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Journalism of Courage
In the 100th year of its republic and the 20th year of its strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan being in power, Turkey will go to polls this Sunday (May 14). Elections in this country, located in both Europe and Asia, are being watched across the world, because who governs Turkey has wider geopolitical ramifications, and because Erdogan for the first time looks vincible.
Opinion polls have given the Opposition camp a slight lead over the President. Yet, Erdogan the season campaigner, with the might of the state’s resources and the media behind him, cannot be written off.
Turkey’s roughly 600 million voters will vote to elect both their President as well as members of Parliament.
The President is elected in direct voting and the candidate to cross the 50%-mark will win. If no candidate reaches that figure, there will be a runoff election on the second Sunday after the first vote. In the runoff, only the top two candidates of the first ballot will contest, and the one with more votes will become President.
Election to the 600-member Parliament, or Grand National Assembly, is through proportional representation, where people vote for parties rather than individual candidates. The seats a party gets is proportional to the votes cast in its favour. To enter Parliament, a party needs to win 7% of the vote, or be a constituent of an alliance that does.
Thanks to sweeping changes introduced by Erdogan in his last term, Turkey now is a Presidential rather than Parliamentary democracy, and the post of Prime Minister has been abolished.
What are the main issues in the election?
The elections are being seen as a referendum on two crucial aspects of Erdogan’s rule — his handling of the economy, and his steering away of the modern Turkish state from its secular, democratic foundations.
Turkey’s economy is in trouble. Inflation is around 50%, down from the high of 85% in 2022. The currency, lira, has shed 80% of its value in the past five years. The recent devastating earthquake has worsened matters. Part of the inflation troubles have to do with Erdogan refusing to raise interest rates on loans, and the country’s central bank not standing up to him. And while Erdogan’s image of a strong leader in full control has helped him, it now concentrates responsibility on him for his government’s perceived delay in earthquake relief, and for the flouting of construction rules that exacerbated the earthquake damage.
On the second major issue, of Turkey’s slide into authoritarianism, opinion remains sharply divided. Erdogan says those who cry democracy is dying are an elite minority who worship the West, while he wants to take Turkey and patriotic Turks to greater heights. His loyal constituency of rural, middle-class Muslims have so far agreed. However, discontent against his grandstanding, divisive, and incendiary rhetoric seems to be growing.
Recep Erdogan, incumbent President
Towering over the election is of course Recep Erdogan (69), and his Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi or AKP). In his 20-year-rule, Erdogan has Islamicised the fiercely secular republic founded by Kemal Ataturk.
Ataturk, a celebrated military commander and statesman, had shaped modern Turkey majorly through the force of his own personality and popularity, forbidding overt display of religion, giving women equal civil and political rights, and turning the Ottoman Sultanate into a democracy. Though he died in 1938, Ataturk remains the tallest leader Turkey has ever produced. Many believe Erdogan, charismatic and popular, seeks to supplant him.
A significant factor that catapulted the humble-born Erdogan to power was discontent against the stringent secularism ‘Kemalism’ enforced in Turkey. Erdogan won popularity in the rural, Anatolian Turkey, which had long felt it had nothing in common with the urban elite, and wanted the right to practise its religion more publicly (wearing the hijab in public institutions was banned in Turkey, something Erdogan overturned). In his initial years, he even courted the Kurdish minority, promising them greater freedom of cultural and identity expression.
But along with stoking identity sentiments, Erdogan also brought in economic well-being through welfare schemes and massive infrastructure building, improving the lives of the poor and the middle classes.
That was the first decade of his rule. His later years have been characterised by economic mishandling and allegations of cronyism on one hand, and a brutal crackdown on dissenters, the press, and minorities on the other. Kurdish political leaders have been imprisoned and prosecuted over alleged links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party or PKK, which uses terror attacks to further its aim of a Kurdish homeland.
A failed coup in 2016, allegedly by Islamist hardliners, spurred on his concentration of power. In 2017, through a narrow referendum, he secured for the President sweeping executive powers, such as appointing cabinet ministers, civil servants, etc.
In the current election, he is the candidate of the People’s Alliance, a coalition of his AKP and several smaller, right-wing parties. He has told voters the West is ganging up to defeat him because of his ‘Turkey first’ agenda.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of ‘Table of six’
Kemal Kilicdaroglu (75) is the chairman of Turkey’s main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi or CHP in Turkish), which was founded by Ataturk. A retired civil servant, he has emerged as Erdogan’s primary challenger after six Opposition parties, known as the ‘Table of Six’, chose him as their joint candidate.
The mild-mannered Kilicdaroglu — called “Gandhi Kemal” by the Turkish media due to his apparent physical resemblance to Mahatma Gandhi — has positioned himself as the contrast to the blustering President, making campaign videos from his kitchen and talking about everyday issues, as opposed to the international conspiracies the President speaks of.
His selection as Opposition candidate had seen hiccups, as many felt he was not charismatic enough to take on Erdogan. The CHP under him has seen numerous electoral defeats to AKP, although a high point came in 2019, when its candidates won mayoral elections in five out of Turkey’s six largest provinces, including capital Ankara and the key city of Istanbul (of which Erdogan had been mayor once).
The mayors of the two cities, Ekrem İmamoğlu of Istanbul and Mansur Yavaş of Ankara, had been in the running for joint Opposition face.
Kilicdaroglu and his allies have promised a crackdown on corruption, controlling inflation, going back to a Parliamentary democracy, and coming up with a plan to resettle refugees back in Syria. Their slogan is, “I promise, spring will come again”.
The other five parties in this alliance are the Kemalist The Good Party, the conservative Islamist Felicity Party, the now-rather-insignificant Democrat Party, and the Future Party and the Democracy and Progress Party, both founded by estranged Erdogan aides.
The alliance has the support of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). But the HDP doesn’t have a formal seat on the Table of Six over its alleged links to the PKK.
Turkey matters to the world, thanks both to its location and its status as a significant economic and military power. Turkey shares a border with Syria and Iran, is separated from Russia and Ukraine by the Black Sea, and is surrounded by the Mediterranean Sea and the Aegean Sea. It controls the Bosphorus strait, which is the only passage for Russia and Ukraine, among other countries, to access the Mediterranean Sea and thus most of the world through water.
For India, it is an important trading partner.
Turkey has territories in both Asia and Europe, making it unique. It is a NATO member with a standing Army second only to America’s, but Erdogan is pally with Russian President Vladimir Putin. For the West, Turkey is a bulwark between itself and the chaos in the Middle East — absorbing refugees and serving as military base when needed — as well as an ally on account of being a stable democracy in an unstable region.
Under Erdogan, democracy is sliding and ties with the US and the European Union are fraying. However, he still remains a key partner, with the Russia-Ukraine war and his access to Putin bolstering his clout. If Erdogan survives this scare and comes back to power, he is likely to double down on his authoritarianism, widening the differences with the West. In Asia, Turkey is likely to vie for greater leadership of the Muslim world, further destabilising the restive region.
The Opposition has said they will work harder to secure membership of the European Union. Kilicdaroglu has promised a more sober foreign policy, and in an article in The Economist, to “restore Turkey’s Western orientation”.
