Erdogan's Turkey

Some guests were awoken by the gunshots, others by the buzzing of three Black Hawk helicopters.

It was the early hours of 16 July 2016. Around two-dozen Turkish commandos dropped into the grounds of the luxury Club Turban hotel in the coastal resort of Marmaris, armed with automatic rifles and grenades.

They were hunting one man - Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The president had been holidaying at a private villa linked to the hotel.

While rebel soldiers in Istanbul and Ankara blocked roads and bombed state buildings, the commandos had been sent to capture the president. It should have been the climax of their coup d'etat. Opening fire and hurling grenades, they stormed the hotel, killing two bodyguards.

But they were too late.

Acting on a tip-off, Erdogan had been whisked away from the resort by helicopter. Once at Dalaman Airport, he took a private jet to Istanbul, with his pilot masking its identity so it appeared on radars as a normal civilian passenger plane.

After 03:00, the president emerged outside Istanbul's Ataturk Airport to the roars of his supporters.

The coup attempt had failed - and Recep Tayyip Erdogan was to emerge stronger than ever.

For many, that night marked the rebirth of modern Turkey. En route to Istanbul, Erdogan made a video-call to Turkish television, urging people on to the streets to resist the coup attempt.

Turks responded en masse - and 265 people were killed in the process.

Some lay in front of rebel tanks to block their advance, others ran into gunfire on the Bosphorus bridge, trying to overpower the coup plotters.

By dawn, the coup had failed.

Much of Erdogan’s support is underpinned by his championing of the Muslim cause.

In Rize, they love his piety - and of course, his local roots.

While Erdogan himself was born in Istanbul, he had strong family ties to Rize - his grandparents migrated there from Georgia and his father was born in the port city.

Standing by the giant mosque in Guneysu, the village adjoining Rize where Erdogan has a house, relative Sadullah Mutlu says he remembers the young Recep as “a mature boy, always ambitious and interested in politics”.

He wanted initially to become a professional footballer but was drawn towards the youth branch of an Islamist political movement. Soon after, he married Emine Gulbaran, with whom he has four children. His political rise was quick, becoming mayor of Istanbul, when he was briefly imprisoned under the secular regime for reciting a religious poem.

Erdogan’s working-class origins in the Black Sea and childhood in the poor Istanbul neighbourhood of Kasimpasa gave him his common touch and ability to connect with ordinary voters.

His supporters here feel he is their voice.

Mehmet Meral is among them. Since the 1950s, his family has owned 140 acres of tea plantations in the mountains around Rize.

It is the centre of the country’s tea industry, with Turkey the world’s fifth largest producer. Terraced rows nestle beside fast-flowing streams and Ottoman-era stone bridges.

“Recep Tayyip Erdogan is one of us,” Meral says, “he’s one of the people. Before, all the leaders were rich kids or high class. He’s not like that.”

Conservatism was taking over - restrictions on alcohol sales and abortions were announced, and Erdogan had urged women to have more children.

Work had begun for Turkey's biggest mosque despite complaints that it was being built on protected forest land and would dominate Istanbul's skyline.

While some members of the government tried a more conciliatory approach to the protesters, Erdogan clamped down hard, labelling them “marauders” and accusing them of “drinking alcohol in a mosque” - something the mosque's imam then denied.

Early AKP rule under Erdogan reached out to democrats and liberals, leftists and Kurds, says Benlisoy. “But after Gezi his rhetoric became about the 'domination' of one side of Turkey towards the other, defining his support base by confrontation with the other.”

The polarisation deepened as Erdogan was shaken by leaks of phone conversations later in 2013 that appeared to implicate him and his inner circle in corruption allegations, which he fiercely denied.

He stoked the old Ottoman-era mentality of a Turkey under siege from its enemies, illustrated by the old adage “the only friend of a Turk is a Turk”.

There was a new conspiracy theory every week as the prime minister increasingly turned to arch-loyalists, while expelling or sidelining members of his own party who dared to dissent.

Freedom of expression was heavily squeezed. The progress of Erdogan's early years receded, as critical journalists, writers or artists were tarnished as “traitors”. Turkey regained its record as the world's leading jailer of journalists.

For Erdogan, extreme times justify extreme measures.

“There is no difference between a terrorist holding a gun or a bomb and those who use their pen and position to serve their aims,” he said, after Turkey’s worst ever terror attack, which killed 103 people outside Ankara train station in October 2015.

It heralded his crackdown - and dozens more attacks to come.

Aynur Yaman, an ethnic Kurd, knows the cost more than most. In her one-room house in a desperately poor village close to Diyarbakir, the biggest city in southeast Turkey, she now cares for her seven children alone.

Her husband, Mehmet Salih Yaman, was killed last year when a truck blew up close to their home. It was believed to be carrying explosives belonging to the outlawed Kurdish militant group the PKK, possibly stockpiled for a future attack.

“They found his left finger and matched his DNA,” she says, “that’s all I remember - I had lost my mind.”

She glances up at his photo that she keeps on the wall. In the corner, her one year-old baby starts to cry. He had just been born when his father died.

