Turkish Elections: Erdoanism Without Erdoan Now?
After Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan has been the country's most powerful leader. Even if Turkey's president fails to win the forthcoming elections, his legacy may outlast him.
Opponents of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoan anticipating that this year's elections will finally put an end to his tumultuous 20-year reign may be in for a surprise: Erdoanism without Erdoan.Two elections are scheduled for 14 May, one for the presidency and one for parliament, and campaigning has intensified as a result of the devastating earthquake that devastated southeast Turkey and north Syria on 6 February, killing at least 46,000 people, but the death toll is still growing.
Fearing an electoral backlash, Erdoan has responded violently to public criticism of bad building standards and charges of a delayed catastrophe response, both of which the opposition is exploiting. The government has imposed a three-month state of emergency in the 10 affected provinces, and speculation is growing that it would attempt to postpone the election if public opinion predicts an opposition victory.
Prior to the earthquake, opinion surveys showed Erdoan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) still holding strong, implying that even if the six-party opposition coalition wins the president, it will fail to dominate the legislature. That would make it impossible for the opposition to restore the former parliamentary system, which Erdoan abolished through plebiscite-approved constitutional revisions.
The presidential election is the main question. Erdoan remains the most popular candidate in a crowded field. His dilemma is that if people unify around a single personality in a run-off election, he will lag most of the prospective opposition candidates in the coalition formed to fight him. With the recent legal suspension of popular Istanbul mayor Ekrem mamolu from future office for "insulting electoral authorities," the way has been paved for Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Klçdarolu to become that lone candidate.
The opposition comprises a number of personalities who believe they are the chosen one to confront Erdoan, including Good Party leader Meral Akşener and CHP mayor Mansur Yavaş. Klçdarolu, the eldest of them, has made it apparent in recent months that he regards it as his right, especially after he decided to let the younger Muharrem Ince to run as the CHP candidate in 2018.
Klçdarolu, who was born in 1948, sees himself as Turkey's older statesman, the adult in the room. The opposition, on the other hand, is well aware that as soon as their unity candidate is named - most likely in early March, when the election date is fixed for formal declaration - the government media machine would go after him vehemently. They will portray him as elderly, feeble, and out of touch, the polar antithesis of what the government would claim Turkey has become under Erdoan, and whether young people vote for Klçdarolu is a major question. They will also portray him as a "soft-on-terror" threat to national security while quietly courting the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party (HDP), which just announced that it will field its own presidential candidate.
Eventually, the administration is likely to resort to sectarianism. Klçdarolu is an Alevi of Kurdish descent. In the past, the AKP has used Sunni identity as a political tool, particularly during the Syrian civil war, when Erdoan and pro-AKP media portrayed the struggle as a jihad against an Alawite dictatorship led by religious deviants.
A still-functioning democracy
Another major issue hovering over the election is whether the administration would attempt to manipulate the result in any manner. The current trend has been to push the envelope as far as possible. The voting process is closely observed in big metropolitan areas. But, in the provinces, particularly in the southeast, it is impossible to keep track of what is going on inside polling booths during and after voting hours. The government also has total control over the process through its electoral commission, which has developed an unbreakable habit of making fast announcements to the state news agency. Then there's the wild card of not only a large number of undecided voters, but also Turks living overseas, whose votes might be swayed.
Despite this, the AKP was defeated in two important elections in 2019, for mayorships in Istanbul and Ankara. In the instance of Istanbul, Ekrem mamolu triumphed despite the government persuading a court to invalidate the first vote and re-hold it. Turkey's elections remain on the fringes of what happens in functional democracies, rather than falling into the kabuki spectacle of nations like Egypt.
Other from that, how important would Erdoan's demise be? Regarding foreign policy, the "sea shift" that would see Turkey re-join NATO and Washington after a difficult two decades appears improbable, as seen by Erdoan's popularity over The Quran-burning. A generation of Turks has grown up in a nation that sees itself as a regional, if not global, power, and that, like Nasserist Egypt, works within many domains of influence - in Türkiye's case, the Muslim Middle East, Eurasian, and Western. No government can just discard such way of thinking. For one thing, Eurasianism was already a significant military movement that has only become stronger under Erdoan.
Second, resolving Turkey's serious economic issues through Western financial institutions would come at a cost that jeopardizes the country's freshly gained foreign policy independence. Even if the new administration raises interest rates to limit ordinary people's spending power, it may balk at a return to hot money in Turkish financial markets and the prospect of IMF assistance to cope with debt. Participation in a Global South seeking de-dollarization may still have some clout in official circles, but the temptation to follow the neoliberal script will be strong.
