Our new contributor in UPA, Brett Marler, on 6 November 2012
wrote an excellent humorous piece[1]
about how American President Barack Obama would have won a landslide victory
against Mitt Romney if we had had the chance to select the US President with the
votes of Turkish people. Let us consider the other side: Would American Republicans,
who lost the last two elections against “socialist” (!) Barack Obama, have
higher chances if they choose Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as their presidential
candidate or would President Obama have a chance against Turkey’s undefeated
Islamist-originated conservative politician Erdoğan as the leader of Turkey’s
main opposition party, Republican People’s Party (RPP)?
Turkey’s
premier Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been showing a great performance of bringing
conservative moral and political issues into his political agenda even at the
expense of creating a huge polarization of the country. Erdoğan yesterday
talking to the press stated that the abolishment of the death penalty was a
controversial issue and we might think of the re-adoption of capital
punishment, since European criminal codes allow even psychopaths like Anders
Behring Breivik just to have 21 years of imprisonment as punishment.[2]
Capital punishment is point of classic division between Republicans and
Democrats in the US and Erdoğan seems to perform and use these issues much
better than Republican presidential candidates.
Erdoğan,
probably thanks to his advisors, is one of the most Americanized leaders in
Turkish political history in terms of choosing topics. Erdoğan -even during the
highest tensions of PKK terrorism- was successful in making the issue of
abortion the primary political discussion in the country in the recent past. Addressing a conference in Istanbul in
November, Erdoğan stated that no one should have the right to approve abortions
and added, “Whether you kill a baby in its mother’s stomach or you kill a baby
after birth, there is no difference”.[3] Erdoğan also noted that “every abortion
is like an Uludere”, an interesting reference to the incident in December of
last year in which 34 civilians were killed by the Turkish military in an air
strike near the Iraqi border in the Kurdish-dominated southeast. Erdoğan’s
insistence on morality and his plan (fantasy) of raising “pious generations”[4]
in addition to his close relationship between Islamic communities and orders,
similar to Mitt Romney, who was looked upon suspiciously for being a Mormon,
seem to me to be indicators that he would have been an excellent choice for the
Republican Party candidate for the American presidency.
Erdoğan would be an excellent candidate for the
Republican Party if he converts to Christianity, but the problem is that the US,
despite of all its economic, political and social problems has a stable
democracy, whereas in Turkey the situation of the lack of an alternative to
Erdoğan makes the system more authoritarian day by day. So, Republicans can
transfer Erdoğan from us to their own party, but we want to have Obama for the
Republican People’s Party’s leadership position in exchange. It’s a good trade:
Obama for RPP, Erdoğan for the Republicans.
Dr. Ozan ÖRMECİ
[1] Marler, Brett, “2014: Obama vs.
Erdogan”, Uluslararası Politika Akademisi,
http://politikaakademisi.org/?p=3198.
[3] “Debates intensify over
Erdoğan’s controversial remarks”, Today’s
Zaman, http://www.todayszaman.com/news-281864-debates-intensify-over-erdogans-controversial-abortion-remarks.html.
[4] “Not state’s job to raise people
according to religion”, Today’s Zaman,
http://www.todayszaman.com/newsDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=271162.
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