CHP, the main opposition party in Turkey, has criticized the governing AKP by linking Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan's political posture to Adolf Hitler.
"If they really want to see somebody resembling Hitler, then they need to look at the photo of their former chairman. He is smiling at them as a wanna-be Führer with his Hitler mustache", Erdogan reacted today. He meant İsmet Inönü, Turkey's second president and one of the founders of CHP.
But Inönü's Hitler mustache?
Being five years older than Hitler, Inonu was sporting his Hitler mustache in Ottoman battlefields in 1910s, long before the Führer had become internationally famous.
So it seems that this is another attempt by Erdogan to manipulate the news agenda. He can't attack Atatürk, because he is way more popular than Erdogan, so he chose a more controversial figure, related to the opposition, preferably a dead one.
One of the closest aides of Erdogan made some confessions about this tactic today. In an interview for Hürriyet, Yalcin Akdogan told the following words about Erdogan:
"The Prime Minister sometimes comes forward and starts a polemic. The public may perceive it as if he criticizes a certain person. In reality, he does it to change the agenda or to give a hidden message to a third person. For example, German Chancellor Angela Merkel was planning to force us into a defensive mode by voicing the privileged partnership offer during her upcoming visit to Ankara. Thanks to the surprising attack by the Prime Minister, we started a debate about the possibility of Turkish high schools in Germany and that was the only issue discussed during the whole trip. In the end, the Germans had to take a defensive stance instead. So if there are heated discussions on the horizon, the Prime Minister may choose to shadow them with irrelevant polemics. The Prime Minister has a man with many game plans."
So maybe now we can understand the irrelevant and misguiding Hitler-mustache polemic, too.
But why did Erdogan want to shift the subject now? What's the next heated discussion?
I believe that there are two answers:
1) Terror organization PKK kills more and more Turkish soldiers every day. The government is increasingly under public pressure. You can observe it in the soldier funerals all around the country.
2) The second round of debates about the constitutional reform package started in the parliament today. Erdogan managed to convince the opposition about all amendments but three of them. The rest of the package will probably have to approved by a referendum.
So Hitler's mustache is the perfect tool to waive these subjects. "Forget your slain son, don't listen to what the opposition tells you about the dangers of the reform package, just vote for it in the referendum", Erdogan simply tells the public.
And then, if this reform package passes, we may see the real Hitler mustache, I fear...
