After having gagged all forms of opposition, imprisoned the intellectual, military, judicial, legal, artistic, journalistic elite of his country, even causing the exile of talented men and women, the Turkish president saw the emergence of an opposition led by the women, the young people, who refuse its diktat, its religious conservative will and its nationalism guided by its obscurantism. Having seen himself often, too often, as the refounder of the Ottoman Empire, Erdoğan cannot live in deafness, at a time when voices are raised against his tyrannical governance.
In this open-air prison that is Erdoğan’s Turkey, the walls are cracking. In the midst of the Covid-19 epidemic, 2,850,930 confirmed cases,
29,356 deaths for more than 84 million inhabitants (Worldometers figures), the Turkish lira crumbles, inflation soars (22%) creating more poverty, with a very young population (under 30s represent 50% of the population), a daily rise in prices hitting low-income households hard, 13.9% of the population is believed to be living below the poverty line (World Bank 2020) , unemployment plunges families into poverty.
A catastrophic record that the Turkish president does not want to see, referring to his dream of making his country a nationalist theocracy, he is pursuing a mad race to enslave his people. Where are today the militants of the ruling AKP party, who once toured the suburbs to visit modest families, the future electorate of Erdoğan, providing them with basic foodstuffs, but that was before, in 2003, when he ran for legislative elections and became prime minister. Today president, Receip Tayyip Erdoğan is the man with the strong words, giver of lessons, insulting the French President Emmanuel Macron, Erdoğan believing himself to be great organizer of the policy in the Eastern Mediterranean, failing to respect the maritime law, eternal provocateur, in intimidating Greece and the Republic of Cyprus.
Erdoğan took advantage of the failed coup of July 15, 2016, real or false coup, to strengthen his dictatorial power, leading purges after purges, to kill all forms of protest, opposition, a system à la “Ceausescu “inspired as much by Nicolas as by Helena. In fact, Erdoğan had more than 20 years ago to believe in the most humble social strata that the intellectuals, the cultivated, educated people, those who made the gray matter of the country were the plague of the country because they were too open to the world, abroad, too secular, not religious enough, too modern, turned towards the West, the poor had voted against the elite.
And the former mayor of Istanbul was also the author of a play questioning Freemasonry, Communists and Jews, “dangers” for Turkey, the sermon was already formulated, other enemies will be added to this start of the list.
Today, Turkish youth are speaking out. Erdoğan may well be the champion of the deprivation of freedoms, and therefore of the right to demonstrate, to think too, Turkish students and their teachers oppose his destructive madness. Anger is roaring on campuses against the Turkish president’s stranglehold on universities.
As Ahmet Insel, scholar, writer and journalist explained to us, the famous university of Istanbul Bogazici was endowed with a rector, not elected by his peers, but appointed by President Erdogan himself, because a new The law appointing rectors appeared after the failed “real-false” coup d’état of 2016. Professors and students demonstrate every day on the campus against the parachuting of the new rector, Melih Bulu, an AKP man. questioned.
Other universities are following this movement against yet another Erdoğan purge, this time in academia and academia. It’s a good thing to finally see an opposition reborn in Turkey, good news that this youth born under Erdoğan, and having only known how to say no to him, with the force not of despair, but the will to finally want live free in their own country, and young people are not the only ones to take the banner of revolt, Turkish women too.
Turkish women take to the streets to demonstrate against domestic violence, family violence where women are still and always murdered by a man, parent, brother, cousin, husband or lover. What is more, at a time when the AKP and the government of Receip Tayyip Erdoğan have repeatedly called for Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention – a Council of Europe convention on prevention and the fight against violence against women and domestic violence – women are murdered again and again in Turkey.
They therefore take to the streets, do not fear the police like the students, and despite the ban on demonstrating on March 8, International Women’s Day, a ban from the top of power, Turkish women were united in the street to say “enough”. As our guest, Ahmet Insel told us, even within the ruling AKP, women are also making their voices heard. In almost two decades, 6,732 women have been murdered in Turkey, an official figure, but how many are the murders of Turkish women that are ignored?
And to think that Turkish women had obtained the right to vote in 1934, what a dramatic reversal of the situation, what a regression when violence against women is hidden or even ignored by the power in place today, because for the president Erdoğan, an accomplished woman is first a mother. Everything is, alas, said. Turkey’s withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention of the Council of Europe, whose Secretary General is Croatian, Marija Pejčinović Burić, would officially sign the drift of Turkish power …
After deciding to occupy and transform into the Hagia Sophia Mosque and the Byzantine Church of Saint Savior in Chora last year, after the multiple threats in the Aegean Sea of Ankara, let us recall that Turkish youth have already been the target power.
In 2020, the Grup Yorum, a musical group, saw its concerts banned by the Turkish government, the artists were brought to justice, two of its members Helin Bölek, a 28-year-old Kurdish, died on her 288th day of the hunger, in Istanbul, on April 3, 2020, as well as Ibrahim Gökçek, who died on his 323rd day of hunger strike on May 7, 2020, a few weeks after Helin Bölek. During the funeral of the two artists, the Turkish police intervened, making arrests.
In solidarity with Grup Yorum, in memory of Helin Bölek and Ibrahim Gökçet, as well as Mustaka Koçak, 28, who died on his 297th day of hunger strike, where he claimed his innocence on charges of terrorism by the power of Ankara, artists and young Greeks gathered on the steps of the Odeon of Herodes Atticus at the foot of the Acropolis of Athens in May 2020, performing the song Tencere Tava Havasi, symbolic song, hymn of the Turkish youth of the events of Geizi in 2013, when they opposed the autocracy of Erdogan.
Now in 2021, young people and women are Erdoğan’s nascent opposition. How, under such tyrannical and obscurantist conditions, could Turkey maintain its seat in the Council of Europe, which defends human rights, democracy and the rule of law?