“The PKK took away our dreams and stole a father of seven in the prime of his life,” 33-year-old Yaman says. “I don’t want to see their faces anymore. I will now vote for the people who have been supporting us psychologically and financially - for Erdogan.”

Close to 30 terror attacks in the past two years have killed about 500 people.

Kurdish militants were behind some - mainly targeting police officers and soldiers - while so-called Islamic State struck public areas, including Istanbul’s Ataturk airport and the city’s Reina nightclub last New Year’s Eve.

Turkey feels constantly on edge, awaiting the next attack - security is the biggest issue for many as they prepare to vote.

A ceasefire with the PKK broke down in July 2015, restarting a conflict that has killed 40,000 people since the 1980s.

Some blamed the militants for resuming armed attacks, others believe Erdogan engineered an end to the truce to whip up nationalist votes and regain the parliamentary majority he lost a month earlier.

If so, it worked - the AKP won back its majority in November 2015 and he’s hoping his hardline stance on terror will achieve victory in this referendum too.

Large swathes of the southeast have seen curfews, military operations and urban warfare over the past two years.

The UN estimates 2,000 people have been killed - soldiers and civilians - while the Turkish army says it has eliminated thousands of militants.

The neighbourhood of central Diyarbakir where the worst of the fighting raged has been completely destroyed, with houses razed to the ground and surrounding buildings still torn by bullet holes.

Thirteen MPs from the pro-Kurdish HDP, which became the third-biggest party in parliament in 2015, have been imprisoned for alleged links to the PKK and 86 mayors have been replaced by the government.

Kurds who finally found a national political voice two years ago now feel silenced.

“The vast majority here think Erdogan and his people are responsible for the devastation that’s happened,” says Ziya Pir, an HDP MP who faces 23 years in prison for “terrorism propaganda” and “membership of a terrorist organisation”.

Kurdish voters are split between conservative Erdogan supporters and the HDP - but he is adamant over where the blame lies. “The old nationalist mentality of Turkey couldn’t allow Kurds to be partners in ruling the country - they had to kill it.”

He worries that hundreds of thousands in the southeast will be disenfranchised in the referendum after being displaced by the conflict and losing their voter registration. Now the only way to return to peace, he says, is with a “no” vote.

“With a ‘yes’, Erdogan would establish an authoritarian regime that may lead Turkey into a dictatorship. If it’s a ‘no’, Erdogan will see he can’t be genuinely successful without the help or votes of the Kurds. A ‘no’ would give a chance to return to negotiations to solve the Kurdish problem”.

Erdogan argues strong central leadership will give him the power to face down Turkey’s terror threats. But critics argue his government’s lax control of the border with Syria and support for Islamist factions has exposed Turkey to the IS threat and allowed jihadist cells to grow here.

Moreover, Ankara’s policy in Syria, attacking the Kurdish militia there, has made Turkey ever more vulnerable, provoking retaliatory strikes by the PKK.

Orhan Tokar was caught up in the terror attack on Kurdish supporters in Diyarbakir in June 2015, which was blamed on IS. He lost part of his left leg in the bombing.

An HDP supporter, his ire is directed mainly at the Turkish government.

“Erdogan can denounce me as a ‘terrorist’ or a ‘traitor to my country’ – my vote will always be ‘no’,” he says. “If ‘no’ wins, spring will arrive and people will be happy again. If it’s ‘yes’, the system will go back to Ottoman times, like a sultanate. And that will divide Turkey.”

After a year of terror attacks, Turks felt they had reached the bottom. But then came the coup.

“The Gulen movement is a perfect definition of a cult,” says Said Alpsoy, sitting in his study surrounded by books on Islam.
A conservative researcher, he spent 17 years as a follower of Fethullah Gulen, the Islamic cleric who the government blames for orchestrating last year's failed coup.

“When Gulen was eating an orange, he threw the peel on the ground. I watched as one of his doctors grabbed the peel and ate it. I realised from the body-language that this was routine. The soles of his old shoes would even be boiled and eaten by his followers.”

He seems embarrassed, apologising for the cruder examples he's about to give.

“Once, after Gulen gave an emotional sermon, he cried a lot and the handkerchief with which he cleaned his nose was wet. A young student took that handkerchief and cleaned his own face with it, right in front of me. Also, the stones of the olives that Gulen ate were never thrown away. They were distributed as valuable gifts to lower-grade people in the movement.”

Fethullah Gulen has built a network of followers since the 1960s, principally through schools and universities that he endowed in Turkey and across the world.

The group presents itself as a “faith-inspired, non-political, cultural and educational movement” adhering to “sympathy, compassion and altruism” through projects ranging from private schools to poverty aid programmes.

But followers ended up taking senior positions across Turkey’s public and private sectors, led by Gulen from self-imposed exile in the US.

“The movement never said in so many words 'let's take over the state',” says Said Alpsoy.

“Instead they would say: 'The state is taken over by the enemies of religion - let's get rid of these invaders and we will give it back to its real owners - the pious Muslims of Anatolia.'”

