A local man with ties to Turkey is watching the unfolding events in Istanbul with great interest.
Hakan Baymak, owner of Baymak Interiors, said on June 13 he had hopes that the situation in his homeland would be improving after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced there would be a local referendum on what should happen with a park space in the city. Protests over whether to maintain the park as is or further develop it have raged for the past two weeks, with police, at times, attempting to disperse large crowds with tear gas.
Baymak moved to Olds about 25 years ago from Kocaeli, a city about 45 minutes east of Istanbul in the northwest of Turkey. He said in talking to his parents on the weekend that the protests in Istanbul are not concerning to them. He likened it to a localized protest in Calgary.
The main issue, Baymak said, is people are upset that Erdogan, in power since 2003, has announced plans to tear down a cultural centre located in the park and build a new structure in its place. People opposed to Erdogan's leadership claim that a mosque will be built to further Erdogan's Islamic agenda.
Baymak thinks that a meeting between Erdogan and a group of protesters on June 12 to attempt to defuse the situation was helpful.
“I think the meeting was about four, five hours with (Erdogan) to voice their concerns on why all these things are happening. The prime minister took the day off just to be able to (meet with the group). I think the bottom line after that meeting was he was sitting down and listening to people,” Baymak said.
While Baymak supports what Erdogan has done for the country over the past few years, he said the prime minister's methods are “dictator-like.” Baymak said, however, that the culture of Turkey is such that strict measures are sometimes the only way that progress is made.
“We've never seen such development, we've never seen such improvement in the quality of life in Turkey. This last 20, 25 years, it's just absolutely fantastic. We all love what (Erdogan) is doing for the country; on the other hand, we don't like how he's approaching it. His approach is a religious approach,” he said.
As a result of Erdogan's methods, Baymak said many different political groups from the Middle East and Europe were looking for any excuse to destabilize the government. Many people are also unemployed, he added. The unemployment rate was 9.2 per cent in February, according to the Trading Economics website. And the opposition, in light of elections happening in October, is also looking to destabilize the situation, Baymak said.
“It's all looking for a flame basically to start the fire,” he said.
Baymak said that while the government became secular in the 1930s, there has been a movement over the past 15 to 20 years to bring religious influences into political discourse, similar to some Republican politicians in the United States.
