The ‘deep state’ meets Erdoğan’s ‘New Turkey’. The country’s resulting predicament is much more dangerous than two decades ago.
“Human rights and the rule of law in Turkey are at the worst level I’ve seen in the 12 years I’ve worked on Turkey’s human rights.”
A different kind of reality is both constructed and deployed, which effects a huge gulf in understanding between the pro-AKP and non-AKP masses.
The current mayhem, if it continues, is likely to once again tempt the military top brass to stage a coup and take power in the name of restoring order as it has done several times earlier.
Officials have insinuated that Kurds might have blown themselves up on purpose. What the quasi-sacred term ‘terrorism’ does today is to curb the will and the ability to resist arbitrary rule.
With three bomb attacks this year including two massacres, many ask if the dark days of the Turkish deep state have come back to torment Turkey.
Whenever I hear academics preaching the discourse of "there is no 'West' and no 'East'", I know that there is the ultimate confidence and 'superiority' of a western passport behind it.
When states lack social legitimacy, a lack of trust in politicians or political parties is merely a symptom of this. Who then do we turn to?
What we have witnessed in the last two years, culminating in the horrible scenes of 10 October in Ankara, is the end of the Turkish Republic as we know it.
