A Tempest of Fear in Turkey
ISTANBUL — Although the word turbulence doesn’t exist in Turkish, it is probably the best description of the state of politics in Turkey these days. But we have other words, many of them, that denote “tension,” “masculinity” and “polarization,” all of which afflict the Turkish state.
Turkey is a liquid country, a watercourse of conflicts and contradictions. The mood changes weekly, sometimes daily. Until recently the country was seen as a successful combination of Islam and Western democracy, a power broker in the Middle East. That view is rapidly fading, and the river that is Turkey is running faster than ever.
With local, presidential and general elections coming, this is a year of loud polemics and quiet concerns. Citizens glance through websites dozens of times daily to see what else has happened. During a vote that gave the government greater control over the judiciary, members of Parliament exchanged blows; a bloody nose was a testament to our bruised democracy.
Nothing reflects the tempest better than the recent proliferation of conspiracy theories.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan repeatedly accused outsiders of being behind the protests in Gezi Park last summer, which left six people dead and 8,000 injured. Several government officials insinuated that dark forces were operating behind the scenes, including the Jewish diaspora, the C.I.A., the BBC, CNN and the interest-rate lobby, a term for a cabal of domestic and foreign banks that officials believe want to harm Turkey to further their own interests. A Turkish BBC reporter was openly accused of being a foreign spy. Protesters in Taksim Square were called terrorists. The German airline Lufthansa, it was suggested, was trying to scuttle an important new airport for Istanbul.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/25/opinion/a-tempest-of-fear-in-turkey.html?hpw&rref=opinion&_r=0
