Turkey: A Warning for Free Speech Critics
The JDP possesses a fundamentally hostile perspective towards freedom of speech, thought, and assembly, more so than any other European country. Turkey does not easily compare to the cases Bleich examines in the UK, Netherlands, and other countries which value liberty as an axiom of society. What certain countries regard as a provocation to violence, such as genocide denial in Germany, Turkey regards as the status quo in the case of the Armenian genocide. For contrast, the French outlawed Armenian genocide denial in 2007, and the Swiss even tried and convicted a Turkish politician (Dogu Perincek) for his denial. In Turkey, acknowledgment of the genocide could fall under Article 301 of the Turkish constitution which criminalizes “insulting Turkishness.” Additionally, the reasons Bleich provides for preserving free speech in Europe and the US often constitute the same reasons Turkey chooses to eliminate free speech.
Much of the paranoia surrounding free speech limitation in Europe stems from the “slippery slope” argument. The British Religious Hatred Act, pursued by the Labour Party in 2006, met exactly this challenge in Parliament (Bleich 2011, 25). Tories feared the generality of an act which restricted hate speech as a blanket category. Answers to the question of who could define hate varied depending upon who gave the answer. Thus, the UK added a clause which specified that the speech must be “likely” and “intended” to cause acts of racial hatred– a difficult standard to prove, and one which limited use of the act to a maximum of four times per year (Bleich 2011, 25). The fear of government overreach in defining dangerous or hateful speech has reached its full potential in Turkey, where the government has taken sweeping actions to limit the speech of dissidents.
Since the Ergenekon investigation launched in 2007, Turkey has used flimsy and fabricated evidence of widespread coup conspiracies to crack down on speech (Eligur 2016, 158). By 2010, 275 academics, politicians, and journalists had been arrested in the Ergenekon case, and the faux investigation only expanded from there (Jenkins 2009, 9). As a weapon against oppositional speech, the investigation targeted several parties from the PKK to the Marxist Revolutionary People’s Liberation party (Jenkins 2009, 9).
In the Netherlands, the government used state power to dissolve a hateful party as recently as 1998, when it dissolved the Centre Party ‘86 for racism which was “incompatible with public order” (Blech 2011, 88). Bleich speaks of this extreme as a rare but aggressive tactic, which often results in a “phoenix-like rise of the organization under a different name” (Bleich, 87). Turkey resolves the problem of a rebirth of state-dissolved organizations by cracking down on every aspect of society. Consequently, the lack of free speech and organizational assembly protects the government’s ability to control opposition. Given the strength of its institutions, the idea of such an abuse of power occurring in the Netherlands seems preposterous. Regardless, Turkey provides a fair warning as to how the state can abuse the power to patrol speech and assembly.
Allies Domestically, Enemies in Foreign Affairs
The JDP’s rejection of liberal democracy and preference for authoritarianism already aligns with the goals of most Russian political intervention. Turkey’s widening distance from the EU, in which President Erdogan has recently downplayed the importance membership, also reduces Russia’s need to interfere in the country’s politics. Despite their authoritarian similarities, Russia and Turkey have struggled to bridge the divide over the Syrian civil war. Their support for opposing sides has prevented the countries from maintaining closer relations beyond trade.
In September of this year, Russia, Turkey, and Iran met in Tehran to discuss the imminent humanitarian disaster unfolding in Syria. The Idlib province, home to approximately 3 million citizens and 1 million children, had become the final rebel stronghold in the country. Turkey and the United States support the rebels, while Russia and Iran support the regime of Bashar al-Assad. The three states managed to craft a deal in which the Idlib province would contain a demilitarized zone for the citizens. The rebels removed all heavy weaponry from the demilitarized zone. Their competing interests in Syria may continue to drive the countries apart, however, since the Syrian regime violated the agreement and shelled the demilitarized zone as recently as yesterday, killing a woman and a child.
The conflict in Syria stands in the way of an alliance otherwise well suited for both countries. They share a democratic facade behind which their authoritarian leaders control the affairs of the country. While Putin has held control in Russia since 1999, vacillating between Prime Minister and President, Erdogan only recently created competitive authoritarianism in Turkey. The JDP’s referendum on April 16, 2017, encoded a number of constitutional changes into law which expanded the power of the executive. The changes abolished the Prime Minister position, granted the President the power to dissolve the entire Assembly at will, and contained several similarly authoritarian provisions (Sakurai 2018, 36). With the rise of an illiberal European regime typically comes closer ties to Russia, as in Orban’s Hungary and Duda’s Poland. Whether the civil war continues to obstruct this development remains to be seen.
Works Cited:
Bleich, Erik. The Freedom to Be Racist?: How the United States and Europe Struggle to
Preserve Freedom and Combat Racism. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Eligür, Banu. “Turkey’s Declining Democracy.” Current Trends in Islamist Ideology 17 (2014):
151.
Jenkins, Gareth H. Between fact and fantasy: Turkey’s Ergenekon investigation. Central
Asia-Caucasus Institute, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, 2009.
Osseiran, Hashem. “Syrian Army Shells Demilitarised Zone in Idlib, Undermining
Russian-Turkish Deal .” The National. November 18, 2018. Accessed November 18,
Yukio Sakurai. 2018. “Turkey’s Possible Future Directions after the 2017 Referendum:
Autocracy or Democracy?” International Journal of Interdisciplinary Civic & Political
Studies 13 (1/2): 33–45. doi:10.18848/2327-0071/CGP/v13i01/33-45.
Your section on free speech was an innovative adaption for a country that doesnt really fit the pattern of the EU countries on these issues. You accurately demonstrate that the dynamics in a healthy democracy differ fundamentally from those in Turkey. However, you may want to address whether Turkey has any formal laws surrounding the Holocaust or perhaps mention how the country’s position on Armenia precludes any genocide-related laws. In your Russia section you make a clear distinction between ideological and geopolitical considerations. However, you may also want to more clearly describe the historical tensions between Russia and Turkey as well as outlining any formal or informal ties with specific Turkish parties or within Turkish society that go beyond the overt formal relationship (or lack thereof) between Erdogan and Turkey.