As President Erdoğan wins re-election and extends his rule to a third decade, Sevda Aksoy explores the underlying reasons and the expected consequences of his victory.

The re-election of Türkiye’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will continue to split Turkish society until his party achieves a hegemony in which freedom of expression, political dissent and pro-Western alignment will end. The result reflects a national divide between the liberal middle class and the groups empowered by the AKP – Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi) after 80 years of secular domination: the religious rich and aspirational middle class, and the historically impoverished working classes.

Tayyip is in a hurry: his rumoured health issues, age and long-fought quest to supplant the modern, secular, Westernised and neutral Turkey of the revered Atatürk with a modern, Islamic Türkiye again prominent on the world stage, will propel further turbulent change at home and abroad.

Why has Erdoğan prevailed in an apparently close-run contest this month? There are seven strong reasons:

weak opposition; control of the media; a decades-long decimation of opposition, perpetuating public fears; religious fervour and pride; the cult of the fatherly leader; collective memory of past turmoil; and nationalism.

Weak opposition

The National Alliance of six parties chose the rather uninspiring leader of the CHP, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi), Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as its Presidential candidate against the incumbent Erdoğan, the AKP/MHP alliance candidate, MHP being the far-right, Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi).  

Very public squabbling over the choice of candidate reminded voters of historic issues with coalitions. This Coalition placed the CHP, the former centre-left party of Ataturk’s heritage but tainted by historical corruption, chaos, and incompetence in previous, secular, governments of the 1970s and 1990s, in alliance with parties associated with right-wing nationalism, such as Meral Aksener’s Iyi (Good Party), and smaller parties led by former AKP dignitaries, ex-President Gül and ex-Prime Minister Davutoğlu. They shared increasingly nationalist rhetoric, illustrated by Kılıçdaroğlu’s latter speeches and endorsement by the far-right Zafer (Victory) party leader, Umit Özdağ. Ultimately this cost them votes from wary but formerly supportive Kurds who elected Green Left MPs.

Even if Kılıçdaroğlu had won, his mandate to effect change would be hamstrung by the CHP’s Parliamentary weakness and need of support from a disparate group of MPs across a stretched political spectrum, whose allegiance would be short-lived.  Die-hard CHP-supporting friends openly spoke of being resigned to another election within two years.

The National Alliance had general unity but not clearly explained policies on issues around inflation – currently easing from 100% – the erosion of civil rights, freedom of speech and the education system, frustration with political cronyism and catastrophic housebuilding under-regulation which contributed to over 50,000 deaths in the recent earthquake.  Ironically, the rise of the AKP, then under another banner, was partly a protest on all these fronts.  During the 1990s, centrist ‘secular’ parties were blamed for repression of religious expression, economic chaos, and the 1999 earthquake disaster in which over 17,000 died.

Massive support for a party whose governance failures are deemed responsible for a huge death toll seem incredible to outsiders. However, condemnation of government laxity in building standards and a belated rescue response came predominantly from opposition politicians and supporters, a mix of ‘secularist’ urban groups and locals with a propensity to vote for the Kurdish-oriented HDP derivative, the Green Left [Yeşil Sol].

Control of the media

Türkiye’s government-dominated media apportions blame to developers and a few local politicians, not the AKP leaders, nor their lucrative policy of amnesty for ignoring building regulations.

Ardent AKP supporters took Erdoğan’s lead in blaming ‘fate’ (Kizmet), and sympathising with the government response being over-stretched by the sheer scale of the disaster area.  

I visited my AKP activist neighbour to offer condolences for the loss of dozens of his extended family back in Karamanmaraş: within hours of the earthquake, he had been on the road, like hundreds of others across the country, trying to rescue, feed and bring away as many relatives as possible. His parents had fled the city to their home village only to find their two-storey retirement home collapsed, leaving them with tarpaulins for shelter for three weeks. His childhood neighbourhood was razed to the ground, he saw neighbours dying of injuries, cold and hunger, waiting for rescue teams, but he has only fatalistic sympathy for the AKP government. He told me: “People criticise them, but what could they do when help was needed over such an enormous area?”  

