The Turkish presidential elections seem not only to have demonstrated Erdo\u011fan’s invincibility, but also, once again, the chronic weakness of his opponents in not being able to convince and mobilize the masses to defend what is left of the democratic system. Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, who has dominated the Turkish political scene for two decades, has not only managed to maintain his majority in Parliament – in obtaining 320 seats out of a total of 600 – but has ended up revalidating his mandate after narrowly failing to surpass 50% of the votes in the first round. In a way, it is a repeat of the script of the April 2017 referendum, which granted Erdo\u011fan, by a narrow margin, extremely reinforced powers to design an autocratic system. Since then, the Turkish president has silenced the media, dismantled the rule of law and ended the practice of separation of powers, as he also controls key institutions, such as the Supreme Election Board, the Supreme Council of Radio and Television and the Directorate of Information Technologies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When it comes to the analysis of the results, Kemal K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu has won in all the provinces of the Mediterranean coast, including the city of Izmir, regions where his party has traditionally had a strong presence. K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu also appears to have won in Istanbul and in the capital, Ankara, so the saying “whoever rules in Istanbul rules in Turkey” is no longer valid. In the southeast of the country, in the areas affected by the earthquakes in February, Erdo\u011fan has gained strong support despite his initial poor government response and even won in provinces where his rival had prevailed in the first round. Unsurprisingly, further east, in the Kurdish-populated regions, K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu’s loose alliance with the pro-Kurdish Ye\u015fil Sol party has commanded a very favorable result for the opposition, while in central Anatolia, Erdo\u011fan has won a landslide victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The unpredictability of the electorate has proved to be higher than the forecasting capabilities of political science. Indeed, Erdo\u011fan’s victory raises a number of underlying questions: why this continuity in power? Why the severe economic crisis, with the Turkish currency at its lowest point, an inflation that reached 85% last November and that on average will hover around 42.5% this year, a central bank running out of foreign currency to meet the debt and a GDP that will not grow more than 3%, two points below the government’s forecasts, has not affected the vote? Why has the government’s more than questionable performance in the wake of last February’s earthquakes not changed the orientation of voters in the most affected areas, as would have been logical?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some ways, the key lies perhaps more in the weaknesses of the opposition than in the strength of the president. Indeed, opposition leader K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu is a political personality without importance who has found himself at the front of the united opposition coalition because the only one who could have defeated Erdo\u011fan, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem \u0130mamo\u011flu, fell out of the game because of a judiciary at the service of the president. Moreover, the coalition led by K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu is very heterogeneous and constituted as an anti-Erdo\u011fan group. Finally, the opposition leader was considered by many Turks as the candidate of the Americans and their European allies. President Joe Biden’s explicit support and K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu’s meeting with the U.S. ambassador in Ankara have ended up having a boomerang effect, as nine out of ten Turks have a negative opinion of the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, for many, Erdo\u011fan is still the champion of national identity and religious beliefs, and a defender of the neo-imperial ambitions of a country that has begun to consider itself once again as a great power. What is more, it plays simultaneously at all tables in the great international crises, starting with the war in Ukraine with the agreements obtained to guarantee grain exports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the same time, we cannot ignore the double game played by the majority of EU politicians with regard to Turkey. If during his twenty years in power, the Turkish president has been, on the one hand, criticized for his increasingly autocratic policy (some claim there are 40,000 political prisoners), the bad management of the economy or his role in the Syrian war, on the other hand, Erdo\u011fan’s stay in power has allowed EU leaders to evade the question of Turkey’s accession.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In this sense, the Turkish president has played a useful political role, as he has allowed the EU to rule out any serious negotiations with Ankara. While under Erdo\u011fan’s power Turkey has moved away from European values, the accession process has come to a complete halt. Right now, the idea of Turkey becoming a member of the European Union is no longer credible, because the country does not meet the Copenhagen criteria<\/a> that include guarantees on the rule of law, human rights and the protection of minorities, and are a sine qua non<\/em> condition for any country that wants to join the EU. On the other hand, the freezing of negotiations also allows a major sticking point to be set aside, namely the Cyprus dispute, the northern part of which Turkey occupies since 1974, and which Nicosia wants to resolve before allowing the establishment of closer ties between the EU and Ankara.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Thus, it seems that for the EU it is more positive to maintain a more transactional type of relationship with an authoritarian leader than a democratic Turkey that would pose much greater challenges, such as resuming the accession process of a country that has a significant contingent of economically disadvantaged and Muslim-majority population.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The day after the elections draws a Turkey where the electoral geography confirms the high support for Erdo\u011fan and his Islamist party in deep Anatolia, as well as a more pro-Western oppositionist profile in the coasts and the Kurdish area. In addition, the demands for modernization and liberalization have not yet found a leader who successfully represents them and able to overthrow the authoritarian and Islamist trend of the last twenty years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n These elections have consolidated Erdo\u011fan’s power, and the general picture of the different parties with parliamentary representation shows that Turkey is leaning towards an extreme right with a mix of Islamists and radical nationalists. In this context, it is foreseeable that accession talks will remain frozen, that the update of the 2016 migration pact<\/a> is highly unlikely, as well as that of the 1995 EU-Turkey customs union<\/a>. Moreover, bilateral disputes between Turkey and some EU members, such as Greece and Cyprus, also carry the risk of fueling tensions between Ankara and the entire bloc, while military tensions could be stoked, especially if Turkey resumes hydrocarbon exploration in disputed waters in the eastern Mediterranean. Not to mention Turkey’s increasingly active role in regional conflicts, such as the one between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabagh territory, or the blocking attitude towards Sweden’s accession to NATO.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, the year 2023 may go down in history as a decisive moment when Turkey turned eastward socio-politically, away from its secular, always vulnerable and western-oriented segments, especially women and youth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Photography: Abobe Stock.<\/sub><\/p>\n\n\n\n Luc\u00eda Fern\u00e1ndez, trainee student at the CETC, has participated in this issue of Diari de les idees<\/em>.<\/sub><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Turkish presidential elections seem not only to have demonstrated Erdo\u011fan’s invincibility, but also, once again, the chronic weakness of his opponents in not being able to convince and mobilize the masses to defend what is left of the democratic system. Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan, who has dominated the Turkish political scene for two decades, has not only managed to maintain his majority in Parliament – in obtaining 320 seats out of a total of 600 – but has ended up revalidating his mandate after narrowly failing to surpass 50% of the votes in the first round. In a way, it\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":63528,"template":"","category_newspaper":[563],"segment":[],"subject":[],"class_list":["post-63523","newspaper","type-newspaper","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category_newspaper-563"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n
\n\n\n\n