Armenian News – NEWS.am presents the abridged version of the article by Stephen Kinzer, visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University, published on Al Jazeera website:
“Sultans ruled the Turks for 470 years until Kemal Ataturk proclaimed a republic in 1923. “Away with dreams and shadows!” he exulted. “I have banished the rottenness of the Ottoman Empire!
A crucial election on June 7 may determine whether Turkey falls back under a form of sultanic rule, led by a supreme leader empowered to control every aspect of national life.
The sultan-in-waiting is Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who was Turkey’s prime minister for 11 years before ascending to the presidency in 2014.
By a delightful quirk of history, the main obstacle in Erdogan’s way is Turkey’s newly invigorated Kurdish political movement. Under a charismatic young leader who has brought a new style to Turkish politics, the Kurdish-led People’s Democratic Party (HDP) has broadened its appeal. It could score an electoral triumph that would deny Erdogan the sultanate he hopes to lead.
Commentary leading up to this election is focused on a single question: Can the HDP win the minimum 10 percent of votes required to enter parliament? If it succeeds, it will take enough seats to join with other opposition parties and block the constitutional changes that would allow presidents to rule more or less by decree. If it fails, Erdogan may be able to push through “reforms” that would make him the most powerful leader Turkey has had since multiparty democracy emerged in 1950.
Erdogan presumed that Davutoglu, who lacks a political base of his own, would be a faithful lapdog. During the current campaign, however, Davutoglu has sounded less than thrilled about the idea of an Erdogan superpresidency — in part because it implies a reduced role for any prime minister. Neither he nor any other leading Turkish politician projects anything like the outsize ego and grandiose self-worship that Erdogan embodies.
Turks have spent countless hours wondering what happened to Erdogan — what produced his astonishing transformation from a reformist leader admired around the world to an angry, divisive politician who appears blinded by unlimited personal ambition. Various theories have emerged. Some believe Erdogan is acting according to a hidden agenda he developed years ago. Others suspect that he has become psychologically unbalanced or that his reported brush with cancer made him a man in a hurry. The most common explanation is one as old as politics itself: He has been corrupted by his long time in power.”
