The Turmoil Behind the Turkish Economic Miracle

The din of banging pots and pans reverberated late into the night across Istanbul’s narrow alleys at the start of June. Young professionals and older housewives alike stood on their balconies, clanging their kitchenware, in support of the tens of thousands of protesters across the country who took to the streets against Turkey’s government. It started as a small environmentalist sit-in over plans to bulldoze a sliver of a park in Istanbul’s Taksim Square to make way for a shopping mall. A violent police crackdown on May 31 escalated the episode to an outpouring of grievances against the state. Thousands in Taksim called for the resignation of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and chanted against what they see as his increasingly authoritarian style.

Erdoğan has presided over a decade of exceptional economic growth backed by record support from voters. The combination has made him more brazen in his use of power, and many Turks bristle at his attitude—that ballot box victories give him license to act like an autocrat. They say he ignores critics of such policies as his recent restrictions on liquor sales and possible constitutional changes enlarging the powers of the president. “At the heart of it really is a completely majoritarian understanding of democracy in which the prime minister sees himself in a position of complete power because he has 50 percent of the vote. But he completely disregards the other 50 percent,” says Kerem Oktem, a research fellow at Oxford, who is currently in Istanbul.