The Gezi Park Protests and Their Impact on Turkey’s Soft Power Abroad

The impact of the Gezi Park protests on Turkish foreign policy will likely become a hot topic in the near future for the main reason that the way the entire process unfolded promises to affect Turkey’s image abroad.
 
The “image” issue lies at the core of the discussions revolving around the concept of “soft power.” Soft power is the ability of one actor to help shape the preferences and behaviors of others through the attraction of its values, norms, institutions and policies in their eyes. The goal is not to directly engage others and push them to undertake cost-benefit calculations. Soft power comes with attraction and persuasion, not coercion or temptation. Most importantly, soft power begins at home.
 
The way a government treats its people speaks volumes as to how it would treat outsiders. Legitimacy and attractiveness abroad comes with legitimacy and attractiveness at home. That said, it is for sure that analysts will approach this issue from many different angles and draw conclusions based on their ideological lenses and analytical tools.
 
Rather than the protests themselves, what seems to warrant attention in this regard is the way the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government has dealt with the protesters. Leaving aside the legitimacy of the claims put forward by the protesters for a while, the whole issue can be boiled down to the question of how a democratically elected government should respond to the demands of a sizable group of people who organize mass protests to reflect their grievances. It is all about the relationship between the rulers and the ruled.
 
Right from the beginning of the crisis, it has become obvious that neither the composition of the protesters nor the response of the government has reflected a uniform character. Put simply, the protesters can be divided into three groups, the locals of the Taksim area and the environmentalists who strongly objected to the decision of the government to erect a military barracks in one of the rare green areas in the heart of İstanbul without taking into account public sensitivities in this regard; the middle and upper-middle classes of İstanbul who have accumulated strong reservations and anger in the face of the mounting conservative and homogenizing social engineering policies of the AKP government in recent years, with limits placed on alcohol sales as the latest example; and finally the radical leftist and anti-statist groups who never miss an opportunity to wreak chaos and anarchy as part of their steadfast opposition to the idea of authority.
 
On the other hand, the government has not demonstrated a uniform stance, either. Some within the AKP appear to have adopted the view that striking a middle ground between the protesters and the government would be the right course of action during this process, whereas some others, including the prime minister himself, appear to have acted on the belief that the policies of the İstanbul Municipality with respect to the construction plans in the Taksim area and the strong support that the government is giving to police actions are fully legitimate and reflect the democratic will of the majority that brought the AKP to government in 2011 in a landslide victory. The characteristic feature of the government’s response is that the prime minister appears to have silenced all the moderate voices within the party and spent a great deal of effort to mobilize public opinion on the side of the police. The use of brute force by the riot police has decisively shaped the way the crisis has unfolded in subsequent stages.
 
We have also seen that some members of the AKP, particularly consisting of members of the prime minister’s inner circle, the so-called advisors, have tried to justify the use of force against the protesters in the eyes of the public at home and abroad by incessantly referring to the illegality of the marginal groups as well as the intrusion of some external forces in the unfolding events. This point has been strongly resisted by the protesters and those who have supported them on the ground who say that the government has been continuously trying to direct the attention of the people to non-relevant issues. For example, the prime minister has repeatedly underlined that the so-called “interest lobby” and the intelligence units of some countries, which have felt alarmed by the dramatic rise of Turkey’s hard and soft power capabilities in recent years, wanted to teach Turkey a lesson.
 
As analysts who try to understand and explain social events from a distance, we are not in a position to unequivocally verify or refute the rationality and correctness of such arguments voiced by the government, for that is an impossible task. However, the claim that Turkey’s dramatic rise in recent years might have attracted the ire, envy and anger of some external circles seems quite reasonable, since this is very much in line with the cardinal rules of international relations as an academic field. Despite all efforts on the part of statesmen and theoreticians to rebuild international politics on the basis of long-term friendships and positive-sum games, the tendency to view international politics through the lenses of eternal power struggles, rivalries, enmities and zero-sum games is still very strong, particularly in the geographies surrounding Turkey.
 
