TURKEY – Erdogan moves to cement power with political purge

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is already the most powerful man in Turkey, ruling by decree from his 1,100-room presidential palace, jailing those he holds in contempt and forcing the rest into self-imposed exile.

But there is one thing he still covets – an executive presidency of the kind forbidden by the constitution. Often he skirts close to violating the charter with his forceful embrace of all the levers of state power, and his ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) insists that a draft of a new constitution is imminent.

Last week, Mr Erdogan removed what could prove to be the final hurdle to that achievement – a crackdown on the Kurdish People’s Democratic party (HDP), the one opposition group that vowed to oppose his attempts to get a new charter through parliament.

In midnight raids, security forces swooped up dozens, if not hundreds, of the party’s leaders and cadres, jailing them on suspicion of being mouthpieces of a violent insurgency. Turkey has been fighting a three-decade conflict with Kurdish militants, but the HDP was born out of a now abandoned peace process and its leaders deny any connections to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ party.

By the weekend, Selahattin Demirtas, the most popular Kurdish leader in Turkey’s recent history, was behind bars, slipping handwritten notes out of prison to his supporters. His HDP party withdrew its deputies from parliament in a defiant, but ineffective, protest.

If a new constitution is now adopted it would make the president’s powers more formidable than Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the man who established the Turkish republic from the ruins of the Ottoman Empire 93 years ago.

Mr Erdogan had prepared the ground for months, jailing the HDP’s allies in the press and intelligentsia. He had already isolated and subdued the Kurdish heartland in south-east Turkey, detaining mayors, cutting off the internet and flooding the streets with police. When he rounded up the HDP’s leaders, the Kurdish opposition, once capable of bringing cities to a halt with their protests folded with a whimper.

“Erdogan’s road map to adopt a new constitution which arms him with full executive power involves crushing the HDP as a political force and maximising nationalist votes for a referendum in 2017,” said Anthony Skinner, an analyst at Maplecroft, a risk consultancy. “Erdogan played the nationalist, xenophobic card in the run-up to the presidential elections [in 2014] and it paid dividends. He is playing it even more strongly now.”

The attacks on the HDP follow a broader purge that has seen more than 100,000 security personnel, civil servants and others dismissed or detained in the wake of a failed coup in July.

Mr Erdogan’s actions – including his decision to extend a state of emergency last month – have rattled investors and drawn widespread criticism from human rights activists. But he has made it clear he does not worry about how the crackdown is viewed by his detractors.

“They call me a dictator, they call me this and that. I don’t care,” he said on Sunday. “It goes in one ear and comes out the other. What my people say is the important thing.”

Even if Turks disagreed with their leader, few are now willing to speak out. Academics who once criticised Mr Erdogan have gone silent.

“Nobody dares say a single world against him,” said one prominent commentator, a former ally of Mr Erdogan’s. “If you put my name in the paper today, I will be in jail tomorrow.”

Analysts expect a new constitution to be drafted by January that is likely to give the president powers to chair cabinet meetings and introduce legislation. If parliament passes it, a nationwide referendum would be held to approve the charter.

To ease the process, Mr Erdogan will be hoping to complete his seduction of the nationalist opposition, the once powerful Nationalist Movement party (MHP), which has sufficient MPs to help the AKP pass a draft constitution through parliament.

Mr Erdogan has already aided Devlet Bahceli, its leader, to fight off an insurgency within his party’s ranks. The recent assault on the Kurdish leadership also plays into Mr Bahceli’s support base, which seeks a robust response to Kurdish separatist aspirations.

That his crackdown on opponents will further alienate Mr Erdogan’s western allies appears not to bother him. As the US has rejected his pleas for a greater role in the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, a fight that would help Ankara quell Kurdish advances in those countries, he has pivoted to Russia. Mr Erdogan has also become increasingly critical of the EU, which Turkey has spent years in talks with over its bid to join the bloc.

“What do we expect from people who kept us waiting for 53 years at the door?” Mr Erdogan said on Sunday, repeating his assertion that the EU was insincere in its accession talks. “Let’s not kid ourselves. Let’s cut our own umbilical cord.”