Answers were suggested by political opponents but ignored by most media: respond immediately, not after days; nor appear to treat AKP-administered areas more favourably; send some of the 775,000 armed forces, the third largest in NATO, with their medics, helicopters and experience to deliver tools, cranes and supplies.  

I asked dozens of Turks why I could never hear any TV news updates on the earthquake statistics, relief efforts or the fate of those bereaved or displaced. The government closed critical media outlets and tightly controls messaging.

A taxi driver summed it up: “Television belongs to Tayyip, thank God we have social media.”  Social media, however, are closely policed. A carpenter friend awaits his court case for passing on a non-violent but anti-government message last year:  police had been monitoring him for months.

Another interesting omission from mainstream media reports was the likely impact on the already troubled economy. The southeast disaster area was a major textile and manufacturing zone: factories and infrastructure have been wrecked, with high numbers of workers killed or displaced and too traumatised to return to Erdoğan’s promised new homes.

It is hard for Western observers to understand why this has not led to wholesale defeat for a party already mired in human rights controversies and drastic inflation levels.  The AKP briefly worried about the impact of catastrophe on their support, and considered postponing the elections as margins appeared to be polling very closely. The dispersal of millions affected by the earthquake disrupted voting in key provinces. Many voters lost their voter registration but the AKP has a well-oiled machine to get its supporters to the polls.

Internet conspiracy theories suggested Erdoğan would create an international incident or threat which required cancellation of the election. In the event, voting went ahead. AKP party votes may have taken a hit in the disaster region, but trust in Erdoğan remains high. He is seen as the only leader who can deal with the enormity of the challenge to rebuild. At the same time, he is used to playing the long game: if defeated, he could foment sufficient dissent to destabilise a coalition government and return in triumph.

Long-term destruction of the opposition

Erdoğan’s success has been carefully orchestrated. Years of vengeful political suppression have eliminated much effective dissent.Fear and compliance in domestic society is maintained in an Orwellian world of seven years of continued arrests of suspects deemed members of the Fethullah Gulen Terrorist Organisation (FETÖ).

Mass imprisonment of thousands of formerly powerful political opponents and military leaders, including erstwhile partners in the Gulen movement, critical civil servants, judges and teachers, has subdued political discourse.  Inconvenient election results are overturned with accusations of terrorism, as over 60 HDP mayors in eastern municipalities were replaced by AKP officials in 2019 and subsequently jailed by compliant courts.

Sentences are long and punitive. This campaign featured AKP politicians promising their supporters revenge and punishment – judicial and physical – for opponents. It is commendable that activists continue to oppose him in the consequent atmosphere of insecurity and fear.

Other strategies to entrench AKP support include re-drawing electoral boundaries to include more rural voters in city constituencies, alleged manipulation of voter turnout, and cutting funding to CHP-led cities.  For example, in Antalya, government funding for new transport links to the 2016 Expo was reallocated when the AKP governor was later defeated by the CHP, leaving the new administration with a huge budgetary challenge.

Religious fervour and pride is central to Erdoğan’s popularity

Erdoğan liberally funds the Diyanet (Directorate of Religious Affairs) to foster AKP support in mosques and religious schools at home and abroad, encouraging population growth, loyalty, and attendance at political rallies, with sermons, charity, and social welfare payments. His is an Islamic government with a mission to proselytise a conservative version of Muslim life. It should not be forgotten that half the population are equally Muslim but seek freedom of expression and personal choice in how they live, worship and vote.

The Diyanet has been instrumental in spreading Erdoğan’s vision abroad, setting up schools in Africa and mosques all over Europe. Overseas Turks overwhelmingly supported Erdoğan in the 2017 constitutional referendum, polling at some 70 -80% in Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, and the Netherlands. This figure may indicate societal failures in migrant integration. It is likely to fall as younger Turkish migrants support Kılıçdaroğlu.

