gas and water cannons to clear Gezi Park of its protesters and spent most of Sunday chasing protesters and looters into shopping malls and upscale hotels.
To most outsiders, this looks like an excellent time for some soothing words and calming speeches in Turkey. Erdogan has a solid majority in parliament and his core supporters don’t seem fazed by the protests in Istanbul. Making a few concessions, pulling the police back except where violence or looting actually occurs, and calming things down were the actions most of us would advise at a time like this.
But Turkish politics has its own rhythms, and Erdogan has his own priorities—and temperament. In response to the protests, he’s toughening his rhetoric and promising a crackdown. In the process, he may have killed the last flickering hope for reopening EU accession talks as his EU Affairs Minister Egemen Bagis is calling the protesters “terrorists.”
We’ll see where this goes. The unrest in Turkey has spread much farther and lasted much longer than anyone expected. If nothing else, the police violence has persuaded many Western liberals that Turkey’s secularists weren’t overreacting when they warned that the AK Party would ultimately limit Turkish freedom.”
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