The Bloody Path to the Ballot Box

The previous general elections in Turkey, held on June 7, 2015, did not leave the country with a stable government. The results prevented the Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu (and the home party of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan) from maintaining its single-party rule, and it was forced into coalition negotiations. However, a combination of several factors made a coalition impossible: the bitter rivalry between the four largest parties in the Turkish parliament (the conservative AKP, the Kamalist-secularist CHP, the nationalist MHP and the Kurdish HDP); the military’s ongoing battle against the Kurdish PKK; and the intensive pressure that Erdoğan‎ exerted on Davutoğlu to hold new elections on November 1, in order to restore single-party rule by AKP. These issues were the focus of a great deal of attention on Turkish social networking sites (SNS).

On July 20, 2015, at the height of the coalition negotiations, ISIS mounted a terrorist attack in the town of Suruç near the Syrian border. The attack caused the death of 32 Turkish civilians, most of them people of Kurdish descent who were on their way to deliver humanitarian aid to the city of Kobani, which was recently liberated from the control of ISIS. The devastating results of the attack place it in the center of Turkish discourse on SNS. Most users identified with the victims, and in that spirit uploaded pictures of carnations with the hash tag “There is a massacre in Suruç” (pictured).[1] However there was also a minority of Turkish nationalists expressing happiness and satisfaction at the death of the Kurds, using the hash tag “cleansing in Suruç.”[2] The tense atmosphere on SNS worsened after the PKK and the HDP pointed an accusing finger at the Turkish government, whom they insisted were responsible for the attack, due to the fact they willingly ignored the activities of ISIS in Turkish territory. Some SNS users also claimed that Ankara bore responsibility for the attack, on the basis of various several conspiracy theories postulating a covert relationship between the Turkish government and ISIS.

Moreover, against the backdrop of anger on SNS and among Kurds in the street, members of PKK began a campaign of revenge against Turkish soldiers in the southeastern part of the country. The Turkish government responded with a broad military attack on both ISIS and PKK, with most of the fire aimed at the Kurdish group. Reactions on SNS were divided. On one hand, both supporters of the government and Turkish nationalists expressed satisfaction with the government’s response, and many called for an end to the peace process with the Kurds, which began in 2009. Supporters of the campaign also described it as a battle that Turkey is waging not only against PKK and ISIS but also against the countries that are purportedly supplying those two organizations. On the other hand, Kemalists and Kurds accused president Erdoğan‎ of taking cynical advantage of the policemen’s murders, and using them as a pretext for a military campaign designed to earn his party the support of nationalists in the upcoming election, moving him closer to the goal of reestablishing single-party rule in Turkey.

These accusations gathered momentum on SNS, following comments by Pres. Erdoğan‎ and Prime Minister Davutoğlu at a mass rally they organized in Istanbul to mark the dramatic increase in the number of Turkish soldiers killed during the campaign. The rally, an ostensibly non-partisan event organized under the slogan, national event organized under the slogan “One voice against terrorism,”[3] quickly became partisan when Erdoğan‎ called on voters “to send local and national representatives to the Turkish parliament.”[4] Davutoğlu explicitly stated that the public must give the government a single-party mandate and leave the Kurdish party beneath the electoral threshold.[5] Supporters of Erdoğan‎ flooded SNS with this call while his opponents accused him of discrimination, and repeatedly claimed that Erdoğan‎ had dragged Turkey into a military confrontation to serve partisan interests. However, it should be noted that in light of the heavy exchanges of fire and many losses, criticism of the government remained limited and relatively moderate. Despite their opposition to the military campaign, many users felt that need to express their identification with the nation, and SNS pages were filled with pictures of Turkish flags and photographs of the victims’ funerals.[6]

Expansion of the Turkish military campaign to Cizre in the southern Turkish province of Şırnak reignited the debate. Operating under a shadow of strict censorship, the institutionalized media in Turkey gave only superficial coverage to the campaign, again causing SNS to be Turkish citizens’ primary channel of information about events. Highly disturbing pictures of death and destruction were circulated on SNS, using the hash tag “Cizre.” Many users, apparently those of Kurdish origin, called the campaign a “massacre.”[7] Conversely, Turkish users frequently cast doubt on the reliability of the photographs, claiming that they actually showed the civil war in Syria. (Horrifying pictures from that conflict are indeed used on the internet to deceive public opinion about other conflicts in the region, including the one between Israel and Gaza.) Turkish nationalists also responded defensively to the mass sharing of pictures by dressing the Twitter bird in a PKK uniform and armed with a rifle.

Against the backdrop of ongoing fighting, the Kurdish party and other non-governmental organizations planned a peace rally for October 10 in Ankara. Tens of thousands of their supporters gathered at the railroad station in the capital, intending to travel to Sıhhiye Square which was secured for the rally. However, their plans were disrupted when two suicide bombers exploded near the train station. In one of the largest terrorist attacks in the history of Turkey, 105 people were killed and 441 injured as of the time of this writing.[8] Unsurprisingly, SNS were quickly flooded with real-time reports and photographs from the scene. Again many users directed barbs of criticism at national leaders, using hash tags such as “The identity of the killers is known,” and “AKP is a murderer.”[9] Their anger also spread to the streets when a mass demonstration filled İstiklal Street in Istanbul, with protestors carrying posters bearing slogans that had previously been spread on the Internet. This was, amongst other things, a clear, contemporary example of the connection between SNS and live action in the streets.

On the other hand, some supporters of the government endorsed the conspiracy theory that the PKK was responsible for the terrorist attack because it wanted to destroy national unity.[10] Aside from the mutual exchange of nasty accusations, Turkish users from across the political spectrum uploaded pictures in remembrance of the attack, and to mourn its consequences. A particularly significant picture was captioned “10.10.15,” and also featured a word play based on the name of the capital city Ankara, which can be divided into “An,” meaning “a moment” and “kara” a synonym for “black,” and was thus displayed to read “a black moment.”[11]

In conclusion, Turkey is currently experiencing a period of unrest unlike anything in its past. It seems that the instability, both in the government and in the peace process with the Kurds, will continue - at least until the results of the election in early November become known. Until that time, it can be assumed that the relationship between the government and the Kurdish leadership and that of other groups in Turkish society will continue to disintegrate. The expressions of hostility in the institutionalized media and baseless hatred being spread on Turkish social media are likely to further deepen the divide in Turkish society.