Turkey moving in direction of fascism: Analyst

Press TV has interviewed Eric Draitser, the founder of stopimperialism.com in New York, about the recent developments in Turkey.

What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.

Press TV: Well, you just heard me read what the main pro-Kurdish party leader had to say about Turkey. Your take on how the Turkish government is actually running affairs and the role that perhaps it plays in what we have witnessed there today.

Draitser: This is a very significant question. I have written about it, a number of other people have written about it as well, specifically the nature of the government and the nature of the state in Turkey.

Of course, we have seen recent attacks against Kurdish activists, against people, leftists, socialists and others; and these attacks have been attributed to ISIL, ISIS, Daesh; and this is an interesting question considering the fact that Turkey is implicated in directly supporting terrorist factions in Syria, and so, from a very  practical perspective, one could look at some of these terrorist attacks as very simply blowback or the logical outcome and outgrowth of Turkish policy vis-à-vis supporting terrorism.

But within the country, domestically, there is also a very real issue that needs to be discussed, namely the fact that President Erdogan, Prime Minister Davutoglu and their AK Party is banking on polarization of the country. They need to mobilize their right-wing quasi-fascistic base in order to be able to maintain power in the upcoming elections. This is not the first time that we have seen heinous attacks against the HDP. We have seen fascist gangs such as the Grey Wolves and others who have attacked party headquarters in various cities, in Ankara and elsewhere in the country. We have seen attacks in the streets. We have seen stabbings, killings, intimidation. Much of this is the hallmark of a fascist state.

Now to say that Turkey is fully a fascist state today is probably an overstatement; but certainly it is moving in that direction and it is a dangerous development and the events that we have seen today really only – I think – underscore this polarization, from which Erdogan and his state apparatus are benefiting.

Now the nature of the attack today… I think it is also very much in question. We do not know exactly who carried out the attack but certainly we know who is going to benefit from it; specifically the government and President Erdogan and his party because further polarization, further attacks upon the Turkish state make it appear that the Turkish government is under attack, therefore, the people would want to rally behind it. It is the nature of false flag terrorism, it is the nature of these sorts of provocations; and I think to a large extent, that is what the HDP spokesman was speaking to.

Press TV: Do you think that we are going to see a major crackdown now in Turkey? If we go back for example to the United States after 9/11 and different laws that were passed, if those attacks had not happened, there was no way that they probably would have passed. Do you think that we are going to see something similar in Turkey?

Draitser: Absolutely! And actually, the parallel with 9/11 is an apt one because 9/11 was not simply a seminal moment where everything changed. It was merely the pretext for a further escalation or a further erosion of civil liberties, a further crackdown on dissent in the United States, which had already begun to take place under the Clinton administration.

In Turkey, you have seen a major crackdown. Turkey is one of the world’s leaders in the jailing of journalists. They have the editor of one of the main papers in Turkey [who] is possibly facing a life sentence, those are the words of President Erdogan for revealing the role of Turkish intelligence in arming and training and funding the terrorist elements in Syria.

You have seen crackdowns on political activists. You have seen the shutting down of social media – YouTube, Facebook, Twitter. All of these things have happened within the so-called democratic state or democratic Republic of Turkey, which is very interesting considering Turkey is a NATO member; Turkey allegedly aspires to the values of Western liberal democracies and yet Turkey is one of the principle violators of the very human rights and civil liberties that supposedly the West holds dear and I think that this is a very real question. What is the nature of the Turkish state?

And let me pose one other point here that I think is really critical. This is a very clear and unmistakable pretext, the justification for Turkey’s expansion of their own war into Syria and their war against their Kurdish population, whether bombing PKK targets, whether trying to impose a no-fly zone, the creation of safe zones along the Turkish-Syria border, all of this has been complicated by Russia’s moves in Syria and Russia’s clear and unmistakable signal to Turkey that their behavior is not going to be tolerated.

Now you have this pretext, you have this justifications, this bolsters the Turkish government’s position vis-à-vis aggression against Syria, aggression against the Kurds. We have just seen a statement from Kurdish organizations in the last hour saying that they will not be mobilizing, they will not be attacking for retribution primarily because they do not want to provide this pretext for the Turkish government to carry out these attacks.

The next 36 to 48 hours are going to be very interesting as the Turkish government responds and undoubtedly uses this as a justification for expanding their war both domestically and abroad.                                                                                                                                                     

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