The most vociferous of these malcontents aired their disdain of the West and Western organizations that Turkey enjoys membership of. For them, the European Union is an imperialist organization intent on partitioning Turkey, as are the United States and its expansionist tool NATO. That is why, they charged, Turkey should immediately abandon all of those organizations to seek a new alliance system. Their preference was an alternative security alliance composed of Iran, Russia and China together with Caucasian and Central Asian republics rich in natural resources, sharing an idealized ethnic affinity with Turkey.This caper did not come to fruition; instead, developments took an opposite turn. On the home front, the power of the military is gradually diminishing in Turkey, and the burgeoning of a more democratic system is in the making. What about Turkey's prospective allies if an Ergenekon takeover was realized? According to a respected international watchdog of democratic standards, Freedom House, democracy has declined lately in several post-communist countries in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In the organization's report, published June 30, democratic decline took place in several crucial areas, including civil society development, elections and corruption, among other quantifiable criteria. Freedom House claims that Azerbaijan experienced the largest decline among the 29 post-communist countries it examined. Kyrgyzstan followed, “earning” the position of being one of the “consolidated authoritarian regimes” together with every other post-Soviet Central Asian states, including Russia, Azerbaijan and Belarus. The critical Freedom House study claims that political and legal standards are at their lowest ebb in the post-communist region in the 13 years that the organization has conducted its democratization survey. None of these governments “have taken a single convincing step toward promoting democratic rule...or creating conditions for the functioning of an independent media and civil society."
On a scale of one to seven, where one is the most democratic and seven is the least, Azerbaijan saw its aggregate score drop from 6.00 to 6.25. Turkmenistan had the worst democratization record among the countries surveyed, registering a score of 6.93. Uzbekistan followed closely, with a score of 6.89. Kazakhstan's score was 6.32, with a slight improvement in independent media and in the judicial system; indeed, Kazakhstan was the only country in the Caucasus or Central Asia to show any improvement in 2008. Nevertheless, Kazakhstan's overall performance is still noted as poor. Kyrgyzstan used to be a country on the road to democracy, but since President Kurmanbek Bakiyev came to power, the country has regressed on democratization efforts. After the 2007 parliamentary elections, Mr. Bakiyev consolidated his power, and allegations of corruption and nepotism have increased.
The only two countries in the region to escape being labeled "consolidated authoritarian regimes" are Georgia and Armenia, but their scores dropped as well. In Armenia, the authorities used force to put down protests after presidential elections, and in Georgia, parliamentary elections were "deeply flawed...”
One of Ergenekon's other choices in a non-Western alliance was Iran, which just concluded a presidential election. The outcome of the elections was widely disputed. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's second electoral victory has been attributed to a conservative slant in the provinces. However, Chatham House, a London non-profit policy center, claims that this attribution is unfounded. The think tank says a review of the political climate in the countryside in 1997, 2001 and 2005 shows Ahmadinejad and other conservatives were viewed with disdain among the rural constituency. What does this mean? Should former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, be taken seriously in his accusations that the vote was rigged?
Chatham House notes that Ahmadinejad would have had to turn all former centrists, all new voters and 44 percent of the reformist voters into supporters to validate the official results of the election. The Guardian Council, the 12-member clerical body tasked with governing the elections in Iran, denies any widespread fraud. However, the Iranian resistance movement exposed a confidential directive by the supreme leader to announce voter turnout at 35 million and declare Ahmadinejad the winner in the first round. There are also speculations that Iran's “arranged” balloting was "an orchestrated coup” by the group of commanders in the Revolutionary Guards that have been in alliance with Ahmadinejad. While the commanders seize power, they use the aging mullahs as a security blanket to legitimize their takeover. Enough of dark scenarios, but this is the world into which our putschist and authoritarian power-hungry bureaucrats and autocrats want to drag Turkey. Scary or silly? You be the judge.
