EMRE DELİVELİ >The end of military tutelage: Historic moment for Turkey

“We are in a historic moment, my dear readers and friends.

When Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced his pesidential candidacy last week, a parenthesis that was opened more than a hundred years ago was closed. The military’s tutelage that started when the Young Turks invaded Istanbul and bombed the barracks in today’s Gezi Park officially came to an end.

But the struggle is far from over. On the contrary, it is just the beginning. Their power may be over, but the institutions and supporters of the ancien régime are still deeply embedded in Turkey. Not until they too are eradicated can Turkey emerge as a global power.

Who are they? The old ruling class gave several domestic and global interest groups lots of concessions to solidify their power, and these are reluctant to relinquish their privileges. For example, there are business barons that have been monopolizing Turkey’s strategic sectors such as banks and refineries for years.

They also put an oligarchic bureaucracy in place as watchdogs of their rule. They understood they could not hold on to their political power after the 2001 crisis. And so they made the institutions of this bureaucracy independent with the help of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to sustain their influence. They got help from Pennsylvania to staff these institutions. It is these very institutions that are holding Turkey back. Just look at the reluctance of the Central Bank to lower interest rates.

They resist because they do not work for you and me but their global benefactors, who are trying to suck us dry. The foreign media owned by the Zionist interest rate lobby is fighting hard to keep interest rates high. The once-Great Britain does not have any economic sphere other than a financial sector based on scam and racket. They do not want Istanbul to emerge as a financial center and grab their business. Other global powers cannot bear Turkey as a world state.

The old ruling class knows that their time is over. That’s why they, with the support of these global powers and their homegrown cronies, tried to destabilize Turkey in June 2013. Remember who gave the marauders shelter, who publicized them to the world! The rebuilding of the barracks in Gezi Park would all but seal their fate. They could only delay the inevitable last summer.

On Aug. 11, we will all wake up to a new, free and unshackled Turkey!”

Loyal readers have probably understood that this wasn’t really me: I was just trying to imitate the style and thinking of Erdoğan’s chief economic adviser, Brave Cloud. I actually made use of his daily columns in a Turkish newspaper to write this piece. I just could not bear the thought that my readers who are not fluent in Turkish to miss out.

I also wanted you to see what kind of *beep* I need to put up with every day just to keep up to date.

After all, this dude, who believes there could be an attempt on the PM’s life by telekinesis, happens to shape his economic decisions and will probably in the near future replace economy czar Ali Babacan or Central Bank Gov. Erdem Başçı.

July/07/2014

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