Turkish revolt: what next?

Turkish revolt: what next?

After the heavy protests against Erdogan's government, little has been said on its outcome.

Violently repressed protesters in Turkey, on June 15, had attracted the attention of the international community. Now, on its aftermath, what is happening?

Ozan B., student at Istanbul's Technical University, is positive about the "big political awareness" it has launched However, he admits that politics in itself remains troubled.

Two months ago, Prime Minister Erdogan had announced Gezi Park's transformation into a shopping centre. This had provoked a movement of peaceful, ecologically-driven demonstration from students.

Soon, governmental police forces dislodged them with water canons and pepper gas, severely harming some participants.

Since then, what had started as the Gezi Park Resistance became a nation-wide movement of protest against Erdogan’s governance, spreading to major cities like Ankara and Izmir.

Already before this, the government had applied a set of very restrictive measures, angering more and more the people.

“For example, they voted new laws bringing extra limitations on alcohol consumption; and on the appearance, [restrictions] over socialisation and contact of young couples in public spaces”, says Dr Raptopoulos, teacher of Middle-Eastern politics at the University of Pireus, Greece.

What are now the consequences of this two-month-old revolt? The first and main one has affected Erdogan's image.

“Erdogan received a heavy blow. According to a gallop […] after the protests, his popularity had dropped from more than 50% to 35%,” says Dr Raptopoulos.

“It is important, since he aimed to make constitutional amendments that would permit the shift to a Presidential system.

“This way he could have become President towards the end of his mandate, earlier than 2015,” he adds.

Indeed since February, the Prime Minister was considering to replace the existing parliamentary system with an executive presidency, which worried the opposition, seeing an attempt at a totalitarian regime.

"It's good that Erdogan is going through a hard time. He has turned people against each other for too long", confides Ozan.

Indeed, since Ataturk's quick secularist policies in the 1920s and 1930s, Turkey had become polarized between Islamic and Western values, a rift on which Erdogan played.

Erdogan's policies also came at the cost of freedom of speech, with several cases of jailed journalists and academics. Again recently, an outlet of Facebook speaking for the minorities has been shut down.

The symbol of this group, a pomegranate, was supposedly against Facebook's standards. An excuse indeed rather obscure.

As for the protesters themselves, Dr Raptopoulos says, “Turkish justice has been very severe with the participants. Arrests continued to take place in the offices and homes of ordinary people many days after the end of protests.” Now, police remains in the street, but no trouble is occurring anymore, according to Ozan.

Now, the next step will be to see if those protests and their influence in politics will have an impact on Turkey's bid to join the European Union, negotiations being discussed since 2005 already.

This article was written as an assignment for the London School of Journalism.