Turkish elections
A quick review of what the results mean for what and who
The second round of the Turkish presidential election is complete, returning Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for another term, after a 52-48 win against the opposition candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. Against the backdrop of an economic crisis, earthquake reconstruction efforts, and nationalist rhetoric aimed at the Turkish hosting of refugees, the expression ‘election fever’ has seldom felt so apt and most now hope for the fever to pass. There is too much to say, and so I am keeping it deliberately brief.
The AKP and Erdoğan
Many in this result will depict Turkish voters staring a crisis in the face and yet voting for a continuation of that which brought them to crisis. The truth is probably a different matter.
The idea of political continuity in a time of obvious turbulence makes intuitive sense. It is fanciful to suggest that undoing two decades of AKP policy would be an easy affair, and you can well make the case for a wisdom-of-crowds that says now isn’t the time. That the AKP actively built a reputation for delivering infrastructure and welfare during that period, while the CHP reputation until very recently has been that of an out-of-touch elite, makes an economic crisis an unlikely moment in which to choose to turn this significantly powerful ship around in an instant.
It is probably a feature of increasing global media and social media that many Westerners now have a casual and passing interest in Turkish elections, in ways they wouldn’t have had a few decades ago. As such the currency crisis and earthquake devastation are easily made to appear (something partisans are only too glad to help in) as unique evidences of AKP failure. It can’t be said enough how ahistorical this is, and even Turkish millennials will - sadly - have an awareness of the 1999 earthquake in the Gulf of Izmit, and the early millennium rationalisation of the currency that required the removal of six zeros.
This isn’t to suggest that the country hasn’t or shouldn’t aspire to move forward, but memories of these events are firmly lodged in the public mind in ways that mean voters don’t associate them as uniquely AKP problems. One would not want to tempt fate, but there is a good chance that the currency will avoid the fate it did in its rationalisation two decades ago, which would arguably be read - contrary to Western projections - as an improved economic performance under the AKP. The Turkish economy has never done well in global economic crises, and people are aware of this.
It goes without saying that the recent earthquakes suggest that any such similar improvements were not delivered in construction standards and must be in the aftermath of February’s devastation.
Internal / external
We are in an unfortunate position where although inside Türkiye the population is exposed to too much propaganda in support of Erdoğan, Western populations are exposed to too much against him. This leaves both groups misunderstanding the situation, the other group, and an ensuing resentment that helps as much as any in the polarisation of the Turkish electorate. Given the Western history of anti-Turkish bias in perceptions of either Türkiye or the Ottomans, and given the ease with which Erdoğan will point towards anti-Turkish bias against the country to rally his support, there is a good case to be made that anti-Turkish bias in Western projections of Erdoğan help him more than they harm him, but this realisation or discipline is yet to drop.
The opposition
It is hard to analyse the opposition campaign because it was two campaigns. An impressive feat of unifying very divergent threads of Turkish politics, behind a positive message of national inclusivity, was abandoned after a failure to win outright in the first round. The following (thankfully shorter) campaign was ugly, divisive and nationalist, taking valid (and now mostly bipartisan) concerns about how to host the world’s largest refugee population, and presenting it with images and rhetoric full with fearmongering and frontiers.
Quite apart from its change of stance, the shift points to fundamental weaknesses in the Turkish opposition. This is particularly stark when compared to the confidence and message discipline of the AKP. Erdoğan was credibly able to suggest that the earlier positivity of the CHP campaign was merely political theatre, that the coalition did not know itself and could not be trusted.
It should go without saying that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who has never won an election in over a decade of trying, should now resign the CHP leadership. That he may not do so is a statement on internal party democracy at the CHP, and a sign that incumbency effects in Türkiye are strong, and responsible for keeping not only Erdoğan in place.
It is hard to pinpoint precise reasons for the CHP failure, and there will (and should be!) competing theories advanced for what went wrong. Things I noticed were as follows:
The campaign was clearly well-integrated with, and supported by, most major Western media outlets, which can always quite easily (though not necessarily) be read as a lack of attention on domestic opinion. The complete U-turn in CHP policy between rounds 1 and 2 also suggested a certain unseriousness in both their own policy but also their self-identity.
Although I felt the ‘Win in the first round’ messaging of the CHP was a clever device to rally turnout and optimism, intense disappointment at not actually doing so, despite the healthiest election showing against the AKP for years, suggest what had been a sincerely held view. Given the known resilience of the AKP vote, this seems now a fantastic failure of expectations management by CHP. The close, 52-48 split of the final result a suggestion that a period of intense demotivation and confusion after the failure to win in round 1 may have cost the Opposition dear.
As someone equally or more well-versed in US or UK politics than Turkish ones, it was noticeable to see familiar themes reproduced in the narration of events. We heard, after the failure of the opposition to win in Round 1, that the Turkish establishment was reeling. That the opinion polls had all suggested a victory for the opposition. What struck me as incredibly naive was the faith placed in opinion polls whereas most even half-serious political operators know to treat polls with heavy scepticism.
