Global Courant 2023-05-29 08:39:46
Recep Tayyip Erdogan will remain president of Turkey for another five years after winning the second round of the election against his old rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, on Sunday. If he serves the full five-year term, he will have been in power for 26 years – almost all of Turkey’s history in the 21st century.
What is amazing is how the majority of the Turkish people elected Erdogan despite a deteriorating economy and now chronic hyperinflation that would likely bring down any government in a democratic country.
So how did Erdogan win the election and, more importantly, what is likely to happen in the country in the near future?
Free but far from fair
The elections were free because political parties could nominate candidates and campaign themselves. Parties also had the right to have representatives at each polling station to ensure that votes were counted correctly. And voters were free to vote.
However, the election was far from fair.
First there was a potential leading rival in the race, Ekrem Imamoglu convicted in December to more than two years in prison on charges of “insulting public figures”.
Imamoglu, the popular mayor of Istanbul, treated Erdogan’s party a rarity defeat in the 2019 Istanbul elections. Polls had shown that he could easily beat Erdogan in the presidential election.
Some to argue the court ruling was politically motivated. With Imamoglu out of the picture, the opposition had to rally behind Kilicdaroglu, the weakest of all possible high-profile candidates.
Erdogan also has an almost ubiquitous grip on the Turkish mediadesigned by Fahrettin Altun, the head of media and communications at the presidential palace.
Turkish media is either directly owned by Erdogan’s relatives, such as the popular Sabah newspaper run by Sedat Albayrak, or controlled by editors-in-chief appointed and controlled by Altun. Some independent internet news sites such as T24 apply self-censorship to remain operational.
With this massive media control, Erdogan and his men ensured that he had power the most television airtime. Erdogan was portrayed in the media as a world leader who moves Turkey forward by building airports, roads and bridges. He was put on TV in front of dozens of journalists, but all the questions were prepared in advance and Erdogan read his answers through a prompter.
Altun also organized a massive smear campaign against Kilicdaroglu. The opposition leader receive minimum airtimeand when he was in the media, he was portrayed as an inept leader unfit to rule the country.
Altun not only controlled the conventional TV channels and print media, but also social media. On Twitter, a highly influential platform in Turkey, Altun used bots and an army of paid trolls and influencers to control the dialogue.
And it worked. Sufficient numbers of voters were affected by confusion and fear that the country would be much worse if Kilicdaroglu was elected.
Finally, there was the possibility of fraud due to the opaque way in which the election results are processed. Once each ballot box has been counted, the ballot paper and list of results are transported to the Election Commission by the police in cities and the military in regional areas. Both the police and the military are under strict control of Erdogan.
The results are then reported only through the state-owned Anadolu Agency, while in the past they were reported by multiple independent agencies.
Even if no evidence of fraud emerges in this election, its specter could call into question the integrity of the entire electoral process.
Unwavering support from religious voters
There are two other factors that were decisive in the election.
The first is the support Erdogan received from Sinan Ogan, who finished third in the first round of the presidential election two weeks ago, with 5.2% of the vote. Erdogan convinced Ogan to lend his support to him.
The second and most important factor was the way Erdogan was viewed in an almost mythical way by conservative and religious voters. To them he is a religious hero and savior.
The religious population in Turkey has long been persecuted in the name of secularism.
To them, Kilicdaroglu and his Republican People’s Party symbolized that persecution. Although Kilicdaroglu renounced the party’s previous strict secular policies, these voters never forgave her for preventing Muslim women from wearing headscarves in educational and state institutions and for keeping religion out of public life and politics for decades.
Turkey’s conservative and religious right see Erdogan as a world leader and a hero who fought against evil intentions, both internal and external, to make Turkey great again.
What is likely after the election?
Turkey urgently needed a change of government and a breath of fresh air. Now the social, political and economic strangulation threatens to get worse.
Erdogan had promised a Turkish revival by 2023, which the 100th anniversary of the founding of the republic. Turkey would be in the top 10 economies in the world by then. However, Turkey is barely in the top 20, ranking 19th.
The economy has experienced a sharp downturn in the past three years. The The Turkish lira has plummeted in value, leading to a dollar-based economy.
But dollars are hard to come by. The Turkish central bank kept the economy going by drawing on its reserves for the elections in recent months. The Central Bank has been with a current account deficit from US$8 billion to $10 billion per month, and its reserves last week fell into the negative for the first time since 2002.
Now Erdogan has to find money. He will resort to high-interest foreign loans and embark on a diplomatic tour of the oil-rich Muslim countries to get some of their money to Turkey. Uncertainty about how successful these efforts will be and their likely short-term gains could push the Turkish economy into recession.
For the people of Turkey, this could mean massive unemployment and a higher cost of living. The the inflation rate had reached a 24-year high of 85.5% last year, and perhaps even higher as the tight government continues to print digital money to pay its large bureaucratic workforce.
On foreign policy, Erdogan will continue to strive to become a regional power independent of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the European Union and the US. He will probably continue to do so strengthen ties with Turkey with Russian President Vladimir Putin, which has been a source of concern for Turkey’s Western allies.
What does the future bring?
According to the Turkish constitution, this will be Erdogan’s absolute last term in office, and it may be shortened.
The 69-year-old president has many health problems. He is becoming physically weaker, finds it difficult to walk, and his speech is often abusive. In the years to come, his health may deteriorate and he may have to hand over his presidency to a trusted deputy.
The other possibility is that potential leaders in his Justice and Development Party (AKP) could decide to stage a party coup to overthrow Erdogan before his term expires so that they can gain public support ahead of the 2028 presidential election.
While there may be some political stability in post-election Turkey for the time being, the country will be in economic, social and political turmoil for the foreseeable future.
Mehmet Ozalp is an associate professor of Islamic Studies, director of The Center for Islamic Studies and Civilization, and executive member of Public and Contextual Theology at Charles Sturt University in Australia.
This article has been republished from The conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Similar:
Loading…
