In normal times, the screens on the interior walls of Istanbul’s trams and metros serve commuters a daily diet of funny cat videos and extreme sport clips on an interminable loop. In the past few days, however, the screens have been replaying something very different.
In the lavishly produced video, filled with sweeping aerial shots and peopled with hundreds of actors, the viewer first sees citizens from all walks of Turkish life – office workers, farmers, school-children – going about their routines. The video cuts to a magnificent windswept park, where we see an enormous Turkish flag begin to fall to the ground. On cue, everyone, young and old, stops what they’re doing and begins to move. Workmen down tools. Classrooms empty. Labourers in the fields look up, see the falling flag, and start to run. Together they spill out onto the streets, and as the camera pans out we see this vast sea of people flocking towards the flag. The words to the national anthem scroll along the bottom of the screen.
Reaching the flagpole, they pile in together to form a human ladder, rising higher and higher. When finally the last man reaches the summit, he takes hold of the slack end of the rope and he suddenly jumps from the pole, sending the flag soaring to the top. The screen fills with the flag, billowing majestically against the picturesque landscape, and then the screen cuts to an image of President Recip Tayyip Erdogan.
The sense that normality has been suspended received official confirmation yesterday when Turkey woke up learn that a three-month state of emergency had come into force. "The aim . . . is to be able to take fast and effective steps against this threat against democracy, the rule of law and rights and freedoms of our citizens," Erdogan said of the move. The state of emergency will allow the president and cabinet to bypass parliament in enacting new laws and to limit or suspend rights and freedoms as they deem necessary.
But while the government argues those additional powers are essential to deal with the plotters behind last Friday’s botched coup, critics of Erdogan and his AK party are concerned that it will further strengthen the authorities’ ability to stifle dissent.
"I'm not frightened, but I'm depressed," says Mahmut Kaya, a Kurdish sociologist and journalist based in Istanbul. Kaya has seen what a Turkish state of emergency looks like. As a regular visitor to the southeast, he travelled in Kurdish regions that had that designation, on and off, for a period of 15 years, from 1987 to 2003. "What I saw were checkpoints everywhere, house searches . . . You suddenly felt you were going into another world – the tension, the fear in people's faces."
Some believe the significance of the state of emergency has been exaggerated. Turkey-based Selim Sazak of the Century Foundation, a New York think tank, says the provision "looks more dramatic than it is" and does not believe much will change on the ground over the next three months. "It is more about effective purging of Gulenists than about affecting normal people's lives," he says.
Not everyone is reassured, however. The purge of 60,000 public servants, including soldiers, judges, prosecutors, teachers and governors, has been defended by the government as an attempt to root out those associated with the US-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Erdogan says masterminded the coup. But the president’s critics accuse him of taking advantage of his new-found strength to crack down on political opposition and consolidate his power.
"No government can, after an event like this, create a list of tens of thousands of people. It must have been prepared," says Gani Kaplan, director of the Pir Sultan Abdal Cultural Centre, which represents members of the Alevi community – Turkey's largest religious minority. "In order to carry out their plan, they needed a state of emergency. And now they have one."
Unlike in Sunni Islam, Alevis pray in cemevis (prayer houses) rather than mosques and worship on Thursdays rather than Fridays, and there is no segregation of men and women during prayer. The community, which has traditionally tended to vote for left-leaning parties, has fought campaigns for stronger rights, but many have felt marginalised during Erdogan’s years in power, seeing his championing of the Sunni Muslim masses as having entrenched their sense of exclusion.
In recent days there have been reports of attacks on Alevi neighbourhoods, and while Kaplan says the incidents have been isolated, he admits that the past week has added to anxiety within his community.
Within hours of the state of emergency coming into effect yesterday, the government announced that it would suspend its adherence to the European Convention on Human Rights. But the question preoccupying many in Turkey yesterday was exactly how the government intends to use the new powers it now enjoys.
Under the law, the authorities can ban the distribution of newspapers and magazines and restrict TV or radio broadcasts. It can also impose curfews and ban public gatherings. The first test may come this weekend, when a rally organised by the secular Republican People’s Party is scheduled to take place in Istanbul.
Already, says Mahmut Kaya, the purges have dealt a “a shock to the country”, and he worries that the events of the past week are reopening all the deeplying “fractures and divisions” that run through the society. “Sixty-thousand people multiplied by their number of family members. It’s huge,” he says. “The chilling effect is already there.”
