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Jay

Dokkaebi
GA Member
Oct 3, 2018
3,207
trt-world.png
 

Jay

Dokkaebi
GA Member
Oct 3, 2018
3,207
250325-turkey-protests-mb-0828-bfdc19.jpg


Not long ago, the Turkish Workers Party, a marginal force, ideologically communist and politically fringe, was dismissed as a relic of Cold War nostalgia. Today, it governs Türkiye.

What happened earlier this year was not a coup in the traditional sense, though many are calling it one. It was a collapse of legitimacy, a kind of ideological revolt against decades of economic stagnation, elite dysfunction, and democratic decay. Into that vacuum stepped Ayşe Arslan, a former academic turned revolutionary, now President, backed by a party that until recently struggled to poll above single digits.

Arslan and her Prime Minister, Yıldız, promised nothing short of a reinvention of the Turkish state. So far, they've delivered — but in ways that have left the country reeling. The Turkish economy, already strained, is in freefall. Inflation has returned with a vengeance. Foreign capital is fleeing. And now, Arslan is reportedly preparing to declare an economic state of emergency that would give her sweeping new powers.

This is not just about crisis management. It is about transformation. Twenty-two billion dollars in private assets were recently nationalized under the justification of "wealth redistribution," a prelude, many believe, to a new centrally planned economy. Thai economists, veterans of Bangkok’s post-crisis socialist experiments, are rumored to be advising Ankara. Whether that advice proves visionary or ruinous remains to be seen.

Arslan and Prime Minister Yıldız Demir appear poised to use the deepening economic crisis as a vehicle to accelerate their ideological project. The expected declaration of an economic emergency would unlock extraordinary powers, enabling the executive to bypass Parliament, override market regulations, seize assets deemed vital to national interest, and impose wage and price controls. Already framed in the language of “economic justice,” such a move would legitimize policies that might otherwise be politically untenable under normal circumstances.

Central to this shift is the push to collectivize significant portions of the economy. State ownership of key industries, workers' councils in factories, and the redistribution of land and capital are no longer abstract goals — they are policy priorities being trialed in real time. Business leaders, particularly in Istanbul and Izmir, have responded with a mix of panic and defiance. Several major firms have relocated assets abroad, and a number of CEOs have reportedly gone into self-imposed exile. But Arslan and Yıldız see in this backlash not a warning sign, but validation proof, they argue, that entrenched wealth is resisting the will of the people. For them, the crisis is not merely economic; it is revolutionary.

The institutional structure of the Turkish state, however, is struggling to contain this new ideological fervor. In a moment that raised alarms across Ankara, Prime Minister Yıldız appeared to suggest the government might suspend Parliament entirely, relying instead on presidential decrees to push through reforms. It's unclear whether this was a trial balloon or a warning shot, but it landed with force.

The Turkish military, long seen as the self-appointed guardian of the republic’s secular and democratic order, has been conspicuously silent in the face of the sweeping ideological shift brought on by President Ayşe Arslan’s government. This silence is not without context. In the early days of Arslan’s administration, hundreds of senior military officials were purged or quietly retired, accused of disloyalty or links to past coup plots. What remains is a hollowed-out officer corps, stripped of its historical autonomy and uncertain of its standing under a government that openly distrusts its role in political life.

Amid that void, the creation of the People's Revolutionary Guard Corps (HDMK) has emerged as one of the clearest signs that Arslan’s regime is building parallel institutions not just to govern, but to protect itself from internal threats, particularly the military. Officially described as a “civilian defense force tasked with protecting the revolutionary gains of the people,” the PRGC is, in practice, a new security apparatus loyal to the party, not the state. Many analysts view it as a preemptive shield against the possibility of a military intervention, a lesson learned from decades of military tutelage in Turkish politics. The PRGC’s growing presence in urban centers and critical infrastructure has sent a clear message: this is a regime preparing not just to lead, but to defend itself at all costs.

Unsurprisingly, street protests have erupted, sporadic but increasingly tense. Türkiye's cities are becoming flashpoints. The state, for now, appears unsure whether to crack down or compromise. That ambivalence is dangerous.

The Turkish government, for its part, insists this is a long-overdue reckoning, a rejection of neoliberalism, a pivot to equity. But even officials within the Ministry of Finance privately admit the current path is unsustainable. The tools of economic revolution, nationalization, emergency powers, centralized planning, require legitimacy, efficiency, and stability. Türkiye today has little of any.

What’s unfolding is not just a story of economic turmoil. It’s a test of whether ideological governance, in this case, a deeply redistributive and authoritarian communism, can take hold within the framework of a post-imperial, post-globalization state.

Arslan's government argues that Türkiye can be remade. The deeper question is: At what cost, and for whom?
 

Jay

Dokkaebi
GA Member
Oct 3, 2018
3,207
75

There’s a tendency, especially in the Western imagination, to see authoritarianism as something swift and cinematic. A military coup. A leader in exile. Tanks in the streets. But in Türkiye, we are seeing something slower, more methodical, and far more insidious. The second wave of purges inside the Turkish Armed Forces has begun not with a bang, but with 820 arrests and the dismissal of over 60,000 soldiers. The justification: “counter-revolutionary ideology.”

What’s emerging under President Ayşe Arslan is a new, distinctly 21st-century model of authoritarian governance ideologically saturated, fear-enforced, and frighteningly adaptable.

At the center of this transformation is the People's Revolutionary Guard Corps, the once-marginal paramilitary force now elevated into a central tool of statecraft. The Guard is not merely enforcing the purges; it is slowly absorbing the functions of the traditional military, taking over security in major cities and, most symbolically, around the presidential palace itself. This is not just a reshuffling of power, it’s a revolution in institutional loyalty. Arslan isn’t just eliminating opponents; she is replacing them with true believers.

Türkiye's new communism is not about state control of the means of production, at least not primarily. While Prime Minister Yıldız is focused on ideological governance, undermining state institutions and coup-proofing the revolution, President Arslan has been focused on ideology building and implementing socialism. However, it is clear that both are aligned that controlling the ideological means of loyalty, the media, the military, and the narrative of the state itself is a necessary step to achieve both of their dreams. As Türkiye's economic and political situation worsens, the government is not loosening its grip but tightening it, as if repression itself can serve as a form of governance. History offers examples, East Germany and Maoist China, but this feels different. This is not a revolution emerging from the streets but one consolidating from the top down.

The role of foreign influence adds another layer of instability. According to a source close to the Turkish Land Forces Command, the crackdown may be proceeding with the “blessings” of Thailand—a state with its own authoritarian legacy. If true, this hints at a growing informal network of illiberal solidarity, where governments share not just arms or trade but tactics for political survival.

Here lies the real tension. For decades, the Turkish military served as guardians of Atatürk’s republican ideals, willing to intervene when civilian governments veered too far into religious or populist territory. Now, that same institution is being hollowed out, disarmed ideologically and structurally. The message is clear, there will be no savior in uniform this time. Arslan got there first.

And so we’re left watching a slow-motion erosion of a state’s core institutions, one that’s happening not under the pressure of chaos, but through its meticulous management. This is what the end of liberal democracy can look like in the modern era: not a collapse, but a transfer of power, of loyalty, of fear from the people to a party.
 

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