Oget Oktem Tanor is among them. Eighty-two years old, she was Turkey's first neuropsychologist and an emeritus professor of Istanbul University.

Now she has lost various rights she held as a civil servant and has been banned from travelling abroad, charged with “terrorism propaganda”.

“It's absurd,” the softly-spoken academic says.

“Of course I'm not helping terrorists. I just put my opinion into words by signing this petition. I have nothing to do with propaganda. Teaching and being with my students is my life, so it's very hard for me not to be with them again. For the first time, I felt depressed.”

She looks out to the Bosphorus from an apartment she's occupied for decades, as she built her reputation as one of Turkey's leading academics. After the coup of 1971, she was forced to flee the country with her husband, facing imprisonment and possible torture for being leftists.

“That time was still better than now,” she says, “because there was a judiciary you could trust and civil courts you could rely on. Now they are all under pressure and there's no separation of powers as there should be in a democracy. I really fear for the future of my country.”

After a crash in 2001 that saw chronic inflation and the Turkish lira reaching an exchange rate of 1.5 million against the US dollar, Erdogan built a reputation for economic competence.

Growth soared to over 10% in 2011 and Turkey became known as the New Tiger, the fastest-growing economy in the G20 group of nations.

But terror attacks and political turbulence have led to the economy shrinking for the first time since 2009.

Unemployment is over 12%. The Turkish lira has lost a quarter of its value against the dollar since mid-2016.

“We are going through an economic crisis,” says Tekin Acar, whose chain of cosmetic stores is suffering. “Nobody is calling it that but sales are dropping, profits are falling and we will have to open smaller stores with fewer staff.”

This malaise could play out in the referendum. Ali Avci sips tea outside his ceramics shop in the Grand Bazaar, trying to pass the day. He and his family have always voted for Erdogan's AK Party - but now for the first time, they plan to defy him and say “no” in the referendum.

“This is a protest vote about the economy but also about Erdogan's lies, which we now see through social media,” he says.

“Days go by without any customers now. I could survive here if this goes on for another year but then I'd have to close. People are afraid of saying they're going to vote no - but lots will.”

It is a trend that appears to be gathering pace - some traditional AKP voters deserting the “yes” camp to voice their anger at the past two years of turbulence.

Before the last general election, pro-government headlines screamed “AKP or chaos”. But even though the party won, chaos still came. And if Erdogan's once solid voter base begins to splinter, it could spell trouble for him in the referendum.

In the last week of the campaign, the governors of Istanbul and Ankara banned two large “no” rallies, claiming they couldn’t guarantee security. “Yes” rallies, however, went ahead – and free buses were provided to transport those who wanted to come.

On my 20-minute walk from my home to the BBC office in Istanbul, I counted 18 “yes” posters and one for “no”.

In some places “no” campaigners have been attacked and some people have been sacked for publicising their opposition.

Government supporters remain convinced that anti-Erdogan bias in the West is misconceived and point out that Turkey is - among other things - the world’s largest host of refugees.

It became the main route for those crossing to Europe, with thousands boarding dinghies every night from the Turkish coast to the Greek islands, and many drowning en route.

Turkey struck a deal with the EU to stem the flow - sending failed asylum seekers back. It’s widely believed that European leaders have tempered their criticism of Erdogan because they needed his co-operation on migrants.

But in some Western capitals, anger at Turkey’s unpredictable leader is growing. The European Parliament called for a suspension of EU membership negotiations.

In Turkey, this referendum will be a turning point. A “yes” would greatly strengthen Erdogan’s hand, giving him unprecedented power and possibly allowing him to remain in office until 2029, as well as virtually guaranteeing him and his family immunity from any attempts at prosecution.

A “no” would not spell the end for him - but would embolden the Turkish opposition and provide a chance for a political challenge.

Whichever way it goes, the chasm between Turkey and the West has grown dramatically.

Some blame Erdogan for that but others see the fault with the EU - that it had a window of opportunity after opening negotiations in 2005 to coax Erdogan into long-lasting reforms.

Instead, the argument goes, the EU gave way to the rhetoric of the likes of France’s Nicolas Sarkozy, who called Turkish membership “unthinkable”.

Turkey sensed it would continue to be held in the EU’s waiting room.

“Sadly, Europe sees President Erdogan and Turkey as an ‘other’ through which to deflect their internal problems onto a distant and imaginary enemy,” wrote Ibrahim Kalin, the president’s spokesman.

“It only deepens the sense of mistrust that is already poisoning relations between Turkey and Europe on the one hand and Islamic and Western societies on the other.”

Turkey matters. It remains a vital Western ally in the region, Nato’s eastern flank and a big trading partner. It is a crucial player in attempts to bring peace to Syria and the war against so-called Islamic State.

As it tries, with faltering success, to pivot more towards Russia and Gulf States, that could have a considerable geopolitical impact. The West cannot afford to lose this country.

“Democracy is like a train, Erdogan once famously said. “You get off once you have reached your destination.”

Some believe he has many stations left to pass, others that this country is in the midst of a slow-motion train crash. This could be the crowning moment or the undoing of Erdogan’s Turkey.