The indictment of Istanbul’s mayor is causing major economic backlash – but amidst fears of internal opposition, Erdogan’s standing abroad is skyrocketing. Israel is watching closely over the Syrian border
“Drink your coffee wherever you want – just not at Espressolab,” called Ozgur Ozel, the leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party, to millions of Turks protesting the indictment of Istanbul’s mayor. “Don’t go into a D&R bookstore, and if you see Istiklal Mall – cross to the other side of the street.”
About two dozen companies and businesses, marked as related to Erdogan, are on the boycott list Ozel has been distributing since the beginning of the week. Other names include giant corporations like Demirören Group, which bought the CNN Türk television network in 2018 with the help of a loan from a government bank on the basis of “recommendations by Erdogan confidants.”
Demirören paid their political dues a year later when they fired four network staff members who worked at a news program. The program had aired a live interview with Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who presented documents detailing corruption by his predecessor from the opponent The Justice and Development Party.
Espressolab, Turkey’s largest coffee shop chain, consists of some 360 storefronts. It became famous in 2020 when President Erdogan and his coalition partner Devlet Bahceli, head of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party, frequented the large café after a prayer they held in Hagia Sophia, which Erdogan converted from a church to a mosque.
Another boycotted corporation is Doğuş Group, whose owner, Ferit Sahenk, holds dozens of service and industry companies. He is the distributor of Volkswagen cars and the owner of several television channels. Sahenk, one of Turkey’s wealthiest businessmen, is considered very close to Erdogan. According to a Bloomberg report, he invested $20 million since 2016 in construction in the town Rize, where Erdogan’s family has its roots.
“We won’t let you sell a single car,” Ozel warned the Turkish oligarch, after his television network NTV refrained from covering the large demonstrations that took place this week in Istanbul. The effect was almost immediate, and the television network broadcasted Ozel’s speech in full.
It’s still hard to gauge the boycott’s economic and political effects, but the huge protest, notably the largest since demonstrations against the state’s attempt to turn Istanbul’s Gezi Park into a commercial center in 2013, has already impacted the country’s economy.
The Turkish lira plummeted by 4 percent, the central bank raised the interest immediately and a benchmark index of 100 companies in the Turkish stock exchange dropped by 15 percent, the greatest slump since the 2008 economic crisis.
To stabilize the currency, the central bank sold $25 billion dollars from the state’s foreign currency reserves.
“Some say this event will pass like other past events. I think otherwise,” wrote the respected columnist Fehmi Koru on the Karar news site. Karar is an unusual site, as it’s written and edited by journalists and columnists who support Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party but don’t hesitate to criticize his behavior.
Koru, formerly the editor of the newspapers Zaman and Millî Gazete, is a Harvard graduate and has a broad religious education. He believes “this event won’t be different from other important events in Turkey’s history, like the military coups that left their mark on our political history. March 19 will remain live in our consciousness for years to come, like other unusual events.”
But Koru doesn’t make do with a philosophical assessment of the event. He thinks Erdogan is planning a far more pervasive maneuver.
“If the plan was only to get Imamoglu out of the way, he could have settled for revoking his academic degree,” he said, just as Istanbul University did a day before his arrest – the Turkish constitution states a presidential candidate must have an academic title.
So did the state leadership headed by the president “not understand what could happen in the street the moment Imagoglu was arrested?” Koru wonders, and immediately rules out this presumption. In his opinion, the answer lies in “a comprehensive plan intended to lead to the closure of the entire Republican People’s Party … [arresting]region heads one after the other.”
Koru’s fears are rooted in facts. Shutting down parties and movements has become a habit of Erdogan’s throughout his term, which began in 2003. Perhaps he believes the big protest movement will provide him with a historic opportunity to carry out another reality-changing move that will not only grant him the third term in the 2028 election, but eliminate the opposition’s political infrastructure.
Erdogan turned the army, the powerful body that ruled Turkish politics since the days of Ataturk, into his executive arm, and leveraged the attempted military coup against him in 2016 into a relentless purge in the judicial executive, the media and academia. The constitutional amendments he passed turned him into an authoritarian leader with superpowers. He may now rush toward the next upheaval after getting his biggest rival out of his way.
