Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
The Observer, Saturday 1 June 2013 19.44 BST
corruption, especially linked to the construction industry, has been a growing problem. In April, for the first
time ever, two officials in Turkey’s public housing administration – which enjoys a virtually unopposed monopoly to redevelop private and public land, including a 20-year, $400bn urban renewal budget – were charged with extorting bribes and abuse of power.
Indeed those who have benefited from recent large projects have allegedly included key players in Turkish society, including members of Erdogan’s own party, a company run by Erdogan’s son-in-law and the Turkish armed forces.
Istanbul riots started over proposed parkland development but government’s increasingly authoritarian policies fuel unrest.
The protests triggered in Turkey by plans to redevelop a park into a shopping mall at first seem an unlikely cause for public anger. In reality, the demonstrations over Taksim Square’s Gezi Park go to the very heart of Turkey’s modern discontents.
Why it has become such a fraught issue was hinted at in a statement issued in the midst of the protests by Istanbul’s Chamber of Physicians, insisting: “It is not [the] job [of police and officials] to protect the profitability of the contractors who will build a shopping mall on Taksim Square.”
The rapid urbanisation of Turkey – and huge growth of Istanbul in the past two decades – has defined the transformation of Turkish society and politics. The continuing migration from rural areas like eastern Anatolia to Istanbul has fuelled the growth of the city, driving a building boom. Politically, it has been prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan‘s moderate Islamist AKP that has benefited from this expansion, the recently urbanised being more socially conservative.
While tension between Turkey’s old secular elites and this new class have long been inevitable, two consequences have not been. As Transparency International made clear in a recent survey of Turkey, while its elections largely have been free and fair, corruption, especially linked to the construction industry, has been a growing problem. In April, for the first time ever, two officials in Turkey’s public housing administration – which enjoys a virtually unopposed monopoly to redevelop private and public land, including a 20-year, $400bn urban renewal budget – were charged with extorting bribes and abuse of power.
Indeed those who have benefited from recent large projects have allegedly included key players in Turkish society, including members of Erdogan’s own party, a company run by Erdogan’s son-in-law and the Turkish armed forces.
The perception in Turkey that barely regulated development is being driven for the economic benefit of entrenched interests with links to party politics, rather than in the public interest, has been fuelled by the hard data about some of the most controversial developments, including Gezi Park.
As a recent article in Hurriyet Daily News made clear, Turkey, and Istanbul in particular, hardly needs more malls. Istanbul already has so many that 11 in the city have been forced to close down.
All of these are issues that have been exacerbated by the majoritarian political style of Erdogan and the AKP. In refusing to back down over the mall development in a speech on Saturday, Erdogan underlined suspicions that he has no interest in dialogue with those who oppose him at a time when he is being accused of leading his country down an ever more authoritarian route.
A new controversial law has limited the sale of alcohol in the country, journalists increasingly have found themselves in jail, and moves by Erdogan would replace the 1980 coup constitution with a presidential system where the president would be elected directly and would no longer be reliant on the confidence of parliament.
If there is one thing that links all the themes of Taksim Square together, it is the question of accountability. Or rather the lack of it.