A Watershed Moment For Turkey

With Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections now set for May 14th—a month earlier than originally planned—who will effectively challenge Erdogan? We will find out in February when the six-party opposition alliance announces its candidate. But the alliance has already said it would unveil a proposal to completely reverse the executive presidential system Erdogan put in place to give the president more power. They will seek to transition back to a parliamentary system. 

The opposition alliance, led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP), will be challenging the AKP, Erdogan’s party, which is allied with the far-right MHP (Nationalist Movement Party). 

These elections are widely viewed as the last chance to keep Turkey from descending into an authoritarian regime under Erdogan. If he wins these elections, he has a strong chance of solidifying that much power. 

This is not an authoritarian regime—yet. It’s tempting to say it is because Erdogan has been arresting critics and sidelining opposition at will as we get closer to elections. But elections are still competitive, even if they will not be completely fair. Erdogan’s victory is not assured. 

The economy is a key issue, which is also why Erdogan is rolling out a number of measures ahead of May 14 that are decidedly populist. 

But the Kurdish question is also at play here. The Kurdish vote could be a big boost for the opposition alliance if they can convince those voters that they’re on the right side of history here. Sadly, though, they do not appear to be. In fact, the opposition CHP seems to be trying to compete with Erdogan on the same level by playing the nationalism card with respect to the PKK and Syria. They, too, would go to war with the PKK. That means that at this moment in time, the opposition and Erdogan’s AKP diverge most strongly along economic lines, with big money increasingly souring on Erdogan—but not enough, in our opinion. Additionally, Erdogan’s recent populist moves designed to win votes ahead of elections are helping.

Most notably, those populist moves include a draft law that would allow individuals and business entities to restructure debt to public institutions as Erdogan continues to try to make friends by dangling all kinds of carrots in front of small- and medium-sized businesses. This would follow other populist moves, such as the minimum wage hikes and pension hikes, along with getting rid of the minimum age requirement for retirement. 

It’s an important election on a global level. Erdogan’s nationalist, empire-building ambitions have given him more power than many would like to see, even if some of those are benefitting from his “mediation” (for major rewards) on various intense playing fields, not the least of which is Russia and Ukraine. The Turkish leader has won a significant amount of political capital over the past couple of years. Now, he’s coming to collect. He wants a piece of the Mediterranean oil and gas pie. He wants to be the key energy hub for Europe, and all the power that comes along with that (watch the deal he struck to allow Bulgaria to use Turkey’s ports for LNG). 

And then we have NATO, of which Turkey is a member. There are now, of course, rumblings from some circles that Turkey should be booted from the military alliance for its refusal to approve Sweden’s accession. Erdogan knows Turkey will not be booted from NATO, which would make the Kremlin very happy. But it will hold up an F16 deal for Turkey. Right now, blocking Sweden’s NATO bid plays into Erdogan’s election campaigning on nationalism (the argument is that Sweden is sheltering wanted Kurds). And the far-right in Europe is happy to take advantage of this situation to stir things up further and score points. To wit, a Danish far-right leader burned a Koran in front of the Turkish Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden, all but ensuring that Turkey would block Sweden’s NATO bid. But Erdogan is really saying that he can block NATO’s expansion and nothing will be done about it.