Turkish Presidential Election Briefing: Part 1
A strongman faces a strong match
On May 14th, voters in Türkiye (also known as Turkey) will head to the ballot box to elect both their president and legislature. This election is one of the most pivotal in Turkish history, as it possibly serves as the most serious challenge to the incumbent president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, since his rise to power in 2003. In addition, this election will probably further clarify the dispute between the opposing ideologies that have ruled Türkiye over the last century: Ataturk’s secularism versus Erdoğan’s appeal to religious conservatism.
State of The Democratic Process In Türkiye
Türkiye currently sits at the crossroads of dual national identities, both tolerant yet suspicious of democracy at the same time. The “father of the nation,” Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, envisioned Türkiye in the 1920s as a country that sought to look to Europe for inspiration and enlightenment. His ideas laid the groundwork for Kemalism, a syncretic ideology that sought to combine secularism and modernism with nationalism and populism to bring Türkiye into the European family. Until the late 1990s, Kemalism had a strong grip on state policy, with the party of Ataturk, the Republican People’s Party (abbreviated in Turkish as the CHP), seeking to adapt it to the issues of the time.
Ataturk’s desire to westernize in consonance with the liberal democratic structures that sprung up in Europe in the post-war period was not easy to implement. He recognized the obvious eventual need for a western-style state to have a secular, representative, democratic government. As such, his followers sought to implement democratic mechanisms in Türkiye as time went on to bring it in line with the West.
However, Ataturk feared that pure democracy would embolden reactionary elements of Turkish society who sought refuge in Islamic and traditional ways. Thus, institutions like the military were strengthened to serve as the final arbitrator of Ataturk’s dreams. Furthermore, power structures were set up in the Turkish government in a way that made it hard for anyone in the opposition to create a pathway to deviate from Ataturk’s ideals. Until the 1990s, Türkiye either saw strong governance by Ataturk’s CHP, weak governance as opposition parties struggled to navigate complex political institutions, or coups as the military stepped in to shut down any viable opposition effort to undo Ataturk’s ideals.
However, the 90s saw the forces of Kemalism unable to handle the Turkish economy in the midst of an economically tumultuous decade. This, combined with a disastrous response to a devastating earthquake in 1999, led to all segments of Türkiye tiring of the incumbent forces. A rise in political Islam across the world, paired with a moderation of policy from the coalition of more Islamist parties led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s AK Party, led to a decisive opposition victory in 2003, heralding a new era in Turkish political history.
Erdoğan, who has run Türkiye in one form or another for nearly 20 years now, has combined Islamic conservatism and realpolitik into a new ideology that seeks to put Türkiye and Turkishness above all and not bend those concepts to another model, be that Europe or Arabia. Türkiye has slowly decoupled from Europe, stalling its own EU ascension negotiations and de-secularizing public life. The democratic process was reformed as well; Erdoğan’s popularity didn’t necessitate him becoming an enemy of Turkish democracy, but the systems of checks and balances instituted by his predecessors were chiseled away. In addition, Erdoğan, with an extent of popular approval, has cracked down on freedom of speech, especially that of the press and of opposition figures, who must now be very precise in how they criticize government policy lest they be accused of defaming important national offices or the nation itself, leading to their imprisonment. The military has also been neutralized as a viable threat to Erdoğan, as most of the old guard has voluntarily resigned or been hounded out after a failed coup attempt in 2016.
Erdoğan’s Current Standing
Heading into the 2023 election, Erdoğan has some clear advantages. First, he has run Türkiye for nearly two decades in his own unique way. This has allowed important state institutions to be tilted in his favor, and thus, allows him many avenues to make the electoral process murkier. Influencing last-minute rule changes to having entire elections re-run, Erdoğan’s party has ensured favorable outcomes for itself in the recent past. Secondly, the aforementioned restrictions on opposition figures and the press give far more rhetorical leeway to Erdoğan’s allies, placing his opponents at a disadvantage. The organization Freedom House, which rates the extent to which countries are democratic, has deemed Erdoğan’s transgressions to be so severe that they negate the democratic nature of Türkiye, deeming it to be more authoritarian than democratic. In this sense, Erdoğan may seem heavily favored to win re-election. That being said, Erdoğan has two major issues counting against him at the current moment.
Firstly, the economy is currently not doing very well, and there is a good argument to be made that it is Erdoğan’s unusual views regarding interest rates that are responsible for this. For a long time, the Turkish economy has heavily relied on imports, which has also led to importing inflation from outside, given the performance of the Turkish Lira. The usual reaction to this aforementioned inflation would be to raise interest rates to slow the circulation of money and, thus, bring the problem under control. However, Erdoğan has expressed his belief that the concept of raising interest rates to combat inflation is an unsubstantiated hypothesis forced on the nations of the world by an “interest rate lobby” and, thus, has continued to cut interest rates even as inflation worsens. This has led to inflation skyrocketing, with an annual inflation rate nearing 80% last year. Erdoğan has attempted to sidestep criticism in this regard by pointing out that Türkiye is also seeing GDP growth right now, which proves his economic management is bringing in results. However, opponents point out that much of this GDP growth comes from greater exports due to a weak currency, and a consumption binge by Turkish households, also due to inflation. With wages still heavily lagging behind inflation, most Turks don’t seem to rate Erdoğan’s economic policies favorably.