Turkey is now a member of the G-20, the prestigious club of the most economically developed 20 countries in the world; it has adopted a liberal-assertive policy stance during the course of developments associated with the Arab Spring, notably in Syria; it now shows a strong determination to help shape the emerging security order in the Middle East with itself acting as the leader and master of this process; its efforts to transform itself into a global power having access to different geographies have skyrocketed; it has now been in the process of reaching a historic peace with its own Kurds as well as those of the Middle East; it is now experiencing one of the best periods in its relations with the United States with President Barack Obama and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan both sharing a pragmatic and realpolitik foreign policy outlook.
 
Just as the point that “Turkey might have attracted the envy and anger of some outside circles due to its accomplishments over the last decade” sounds reasonable, the argument that ‘the way the government has thus far responded to the Gezi protests and handled the whole process will put a dent in Turkey’s image abroad’ is equally reasonable. The image issue is important because the main source of Turkey’s improving international profile and rising value in recent years has been the attractiveness of the so-called “Turkish model.” Without taking the post-9/11 and post-Arab Spring eras into consideration, it becomes a futile exercise to explain why Turkey’s value has increased in international stock markets. Turkey’s soft power, viz. its improving image and increasing followers, has been very much associated with its success in combining Islam, secularism, Westernization, Europeanization, modernization and democracy in a harmonious manner. This has been the case in the eyes of both the Western countries, which continuously refer to Turkey as an ideal partner in their efforts to help bring into existence Western-friendly states in the Greater Middle East, and the regional countries which try to economically develop and politically democratize while remaining true to their cultural and religious values.
 
That said, it should be disheartening for the AKP government to have seen many Western countries adopt a critical rhetoric during the entire Gezi Park process. Not only the State Department and White House officials in the United States, but also some influential politicians and bureaucrats in the EU area have harshly criticized Turkey in this context. The head of the European Parliament has even warned Turkish authorities that the accession negotiations with the EU might permanently come to a halt unless Turkey overhauls its illiberal and non-democratic responses as soon as possible.
 
It is quite important to underline the point that Turkey’s attractiveness as a source of inspiration, if not a copycat role model for the transitional regimes in the Middle East, will be very much informed by whether Turkey becomes a truly liberal polity alongside its ongoing process of democratization. This is the crux of the issue. At stake is whether Turkey should be seen as part of the liberal-democratic club in the developed West, or the so-called rising powers associated with the BRICS countries, which are Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Turkey’s economic transformation over the last decade has certainly swelled the size of the middle classes living in metropolitan urban areas which are very sensitive about their lifestyles and show a growing penchant for becoming part of decisions that directly affect their well-being. It is the success of the AKP’s liberal economic policies that we now a have a growing middle class in Turkey which is simultaneously becoming political/politicized. The most important message these circles wanted to give to the government in the latest Gezi Park events is that they want to see respect from the government and to live their lives as they wish, rather than being “instructed” as to how to pursue a moral and decent life. For democratic liberalism to accompany economic liberalism, Turkey’s rulers need to view democracy from the perspective of pluralism rather than majoritarianism. Plural democracy, rather than majoritarian democracy needs to take root at home.
 
For this to happen, the first thing to do is strengthen the consensus-oriented political culture as well as the principle of the rule of law. Liberal democracy thrives on the ideas of pluralism, respect, rule of law, constitutionalism and non-discrimination against minorities on the basis of moral, legal and political grounds. The strong and the powerful should respect the weaker, not tolerate; the strong and the powerful should not see itself as above the law; the strong and the powerful should not impose a particular way of life on the weaker; the strong and the powerful should avoid practices of social engineering both in top-down and bottom-up manners; the strong and the powerful should take the messages of the weaker, rather than giving messages to them. The strong and the powerful should seek legitimacy in the consciousness of the people rather than the number of those who made him/her strong and powerful; the strong and the powerful should rule by modesty rather than over self-confidence. These are the messages of the Gezi Park protests that I have taken as an observer of Turkish politics. For Taksim to inspire Tahrir, rather than the other way around, the credentials of Turkey’s soft power identity should be reinstituted as soon as possible, hopefully on a liberal-democratic trajectory rather than an illiberal majoritarian democracy.