The efficiency of Turkey’s measures against the coronavirus remains questionable, but they have clearly become a new government tool to fuel political tensions and polarization. Ankara has banned opposition protests and other politically inconvenient events while the ruling party has no trouble mustering crowds to promote its own agenda.

On Aug. 30, the government banned celebrations of Victory Day, marking Mustafa Kemal Ataturk’s decisive defeat of invading Greek forces in 1922 before his proclamation of the secular Turkish republic the following year. Heavy-handed police greeted those who took to streets in defiance of the ban. A parliament member from the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) said he was kicked by the security forces. Police sealed off streets leading to Ataturk’s mausoleum in Ankara. The only group allowed to the mausoleum were supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan who, flouting the solemn atmosphere of the edifice, chanted slogans in support of the president as he laid a wreath at Ataturk’s tomb. 

In sharp contrast, Erdogan led a crowded and high-profile ceremony in eastern Turkey only a few days earlier to mark the anniversary of a 11th century battle that paved the way for Turkish settlement in Anatolia and the subsequent rise of the Ottoman Empire. Similarly, the pandemic did not stop nationwide events July 15 to mark Ankara’s suppression of the 2016 coup attempt. 

Perhaps the most striking gathering was the first Friday prayer that Erdogan led at the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul July 24 after reconverting the Byzantine edifice from museum to mosque. Hundreds of people flocked to the square outside, many of them mobilized by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Though ecstatic men scrambling to reach the square overpowered the police barrier, there were no truncheons or kicks.