The second major issue for Erdoğan has been his government’s response to Türkiye’s recent earthquakes, which have been catastrophic for the country. On the 6th of February, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake struck Türkiye and Syria, killing nearly 40,000 Turks and displacing more than a million people in the aftermath. While the country rallied together in the immediate weeks after the calamity, many Turks now feel that the state response was incredibly lacking and insufficient. In many areas, emergency response teams took several days, if not weeks, to arrive, with locals and international relief workers having to step in to supplant them. The response was considered so insufficient that Erdoğan felt the need to apologize to the nation for it; this apology, however, has been considered late and lacking in sincerity. With Erdoğan also facing criticism for allowing many companies to build infrastructure that did not conform with the anti-earthquake regulations from the last major one in 1999, this recent disaster has served as a serious liability to Erdoğan’s brand as an authoritative leader who can deliver on basic needs and services.
State of Opposition
Turkish politics is incredibly complex, and over the last twenty years, Erdoğan has capitalized on this to ensure a divided opposition. Those who oppose Erdoğan range from those to his left who view his conservatism as anti-thetical to their own aims, to those on the right who view Erdoğan as too syncretic and not ideological enough, to those who cannot neatly be slotted on the western political spectrum and who have very specific criticisms of Erdoğan. However, in 2018, Erdoğan restructured Türkiye from a parliamentary system to a presidential one, which he hoped would allow him to stop having to deal with junior coalition partners who could create frequent roadblocks for his policies. While he was successful in that regard, this move has also united the entire opposition against him, with almost all parties willing to set aside their personal and political differences to try to take Erdoğan out and restore a parliamentary system.
This broad front is de facto led by Türkiye’s main opposition party: Ataturk’s CHP. Now a center-left party that combines western social democracy with secularism and intense Turkish nationalism, the CHP’s leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has been able to bring together Türkiye’s more accepted opposition parties together in an agreement known as the “Table of Six” and secure cross-nominations for president. Most opposition parties not at this “Table of Six” have either additionally cross-nominated Kılıçdaroğlu or have not nominated any presidential candidate at all: a tacit endorsement of the CHP leader.
Many Turkish political experts are skeptical of Kılıçdaroğlu. Known more as a shrewd politician than a charismatic campaigner, his popularity lags behind many other prominent figures among the opposition, including those in his own party. Many who wanted Erdoğan gone were hoping that Kılıçdaroğlu would understand this and nominate one of the more popular CHP mayors of either Ankara or Istanbul as the opposition candidate for president. While Kılıçdaroğlu has made both of them his vice presidential candidates (there are multiple VPs in the Turkish system), many pundits still worry that Kılıçdaroğlu's lack of charisma and prior unpopularity makes him a dangerous choice for such an important job. Furthermore, Kılıçdaroğlu, since he became party leader in 2010, has repeatedly lost multiple elections and referenda to Erdoğan, which many pundits worry gives an impression of him being a “serial loser” among the Turkish public.
Another variable that the opposition must deal with is Türkiye’s “third party”-- the leftist People’s Democratic Party (abbreviated in Turkish as the HDP). While the party holds leftist views that run anathema to the sensibilities of many, the real reason it is a “hot potato” for Türkiye’s opposition is that it is the party for Kurdish citizens of Türkiye. The HDP is the only major party in Türkiye to reject Turkish nationalism and call for pluralism, a rejection of the traditional Kemalism of the left and the Islamism of the right. Erdoğan, for his own part, has accused the party of having ties to the banned Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), an organization that has used armed struggle and terror attacks in the past to advance the cause of Kurdish independence. While the HDP is conscious of its own role in Turkish politics and has decided not to formally endorse Kılıçdaroğlu, their decisions not to nominate a presidential candidate of their own, and to limit their attacks to Erdoğan, have created an implicit endorsement which Erdoğan will try to exploit to brand his opponent as an anti-national terrorist sympathizer.
Prediction
With all that being said, the unity of the opposition and the multiple challenges that Erdoğan has been dealing with have given the opposition a stronger start in polling, which currently seems to suggest that Kılıçdaroğlu may win in the first round outright. However, with the previous inaccuracy of Turkish polling and the ties between media companies and the government, it’s questionable whether these numbers ought to be taken at face value. Therefore, the most likely outcome is that the first round will be tight, with small third-party candidates limiting both Erdoğan and Kılıçdaroğlu to under 50%, forcing another round.