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The master of the game in Ankara

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The evening of June 7, 2015 – election day – must have been one of the worst nights in Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s political life. The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which he had led until August 2014, lost its majority in Parliament, shattering his dream of introducing a Presidential system in Turkey. However, in the aftermath of the June elections, Mr. Erdoğan managed to reverse the electorate’s verdict. Fully exploiting the prerogatives of his office and his considerable influence over his former party, he blocked attempts to form a coalition government. Through a series of smart strategic moves and taking advantage of the ineptitude and disarray of the opposition parties, he succeeded in forcing a repeat election on the country.

Maurice Flesier_CC BY-SA 4.0In a carefully crafted electoral campaign that ran parallel to that of Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu’s, Erdoğan avoided overexposure but consistently vouched for the AKP without explicitly mentioning its name. He shifted the focus away from his aim to establish a Presidential system, emphasizing instead the importance of safeguarding Turkey’s domestic stability. In fact, the AKP propaganda machine systematically pushed the message that by denying the Party enough seats to rule by itself, the electorate would open Pandora’s box.

Chaos, they claimed, would ensue and the economic and political progress achieved during the 13-year reign of the AKP would be jeopardised. The strategy was successful: the AKP’s middle class electoral base, which owes its current prosperity to the AKP’s economic policies responded to the threat of an economic slowdown by closing ranks behind the party.

Most importantly though, the warning that chaos would result from an uncertain electoral outcome proved all the more effective against the background of a wave of terrorism, military responses and suicide bombings. The government abandoned its previous overtures to the Kurds and set itself on a collision course with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). For its part, the PKK responded by escalating violence. The prospect of an impending civil war was hugely worrying to the public. The violence peaked when, on 10 October, a pro-peace and democracy rally in Ankara became the scene of the worst terrorist attack in Turkish history.

Two suicide bombers associated with the so-called Islamic State (IS) took the lives of 102 citizens, most of whom were supporters of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), a pro-Kurdish Party. The government used this atrocity to claim that the attack had been a joint PKK and IS plot, and that Turkey was besieged by terrorist organisations.

The argument that the PKK and IS collaborated in carrying out the massacre, although not based on any evidence, struck a chord with the general public. The PKK’s escalation of violence in the summer had hardened the nationalist core of Turkish conservatism. The PKK’s violence also alienated the mostly conservative middle class Kurds that defected from the AKP in the June elections and supported the HDP. The election results show that the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and HDP both lost millions of voters to AKP.

The AKP’s strategy of fomenting fear among voters was compounded by a systematic campaign of verbal and physical attacks against independent media. The building of the country’s most important newspaper Hürriyet was attacked twice in three days by AKP-affiliated thugs, led in one instance by an AKP member of parliament. The newspaper’s most popular columnist was assaulted in front of his apartment building and his ribs were broken.

The judiciary increasingly worked as an extension of the executive and acted in line with the President’s wishes. Four days prior to the elections, a conglomerate affiliated with Mr. Erdoğan’s nemesis, the Gülen movement (that also owns a media group), was taken over by the government in the context of an ongoing investigation. It is highly likely that the arrests of individuals within the police and the judiciary and the attacks against entities associated with the Gülen movement will continue unabated.

It was under these conditions that on November 1, on the 93d anniversary of the abolition of the Ottoman Sultanate, in an election that was clean but held under extremely unfair conditions that the ruling AKP won nearly 50 percent of the vote securing a comfortable majority in Parliament. However, the AKP’s 317 seats do not provide the necessary majority to change the Constitution. Nonetheless the issue of constitutional reform to establish a Presidential system is very much back on the agenda.

A lot depends on what the PKK will do and whether or not the government will allow the jailed leader of the organisation, Abdullah Öcalan, to communicate with representatives of the HDP. Mr. Öcalan may be amenable to a deal and encourage the HDP to cooperate with the AKP on constitutional reform. Alternatively, it would not be too difficult to lure some deputies from the sinking MHP to AKP and reach the 330 threshold that is necessary to change the constitution in Parliament and put reforms to a referendum.

Although nominally Mr. Davutoğlu won the elections, it is clear that the real figure behind the victory is Mr. Erdoğan. He dominates the political space and the agenda. He inspires awe and fear. So far, his policies of polarisation and intimidation have worked and rallied almost half the public behind him. He is unchallenged as a political leader. The two major opposition parties, the MHP and the Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP), are badly beaten and face a period of internal turmoil.

Based on his past performance, one can assume that Mr. Erdoğan will probably continue consolidating his rule and build an illiberal political system where the AKP is predominant, particularly if he manages to introduce a Presidential system. He is also certain that the Europeans, motivated by the pressing need to stem the flow of refugees through Turkey, will happily do business with him. However, the AKP’s victory has not eliminated any of the structural economic and political problems that Turkey must confront while at the same time facing an increasingly destabilised regional strategic context.

Soli Özel is Lecturer at Kadir Has University.

 

 

 

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