Turkey, which way will it go?

Hmm so with all these protests in Turkey it seems that their is a major backlash to... what? You could actually paint a million faces onto this disagreement. Two massively broad camps that aren't as neat and digestible as some would like you to believe. 

Camp 1:

• Nationalist

• religious value

• conservative 

• rural provincial

• secondary level education

• Euro-skeptic

Camp 2:

• Internationalist

• Secular values

• Liberal

• urban cosmopolitan

• tertiary education

• Pro-Europe

Now the whole camp thing is a kind of dummies guide but if a person ticks more boxes on one of them than the other then they will typically belong to that camp. Another way to look at which would make it very easy for you to empathize with is big city vs rest of country. Istanbul is to Turkey what London is to the UK, Paris is to France, Tokyo is to Japan, Shanghai is to China and what NY, Chicago, San Fran and LA are to the USA. The cosmopolitan globe trotting big wigs of these cities seem at times like aliens to the native population.

The western coverage seems to miss represent the protests into a kind of cheap and nasty fist in the air Muslim caricature. Turkey is not Iran, Egypt, pakistan or Saudi Arabia. Culturally, It has far more in common with Italy and Spain than those countries. Economically it has more in common with the Eastern European countries like Poland and the Czech Republic. The protests are somewhere between OWS and the Tea party and Tahrir square and Mubarak; leaning towards OWS.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the St Paul of Turkey; its first president and one of the greatest leaders of the 20th century.

The protestors seemed to be against the ever increasing government mandated morality. The Islamic Clergy in Turkey had correctly been identified as a major barrier to progress by Ataturk and the Turkish constitution, including its revisions/replacements have all included clauses for secularism. The protestors now fear that this and many freedoms based on this are under attack and they see Erdogan, the turkish prime minister of over a decade, as the vanguard for Shariah Law. He has banned porn and temporarily banned youtube. Turks don't want to live like the Chinese or the Saudis and they think that is where this lack of trust will end.

As a Libertarian I am torn between two diverging opinions of Erdogan as I am sure many people must be. In one respect I agree with the protestors, the civil liberties are being pulled back and they are being pushed into a situation where it is 'if Erdogan says it then that makes it right'. The key role of human rights is to protect minorities, and the smallest and most vulnerable minority is the individual. Many of Turkey's Muslims describe themselves as cultural Muslims more so than devoutly practicing muslims. 

The respect I have for Erdogan comes from his economic stewardship. Under him the Turkish economy has performed exceptionally; debt payed down, very good GDP growth and a quick recovery from the crisis; ending the revolving door between the treasury and IMF. He achieved this by reducing regulation and creating a regime that is attractive to foreign investment. From an economic standpoint he is probably the best leader Turkey has ever had.

After the 2011 election the camp 2 really started losing a key argument, Europe. Europe was falling into a giant maelstrom, a maelstrom from which it still hasn't recovered. Watching Europe in its hideous death throes, the kind of second coming like images that are being seen in Greece just next door and then contrasting that with their own situation, Europe doesn't look like the deal it once was. More so than that, the average Turk probably see the spendaholic ways of southern Europe as being correlated with the regions looser code of conduct.

Still the relative failure of southern Europe has been communicated far more than the relative success of eastern Europe. The media finds that starving Spaniards make for better news than saving Slavs. On the subject of saving, Turkey hasn't been doing enough of it and since the recession there has been a boom in private debt. It is important but I lack the economic knowledge to put it into my larger understanding of the Turkish economic situation. I do know that it makes Turkey quite fragile and might be concealing some hidden faults. Indebtedness could be some of the reason behind the protests and it will mean that if the protests lead to elongated economic woes then Turkey could enter a nasty viscous cycle following a string of defaults, the low debt and high level of reserves suggests that Turkey has a lot of Breathing room though.

The protestors have put up a few awesome gifs