It is clear how similar Trump and Erdogan are – they are both damaging the unity of their nations

For two weeks we have been waking up to protests in the US, watching the country often tagged as a "melting pot" slowly turning into a pressure cooker.

As a journalist living in a country where polarisation has taken its toll, it is even more worrisome to hear the political rhetoric that provides the narrative to street outrage – as it further fractures a society built upon highly sensitive fault lines.

Donald Trump’s alienating social media posts now require a far more serious analysis than "the funniest retweet of the day" as they set up the "us" versus "them" narrative.

Turkey has seen its fair share of protests, with one prominent example coming from 2013. Peaceful protests that erupted in reaction to government plans to scrape Gezi, a park in central Istanbul, for a construction project soon turned into a nationwide protest against the bigger picture of life in the country.

The more Ankara failed to empathise with young crowds and portrayed the unrest as a foreign plot led by looters and anarchist mobs, the violence escalated with some groups trying to hijack the protests while the political divides grew deeper. Eleven people died, thousands were injured.

“Our nation has been gripped by professional anarchists, violent mobs, arsonists, looters, criminals, rioters, Antifa [anti-fascist protest movement] and others,” Trump said last Monday, his words echoing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s stance back in 2013.

The US president threatened to bring in the military to “protect innocents” while tacitly supporting police forces by not mentioning violence towards civilian protesters ins some . So had the Turkish President.

Erdogan’s heavy-handed talk was about consolidating his rule during a run of three consequent elections starting in 2002 while Trump’s is seeking to do the same before presidential elections this November.

“Elections surely play an important role, however, the need to divert the focus from the urgency to reform policing in the US... stands out as a priority for Trump,” said Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of political sciences at Istanbul’s Sabanci University.

“Protests start peacefully, then agent provocateurs step in, causing liberal protesters to get portrayed as vandals, which [politicians then use] to justify excessive police force,” he added.

Commandeering religious symbols, as Trump did last Monday by appearing in front of a church with a bible in hand, was no different to when the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) made allegations about protesters drinking in a mosque, which were dened by those connected to the mosque. [Erdogan and Trump] both needed to vilify the opposition, Kalaycioglu added.

Both the US and Turkey, countries with diverse populations have faced issues recently. In Turkey, the coronavirus pandemic – which put the wellbeing of the nation at risk – could have eased differences and created a sense of overarching unity across political platforms. However, the opposite has happened.

This rift is borne out in public surveys such as one by Konda, a leading polling agency, which showed that 45 per cent trusted in measures imposed by Turkey’s medical authorities while an equal percentage expressed distrust in the Covid-19 statistics put out by the government..

“It is understood that the polarisation in the country and, in parallel, the trust in state institutions remains in place even at times of pandemic and in reference to such a public health matter,” said Bekir Agirdir, the director of the polling agency.

President Erdogan, in a routine address to the nation in May, bashed the opposition Republican People’s Party in opposition and its media affiliates in reference to rumours about snap elections.

“Don’t sweat in vain,” the president said in a live statement and labelled the opposition as associates of “disrupters” that lacked “historical, conscious or moral compasses, spines, cause or struggle”. Finally, he likened them to “mythological creatures who feed on enmity, fear, conflict and pain.”

It was long before the Gezi riots that the AKP had started to shed its liberalism for a more conservative stance, deriving its strength from the unconditional loyalty of grassroots party supporters. The tone, however, has been fluctuating in line with the party’s public popularity.

“Such language and the polarisation it triggers in the public sphere has to do with an immediate need to consolidate power when there is foreseeable loss of support among the party constituency,” said Dr. Nil Mutluer of Diversity and Social Conflict studies at Humboldt University in Berlin.

A survey by MetroPoll in April was a distinct blow to the popularity of President Erdogan – he came fourth in terms of successful performance during the pandemic, behind his health minister, the science council and Ankara’s opposition mayor.

Erdogan’s persistence to singlehandedly control pandemic aid nationwide by freezing accounts of local administrations likely had a say in this ranking, as the survey also found that an overwhelming majority of 62 per cent opposed the move.

“The pandemic was a perfect opportunity to start a new normal in politics and create a brand-new sense of unity but it has gone to waste,” Agirdir said.

Trump and Erdogan are two of the world leaders looking to protect their strong man image during the pandemic, and clearly share similar ideas about how to deal with protests. But it is coming at the cost of unity within their respective nations.