There has been a surge in younger people leaving a restrictive Turkish regime. As a London café manager explained: “In the past, rural poor Turks and Kurds came to earn money as manual labourers; now the educated flee – doctors, engineers want to get out, to be free, even if they must give up their professions.”   Nevertheless, a majority for Erdoğan will turn out, based on larger numbers of older voters living abroad, but taking pride in asserting a Muslim Turkish identity and a government that ’stands up’ to Western powers.

The ‘father figure’

Erdoğan is a father figure to his supporters, much as Atatürk has been for all Turks in the past century. There is an historic association of Turkish national pride and support for a strongman leader prepared to enact change regardless of the cost to civil liberties – Ottoman Sultans, Atatürk and now Erdoğan.  While half the population now mourns the authoritarian clampdown on dissent and human rights, the other 50% sees the triumph of their identity and opportunities as pious Muslim Turks, over perceived secular repression.

Although many Turks openly suggested the earthquake death toll is grossly underestimated, they do so with fatalism and faith that their leader will continue his track record of achieving massive infrastructure projects, needed for reconstruction; as well as increasing state provision for the poor, both in terms of hospital and university access and raising the minimum wage and pensions; bringing them pride as Muslims and reasserting Türkiye’s profile on the world stage. Unbound faith in an autocrat providing infrastructure and nationalist identity while restricting civil rights, has parallels with Modi’s India today and even interwar Germany.

Memory of past turmoil

Additionally, Turks have painful memories of past regimes: most voters value the difference between the country’s unforgotten late 20^th century turmoil and its 21^st century economic development.  In the 1970s Turkey suffered 100% inflation, commercial stockpiling of basic foods and a bloody left-right faction-led quasi-civil war which culminated in another military intervention in 1980.

I recall this period vividly because my car, my neighbour’s son, and a guest, a trade union official returning from work, were all shot in separate incidents in 1979-80.  After a decade of repression and privatisation, the 1990’s saw new secular parties mired in deep state, military, and mafia corruption scandals under female PM Tansu Çiller; IMF-imposed economic strictures; USA interference; bank failures; devaluation; and political churn. This left the polity ripe for rejecting the secular ideal and also fed widespread anti-Americanism, especially after 2004’s invasion of Iraq.

Contrasting this, massive urbanisation and infrastructure-building programmes under Erdoğan have changed voting patterns. Friends and relatives switched from being dedicated CHP voters to AKP enthusiasts, still living a Westernised urban lifestyle but dismissive of an opposition they still associate with historic economic and political instability. The middle classes are desperate to protect their personal freedom, their family’s economic well-being and their children’s future from an autocratic regime, but they too are wary of alternative solutions to the current economic problems and suspicious of American influence in NATO.

Nationalism

This year, the National Alliance’s main uniting platform became nationalism, building on high levels of xenophobia. There are two longstanding targets of xenophobic prejudice: the Kurds and Syrian refugees; but there are also new targets of nationalist hostility arising from the Ukraine conflict.

The tragedy of the 100 years-old Kurdish situation is too complex to deal with adequately here. Suffice to say there is entrenched antipathy to Kurds heightened by ongoing warfare between the Turkish state and the PKK.

Kılıçdaroğlu is aware that, although the HDP Peoples’ Democratic Party (Halkların Demokratik Partisi,) has won elections in the southeast regions, many pious Kurds still support the AKP.  The pro-Kurdish YSP Green Left Party (Yeşil Sol Parti) considered supporting Kılıçdaroğlu for the presidency, but questions remained about how much that would benefit the Kurdish population or support a just peace process.

Anecdotally, a retired teacher friend and Turkish CHP supporter commented that a CHP government should release Selahattin Demirtaş, as an unfairly imprisoned pro-Kurdish HDP leader. The assembled ladies’ eyes popped above their coffee cups in shocked silence, before changing the subject to market prices.

