THE TURKISH ELECTION

In Istanbul for the election, everyone I spoke to including low income folk such as waiters and the like, all assured me they intended voting for the Opposition leader Kilicdaroglu. Their motivation was simply to be rid of Erdogan who has wrought devastating economic harm with his erratic policies and showboating international posturing.

Was the election honest? On face value probably. But in another all-important sense it most certainly wasn’t.

Turkey is a big country with 85 million people. Roughly half live in the cities. The city dwellers overwhelmingly voted for change, the rural voters as everywhere, including New Zealand were more conservative, fearful of the new. Additionally, the Opposition leader represented a secular group thus Erdogan had the closed mind Muslim vote wrapped up.

Turkey has nearly 200 television news channels, all controlled by Erdogan in diverse ways, such as funding the media “in the national interest”. Ring a bell does it? All heavily promoted Erdogan, just as Stuff in particular does here with the Government’s agenda, it being substantially dependent on the government (our) money. Frankly, that’s been tantamount to corruption.

I first visited Turkey over half a century back and was last there about 15 years ago since when Istanbul has visibly gone backwards. Today, vast numbers of unemployed men stand about everywhere gazing at their bloody cell-phones.

At the turn of the century there was a great deal of speculative journalism making predictions about the new century ahead. I recall my surprise when many of the forecasts picked Turkey as destined to be one of the great 21^st Century growth nations, for reasons I can no longer recall.

But assuming there was validity to their prophecies, then the Erdogan disaster shows how a single dominant personality leader can stuff a country up, as we’ve witnessed throughout history and today in numerous nations.