Turkey is a highly centralized country and local governments do not have much power. On the other hand, the political dimension of these elections was important – because it was a plebiscite that Erdoğan’s AKP lost with a turnout that, while not impressive for Turkey, objectively still remained high, says Adam Balcer, program director of the College of Eastern Europe.
Jakub Majmurek: How great is the scale of the defeat of the AKP, President Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party, in Turkey’s March 31 local elections?
Adam Balcer: It’s certainly a failure, but I wouldn’t call it a defeat. In 2015, the AKP won nearly 50 percent. votes in the general election. This year, looking at the results of provincial council elections, 32 percent. The decline is therefore very pronounced. This is the ACP’s weakest performance in its history. In 2002, when the party first came to power, it won, 34 percent. votes – then it was a completely different grouping, and has since changed decidedly for the worse.
In March of this year, the AKP lost as a party for the first time. The main opposition force, the center-left Republican Party (CHP), scored better. Nevertheless, Erdoğan’s formation won almost a third of the vote. In addition, 70 percent. The province ran jointly with the small, far-right National Action Party (MHP), which supports the president’s government in parliament. Without them, the AKP would not govern. Together with the MHP, the ACP has nearly 40 percent. endorsements. And that’s quite a lot, as they will probably run together in the next parliamentary elections. Summary: AKP received a very strong blow, she certainly wobbled after it, but she is not lying on the boards yet.
How deeply has the opposition “bitten” into areas previously controlled by the AKP?
The Justice and Development Party, for example, lost the country’s fourth city, Bursa, where, together with the suburbs, the country’s approx. 3 million people, previously seen as conservative and traditional. It has also lost several medium-sized cities – with populations of 300,000 to 700,000 – which it had previously portrayed as the “real Turkey.”
In Turkey we have a similar division as in Poland? Areas outside major cities vote for the right-wing populist AKP, and cities vote for the opposition?
In Turkey, it looks a little different. In the southeast of the country, Kurdish parties have traditionally scored well. The CHP had the strongest support on the Mediterranean and Aegean coasts, in such centers as Adana, Antalya, Izmir and Mersin. In 2019, it captured the capital, Ankara, and Istanbul – a city that, with its suburbs, has a population of 15 million, more than many EU countries.
This year, the AKP lost several near-coastal provinces in the western part of the country where it had previously been strong, such provinces or mid-sized cities like Denizili or Manisa, where current CHP leader Özgür Özel is from. On the other hand, in a city like Şanlıurfa in the southeast of the country, the AKP lost to the far-right Islamist-nationalist New Prosperity Party (YRP).
Where did she come from on the Turkish political scene?
Its leader Fatih Erbakan is the son of former Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan, who was ousted in a soft coup. Erbakan senior largely brought up Erdoğan politically. However, this one, while building his position as a leader of the right, has marginalized his former mentor.
The YRP ran jointly with the AKP in last year’s parliamentary elections and supported Erdoğan as a presidential candidate. Within a year, Fatih Erbakan, a politician known for his unpredictable behavior, changed front, broke away from the coalition, moved to the opposition and began attacking the president from the right flank.
Erdoğan is somewhat to blame himself; he too, after all, played the Islamist card. Most recently, on the occasion of the Gaza conflict – although at first he looked at the situation passively, over time he radically turned up the rhetoric. Not surprisingly, someone appeared ready to reach for even harsher language, attacking Erdoğan as “too soft.” The pandemic has also done its part to boost the support of the far right, which has bolstered the popularity of conspiracy theories in Turkey, especially among radical right-wing circles.
The New Prosperity Party could seriously damage the AKP in the long run?
Today, Erdoğan’s Party certainly has a problem with it. In many of the AKP’s important provinces in the center and east, where the cities lie, the party will need the YRP as a coalition partner. Add that the aforementioned extreme nationalist MHP ran on its own in some provinces, competing with the AKP, and that’s where it often did better. So it remains to be seen whether it will try to build alliances other than with Erdoğan’s formation in the territories.
The AKP thus has a sense of political siege. On the one hand, the growing strength of the center-left CHP, on the other, trouble on the right flank. On top of that, as usual, not much has been accomplished in regions populated by Kurds in large numbers. So if such results were repeated in the parliamentary elections, the AKP would have a problem. It would likely lose power, or to maintain it, it would have to seek a deal with radical Islamists and the far right, which weakens it in the center and opens the field to the CHP and smaller opposition parties.
What was the reason for such poor performance of the ACP? Why did the opposition succeed now and not succeed last year when it went to the polls united against Erdoğan?
Not exactly united. The far left and Kurdish parties went separately in one bloc. We also had an alliance of two small nationalist parties, whose candidate won 5 percent. votes.
