ISTANBUL: In a slick online video, 22-year-old Turkish student Ali Gul sits in front a drum kit and framed artwork while making tart remarks about Turkey’s political leadership. He wraps up by musing that he will probably get arrested if the video goes viral.
The video clocked tens of thousands of hits. This month, Gul was detained. Times have been hard for Turkey, buffeted by bombings, violence between government forces and Kurdish rebels, refugee flows from the war in neighboring Syria and a failed coup attempt that unleashed a huge government crackdown under an ongoing state of emergency. Now the nation is on the cusp of what could be drastic change in its political system that would, backers say, impose badly needed stability or, according to Gul and other critics, nudge it toward autocracy.
Next month, Turks will decide whether to make the post of president more powerful in a constitutional referendum that is a big gamble for Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the tough-talking president who is arguably Turkey’s most transformational figure since Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the Ottoman-era army officer and national founder who died in 1938.
Whichever way the April 16 vote goes, Turkish society will remain deeply divided.
In power since 2003, Erdogan represents a swathe of pious Muslims whose political and economic ascendancy came at the expense of a hard-line secular class that once dominated the NATO member country with the military’s support.
A former prime minister, Erdogan was elected president in 2014 for a five-year term and took a far more active role in politics than his predecessors. Even if the referendum proposals fail and his aura of invincibility is punctured, he could still run for another term as president.
“He is truly a man of servitude. And he knows how to affect a person down to the capillary vessels. He gets down to one’s heart, touches it,” said Ahmet Kaya, a machinery workshop owner in Istanbul who views the president not as an authoritarian ruler, but as a scrappy defender against Turkey’s perceived enemies.
Those enemies, at least for the purposes of a political campaign, include some European nations that blocked efforts by Turkish ministers to woo diaspora votes before the referendum. Erdogan, who once courted the EU on behalf of Turkey’s fading candidacy to be an EU member, has galvanized supporters by comparing current Dutch and German authorities to the Nazis.
The taunts aimed at Europe, Turkey’s No. 1 trading partner, tap into historical grievances in Turkey, where the story of how colonial powers carved up the disintegrating Ottoman Empire still fuels a powerful nationalism. To some, they smack of desperation in a referendum campaign whose outcome is unclear.
Hopes for consensus politics in Turkey would diminish if referendum proposals to abolish the post of prime minister and concentrate power in an executive presidency are approved, said Ahmet Kasim Han, an associate professor of international relations at Kadir Has University in Istanbul.
“The gates of populism, which will be fed also by the current zeitgeist around the world, could be wide open in Turkey,” Han said, referring to the populist platforms of US President Donald Trump and anti-immigrant politicians in Europe.
A ‘yes’ vote in the referendum would grant the president the power to appoint government ministers and senior officials, appoint half of the members in the country’s highest judicial body, declare states of emergency and issue decrees.
“The president would be given the power to dissolve Parliament on any grounds whatsoever, which is fundamentally alien to democratic presidential systems,” said the Venice Commission, an advisory body to the Council of Europe.
Erdogan has dismissed assertions that the referendum proposals set the stage for one-man rule, saying they will instead end the kind of political chaos that rocked past coalition governments. In 2001, the Turkish currency plummeted during an economic crisis in which public disgust with national leaders opened a path for Erdogan’s rise to power.
“I want to rule my country with almost the same understanding as a company manager. Why? To be able to lead with speed, to speedily take decisions,” Erdogan told the A Haber news channel.
Gul, the student, could face jail time if convicted of insulting the president and the Turkish state in his online video criticizing the referendum. Drawing a questionable parallel with democratic Turkey, he said dead dictators Muammar Qaddafi of Libya and Saddam Hussein of Iraq, as well as current Syrian President Bashar Assad, imposed stability and took rapid decisions in their countries.
For Turkish president, referendum on power is a big gamble
For Turkish president, referendum on power is a big gamble
Kushner’s vision for rebuilding Gaza faces major obstacles
- It remains uncertain whether Hamas will disarm, and Israeli troops fire upon Palestinians in Gaza on a near-daily basis
JERUSALEM: Modern cities with sleek high-rises, a pristine coastline that attracts tourists and a state-of-the-art port that jut into the Mediterranean. This is what Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East adviser, says Gaza could become, according to a presentation he gave at an economic forum in Davos, Switzerland.
In his 10-minute speech on Thursday, Kushner claimed it would be possible — if there’s security — to quickly rebuild Gaza’s cities, which are now in ruins after more than two years of war between Israel and Hamas.
“In the Middle East, they build cities like this ... in three years,” said Kushner, who helped broker the ceasefire in place since October. “And so stuff like this is very doable, if we make it happen.”
