Diet change arrives in Türkiye

Start preparing the Truth and Reconciliation Committee of turkeys: President Recep Tayyip Erdoans at the arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Mamolu, should end any claim in the State Department that Turkey is a democracy or that Erdoan plans to resign when its presidential term ends theoretically. Erdoan plans to govern for life.

Mamolu is now joining his political colleagues like Selahattin Demirta and Figen Yksekda, whose Kurdish party refused to accept the Diktats of Erdoans and had the temerity of criticizing Erdoans of more scandalous positions. Like all dictators, Erdoan will eviscerate all the challengers who dare to oppose him or even show skills by allowing their ascent. He will govern until his death and expects that one of his son or his son -in -law will take his place, effectively transforming Turkey into Sultanate.

He's wrong, of course. The next Turkish president will emerge from the thousands of political prisoners that Turkish prisons today hold.

There is a vanity in Washington, Brussels and London that even if Erdoan is a problem, Turkey can return to normality after the death of the presidents, whether natural causes, a murderous ball or on the gallows after a popular uprising. However, such a return to the status quo ante is easier to say than to do: more than 35 million Turks have crossed the Turkish education system under Erdogan.

He reformed the army in his own image, as well as a large part of the state bureaucracy. The turkeys once the professional external service are an embarrassment today. The Turkish banks are accomplices of corruption, its business leaders surround bribes in Erdogan, his family or their screens. The turd only professional journalists are in prison, in exile or quiet retreat.

Erdoan could not have transformed Turkey so decisively. For this reason and if Turkey must cure, it will be necessary to establish a commission of truth and reconciliation to identify fraud, corruption, dishonesty and repression at the heart of Erdoganism, to disentangle it and allow rehabilitation for those whose life Erdogan has ruined. In simple terms, Erdogan did more to abuse democracy in Türkiye than Colonel Alarslan Trke or General Kenan Evren who respectively led the 1960 and 1980 coups.

Erdoan had voluntary collaborators at each pivotal moment in his career, some motivated by ideology but many others motivated by greed. Not all Turks. During his early years as Prime Minister, while the West has always celebrated the Turkish chief as a technocrat who had put the ideology aside, Erdoan benefited from the Afflux de cash Qatari according to Turkish officials at the time.

There were other employees. Long before Erdoan launched the theologian Fethullah Glen on fire, they worked in tandem; Erdoan even adopted the Glénist Minister of Foreign Affairs Ahmet Davutolu. There are other unknowns. In 2007, Erdoan allegedly held a secret meeting in head with the best turkey general, Yaar Bykant. The allegations of blackmail and extortion surround the meeting. The members of the family of Erdoan or Bykant could shed light on the secret transactions concluded at the time and explain why Bykant made the army hold to allow Erdoan to run Roughshod on the Constitution.

There are other questions than a truth and reconciliation must answer. Who bribed the Supreme Court to prevent the dissolution of the Erdoan political party? Who was responsible for the counterfeiting of his university degree and his files? After all, the greatest irony of his revocation of the Diploma of Mamolus College to disqualify his presidential race, Erdoans, belongs to a department which did not exist when he said he obtained his diploma.

Then there is 2016 Reichstag shot: What was the real story behind the episode that Erdoan called a gift from God and used to consolidate power and imprison hundreds of thousands of opponents?

Not all prisoners behaved honorably. What prisoners asked for mercy by informing others, honestly or not? What properties have Erdoan and his friends confiscated on the basis of false accusations? How will compensation be paid to these victims of what was essentially mafia tactics. The Turks were not the only ones involved in such commercial dishonesty. How would Turkey compromise American ambassadors and at least a former defense attaché? Have the American thinkers acted as a foreign agents not recorded in trading of presentations and access to Erdoan in exchange for donations from businessmen? What rear boutique offers have the political process in Washington corrupted? Where are the billions of dollars diverted? It is no longer just in the basement of the Erdoans sons.

Other aspects of the tyranny of Erdoans deserve to be revealed: what was the decision -making process behind the shaving of the Kurdish cities like Cizre and Mardin a decade ago and the arrests of the high Kurdish leaders? Who falsified the files on the members of Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and to what extent TürkiyeS politics? Who was behind the murders of PKK members in Paris?

Then, there is the question of the Islamic State: who within the Turkish intelligence service was at the origin of the armament of the Al-Qaeda factions? Who in Erdoans Inner Circle took advantage of the Islamic State while the Türkiye militant group sponsored Turkish and Turkish prisoners burned?

The regime change arrives in Türkiye. Europeans must start doing what Turks today cannot and what Trump's current administration has no interest in pursuing. They must help the Turks plan the day after Erdogan. Two decades of Erdoanism traumatized those in Türkiye that it has not corrupted. In the absence of a South African style process or Morocco, there will be societal upheavals while the Turks and the Kurds seek to take revenge on their executioners.

Peace requires justice. Both require the truth.

About the author: Dr. Michael Rubin

Michael Rubin is a principal researcher at the American Enterprise Institute and director of policies analysis at the Middle East forum. The opinions expressed are his.