Erdogan is using the pandemic to fight his political rivals

The Turkish government, like all governments, declared war on the coronavirus pandemic.

It floundered in some of the battles against the virus, showing a great deal of internal confusion, not just because of the rapid spread of the virus, but also because President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was using the battle against the spread of the disease to fight his political opponents at home and abroad.

Erdogan did the same with the war on terrorism. He fought terrorists and used the war on terror to fight his enemies as well. The charge of terrorism became the sword hanging over the head of the opposition at home and abroad. Now, the sultan has found in the COVID-19 pandemic the perfect new bogeyman through which he can try to win back the confidence of the street and pulverise all the political gains made by his opponents over the past two years.

Erdogan wants to use the pandemic to divert attention from everything he and his party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), have done in the past four years. With his people he wants to barter salvation from the pandemic and its repercussions in exchange for forgiveness for all the mistakes he and his party have made since turning Turkey into a dictatorship.

Up until the first week of April, Erdogan continued to boast that the COVID-19 pandemic could not touch Turkey. When it became clear that the government’s decision not to monitor the virus right from the beginning was a mistake, he began to promote the idea that Turkey has an invincible health system and could contain the pandemic and all its repercussions. He went as far as boasting that Turkey could even help other countries overrun by the pandemic.

Alas, things do not always go according to the sultan’s wishes. The Turkish health system was soon squeezed by the growing number of infected citizens. Turkey quickly became an epicentre of the pandemic, surpassing China and drawing near to the top five countries affected by the virus. Lockdown and confinement measures were inevitable.

The Turkish opposition says Erdogan ignored local mayors' demands to impose early lockdown measures in the provinces. The man simply continued to believe that his country was immune to the possibility of horizontal contamination and expansion of the disease, until the pandemic surprised him and spread like wildfire. Only then did he realise that his calculations were not accurate and that there was no choice but to declare a generalised curfew.

Panic in the streets ensued. The population only had one hour to buy provisions and return to their homes before the streets were closed. The Turks lost their minds and started fighting over food and drink. It was a guaranteed scandal and the media and social platforms did what they had to do.

With the curfew decisions of April 10, the Turkish government corrected some of its previous mistakes and started informing the populations a few days earlier of its intention to close the country. But it was too little and too late to restore people’s confidence in its ability to manage the crisis. There are three reasons for this result. First, the Turkish population now expects the worst of its government after the latter’s failure to correctly read the threat of the pandemic. Second, the pandemic is wreaking havoc with the country’s already exhausted economy due to Erdogan's adventures abroad. And third, intentionally or unintentionally, the Turkish opposition has decided to stand up to Erdogan’s undeclared war against it under the guise of fighting the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

The mighty and powerful of this world are all afraid of this invisible enemy indiscriminately ravaging their people, but Erdogan’s fear of the opposition surpassed his fear of the scourge. The pandemic did not distract him from chasing the opposition’s figures and members or from monitoring their every move. He dared not release the tens of thousands of political prisoners and prisoners of conscience who opposed him, neither did he dare hasten their trials. He chose, instead, the easiest option which was to let inmates face the risk of COVID-19 infection and death in prison, reasoning that they are terrorists and their fate is death, whether by disease or execution.

The pandemic gave Erdogan another excuse to arrest members of the opposition for reasons other than a charge of terrorism. Today, they can be arrested for spreading provocative rumours, to use the terms of Turkish Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu. The sultan can even confiscate bank accounts and prosecute members of the opposition on charges of illegally collecting donations to help families affected by the pandemic. Only Erdogan and his government are entitled to collect donations for this purpose.

We can easily imagine Erdogan thanking the Almighty for sending the pandemic his way. Not only did it give him new tools to clamp down on the opposition and pursue it, but it allowed him to evade accountability. Now, he can easily and conveniently attribute the economic crises that have been plaguing the country, because of his misadventures abroad, to fighting the pandemic.

Erdogan has political, partisan and economic dreams for his COVID-19 war; he wants to use the pandemic, not fight it. These dreams reflect autocratic tendencies and practices, all under the protection of a docile parliament. Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch, once said that Erdogan’s game in Turkey was not about power. Erdogan and his centralised government do not need more of it. She might have been right in her appreciation of Erdogan's need for power, but has a tyrant ever been satisfied with what he has?

Baha al-Awam is a Syrian writer. 

This article was originally published in The Arab Weekly.