That timeline is at odds with what the United Nations and Palestinians expect will be a very long process to rehabilitate Gaza. Across the territory of roughly 2 million people, former apartment blocks are hills of rubble, unexploded ordnance lurks beneath the wreckage, disease spreads because of sewage-tainted water and city streets look like dirt canyons.
The United Nations Office for Project Services says Gaza has more than 60 million tons of rubble, enough to fill nearly 3,000 container ships. That will take over seven years to clear, they say, and then additional time is needed for demining.
Kushner spoke as Trump and an assortment of world leaders gathered to ratify the charter of the Board of Peace, the body that will oversee the ceasefire and reconstruction process.
Here are key takeaways from the presentation, and some questions raised by it:
Reconstruction hinges on security
Kushner said his reconstruction plan would only work if Gaza has “security” — a big “if.”
It remains uncertain whether Hamas will disarm, and Israeli troops fire upon Palestinians in Gaza on a near-daily basis.
Officials from the militant group say they have the right to resist Israeli occupation. But they have said they would consider “freezing” their weapons as part of a process to achieve Palestinian statehood.
Since the latest ceasefire took effect Oct. 10, Israeli troops have killed at least 470 Palestinians in Gaza, including young children and women, according to the territory’s Health Ministry. Israel says it has opened fire in response to violations of the ceasefire, but dozens of civilians have been among the dead.
In the face of these challenges, the Board of Peace has been working with Israel on “de-escalation,” Kushner said, and is turning its attention to the demilitarization of Hamas — a process that would be managed by the US-backed Palestinian committee overseeing Gaza.
It’s far from certain that Hamas will yield to the committee, which goes by the acronym NCAG and is envisioned eventually handing over control of Gaza to a reformed Palestinian Authority. Hamas says it will dissolve the government to make way, but has been vague about what will happen to its forces or weapons. Hamas seized control of Gaza in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority.
Another factor that could complicate disarmament: the existence of competing armed groups in Gaza, which Kushner’s presentation said would either be dismantled or “integrated into NCAG.” During the war, Israel has supported armed groups and gangs of Palestinians in Gaza in what it says is a move to counter Hamas.
Without security, Kushner said, there would be no way to draw investors to Gaza and or stimulate job growth. The latest joint estimate from the UN, the European Union and the World Bank is that rebuilding Gaza will cost $70 billion.
Reconstruction would not begin in areas that are not fully disarmed, one of Kushner’s slides said.
Kushner’s plan avoids mention of what Palestinians do in meantime
When unveiling his plan for Gaza’s reconstruction, Kushner did not say how demining would be handled or where Gaza’s residents would live as their areas are being rebuilt. At the moment, most families are sheltering in a stretch of land that includes parts of Gaza City and most of Gaza’s coastline.
In Kushner’s vision of a future Gaza, there would be new roads and a new airport — the old one was destroyed by Israel more than 20 years ago — plus a new port, and an area along the coastline designated for “tourism” that is currently where most Palestinians live. The plan calls for eight “residential areas” interspersed with parks, agricultural land and sports facilities.
Also highlighted by Kushner were areas for “advanced manufacturing,” “data centers,” and an “industrial complex,” though it is not clear what industries they would support.
Kushner said construction would first focus on building “workforce housing” in Rafah, a southern city that was decimated during the war and is currently controlled by Israeli troops. He said rubble-clearing and demolition were already underway there.
Kushner did not address whether demining would occur. The United Nations says unexploded shells and missiles are everywhere in Gaza, posing a threat to people searching through rubble to find their relatives, belongings, and kindling.
Rights groups say rubble clearance and demining activities have not begun in earnest in the zone where most Palestinians live because Israel has prevented the entry of heavy machinery.
After Rafah will come the reconstruction of Gaza City, Kushner said, or “New Gaza,” as his slide calls it. The new city could be a place where people will “have great employment,” he said.
Will Israel ever agree to this?
Nomi Bar-Yaacov, an international lawyer and expert in conflict resolution, described the board’s initial concept for redeveloping Gaza as “totally unrealistic” and an indication Trump views it from a real estate developer’s perspective, not a peacemaker’s.
A project with so many high-rise buildings would never be acceptable to Israel because each would provide a clear view of its military bases near the border, said Bar-Yaacov, who is an associate fellow at the Geneva Center for Security Policy.
What’s more, Kushner’s presentation said the NCAG would eventually hand off oversight of Gaza to the Palestinian Authority after it makes reforms. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has adamantly opposed any proposal for postwar Gaza that involves the Palestinian Authority. And even in the West Bank, where it governs, the Palestinian Authority is widely unpopular because of corruption and perceived collaboration with Israel.
