Democratically-elected autocracy

For Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister, democracy is all about arithmetic, i.e. merely the numbers and percentages of votes cast. For Turkey’s European friends it is all about men in uniform. Both obsessions are wrong, and no one will be happy about the democracy Turkey will eventually have invented. Mr. Erdoğan thinks elections would suffice to make Turkey a democracy. For Brussels, Turkey is a democracy as long as the military does not intervene in politics. Sadly, Russia is not a democracy in the true meaning of the term although it holds democratic elections. Nor is Saudi Arabia a democracy because the Saudi military leadership does not have a role in politics.

In democracies, governance is transparent, corruption allegations are thoroughly investigated, partisanism and nepotism are hardly the norm. Anti-government protestors are not brutally beaten by the police, arrested on the spot and prosecuted immediately.

In democracies, prime ministers do not call for a national boycott against newspapers critical of their governments. Nor do they land unfriendly media groups with unprecedented tax fines. In democracies, detainees are not held behind bars for over a year without even knowing the charges against them. Mr. Erdoğan justifies his anger at this publishing group with the news about his family members. In his vision of democracy newspapers should refrain from covering the commercial miracles of the prime minister’s sons, son-in-laws, close friends or senior party officials. No coverage, and that would be democracy. If there is coverage, then the democracy should come up in the form of a $500 million fine.

Just the other day, Mehmet Ali Şahin, the justice minister, publicly said that Turks should vote for mayors who would be "friendly" with the central government, or suffer the consequences. On the same day, Ankara’s mayor, Melih Gökçek, from the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, claimed that his election rival, Murat Karayalçın, could not get government loans for his projects should he be elected. These statements are not only undemocratic or unethical, they are also illegal.

If a public prosecutor filed a suit about the AKP on the grounds of illegal election campaigning, that would be very undemocratic. If the senior AKP figures breach the election laws, that would be democracy.

When the prime minister talks to Kurds in Kurdish, that’s democracy. If a Kurdish politician speaks in Kurdish in Parliament, that’s a breach of law and awfully undemocratic.

Similarly, when a judge arrests people known to be critical of the government it’s always "our independent judiciary and we should not intervene." When another prosecutor indicts the ruling party, or when the Supreme Court finds it guilty of unconstitutional activity, that’s so very undemocratic and it constitutes a "judicial coup."

Now Mr. Erdoğan is accusing this publishing group for being in alliance with the opposition Republican People’s Party, or CHP. Of course, he claims "the other" media is not pro-AKP at all! They are objective, neutral, independent publications. And yes, even the media group owned by a company run by his son-in-law! That one, too, is neutral. But it would be quite easy to see if Mr. Erdoğan is telling the truth. Scanning a couple of months back, in one newspaper only, Hürriyet, anyone can dog pile and produce dozens of articles, stories and columns bitterly critical about the CHP or its leadership. To match that, I shall name four newspapers that Mr. Erdoğan tags as independent and objective: Zaman, Star, Yeni Şafak and Sabah.

Now do the same scan for the same period and see how many articles, stories or columns you would find equally critical of the AKP. I’ll tell you, not more than a few, and that would be if the chosen criterion is not bitter criticism, but just shy criticism. The fact is, my sparring partner, the all-too AKP-friendly Mustafa Akyol, does write a column for this publishing group (and I am only too happy he does) while I could only be an office boy in any one of those "objective and independent" newspapers.

With the AKP caring only about arithmetical democracy and the EU about how often and on what subjects do the Turkish generals talk, Turkey is not sailing toward a safe harbor. Too bad, democratic elections and silent generals per se do not necessarily make democracy.