Turk Twerks

On March 22nd, I presented my A Digital Coup blog about how “All powerful Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, [was and still is] currently under a cloud of suspicion with allegations of possible corruption. Social media have been blasting away, albeit most folks who routinely access online social media are not his conservative constituency, the latter being mostly those with traditional Islamic if not Islamist leanings.” Erdogan banned most social media, since restored, easily won re-election, and then set about finding ways to punish candidates and opposition leaders who sought to unseat him through Turkey’s democratic election process.

He reveled in his victory, boasted about the movement away from secularism towards a more Islamic oriented nation and smiled at the economic prosperity achieved during his tenure at the top. The people, he screamed, have never had it better, economically at least. Mostly Sunni Turkey also began to lean away from its possible hook-up with the European Union (3% of Turkey is actually in Europe) and pushed back against Shiite-led nations – like Iran and Syria – who were trying to expand influence in the Middle East.

With Egypt lumbering under a purge of the Morsi government and his Muslim Brotherhood, and Saudi Arabia suffering from being a small (albeit rich) monarchy with shrinking regional influence, Erdogan yearned for more clout among the Sunni majority around the world. Despite social media campaigns presenting alleged conversations between Erdogan and his son on how to stash large sums of money, Erdogan’s regional star appeared to be on the rise. Until an incident in a former government mine – now privatized through Erdogan’s reform efforts – became the focus of news stories all over the world. Safety and the rights of minors were ignored in the interest of profits for the new owners, the stories cried… all part of Erdogan’s powerful economic policies. Corruption suddenly got personal.

It all happened in a small Turkish mining town of Soma, about 75 miles north of the port city of Izmir. An explosion and a raging fire in mid-May took, at this writing, almost 300 lives, with more bodies being discovered as rescue efforts continued. “[On May 15th], five labor unions called for a one-day nationwide strike, demanding better health and safety standards for miners. They also said that mine inspectors should be drawn from labor unions and include independent experts not employed by the mining corporations. The mine at Soma was formerly state-run but was privatized almost a decade ago…

“Public discontent has swelled as the victims’ families have demanded answers from the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan [who visited the Soma after the disaster]… Mr. Erdogan was forced to take refuge at a supermarket during his visit here on [May 14th] after angry crowds scuffled with the police and called the prime minister a murderer and a thief. Turkish newspapers published a photograph on Thursday of one of Mr. Erdogan’s aides kicking a protester who was being held on the ground by police special forces during the protests.

“The aide, Yusuf Yerkel, later apologized for failing to ‘restrain myself despite all the provocations, insults and attacks I was subjected to,’ according to the semiofficial Anadolu News Agency.

“The privatization of mines had led to a sharp increase in accidents ‘because profit is always more valuable than miners’ lives in the private sector,’ said Umar Karatepe, a spokesman for the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey. He said protests would continue until the energy minister, Taner Yildiz, resigned and the government attended to the miners’ immediate concerns.” New York Times, May 16th.

With Assad’s regime in Syria seeming to capitalize on his people’s weariness of the continuing rebellion, slowly gaining the upper hand, the sword of possible corruption hanging over his head and this horrific mining disaster, could it be that Erdogan’s soaring fireball of popularity was being doused in a sober bath of cold water reality? Was this the beginning of the end for this dynamic leader and his push for Turkey to de-secularize towards more of an Islamic state? With leadership lacking and stability being at best ephemeral in this sizzling fire pit we call the Middle East, exactly what cards will the law of unintended consequences reveal?

I’m Peter Dekom, and the shifting sands in the Middle East only occasionally involve real sand!