Today’s Zaman: Gezi protests traumatized AKP's political elites

Below is an article by Emre Uslu published in Today’s Zaman.

The Gezi park protests have slowed down in recent weeks. Normally, it would be expected that the Justice and Development Party's (AKP) political elites would feel relieved to see that the protests have weakened.

However, behind closed doors, the AKP is still concerned that the Gezi protests deeply affected the political stability of the country.

I will list a number of points that the political elites underline when it comes to the Gezi protest.

First, almost all political elites that I have talked to agree on the point that the government was not able to handle the Gezi protests in the right way. Some argue that the first few days of the protests the AKP failed to handle them. But others put emphasis on how the Western world now sees Turkey after the Gezi protests. They argue that the protests' impact on the international arena is much deeper than what most of the AKP leaders see. Thus, they are very worried about the negative effects of the Gezi protests in the long term.

Second, they are concerned with the domestic political coalitions that the AKP government established in the last 10 years. Many of the AKP's political elites are worried because they think that they are losing the parts of the coalitions that helped the AKP government rule the country with ease.

They are aware of the fact that they will win the elections, but they can't rule the country with ease without regaining the support of the AKP's coalition partners.

I think the Gezi protests were not the turning point for the AKP government when it came to losing its coalition partners. The AKP government had lost its coalition partners, the liberals, long before the Gezi protests. Soon after the 2011 election (and even before the elections), some liberals noticed the authoritarian nature of the AKP government. However, the AKP elites did not take the liberals' warnings to heart before the Gezi protests.

When liberals were giving warnings about the authoritarianism of those in power, the pro-AKP media targeted those liberals attempting to demonize the government. However, the Gezi protests once again proved that it was the liberals who were criticizing the AKP government.

Some of the AKP elites that I have talked to think that they should find a way to recover the broken ties with the AKP's coalition partners, but they also realize that it would not be so easy to restore them.

Third, the AKP's political elites are aware of the fact that the image of Turkey and the government was harmed severely. Given that the AKP government was considered a model government for Muslim countries, the tarnishing of the AKP's image worries the party's elites.

Worse, the AKP has no idea how to restore its image. Deputy Prime Minister Beşir Atalay's accusations on the Jewish Lobby, in particular, are a further worry for the AKP. It thinks that accusing the Jewish lobby of perpetrating the Gezi events was the worst mistake of all because it is almost impossible to take a step back from such a statement.

Fourth, and the worst issue that worries the AKP's political elites, is Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself. They agree that Erdoğan is the greatest leader that Turkey has had in the last few decades. However, they also realize that in recent months, especially after the Gezi protests, it has been very difficult for the political elites to reach out to Erdoğan and convince him of alternative methods to deal with the events.

It seems that the continuation of the Gezi events makes the AKP's political elites worry, but they don't have many options to deal with them. Thus, the easiest way for them to explain the Gezi events to their bases and to themselves is to come up with conspiracy theories.

All in all, the Gezi events deeply traumatized the AKP's political elites so much that they don't know how to overcome them.