Ten days after the arrest of Ekrem Imamoglu and tensions in Turkish society seem to have eased. The Constantinople mayor remains in Silivria prison holding meetings and phone calls with his party representatives but the streets in major urban centers are no longer crowded with thousands of Turks.
The calm after the tension, however, in a country like Turkey is not synonymous with de-escalation, and such a thing could not happen as the issues within the country are not only significant but also long-standing. The Turks, especially those who are currently choosing at risk to stand up to the country’s president and his government, have a perfect understanding of the dynamics and practices he can use. They also know, most of them first-hand, the pressure or even the control that Erdogan has over every institution in Turkey, from which the judiciary has not escaped.
At first, the fact that the tension of the first few days “calmed down” is presented by the majority of the media in the neighbor as a victory for the President who managed to provide answers with his attitude. The truth is that just yesterday, Erdogan banned the broadcast of yet another anti-government media outlet for 10 days on the grounds that it spreads false news and incites violence…
Erdogan at the same time, choosing very carefully the move and the person, arrested and expelled from the country with the same reasoning the permanent correspondent of the BBC… The President of Turkey has not stopped promoting his own “pawns” on the chessboard that he has set up and is fully aware that what seems calm today is enough for only a moment to turn into a rupture with society.
On the other hand, for the first time in a long time, the opposition, and specifically the CHP, seem to have accepted the events that are impossible to change immediately and are attempting to take a step back in order to adjust their strategy and next steps accordingly.
The critical day for the second phase of developments in Turkey is the official end of Ramadan… On Saturday, March 29, the great Muslim holiday ends and the students who constitute the structural core of the reactions will return to urban centers and schools. The Republican People’s Party, which in addition to the mayoral seats in the most important cities of Turkey also controls the student movement, has turned its attention to how it will manage to organize actions that will not have the police and violence as a response.
For the main opposition party, it seems crucial to deprive Erdogan of the opportunity to suffocate the next demonstrations with chemicals and water from the breezes.
On the other hand, the way in which the police authorities throughout Turkey have managed the situation, with arrests numbering 1400 but violence being minimal given the situation, shows that the government has also chosen to keep its distance from methods that would certainly lead to escalation.
Tayyip Erdogan may have spoken of “street terrorism” in his message, but he did not choose to attack in the face of the slogan “Justice, Rights, Democracy” that the demonstrators frequently used.
In this way, as the pro-government press – the majority of Turkey’s media – reports, Erdogan has proven that he is not negative about reactions and criticism…
The message that Ankara is sending at the institutional level is that the President listens to what society tells him. Basically, what Erdogan gains is time, time that the opposition cannot afford to lose.
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