Damascus-Sana
Unlike the countries of the world that have mobilized all their energies and efforts to confront the Corona virus and limit its spread, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan dealt with the outbreak in the country indifferently ignoring the lives of his citizens, but he soon rushed to exploit this crisis not to contain it but to achieve his authoritarian goals, and among them Abuse his critics and opponents and influence their popularity among Turks.
The confusion in the management of the Corona crisis with the Turkish regime appeared since the beginning of its escalation in Turkey, where Erdogan's authorities imposed the embargo in the country suddenly and without warning, which caused massive chaos in the Turkish cities to secure food and living items, which prompted Interior Minister Suleiman Soylu to resign and then rejected it from Erdogan accepted himself in Mashhad, highlighting the extent of the internal differences that this regime suffers from.
In an attempt to absorb the anger and resentment within Turkish society for its poor management of the Corona crisis, the Turkish Parliament dominated by the ruling Justice and Development Party resorted to adopting a decision to release prisoners under the pretext of alleviating overcrowding in prisons with the spread of the virus and among them perpetrators of serious crimes, but it excluded many journalists, politicians, activists and citizens Ordinary people who entered prison just for criticizing the government.
Erdogan, who considered himself in a war between two fires, as for either focusing on precautionary measures, disrupting the economic movement or keeping the economic movement and ignoring calls for a total closure to avoid a crisis in a more severe economic crisis than the one that the country suffers, he devoted most of his time to abuse his opponents and critics, describing them as "epidemics and viruses" He tried to pull the rug from under them and not enable them to take any action that would enhance their popularity among the Turks, trying to monopolize any supposed progress in the crisis in his favor and depriving his opponents of any initiative to save what could be saved.
At the behest of the President of the Turkish regime, the Turkish Ministry of the Interior began an investigation last week with the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, honoring Imamoglu and Mansour Yavash, who are from the opposition Republican People's Party, because they announced a fundraising campaign to help the poor and needy in the Corona crisis, which prompted Erdogan to limit and restrict them and accuse them of creating A state within the state or the establishment of a parallel entity to the state to attribute to itself any act or initiative in the framework of providing aid and announcing a fundraising campaign that will ultimately benefit the regime.
Simon Tisdale, writer for the British Guardian newspaper, said in a recent article that Erdogan dealt with the Corona crisis by putting the economy and its political gains first before saving the lives of people, stressing that he was accused, like US President Donald Trump, of politicizing the crisis.
Tisdale noted in his article that Erdogan banned fundraising efforts by opposition-held city councils in Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara as a result of the impressive performance of Istanbul's mayor, Imamoglu, his potential presidential rival in the 2023 election, which was more of concern to him than the epidemic.
It is clear that the Corona crisis revealed the fragility of Erdogan's regime in the face of crises, especially that his country has been involved in for years, including supporting terrorism in Syria and Libya and others and interfering in the affairs of a number of countries in the region, such as Iraq, in addition to the failure to manage the stifling economic crisis inside Turkey and the patchwork policies in Saving the depressed economy with millions of Turks losing their jobs due to Corona without plans to re-employ them, putting the fate of this system at stake.
