Beirut: When Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas paid an official visit to Ankara last January, he was surprised to see spear-carrying guardsmen, who turned out to be paid actors, spread along the main staircase of a new and highly controversial presidential palace.
There were only 16 men dressed in Ottoman historical warrior armour, brandishing shields and clutching fearsome-looking swords.
Abbas did not raise his eyebrows and played along as Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan posed for photographs that highlighted golden helmets and a few fake moustaches. It was the pinnacle of Erdogan’s latest “folie des grandeurs” [delusions], as the ultra conservative Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP in Turkish) positioned itself to transform the largely secular state into a new version of the Ottoman Empire, which collapsed at the end of the First World War.
Paradoxically, the 16 actors were replaced with actual soldiers, as the government goaded the military to create a new ceremonial 478-men brigade modestly named the “Conquest Unit.”
The ritualistic brigade, which is attached to the 1st Army headquartered in Istanbul, was tasked to attend events marking the 562nd anniversary of the Turkish conquest of Istanbul.
It was supplemented by an 84-men Ottoman military band, known in Turkish as the “Mehter,” in the official ceremony for the anniversary held on May 30, a day later than the conquest’s commemoration date.
President Erdogan and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu attended the event in Istanbul’s Yenikapı Square a week before the June 7 general election, though the political rally was decried by opposition forces as a gimmick.
In fact, the Turkish president, who was elected head-of-state in August 2014, swirled in controversies, of which the extravagant presidential palace in Ankara and the “Conquest Unit” were mere footnotes.
His chief goal was to win an absolute parliamentary majority for AKP — he says he wants 400 deputies out of the 550 — so that a two-thirds majority would allow for constitutional amendments that will introduce an executive presidential system instead of the current parliamentary democracy.
His preference is for a democratically elected Sultan “à la Turca” as he likes to repeat, in which an elected man runs a one-man show with no checks and balances.
In other words, what Erdogan wants is a Sultan for a supposed emerging Turkish empire, which most Turks find too controversial if not impossible to restore.
Erdogan and the AKP have successfully muzzled the once dominant force of Turkish politics, the armed forces, conducted a number of trials of senior officers and otherwise emasculated the institution into a truly subservient position.
The political opposition, led by Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) was likewise marginalised, as it failed to mobilise public opinion against established Erdogan profligacy.
Even the president’s erstwhile ally, a religious leader by the name of Fatallah Gülen who deployed a powerful network of schools, media outlets, and business associations, was on the run in the United States.
Gülen, who fell out with Erdogan, is even banned from returning to his native country that is gradually becoming an authoritarian state.
Only Selahattin Demirtas and the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which represents a significant majority of Turkey’s Kurdish population, stands in Erdogan’s hegemonic road towards a state of utter fantasy.
To be sure, the HDP rode the demographic wave that gave Kurds a distinct advantage — fertility rates in the eastern and southeastern Kurdish areas of Turkey is at 3.41 compared to 1.93 in western Turkey — though Erdogan is betting on a quirk in the electoral system that penalises small parties.
In fact, if a party fails to win 10 per cent of the votes nationwide, any seats it would have won are automatically reallocated among those that crossed the threshold. In other words, if the HDP fails to secure 10 per cent of the vote nationwide, it would forfeit its seats to the AKP, as every opinion poll is indicated that the president’s party is running second, in HDP strongholds.
This was how Erdogan garnered its seats starting in 2002, not because it proposed a viable political platform to Turks, when it won barely 34 per cent of all votes almost two-thirds of all parliamentary seats, and this is how Erdogan hopes to win in 2015.
While the president demonstrated a distaste for democratic institutions and clashed with law enforcement authorities as well as the judiciary, which prompted a generally sympathetic Economist to print a 2013 cover showing his face on Ottoman Sultan Selim III’s body, Erdogan cherished his aggressive preferences.
He relied on force at every opportunity and went after intellectuals and journalists with a vengeance. He even went after the New York Times when that paper wrote a scathing editorial in which it affirmed that “Mr Erdogan has a long history of intimidating and co-opting the Turkish media.”
The president was enraged and asserted that its employees were “paid charlatans,” adding: “All their stories on Turkey during critical times reek of provocation.” He hammered in his inimical Turkish: “Who do you think you are?”
Even worse were the anticipated Sultan’s increasingly Islamist character as best described by Burak Bekdil, a leading columnist for the Turkish daily Hürriyet.
Bekdil recently opined that Erdogan may perceive himself as a 21st-century reincarnation of Salah Al Deen, someone who united the entire Muslim nation — or at least the Sunni portion — around his persona, though most Muslims consider him little more than a “fairy tale.” If he fails on June 7, Bekdil opined, Erdogan may have no choice but to enjoy his “Conquest Unit” at the grandiose Ankara presidential palace.
