I was reading a short account on Turkey crackdown. Till last Wednesday 45 newspapers and 15 magazines were banned, 16 TV channels and 23 radio stations lost their licenses. 3 news agencies and 29 publishing houses were closed, too. 89 journalists were arrested. In the Army – 149 admirals and generals were dismissed and arrested, along with other lower rank officers. Thousands and thousands judges, prosecutors, professors and teachers were purged from their public jobs. And these are only provisional figures. Prestigious human rights organizations don’t stop protesting against tortures and bad treatments in Turkish prisons. There are reports that high rank officers were savagely beaten and even raped during so-called interrogations; sources having access inside prisons are saying that the bulk of arrested people are denied the right to a lawyer or to contact their families. Many of these men are to be put on show trials with heavy penalties. Erdogan is talking about reinstating death penalty. A long list of executions won’t be a surprise in the near future. Erdogan wants to eliminate his personal opponents; all those who contested him in one way or another have to disappear from public life; the most influential for good.
This short account reminds me another. The bleak account of the Stalin’s Great Terror during last century thirties. It was a huge purge onto the very heart of Bolshevik establishment. Stalin’s targets were high-rank Red Army officers, Marshals included. He also targeted administration. More than 100.000 clerks disappeared into the Gulag or executed. And targeted his Party colleagues, anybody who could oppose him, who could become his rival but also common old party members, anybody who could have a certain legitimacy to say something relevant at Party’s meetings and gained informal authority. Great Terror death toll resembles that of Soviet Union WW II. And it was a purge meant exclusively to secure Stalin’s personal power.
Erdogan’s Turkey reminds me also of Hitler’s Germany at the beginning of the Nazi regime. In 1933, the very first year of his accession to power, Hitler ordered huge reprisals – Jews persecution, political parties banning, elimination of free press. His political rivals were victims of the first operation of mass arrests – regardless they were liberals, social-democrats or communists. The second operation took place inside Nazi organization during that Long Knives Night when the SA chief of staff, Erich Rohm, was eliminated. Last internal purge was in 1944 after von Stauffenberg’s failed attempt to kill Hitler. This time Hitler’s target was the Army.Another resemblance it has come to my mind is Spain after Civil War, the years when the victorious Franco went on a huge purge doubled by short trials and swift executions of former enemies, those who fought by Spaniard Republic side.
One last case, a more recent one. Mao’s China saw between 1966-1974 one of the most cruel mass purge in XX century. So-called Cultural Revolution was meant as a reprisal against those who jeopardized – in a real or fictional manner – Mao’s personal power. All those who could challenge Mao’s absolute power disappeared. Mao instigated youngsters/ entry level against consecrated Party leaders. Not directly but targeting every single spring of authority in the country – teachers, doctors, any kind of natural leadership in professional communities were accused of having links or Occidental/ bourgeois behavior. Mao’s craving for power made millions of victims.As in Hitler’s Germany, in Stalin’s Soviet Union, when the leader wants space around, when he wants to deter, to intimidate, and eventually to liquidate his rivals, the victims are in fact impossible to count. Unfortunately, as in Erdogan’s Turkey.
To notice that none of these historic cases are success stories. Such practices could provide absolute power for a while but they proved to be undoubtedly disastrous. Maybe Recep Erdogan hasn’t had in mind these „glorious” files. Although his friendship with mr. Putin could provide some exquisite expertise in the field given NKVD/ KGB archives. Mr. Erdogan could use Turkey’s own dark Ottoman traditions. Ottoman Empire history, not necessarily that of Middle Ages, but XIX century one, is full of political and military purges, ethnic and religious cleansing, bloody crackdowns, political assassination and massacres against civilians. Maybe Erdogan is returning mainly to this Ottoman tradition when operates a purge of such a scale in nowadays poor Turkey.Whatever the case, I hope I’ve made it clear through the lines above that mr. Erdogan is not a pioneer; he’s just a humble follower with a foreseeable future.
STELIAN TANASE
CITITI SI SERUITI
COpyright www.stelian tanase.ro