The idea of an establishment left ‘reeling’ also seemed strange, because the Turkish establishment, even if twenty years ago it might have been, is no longer those people and parties represented in the CHP or the Opposition. To be openly surprised at a failure to easily defeat so experienced a campaigner and political operator as Erdoğan suggests some level of delusion.
It may be a strange or inaccurate observation in my part, but in this I couldn’t help but detect airs of 2016, with Turkish commentators reproducing the US or British shock at the Brexit or Trump vote, but to describe a fundamentally different situation. When the opposition soon rushed to make right-wing nationalist, Sinan Oğan, a ‘kingmaker’, despite his securing only 5% and his supporters now having a choice to make, there seemed too a noticeable enthusiasm for kingmaker-making that again indicated an enthusiasm for political theatre above political strategy.
Syria
Despite the extent to which it has been shattered as a country, Syrian politics for now play a large but barely-mentioned role in Turkish politics. While the presence of millions of Syrian refugees is prominent in political debate, the interaction between this and what happens in Syrian politics is less so.
Here too, despite the greater tone of belligerence from the Opposition, there is every reason that Erdoğan would be the politician more trusted to deliver a return of Syrians. On the one hand a shaky Opposition alliance with no foreign policy grounding promises that all refugees will be returned; on the other, an AKP government with a track-record of resisting and negotiating with both Syria and their Russian sponsors commit to beginning repatriations. Again, and as with the economy, it is not hard to see why the AKP offer would be the more nuanced but more trusted.
Syria too will have played a part in Western foreign policy calculations within the election. While Western political establishments have an intense dislike of Erdoğan that says as much about their own prejudices as the man himself, Türkiye’s Syria policy on his watch - a willingness to resist Syria and Russia, and by extension Iran - is one of which the West heartily approves. While an understanding of Kılıçdaroğlu as sufficiently pro-Western (or perhaps impressionable) might have been a price worth paying for the loss of this Turkish policy, the Opposition’s talk of a pretty much immediate peace with the Assad government in Damascus would certainly have caused some raised eyebrows in Washington.
What happens next between Türkiye and Syria will also prove significant for Kurdish relations inside Türkiye. As the AKP and Assad look to restore some degree of ties, Turkish expectations will be for a greater place for Syrian Kurds inside a restored Syria, and a simultaneous commitment that Damascus curtail the ability of Kurdish militants in the PKK/YPG to operate against Türkiye. This, in turn, should hopefully create space for an improvement in Kurdish relations inside Türkiye, with less worry of cross-border militancy from the YPG.
Interest Rates
While Erdoğan is generally depicted as ruthless, his most abiding tendency is pragmatism. Nor has the Turkish interest rate policy since 2021 been as entirely dogmatic as has often been suggested from outside. At the end of last year, it had been stated that there would be no further rate cuts, that they were low enough, leaving Turkish interest rates at just under 10%. This policy was - somewhat understandably - reversed when the earthquakes struck, leaving economic devastation and the need for some support to the economy.
In recent months, Erdoğan had told Turkish voters they could trust interest rates would stay low with him. While some degree of political involvement, or rather social-economic concerns, should be a feature of interest rate-setting, it was a new and markedly overt turn to see them incorporated so directly with an election campaign. As Turkish currency reserves, and exchange rates, both now move lower, Erdoğan’s instinct for political expediency would suggest that some sort of intervention, most likely an interest rate increase, will come soon.
The Left
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), the most successful left-wing party of recent times in Türkiye, contested these elections partly under the banner of the Green Left Party (Yeşil Sol). While some of this was a necessity born of the unacceptable and ongoing process of state harassment against the pro-Kurdish HDP, in my view a permanent shift to Green Left would not be a welcome one.
It is my belief that a Peoples’ Democratic party-identity will always have a broader appeal than the often more niche values of being ‘green’ or being ‘left’. I also believe it unhelpful to ringfence the vital demands of greens and leftists into their own place in the political spectrum, as if thereby releasing other parties from sharing in these concerns.
Most crucially, the HDP across a decade built-up a great deal of name recognition and support outside of the majority-Kurdish and southeast regions where its organising originates. It would, in my view, be to risk a good deal of this progress, and the energy that built the party, to now set about the construction of a new party. Difficult as it is, those energies should instead be put to support of the HDP.
Democracy
It has felt like a constructive if unpleasant election period in Türkiye. Erdoğan and the AKP are hardworking campaigners with a well-drilled election machine. Even if many dislike much of what it stands for, and even if its leveraging of state apparatus should be decried, it is a democratic creation.
In the run-up to the first round, and even in their performance in it, the CHP-led Opposition showed greater ability than ever before in how to present a genuinely unifying message for all of the country. Kurdish voters turning-out to vote for the CHP, having once been an electoral force behind the rise of the AKP, is hopefully a sign that all votes in the country are now in-play, and contestable, for both major parties - a significant democratic step.
For all its organisation and enduring support, that the AKP is not able to win by a larger margin shows a significant part of the Turkish electorate does want change and will vote for it. How that trend will manifest once the AKP have to do without the trust, communication, and recognition that is carried to voters in Erdoğan himself, will be a defining issue in the coming years of Turkish democracy.
Forgive me, it was brief as I could manage.