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I remember reading a long time ago that as a democratically supported populist Erdogen always faced push back for bureaucracy and basically the PMC. Any time he tried to keep them in line and enforce his Democratic backing he came off authoritarian. And this is the way of all populists who always end up fighting the PMC and that fight always comes off unnatural. Same as Trump being investigated even before being elected by the fbi. The constant bureaucratic roadblocks makes a guy look authoritarian while they appear organic. Also same with Desantis attacks on DEI in universities - top down but Democratic control over organic PMC action.
Therefore, I support Erdogen. Not even 100% sure why but he feels like a natural ally. It feels like Trump versus Biden and I’m not voting for Biden. Also when the west does need something it seems like Erdogen always falls in line and helps.
I suspect because you don't know much about the topic and just project your own prejudices on him.
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Two things can be true: Turkish "democracy" may have always been democracy-with-an-asterisk. That asterisk being a Kemalist deep state willing to overthrow and jail opponents (like Erdogan) for being insufficiently secular. So a pretty big one.
Erdogan may be their chickens coming home to roost - hard to make the moral case for democratic restraint when the deep state and some of the more liberal Turks were fine with illiberalism to maintain their preferred status quo against the broadly Islamist populace (similarly, "liberals" in Egypt reacted...badly to Morsi).
But that doesn't mean that Erdogan isn't an autocrat now or that he's good for Turkey.
Yes this is pretty much spot on. One man increasingly making almost every single decision and taking personal control of almost every patronage network in a diverse country of ~80 million for 25 years has had quite disastrous consequences no matter what one thinks about his opponents.
Ironically, his main victim has been the center-right/conservative/Islamist-ish* political movements. He totally hollowed the organizations out and blocked the paths of succession for talented people in favor of his own syncopates.
*always good to keep in mind there are very few Islamists in Turkey in the Salafist sense, and these people typically consider Erdogan also an absolute degenerate enemy of the true faith.
I meant it in a much broader sense: relative to laicite especially, so many Muslims would count as "Islamist" . They don't actually have to be a crazy Salafist type or even the state-opposing Muslim Brotherhood types.
TBH the whole term is a fraught one, partly because it's a tempting way for Westerners to criticize Muslims while claiming to not criticize Islam-as-such, and to apply Protestant assumptions to Islam - obviously the "right" sort of Islam wouldn't be so politically problematic (even though a lot of inconvenient things in Islam are just part of general doctrine).
Erdogan's magic with regards to Islamism was to take over the Muslim Brotherhood type Milli Görüş movement which was making large sections of the population as well as the elite rather uncomfortable at the time, and merge it with the more folksy traditional Islam of the population, liberal pro-EU currents, as well as the dominant center-right capitalist developmentalist tradition of Turkish politics.
Later on he did one more pivot and moved to a type of Islam that the rulers of the Ottoman Empire would be very familiar with, where protecting the religion is the source of the state's legitimacy, and in exchange the state gets the power to define what religion means. This could take on very radical forms, as even implementing laicite can be an act of upholding the religion if the state determines this is what it will take to protect the community of believers(Obligatory photo of Ataturk praying with the muftis and imams at the opening of the first Parliament of Ankara). After all, what does Islam even mean if the Muslims are not strong enough to keep existing? Currently this is what Erdogan-style Islamism ended up transforming into. However the problem with such a model is that it is also quite despotic and spiritually empty, which are two problems Ottomans also often struggled with.
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Dude embezzled funds for earthquake victims and shut down social media when people started talking about it.
Maybe I can clarify what you are trying to say here. After the absolute devastation of the 1999 İzmit Earthquake, there was a significant civic and political push in Turkey for rapid urban renewal in order to make the cities more robust against future earthquakes and also to have decent rescue and relief organizations. The governments of the time imposed earmarked taxation for earthquake funds, which were supposed to be used for, well earthquake stuff. But the truth is there was nothing in the laws that actually forced the government to use this money for anything specifically. It was a Parliamentary democracy, money goes where the budget voted by the Parliament of the time wants it to go. So a lot of these funds got used in much more popular (people forget fast) infrastructure projects or just general spending. So it is a form of misusing funds, but embezzlement is a bit strong. I am sure there was some embezzlement somewhere but that is always the case with any government fund.
Also I am not sure what you are talking about with shutting down the social media.
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I hate being the “source” guy, but I googled your claim and got nothing. That’s a big claim so I believe you need to back it up. The only thing I got is a cell phone tax they claim went to pay IMF loans and general government expenses. That would not be embezzlement.
There are a couple in German: 1, 2. Automatic translation from German into English is usually quite good.
I don’t believe the articles are describing “embezzle” which in the usage Im familiar with involved taking public funds and putting them directly into your pocket.
These articles describe using earthquake money for general government money. Which is of course quite common and the US does that all the time and every day.
The article cites a journalist called Mumay claiming that a fake address was used to channel earthquake relief funds to one Ensar foundation "close to Erdogan". I am not sure exactly what is being claimed here, maybe @Pasha knows more?
It wouldn't surprise me much. NGOs which are mostly actually just funded by various government funds and have a political purpose next to their regular work has been a common thing in Erdogan's "patronage networks" I have been mentioning. As far as I know this one mostly builds and runs university student housing and does some relief work, typically with a religious tone. It is a method for offloading government responsibilities to institutions which can be more selective in the ideological and political constitution of their members, as opposed to regular civil servants who are more or less the average of the country by definition.
This should sound rather familiar to anyone who knows how the Western NGOs function. It is of course less professional and more embezzlement-y.
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