Surfing on tension waves

Directors of opinion poll companies, appearing on various channels over the weekend, defended that if polls were to be held immediately after the Davos incident, perhaps carried by their emotions, Turks might have given some additional 8 to 10 points of support to the ruling AKP candidates. But elections will be held on March 29 and by that date such emotions will mostly die out and Turks are expected to primarily vote with economic considerations. There might be a slight contribution of the Davos incident on the AKP performance in the polls, but that contribution will not be higher than one or two percentage points, they said.

Pollsters, unfortunately, were missing one important point. It was these outbursts on which Erdoğan has built his entire political campaign. He knew well in December 1997 in Siirt when he recited the poem, "Mosques are our barracks, domes our helmets, minarets our bayonets, believers our soldiers. This holy army guards my religion. Almighty, our journey is our destiny, the end is martyrdom," which also included lines that he had modified himself, from Ziya Gökalp that it could land him in jail on grounds of disseminating hatred and exploitation of religion. He still did it, landed himself in jail and eventually emerged from jail as the leader of the "reformist" wing of the political Islam in the country.

Compromising is not in the dictionary of Erdoğan. Rather than compromise, he has been preferring head on collision, climaxing tension and then surfing to his target on that tension wave. Political polarization and thus dividing the country between secularists (mostly supporting the main opposition CHP) and devoted Muslim Turks (mostly supporting his AKP) has been the cornerstone of Erdoğan’s political strategy, which coupled with the high demand for economic stability, has earned two straight terms of almost absolute AKP majority in Parliament. The skill in deception helped the AKP and Erdoğan in this long period as well.

Deception: Name of the game!

Though he considered democracy nothing more than a coach on which he would travel on until the destination he wanted but would abandon at that point, he pretended as if he was the best-ever democrat in the country. Though religious feelings and the generosity of the Turks were nothing further than a fertile ground to exploit, to collect through the Light House charity fund millions of euros worth of donations (in Germany, Austria, Netherlands as well as in Turkey), to fund an Islamist TV channel, finance political Islam and raise a green capital, but they are the most devoted and true Muslims.

Though he considered the EU-membership bid of the country as a vital tool to attain his Islamist designs, in order to obtain external legitimacy in the absence of a domestic one, for a long period he pretended as if he was devoted to the EU goal of the country. But he was such a democrat that he could not accept any criticism in the media, brought court cases against cartoonists criticizing him, and still has been appealing for a boycott of the media outlets that refuse to enter into an allegiance with him and his AKP. Only this week Erdoğan appealed to his supporters twice and urged them not to let into their houses those newspapers not supportive of his government. Still, both in Turkey and in some European capitals there are people considering him a "conservative democrat" politician.

For Erdoğan, barking in Jerusalem of a dog clad in uniform Ğ though the Israeli military immediately disavowed the accusations and the insulting barking Ğ was yet another opportunity to exploit, to revive the "Davos emotions," which if maintained to run high, he hopes will help his party garner some additional support in the polls. Otherwise, if tension is permitted to subside and the electorate is allowed to ponder accuracy of rampant corruption claims, can the AKP maintain a 47 percent electoral support?

Erdoğan loves surfing on tension waves.