We are a Mediterranean country, where people are more inclined to suppress worries and worries and see the glass as half full. But the experiences of the last few years have significantly dampened our confidence. Pessimism is now the new normal for us. The political climate also affects the language. New idioms, new proverbs emerged. I mentioned a saying a while ago: If someone wants to do or say something that might displease the palace, let’s remind them of the prison where the opposition members are imprisoned with: “Now it’s cold in Silivri.” The harder the Erdoğan regime acts, the more new sayings appear. The following has been particularly popular lately: “The bad times are over, even worse times await us.”
This saying expresses that we have almost lost our belief that things will get better at some point. Why am I leading him? Erdoğan recently appointed Chief Prosecutor Akın Gürlek, the architect of his judicial crackdown on the opposition, as justice minister. The name may sound familiar to you: When Gürlek became Istanbul’s chief public prosecutor at the end of 2024, I told you what could happen to us. The letter was titled “Erdoğan’s Secret Weapon.”
The worst fears are confirmed
Unfortunately, the worst fears have been confirmed. Erdoğan saw his support dwindling further, so Gürlek, at his behest, dealt the opposition one blow after another. He put several opposition politicians, including Erdoğan’s strongest rival Ekrem İmamoğlu, behind bars on corruption charges. The indictment he prepared calls for over 2,400 years in prison for İmamoğlu. For this, Gürlek has now been rewarded with the position of Minister of Justice.
The appointment of a man the opposition describes as a “mobile guillotine” as minister suggests that even worse times lie ahead. The idea is this: Erdoğan cannot win the coming elections, he can only ensure that the opposition loses. Namely with the judiciary that he politicized. He doesn’t want to leave anything to chance before the early elections, which will probably take place in November 2027. The fact that he put Gürlek at the head of the judiciary has two consequences: Firstly, the Minister of Justice can ensure that the Imamoğlu trial, the indictment of which he penned, produces the desired result, because in this position he heads the body that appoints judges and prosecutors. So he can politically eliminate İmamoğlu, who is ahead of Erdoğan in all polls. Point two: Gürlek now has the power to expand the operations he carried out in Istanbul against the opposition leader CHP and other opponents to the entire country. Now he also has something to say in the process of canceling the CHP party conference at which the new leadership was elected, which then made their party the winner of the election. Likewise in the trials of Mansur Yavaş, the mayor of Ankara, who is considered an alternative opposition candidate if İmamoğlu cannot run.
In fact, Gürlek has another option: he can suppress the supervisory complaints that have been made against him. The opposition had filed a complaint with the Ministry of Justice because Gürlek illegally received an additional salary from a public institution while working as a prosecutor and concluded a preliminary contract for the purchase of an apartment worth around two million euros. Now he himself heads the committee that decides on these complaints.
Anyone who criticizes the president will be arrested
These are guesses about what might come. But now to the events immediately after he took office. On Gürlek’s first day as justice minister, the head of the CHP youth organization was sentenced to 17 months in prison for criticizing Gürlek. Another young CHP politician was arrested for commenting on Gürlek’s appointment on social media.
In an exclusive interview on a private broadcaster close to the government, Gürlek gave hints about what awaits us. He announced that he would restrict legal consultations for political prisoners, including İmamoğlu. He also held out the prospect of a regulation to control social media, the only area in which the opposition still has a say: no more access without ID. This didn’t even work in Russia and China, which instead blocked international platforms and replaced them with their own. In order to capture government critics, the palace regime in Turkey is thinking of only allowing access with an ID number.
Unfortunately, there are other measures that make young people in particular groan: “Even worse times await us.” A ban on social media for under-15s is being discussed around the world, and in some places it has already been implemented in this or a similar form. Our government goes further, it writes into such regulations that computer games must not be “contrary to national security and public order”. You can probably guess how this regulation will be interpreted. Computer games could be banned by court order, and platforms like Playstation could even be blocked completely if they do not set up representatives in Turkey.
While our government is imposing new bans on the digital world, it is also putting further pressure on us in the analog world. Sold-out concerts by three heavy metal bands from Russia, Poland and Ireland were banned in Istanbul immediately before the event. Why? The bands are not in harmony with the “values of society”. Of course, there is no such law; in fact, the ban came after the radical Islamic newspaper “Akit”, whose representative Erdoğan likes to take with him on foreign flights, wrote that the musicians were Satanists.
It is not an isolated case that concerts are banned due to reactionary demands. It is the latest example of the path on which the palace regime wants to take the secular republic. What haven’t we experienced recently! Universities have been instructed to organize classes according to Friday prayer timings. Students were beaten for decorating a Christmas tree for the New Year. As if that wasn’t enough, investigations were initiated against her. At the high school graduation ceremony, young girls were sent home because their clothing was not appropriate. The latest wave of the reactionary siege came at the beginning of Ramadan, the Muslim holy month. The Ministry of Education ordered all educational institutions from kindergartens to high schools to organize special activities for Ramadan. There should be religious ceremonies in schools, “experts” should be invited as speakers and students should visit mosques.
Our problem is not just the cultural and ideological siege. The economic situation is also hitting the country hard. “The bread is in the lion’s mouth,” as a beautiful Turkish proverb says. He no longer has it in his mouth, but rather in his stomach. It has become extremely difficult for people in the lower and middle classes to make a living and get enough to eat. Due to increased unemployment, it is equally difficult to have a career, except perhaps as a supermarket cashier or moped courier. Barely noticed, a bitter legal regulation was recently passed. The age limit for moped couriers used to be 62 years. Then it was raised to 65 years, and immediately afterwards to 69. No one can survive on the average pension of 440 euros. Millions of pensioners have to look for dangerous part-time jobs such as courier drivers or construction workers.
Now don’t think that only the poor are unhappy. People with money are also looking for peace and quiet. Recently, our neighbor Greece announced that the number of “golden visas” had exploded. This refers to Turks who receive permanent residence if they invest at least 250,000 euros there. Their number has increased by 160 percent in the last two years. The current account deficit paints a similar picture. Last year, Turks invested almost 16 billion euros abroad. If trust in the rule of law has fallen to 27 percent and there is a risk that your assets will be confiscated on the orders of a public prosecutor, would you want to live in a country whose politics are determined not by elections but by court rulings? Would you stay in a country and leave your money there if the “mobile guillotine” is the Minister of Justice? It’s better to keep your answer to yourself because: “It’s cold in Silivri now.”
From Turkish by Sabine Adatepe.
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