A young, liberal, lawyer friend returned from military service as an officer in Diyarbakır, traumatised by months of seeing young men killed. Most army conscripts are drawn from poorer families, who cannot afford to buy them out of active service, often the same population that votes AKP.  Not all Kurds support pro-Kurdish parties; many, like my neighbour, identify as Muslims first and follow the AKP. They also appreciate the increased prosperity they have experienced since 2002. Despite his persecutions, only Erdoğan is seen to have the political clout to deal with this war.

The Syrian situation, in which Europe, the USA and Türkiye have all played self-interested parts, has seen refugees meet with hostility undiminished by having their plight worsened by the earthquake. The media and even friends spin urban myths about crimes by refugees, blaming thefts from damaged homes on the Syrians.

In a populist move, Kılıçdaroğlu has stoked this nationalist resentment, promising to send Syrians back as a priority. 

In Antalya, a sometime coastal bastion of CHP support, there is strong anti-Kurdish sentiment and hostility to Syrian refugees, regardless of the relative distance from the Kurdish homelands and the EU-subsidised camps. In the aftermath of the earthquake, hundreds of homeless Turkish families were housed temporarily in hotels in Antalya province under government initiatives. But their arrival outraged local middle class Turks, who feared additional pressure on resources and their Westernised way of life. Although the displaced have largely moved on to stay with relatives across the country, the resentment burns on.

The war in Ukraine has added a new level of xenophobia, particularly in the Antalya region, where thousands of Ukrainians have passed through and Russians have settled, previously inter-marrying but more recently avoiding Putin’s militarisation. Though tolerated as a predominant tourism clientele, the influx has seen local house prices and rents soar for Turkish workers.

The proportion of Russian residents on my former block in a nearby town has gone from 10% spousal presence to 50% outright Russian-speaking owners. Local resentment was epitomised by taxi drivers raging to me about ‘foreigners’, disregarding the fact that the entire region depends on ‘foreigners’ for jobs and prosperity in tourism as well as overseas markets for its vegetable production. When Putin banned Russians from travel to Turkey in 2016, in response to the Turkish downing of a Russian jet in 2015, there was widespread economic pain.

I watched AKP Foreign Minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu address a small crowd in Kemer, a tourist town within his Antalya constituency, popular with Russians. An elderly resident quibbled about recent demographic changes and his reply uncompromisingly highlighted benefits to the economy. He did not elaborate that as Foreign Minister, he has worked with Erdoğan to secure Russian agreement for grain supplies from Ukraine to the Third World, obtain cheap Russian natural gas for Turks this year, have the Russian-built Akkuyu nuclear power station completed and facilitate sanctions-busting Russian fund transfers. As Erdoğan recently stated in an interview: Türkiye has a ‘special relationship’ with Russia.

Finally, the presidential race was a battle between two kinds of rampant nationalism: the CHP supporters’ xenophobia against Kurds, Syrians, and other migrants, rich or poor, from the Middle East, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan and the Caucasus, and the AKP’s anti-Western sentiment stoked by Erdoğan’s rhetoric.

Anti-Americanism colours both forms of nationalism. My far-left-leaning neighbour, who knew Erdoğan at school, decries every act of USA foreign policy, and our MHP (right wing, ultra-nationalist)-supporting former caretaker, loathes USA protection of Syria’s Kurdish YPG, and wants to pulverise Kurds.  

Kılıçdaroğlu wanted closer relations with the West, but Turks across the political spectrum distrust both the USA and the EU. Although Türkiye has a beneficial Customs Union for its exports, some resent the delayed accession process and funding for housing Syrian refugees, and others resent criticism of human rights issues.

This antipathy has significance for the next few years of foreign policy by and towards Türkiye.

Aftermath

The consequences of Erdoğan’s victory will be drastic: more restrictions on human rights will follow.