At the same time, Erdogan is increasing his international stature. On Tuesday, his foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, landed in Washington for a meeting with his counterpart Marco Rubio to discuss issues pertaining to Turkey and the United States’ joint interests in the Middle East and beyond, and prepare the expected meeting between Erdogan and Trump.
A day later Trump held a meeting with the new ambassadorial candidates, in which each presented himself and the country he’s supposed to be sent to. Tom Barrack, the tapped ambassador to Turkey, told the president, “Turkey is one of the most ancient civilizations and is striving for your peace, prosperity and security plan.”
As expected, not a word about the protest in Turkey. Trump has a good relationship with Erdogan, whose relations with President Biden were on the verge of severance. Turkey-U.S. relations are expected to warm considerably.
Trump, who excluded Turkey from the F-35 building project after it refused to cancel the 400-S Russian radar systems, has recently hinted he would reconsider adding Turkey to the project.
Turkey is a strategic partner of Syria’s new regime headed by Ahmad al-Sharaa and is acting to rebuild the Syrian army. Now Turkey could be Trump’s partner in implementing his desire to withdraw the American forces from Syria.
Al-Sharaa and Kurdish forces signed an agreement in March – intended to integrate them into the Syrian army – with Turkey’s agreement and American encouragement. The agreement might well impact Israel’s ability to continue acting in Syria freely, as it is doing today.
Turkey, like Saudi Arabia and Qatar, is acting as al-Sharaa’s lobbyist in Washington in a bid to lift the American sanctions from Syria by portraying itself as a guarantor for the Syrian leader’s “good behavior.” It is doubtful Israel will succeed swaying Trump and persuade him that Syria is a threat and Turkey is a hostile state.
Erdogan no longer has to fear an American reaction that will stop or even only denounce his war against Turkish democracy. He now enjoys also the mantle of a confused Europe, trying to find its way between the Russian threat and the American alienation, even hostility.
Some 10 days ago, the NATO chief Mark Rutte called on the European Union to tighten its cooperation with Turkey to strengthen Europe’s defense abilities.
Turkey, a NATO member and holder of the second-largest army in the organization after the United States, is also a huge arms producer whose weapons were tried successfully on several fronts, including the war in Ukraine.
A plan to set up an independent European defense force that won’t depend on the United States, with Turkey serving as a primary partner, is garnering considerable attention. Ankara’s close ties with Moscow and Turkey’s refusal to adopt sanctions imposed on Russia, however, are raising eyebrows.
Despite these concerns, the European Union cannot be too choosy in picking its partners. It is vital to act pragmatically and fall in line with partners who share one’s strategic interests, wrote Federica Mangiameli, a senior researcher in GLOBSEC.
It’s not certain Turkey “shares those strategic interests” with Europe, but the very debate on the Turkish partnership, which, if realized, will have a price Europe has avoided paying so far, like adding Turkey to the Union, already raises Erdogan’s shares in the international arena.
So it’s no wonder the European response to Erdogan’s political moves and the protest ranged from faint denunciation to urging Turkey “to uphold democratic values”, as the European Commission said.
Violating democratic values is one of the main causes preventing Turkey from entering the European Union. But as the Union has proved in the past, when it signed with Turkey their refugee agreement in 2016, those values are flexible and the European Union will continue to “follow with concern” the developments in Turkey.
Erdogan knows that an international stature and foreign policy, as strong as they may be, won’t determine the election result or the extent of public support for him. Until this election is held, he’ll have to deal with the protest, and he is doing it in his customary way.
Close to 2,000 people were arrested, a few journalists were forbidden to leave the country and the legal system is preparing to indict hundreds if not thousands of “rioters” and “vandals” who are inflicting “street terror,” as the justice minister put it.
He promised “we know each and every one, and will settle the score with them.” Brutal, long-term score settling has become the Erdogan’s regime’s signature mark.