The citizens of Turkiye went to the polling stations on Sunday, 14 May 2023, in what were predicted to be tightly-contested presidential and parliamentary elections. Early results in the presidential contest proved inconclusive, leading to talk of a head-to-head vote two weeks later. A candidate must secure more than 50 per cent of the vote to be confirmed as president, failing which a run-off vote hopefully decides the winner. On the same day, occupancy of the 600-seat Grand National Assembly was also being decided through a system of proportional representation. Whatever the eventual outcome of the presidential contest, it would seem that the reputation of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkiye’s leader over the past two decades, has been somewhat dented by events in recent years.
The elections are being contested by 32 parties, many of which have coalesced to form alliances of like-minded political parties for electoral purposes. The main challenge to Erdogan’s authoritarian leadership comes from the six-party Nation Alliance or Table of Six, headed by Kemal Kiliҫdaroğlu , the 74-year-old leader of the centre-left Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi (CHP)-the Republican People’s Party. This alliance proposes to dispense with the executive presidency, as well as strengthening parliamentary democracy, restoring the independence of the judiciary, central bank, and media, returning Syrian refugees, and courting relations with the West.
It seems an opportune moment to reappraise Erdogan’s time in power as a conservative, nationalist, and religious leader, even as it seems possible that he may yet secure a third term as president of Turkiye.
Erdogan was born in Istanbul in 1954, the only child of a migrant from the conservative town of Rize on the eastern Black Sea coast in northeast Anatolia. His father rose to become a ferryboat captain on the Bosporus. Erdogan was raised in the tough working-class neighbourhood of Kasimpasa, which forms part of the Beyoğlu district of European Istanbul, lying along the northern shore of the Golden Horn estuary. He attended an Imam Hatip school, one of many religious schools set up to provide Islamic education in place of the defunct traditional madrassas, where he became involved in right-wing politics. Erdogan topped his education with a year in a secular public school, followed by a stint at the Aksaray Business and Management School in Istanbul.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan made his name as Mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998, until he was forced to step down after allegedly inciting religious hatred when he recited an Islamist poem at a rally. His conviction resulted in a four-month and ten-day-long stint in prison between March and July 1999. Upon returning to civilian life, he set up the conservative-democratic Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (AKP), better known abroad as the Justice and Development Party, in August 2001. His newly-formed party soared to success, winning 34.4 per cent of the vote in the parliamentary elections of November 2002, which made it the largest party in parliament. Erdogan himself was only able to stand for parliament in March 2003, after the lifting of his ban from politics dating back to his 1998 conviction. He first became prime minister on 14 March, and went on to win two further general elections in 2007 and 2011. He then became the first directly elected president in 2014, displaying growing authoritarian tendencies. A failed military coup on 5 July 2016 was followed by a purge of high-ranking military officers and judges. A constitutional referendum the following war created a powerful executive presidency, suiting Erdogan’s needs. In July 2018, Turkiye adopted a presidential system, and the role of prime minister was abolished.
Erdogan’s time in office has been marked by a transition from the secular democracy of Kemal Ataturk to an increasingly Islamic state. In 2012, the “4-4-4” educational reform plan mandated four years each of primary, middle, and secondary education, including compulsory Islamic education at middle- and high-school levels. The following year, Erdogan lifted a ban on hijab-wearing by women public sector employees and university students, thereby overturning one of the basic tenets of Ataturk’s Turkish state. In 2020, Erdogan even reconverted Hagia Sophia in Istanbul back into a working mosque, defying Ataturk’s conversion of the former Orthodox Cathedral turned mosque into a museum.
Voters are most concerned by the ailing Turkish economy, the government’s response to the recent earthquakes, the balance between Islamic values and Turkiye’s traditional secularism, the future of the 3.7 million Syrian refugees, and the role of democratic political institutions, while unresolved issues with minorities such as the Kurds, Alevis, and religious factions such as the Gulenites (followers of exiled preacher) Fethullah Gulen) continue to feature in the background. Inflation reached a 24-year-high in 2022, when the consumer price inflation rate soared to 85.51 per cent, while the Turkish lira lost 80 per cent of its value against the US dollar over five years. Erdogan’s unorthodox response to double-digit inflation entailed keeping interest rates low, even as three central bank governors were dismissed in less than four years. His fetish for economic growth and aversion to high interest rates overheated the Turkish economy, leading to high inflation and a cost-of-living crisis.
Erdogan’s image has particularly suffered from his government’s response to two massive earthquakes in south-eastern Turkiye on 6 February 2023, which led to the declaration of a state of emergency in the ten most-affected provinces. It appears that weak enforcement of building regulations and flawed housing developments led to a paucity of earthquake-resistant buildings able to withstand the latest disaster in an earthquake-prone region.
Turkiye has the longest coastline of any Mediterranean country. Turkiye’s mavi vatan (blue homeland) strategy promotes Turkish naval supremacy in the Eastern Mediterranean, where it disputes ownership of the continental shelf and territorial waters with Greece and Cyprus, as it seeks to protect natural gas reserves, and demands demilitarisation of Greece’s eastern Aegean islands and islets, some of which reach up to within three miles of the Turkish mainland. Erdogan’s expansionary desires have been described as combining elements of pan-Turkism (or Pan-Turanism), which considers Turkic language speakers across Asia and Europe to share common origins from the area known as Turan in the Central Asian steppes, thus forming part of a single nation, and of Neo-Ottomanism, which evokes memories of the Ottoman Empire as a central power in Eurasia.
Erdogan has displayed adept political brinkmanship in the face of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Turkiye, a NATO member, has defied economic sanctions imposed on Russia by Western powers and continued to trade arms with that nation, while also providing arms to Ukraine and facilitating the resumption of Ukrainian wheat exports. Russia remains the largest supplier of energy to Turkiye, and most recently, in April 2013, opened Turkey’s first nuclear plant-the Akkuyu plant in Mersin province. Russian oligarchs have found sanctuary and chosen to invest their considerable wealth in Turkiye, which also remains a popular destination for ordinary Russian tourists.
The elections will eventually be decided, one way or another. Either way, Turkiye remains a deeply polarised nation, in which conflicting Islamic and secular values are on a collision course. Erdogan remains popular among conservatives and religious Turks, especially in the Anatolian heartlands, and his expansionary policies and ambitious infrastructure projects have proved vote-winners up to now. Turkiye’s considerable geopolitical importance will ensure it stays in the spotlight for international politicians, defence strategists, political analysts, and many others grappling with the messy political agendas of today.
Ashis Banerjee
Istanbul: A Tale of Three Cities