I am using the term “criminal coalition” as a metaphor, but the truth is it's quite close to reality. In the past, I've written about how the AKP is transforming Turkey into a “crime station,” a spot where terrorist groups, nuclear traffickers, mafia bosses and international networks specializing in laundering dirty money all overlap.
Here is a list of the coalition partners with whom the AKP works these days:
1) The Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK)
2) The Ergenekon structure
3) Various factions that support al-Qaeda, such as the Tahşiyeciler and the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL)
4) ISIL-al-Qaeda (allowing terrorists to travel over Turkish territory and a failure to open up an investigation into the 20,000 bullets discovered in Adana)
5) Hamas
6) Mafia types (the AKP hosts these types every day on their TV channels with the purpose of seeing them attack the Hizmet movement)
7) Reza Zarrab, Yasin al-Qadi and more of such people...
This is a clear photograph of the AKP's real coalition partners and any editor would affix the same headline to this picture: criminal coalition.
AKP in criminal coalition with its own voters
But in addition to all of the above, the AKP is also in a criminal coalition with its own voters now. This has been the case since the Dec. 17, 2013 operations. There is a theory that the more members of criminal organizations commit crimes, the more tied to that organization those members become. It is very rare for members of a criminal organization to feel guilt or to try and leave that organization.
Post Gezi and Dec. 17, the AKP staunchly defended those involved in acts of thievery, corruption and bribery. And so it is that staunch supporters of the AKP, steadfast in their defense of the ruling party, now feel like partners in crime. The more these voters feel like partners in crime, the more tied to the AKP they also feel.
For example, a parliamentary commission recently decided not to send government ministers accused of serious improprieties to trial. Opposition parties believe tried-and-true AKP voters will see this attempt to clear the government ministers for what it really is, and will then quickly distance themselves from the ruling party. But in fact, the opposite is happening. The acquittal of those AKP ministers places even more emotional pressure on AKP supporters within their own personal circles, making them feel even more a part of the crime. In fact, it is only through clinging on more tightly to the AKP that these supporters are able to throw off the sense of social pressure on them. These supporters thus ultimately withdraw into their own circles, cutting off ties with their opposition-supporting friends and socializing only with those who think like them. And in the end, what this means is that AKP supporters become only more and more involved partners in the “criminal coalition.”
As dyed-in-the-wool AKP supporters pull further and further into their own circles, overwhelmed by a sense of guilt, their support for their own party not only becomes more fanatic, but they also become more and more dependent on the AKP. I've noted this before in the past: What AKP defenders are defending is not actually the AKP, but their own identities. For after all, the AKP has pushed them into close contact with all sorts of unseemly things. And they have thus become people who defend thieves and thievery. AKP voters see themselves as dirtied; as such, since they cannot with a straight face defend the ruling party anymore, the least they can do is defend their own identities.
Let's take a look at some of the criminal things AKP supporters have been forced to defend after the Gezi protests.
1) They have defended AKP-backed violence in the wake of youths being killed during Gezi.
2) They made an actual choice between the dead in choosing to defend Burak Can Karamanoğlu in the face of the death of 15-year-old Berkin.
3) They wound up defending government advisor Yusuf Yerkel, who was photographed kicking a worker in Soma.
4) They defended government ministers who did not resign after the miners at Ermenek were killed.
5) When all the details of Dec. 17 emerged, they defended not only Zarrab, but also the various children of government ministers, the shoeboxes filled with cash and the notorious wristwatches.
6) And more importantly still, despite the fact that these AKP voters call themselves Muslims, they found themselves in the position of defending those who mocked the Quran.
7) They defended the phone recordings that shed light on so much corruption, outright thievery and other improprieties.
8) They defended newly created fatwas which declared that “thievery is not corruption.”
9) They defended the ambiguous origins of the $100 million invested in the Foundation of Youth and Education in Turkey (TÜRGEV).
10) They were forced to defend the enormous contradictions voiced by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from day to day.
11) They were forced to defend arms heading for al-Qaeda and support going to the PKK.
12) They spent time defending all the new forms of pressure being placed on the media.
13) They voiced support for the sealing of the Dec. 17 files at the prosecutor's offices as well as in Parliament.
14) And they were forced to defend the allowances for relatives of AKP supporters to automatically get state jobs, when hundreds of thousands of others have taken the State Personnel Examination (KPSS) and are awaiting legal placement in state jobs.
One could easily extend this list up to 100 and more...
Blaming others as a defense
Just think for a second if you were forced to defend any of those serious items I listed above; the only thing you could really do is blame others, similar to what we heard from Ahmet Davutoğlu in response to the allegations of many AKP supporters' relatives getting state jobs without taking the KPSS exams. His comedic response? “40 years ago, [Kemal] Kılıçdaroğlu also oversaw the hiring of his relatives.”
It is the classic guilty person's psychological response: Avoid answering difficult questions by blaming others and using one's own line of questioning to avoid discussing the real issues at hand. Fervent supporters of the AKP have entered this state of mind; this partnership with the ruling party based on guilty feelings has also brought about a new social contract between these supporters.
The intersection point for relations formed by the AKP with its supporters and the vital actors in Ankara is “crime” and the psychology of crime.
This criminal coalition cannot be dealt with using classic political methods. These types of coalitions are only broken when clashes of interest arise within their ranks. What is truly sad is that these types of coalitions ultimately carry the country to the edge of a chasm. On the other hand, the good news is that such coalitions do often experience clashes over interest within their ranks. And it appears that the future may be full of such clashes.
Source: http://www.todayszaman.com/columnist/emre-uslu/akps-criminal-coalition_369044.html
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