AKP May Have Gotten Message From Gezi Park

It has now been a month from the beginning of the Gezi Park crisis and the subsequent anti-government protests that shook Turkey. Most observers, including myself, have concluded that the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government led by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have both misunderstood and mismanaged the crisis. However, I also think that the AKP elites have learned some lessons and are willing to take some helpful steps.

For sure, the misunderstanding still goes on, and at its heart lies the AKP propaganda, if not self-delusion, that all the protests were orchestrated by "dark powers" which wanted to sabotage Turkey's glorious progress. A film prepared by the AKP public-relations department lays out this scheme very clearly, by explaining how Erdogan's success provoked a long list of conspirators, ranging from the interest-rate lobby to foreign companies and their domestic "spies." Uncritically pro-Erdogan commentators in the media take these conspiracy theories to new heights every day, blaming almost every political actor in the world except the AKP itself. According to one popular theory, for example, one of the conspirators was the German Lufthansa, which wanted to take on revenge Turkey for the success of Turkish Airlines and the construction of Istanbul's third airport, which promises to be Europe's largest.