On Oct. 10, a suicide bomb attack killed over 100 people in the center of Turkey’s capital, Ankara. The suspected perpetrators were part of an Islamic State cell in Turkey. What is more unnerving is that many saw it coming.
In June, a large pro-Kurdish election rally in Diyarbakir was attacked, killing four and injuring many more; in July, a horrendous suicide attack targeted socialist youth in Suruc, killing 33. Ominously, a number of Turkish columnists warned the government openly about potential bombers — even providing the names of some of them.
Unfortunately, Turkey’s government seems more interested these days in punishing those who insult the president on Twitter than in tracking Islamic State cells in the country. Since 2013, Turkey’s president has created a political climate in which domestic Islamic State cells have found it easy to prosper. Until very recently, Turkish security forces have been soft on Islamic State operatives and lax about their movements across the border.
Worse, as more information about the Ankara suicide bombers emerges, it’s clear that there were gross intelligence failures. The father of one of the suicide bombers pleaded with authorities to keep his son in custody, but the police let him go. The government’s ban on news reports about the incident has further clouded the situation.
Not surprisingly, many Turks now feel that the social contract between the people and the government has been broken and there is no going back. Quite simply, the government has failed to protect them.
As a former member of the ruling Justice and Development Party, or A.K.P., who served in Parliament from 2007 to 2011 and was on the party’s executive committee, this has been a deeply disappointing process to watch. The A.K.P. was once the most progressive force in Turkish politics, but it has undergone a damaging transformation since the fateful Gezi Park protests of 2013.
Although I am a former air force officer and I believe strongly in the virtues of a secular state, I joined the A.K.P. in 2007 because I believed Turkey was at a critical juncture. I had little regard for the militant secularism and nationalism harbored by many within Turkey’s old establishment. The election of Abdullah Gul in 2007, who was almost blocked from becoming president because his wife wore a head scarf, was a critical moment for the consolidation of our democracy. By that time, the A.K.P. had already put Turkey into accession negotiations with the European Union, managed an impressive economic growth story and improved Turkey’s international standing. In many quarters, Turkey was seen as an inspiration for other Muslim countries.
It’s true that the A.K.P. was never a liberal party, but it had a clear interest in Turkey’s democratization. That’s why the party enjoyed support from democrats, liberals and some social democrats who were eager to balance the excesses of the stern old secularist regime. Both in Parliament and abroad we enjoyed the moral high ground of normalizing civil-military relations, overseeing a growing economy and obtaining greater democratic legitimacy through growing support from the electorate. I comforted myself in thinking that the European accession process would serve as an anchor if the A.K.P.’s conservatism ever pulled the country off course.
By 2009, the process had slowed down. Then, in September 2010, a referendum allowed Recep Tayyip Erdogan, then the prime minister and now the president, to shape the judiciary to his own liking. After that vote, he believed he had defeated the establishment for good. Regrettably, he came to the conclusion that he no longer needed the moderates in the party.
When I examined the new candidates list in 2011 I immediately understood what was going on. He had decided to root out all of the democrats, liberals and moderate conservatives. Those who replaced us were ideologically conservative Islamists who showed absolute loyalty to him.
However, few were willing to make a fuss about it as the A.K.P. won its third consecutive election with a record 50 percent of the vote. The purge of centrists continued in the party’s 2012 convention. Those who asked questions, offered constructive criticism or were generally disposed to moderation were kicked off the executive committee. The consolidation of Mr. Erdogan’s grip was complete.
I disassociated myself with the party after the convention and took part in the 2013 Gezi Park protests.
A few months later, major corruption scandals put Mr. Erdogan and the party on an irreversible path. He turned authoritarian, the country became increasingly polarized, the Kurdish peace process collapsed after the June election and violence by the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or P.K.K., broke out again.
Stubborn insistence on a disastrous Syria policy further dragged the country into a regional quagmire. Turkey’s inability to oust Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria led the government to support radical elements fighting Mr. Assad while Turkey became host to more than two million Syrian refugees.
What started out as an impressive political journey is now heading toward disaster.
It is clear that the A.K.P.’s promise to consolidate Turkish democracy, solve the Kurdish question and join the European Union has utterly failed.
It did not have to be this way. Mr. Erdogan’s desperate choices for his personal survival have doomed the party and poisoned the spirit of our nation. Mr. Erdogan has squandered a historic opportunity to consolidate Turkish democracy, transform Turkey into a First World country and bridge differences between secularists and conservatives, Turks and Kurds and Sunnis and Alevis. The absence of a viable, united opposition makes the situation even worse.
If the A.K.P. is not defeated in the Nov. 1 election, Mr. Erdogan’s authoritarianism and Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s foreign policy could suck Turkey deeper into the Middle East’s vortex of violence.
Turkey is in desperate need of new leadership and political wisdom to get out of this mess.
Suat Kiniklioglu was a member of the Turkish Parliament from 2007-11 and is the executive director of the Center for Strategic Communication in Ankara.