Davutoğlu's Test Over Freedoms In Turkey

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu cannot add anything more to the infrastructure built by the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. All major projects have already been done. Moreover, the Turkish economy is no longer in good shape and cannot deliver any new big projects. Davutoğlu cannot do anything more in the health sector.
Education is a mess but is impossible to get right. Foreign policy is another mess, and Davutoğlu will have serious practical difficulties to work wonders in this area. Nevertheless, he can prove himself to be a good leader by tackling Turkey's increasingly serious problem: the lack of freedoms. I doubt that he can overcome the Erdoğan barrier to do this but if he can, he will be remembered as a good leader.
Despite the rhetoric, since 2011, Turkey's democracy and freedoms have been on the decline. It is fatuous to compare the Turkey of today with that of the 1930s or 1990s and conclude that today's Turkey is better. We must compare today with 2011. Today is definitely worse than 2011. What is the reason? It is very simple: Erdoğan. Can Davutoğlu handle this problem? Gezi was a huge manifestation of the fact that millions in this country no longer feel that their freedoms are respected and protected by the state. They feel that their lifestyle is under threat. Their children are forced to attend imam-hatip schools by the Erdoğan administration, which keeps opening imam schools without demand and places students into these schools without parental choice. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) knows very well that these schools produce Islamists who are natural voters for the AKP. In the future, these graduates will not be satisfied with the AKP's empty Islamism and will favor Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS)-type perverted, monstrous radicalism and the AKP does not seem to care about this imminent danger and keeps opening imam schools without providing sufficient quality teachers and educators. Anyway, this is a matter for another discussion.
In addition to the Westernized segments of society, several religious groups do not feel safe either under Erdoğan's rule. Erdoğan wants to be a religious leader, too and his family now controls a very big religious foundation that has been allocated many public properties and land to offer dormitory places and scholarships to many thousands of imam schools and theology students. Simultaneously, activities and projects of other religious groups which do not bow to Erdoğan's authoritarianism are harmed. Can Davutoğlu stop this project of a state-engineered religious community? Can he stop Erdoğan's aim of ending religious plurality in the country?
Press freedoms are at their worst point. Many journalists have been in jail and many more -- like myself and my colleagues at this newspaper, the Zaman daily, the Bugün daily, Taraf, Bugün TV, Samanolu TV and so on -- have been targeted by Erdoğan's close circles, his advisers and supporters who keep threatening that we will be sent to jail. Previously, Erdoğan's journalists were claiming that I was an MI6 agent, but possibly seeing that it has not created the intended impact, now one of his advisers claims, using a sock-puppet Twitter account, that I am connected to the CIA. For them, any critic is either a spy or a traitor. You do not need to search for these Twitter accounts or read Erdoğan's media; just listen to Erdoğan for 10 minutes and you will know. Journalists cannot feel safe in this country. This has never been the case, but now it is very bad. Many journalists have been forced to leave their jobs just because they criticized Erdoğan. Now, many more are no longer accepted at AKP events. Starting from yesterday, many of them will not be allowed to follow the president's events. If the fake judicial case against the so-called “parallel police” continues without just legal intervention from top courts, the next step will be to imprison critical journalists, academics and civil society actors, alleging that they are the civilian wing of the spying gang that tried to stage coups against Erdoğan, first during Gezi and later on Dec. 17 and Dec. 25.
Can Davutoğlu restore Turkish democracy and freedoms back to their 2011 levels? They were not all right in 2011, and we were expecting them to be better in line with EU standards. But I no longer ask for this. That is too much to expect from Islamists. I will be content with 2011 conditions.

İHSAN YILMAZ (Cihan/Today's Zaman)