Transcription
This video was brought to you by Incogn.
Late last month, Istanbul mayor and opposition presidential candidate Ekramolu was detained and jailed. The suspicious timing and speurious charges suggest that his arrest was probably ordered by incumbent President Erdogan, who was probably expecting a brief but manageable period of protest. Unfortunately for Erdogan though, the reaction both economically and politically has been severe. And despite a harsh crackdown by Turkish security services, the opposition CHP is promising reoccurring protests until Imamolu is released and early elections are held. So in this video, we're going to take a look at the massive protests in Turkey and why history suggests this could be the beginning of the end for Erdogan.
[Music]
The TLDDR team and audience have ranked the most powerful people in the world to determine who is the most influential. Want to know who made the list? Pre-order a copy of our magazine too long in order to find out. Click the link in the description to reserve your copy.
So, let's start with a quick recap of what's happened over the past few days. This story really starts on the 19th of March when Turkish authorities detained Immolu on suspicion of corruption, extortion, bribery, money laundering, and supporting terrorism. Imamolu was arrested along with roughly a hundred or so other people including senior CHP officials and is part of a wider crackdown on opposition figures and journalists that began earlier this year. Unsurprisingly, Erdogan's claimed that he has nothing to do with any of this and that this was just Turkeykey's judiciary system functioning independently. But this is deeply implausible for a few reasons.
First, the timing is suspicious. Imolu's arrest came just a few days after Istanbul University suddenly anoldled his degree, which he'd obtained in the '90s, and which would effectively bar him from running for the presidency, as presidential candidates must hold a university degree. And this was all just a few days before he was due to be crowned as the presidential candidate for Turkeykey's main opposition party, the Republican People's Party or CHP. Unlike before the 2023 presidential election when it took the CHP months a very public infighting and until the very last minute to decide on a candidate, this time Imamaldu, who's probably the most popular figure in the CHP, was essentially unopposed. This makes the timing even more suspicious. It looks like Erdogan realized that the CHP had unified around a popular politician that would probably beat him or his appointed successor and decided to get rid of Imamolu both because polling currently suggests Immolu would beat Erdogan in a head-to-head and because he wants to restart the CHP infighting that helped him to ek out a win in 2023.
But as well as the timing looking suspicious, when you look at the actual charges levied against Immolu, they're sort of ridiculous. For instance, Istanbul's public prosecutors argue that by forming a de facto electoral alliance with other opposition parties in the 2024 municipal elections, including the prokurdish people's equality and democracy party or demolu apparently aided the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that's waged a decadesl long insurgency against the Turkish state and is designated as a terrorist organization. Not only is this a weirdly indirect allegation, but also displays how unevenly the law is being applied. After all, Erdogan is currently in direct talks with the PKK, which is apparently fine. But Immolu holding talks with a lawful non-terrorist Kurdish group, apparently isn't.
Immolu is also appealing another case where he's sentenced to more than 2 and a half years in prison for allegedly calling members of Turkeykey's high- election council fools. To most of our viewers, the idea of sentencing someone to years in prison for just insulting an official might sound ridiculous, but these sort of convictions are actually remarkably common in Turkey. And thousands of people are jailed every year for just insulting Erdogan. What makes Imamolu's case even more ridiculous is the fact that the courts actually ruled against him anyway because they quote inferred that's what he meant. Anyway, you get the idea.
There's reasons to suspect that Immolu's arrest was directed by Erdogan, who was presumably hoping that if he did it this far ahead of the next election, public resistance would be minimal, especially if he was able to keep prokurdish groups like the DEM quiet with the promise of reconciliation with the PKK. Erdogan was also probably hoping that given Europe currently wants Turkeykey's help supporting Ukraine and that Trump has somewhat of a ponchant for strong men, the EU and US would turn more of a blind eye than they would in normal times.
Unfortunately for though, the reaction to Imolu's arrest has been more severe than he probably expected, both economically and politically. Economically, Imalu's arrest sparked massive capital outflows with foreign investors who had just tentatively started reinvesting in Turkey after a multi-year economic crisis, pulling their cash out as fast as they could. This caused the Turkish lera to decline from 36 to the dollar to an all-time low of 38 to the dollar. And it only stabilized there because the Turkish central bank spent nearly a third of its entire foreign exchange reserves defending the currency. Even still, a weaker era threatens to rekindle inflation, which has finally started falling in recent months, but is still running at about 40% yearonear.
It's not just economically either. Politically, the reaction has been massive. Despite a ban on public gatherings, Imolu's arrest has sparked massive protests throughout last week, especially in Turkeykey's big cities, culminating in a massive anti- Erdogan protest in Istanbul on Saturday, which the CHP claims was attended by over 2 million people. On Sunday, the CHP said that the process will continue on Wednesday and Saturday of every week and called for early elections. The Turkish authorities have reacted with a massive crackdown, detaining thousands of people, especially students and journalists, and demanded that X take down hundreds of accounts that have criticized Erdogan or the government. In a sense, it looks like the fact that neither the EU nor the US has stepped up has helped the protesters because Erdogan can't plausibly claim that they've been organized by foreign forces. And the protests are now less about specifically supporting the CHP and Imamolu and are more generally about protecting Turkish democracy.
So what happens next? Well, there are two reasons that Erdogan should be worried about this. Firstly, the protests look quite similar to other protests we've seen in places like Serbia and North Macedonia recently where anti-government protests led by students morph into wider reoccurring protests focused on democratic backsliding and corruption. And both of these are issues in Turkey. Obviously, Erdogan has eroded Turkeykey's democratic practices, but corruption became an especially salient issue in 2023 when earthquakes caused an astonishing 50,000 deaths in large part because construction contracts have been handed out to Erdogan's cronies who didn't properly follow building regulations. And this has echoes of what's happening in Serbia at the moment where the anti vuch protests were triggered by the fatal collapse of a train station, the contract for which had been handed out to a dodgy Chinese firm who had ties to Vucha's government.
The second reason is that even if Erdogan does jail Immolu, history suggests this could just make him more popular. After all, that's exactly what happened to Erdogan. He also rose to prominence as the mayor of Istanbul before being jailed on dubious charges when the incumbent government struggling with a persistent economic crisis felt threatened by him. This made him somewhat of an electoral martr helping him win the 2002 election with the AK and the rest is history.
Now, as we've demonstrated in this video, there's a huge amount of uncertainty in the world about politics and current affairs, often with few easy solutions. Unfortunately, this can be the case online, too. There are all kinds of bad actors out there that want to try and use you to make a quick buck. Take for instance data brokers. They sell your data to businesses and marketing agencies, leading to more spam calls, texts, and emails. Or even worse, they can sell your data to even worse actors who can go on to use your identity. Some data brokers have even been charged with conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud for internationally supplying data lists of elderly and vulnerable people to scammers.
Fortunately, today's sponsor, Incogn to rectify this. They work on your behalf to request your personal data removal. They also deal with any objections and to make sure your personal information isn't just shared by the brokers again, they conduct repeated removal requests. and with their family and friends plan. They'll even do this for you and up to three of well your friends and family. So create an account with our link in the description granting Cognney the ability to work on your behalf and sit back as they make you safer. Plus if you use our link you'll get an exclusive 60% off an annual Incogn plan. So thanks for checking it out and thanks to Incogn for sponsoring this video.