AKP leading members already stated that they want to punish and imprison political opponents. There may be more elections but those alone do not sustain democracy: freedom of expression, an independent judiciary and media, and access to an enlightened education system are also necessary.

The economy will stagger on, with a foreign currency crisis following his unsustainable interest rate policy and national wage rises in persistently high inflation. Gulf investment – not the USA-dominated IMF – will be needed to refinance the country‘s debt and to rebuild infrastructure and housing in the earthquake zone. Production of cars and white goods for export will probably dip, hitting GDP, albeit temporarily. Tourism will continue to boom, switching to offer more winter holidays as global warming rises.  Gas and oil exploration will continue, in an effort to help moderate other economic issues, but, unaccountably, solar or wind power will lag behind despite the country having 300 days of sunshine and wide, open spaces for windmills.

Eventually, Syrian refugees will be sent home to face an uncertain future. Türkiye and Russia have supported opposing parties in the Syrian conflict. However, as Assad is now being rehabilitated in the Arab world, Türkiye will seize the opportunity to repatriate over 3 million Syrian refugees.

A ceasefire will be negotiated again with the PKK while Erdoğan’s position is secure.  It may not last.

More immediately, the war in Ukraine will be prolonged.  Türkiye will continue to bust sanctions and to obtain, and later pipe, lucrative Russian gas exports. It will hold off China, with the unaligned nations of India, Brazil, and the Third World, from putting UN pressure on Russia to desist from war.  Türkiye will also still sell drones to Ukraine. 

There are implications for NATO, as a confident and vengeful Erdoğan will continue to block Sweden’s membership. The disputed provision of F16 fighters by the USA to Türkiye may be interpreted asbeing prepared for delivery to Ukraine by the AKP-dominated media, and excuse more purchases from Russia to add to the D-400 missiles Türkiye already bought.

Right now, it is difficult to see how the West and a future Labour government will address this. They may continue the current ‘balanced’ or ‘blind-eye’ approach. Türkiye has been useful to both Russia and the West as a self-styled middleman, allowing the West to keep Türkiye in NATO to help defend the borders of democracy, despite regular instances of undercutting not only NATO partners and objectives but also the Western values NATO supposedly defends.

However, Türkiye has been far more useful to Russia, allowing sanctions-busting transactions from simple MIR system card purchases by Russian tourists to massive oil and gas payments. Türkiye will further support Russia’s economy and undercut Western sanctions because the leaders share autocratic policies: suppression of opposition, criticism and media analysis, cronyism/oligarchy, antipathy to liberal values and lifestyle choices, and intense nationalist rhetoric – but also because they benefit economically.

In pursuing a form of Neo-Ottomanism to raise Türkiye’s profile and power in the world, Erdoğan has led disagreements and diplomatic spats followed by rapprochements with Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Israel, Iran and Armenia. Türkiye has permanent squabbles with Greece, and sent armed incursions into Libya, Iraq and Syria. Erdoğan has been obliged to rebuild bridges with Saudi Arabia whilst retaining Qatar’s enormous financial interest. Türkiye has also made overtures to Israel after years of estrangement following the Mavi Marmara affair, and to Egypt after decrying the overthrow of President Morsi. 

Türkiye will vie with the Chinese by continuing to open up markets for Turkish manufacturers and investment in numerous African nations, and selling them weaponry. Exports reached some $34 billion last year.

After Erdoğan, his sons-in-law may continue his dynasty and policies, or there may be the social turmoil seen elsewhere in the Middle East when the strongman goes. While Erdoğan’s image will adorn every public building, as Atatürk’s portrait does to this day, he will eradicate the last vestiges of the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: secularism and the guiding principle of Yurtta sulh, cihanda sulh, Peace at home, Peace in the World.

Sevda Aksoyis a pseudonym.

Image: Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Source: http://kremlin.ru/events/president/news/62936. Author: Mikhail Klimentyev, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.