Today, the CHP’s good performance may be due to the fact that voters found it necessary to bet on the strongest opposition party. Also supporting this interpretation is the poor performance of the Good Party – which broke its alliance with the CHP after last year’s elections. The Republican Party was also helped by the replacement of its leader in November. The new leader, Özgür Özel, is more dynamic than his predecessor, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. He comes from a “traditional” Sunni Turkish province and is 20 years younger than Erdoğan. The CHP has several strong leaders at the moment; in addition to Özel, the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara must be mentioned here: Ekrem İmamoğlu and Mansur Yavaş.
It is also worth noting the extremely low turnout for Turkey, 78 percent. I know that in Poland “low turnout of 78 percent” sounds absurd, but in Turkey there is a completely different culture of participation in elections. The March 31 turnout was the lowest since 2004. As one might assume, some portion of earlier AKP voters, less involved in the country’s divisive political polarization, stayed home.
Why?
What might discourage a less politically engaged voter from voting for a party he previously supported? First and foremost, the economy. Last year, inflation was falling and managed to bring it down to 40 percent by the elections in May. – Again, I know that in Poland the phrase “managed to bring inflation down to 40 percent” sounds absurd, but that was the scale of the Turkey’s high-cost problem. People hoped that after winning the elections, the AKP would somehow stabilize the economic situation, curb price increases. However, reforms have been postponed for too long and today inflation is 67 percent in Turkey. and all indications are that it will continue to grow.
If the AKP hadn’t controlled most of the media, the judiciary and key state institutions, which hadn’t been so politicized before, it probably would have paid a much higher price at the ballot box for all this. This control keeps her in the ring. What works in the AKP’s favor is that the next parliamentary and presidential elections are still four years away. This gives her time to learn lessons, regroup and prepare for a clash with the opposition.
And didn’t the ACP simply pay the price for the chief’s structure? For the lack of strong local leaders?
This includes. It has always been a leader’s party, but at one time there were several heavyweights in addition to Erdoğan. Today we have a leader surrounded by a chorus of clappers. The chief is in addition worn out as a politician. He has actually been in power since 2003, and is more than 70 years old. For Turks, who are a younger society than Poles – the average age is 32 – Erdoğan is becoming an increasingly anachronistic, “grandfatherly” politician, especially compared to his main rivals, who are in their 40s and 50s.
Local governments have significant power in Turkey? Does the AKP’s defeat change anything significantly in the country’s power calculus, or not especially?
Turkey is a highly centralized country and local governments do not have much power. Certainly significantly smaller than in Poland, not to mention the federal states.
On the other hand, the political dimension of these elections was important – because it was a plebiscite that the AKP lost with a turnout that, while not impressive for Turkey, objectively still remained high.
How will the authorities respond to this failure?
Power has three options: a stick, a carrot and some combination of the two. So it could, for example, start limiting the powers of local governments, or make problems with giving money to those controlled by the opposition. If the AKP tries to “eat the appetizers” from the extreme right, if it itself moves to the right because of this, it will be all the more authoritarian towards the opposition. Such a policy of “we’re going for broke” and “there’s only a wall behind us,” however, could backfire on support for the AKP among middle-of-the-road voters, especially those in the affected cities.
So there’s the carrot option: trying to extend an olive branch to the opposition, coming to terms with the loss of large and some medium-sized cities, and working out some model of cooperation with their opposition authorities. Erdoğan announced something like this after the election was announced. He said the public has spoken, the party has heard his voice and will now work through it. Of course, with the far-reaching polarization of Turkish political life, where a great many opposition voters have a sense of injustice toward the ruling party, for many groups these assurances were completely unbelievable.
You can also combine stick and carrot. An important factor is the economy. The authorities know they need to calm the economic situation, and turning the screw and cracking down on the opposition is not something that attracts investment and satisfies markets and promotes the development of local business. The key question is to what extent Erdoğan is capable today of reflecting on what that yellow card from society meant.
The March 31 defeat will not trigger a discussion within the party about whether Erdoğan is a forward-looking leader?
As if we talked privately with many AKP activists, especially younger ones, we would probably hear that they have doubts. In 2028, when the next election is held, Erdoğan will be 74 years old. He himself has a problem with running again. Elections would have to be early, but such an option requires a self-dissolution of the parliament, and for that the support of 60 percent is needed. all MPs. ACP with satellites controls just over half of the sites. It’s possible that Erdoğan will try to bend the law, such as taking away Kurdish seats, which could infuriate many Turks. At worst, he will field a Turkish version of Medvedev, and run the campaign himself from the back seat. This will be a major challenge for the AKP, as the opposition will be led into battle by several charismatic middle-aged leaders.
There are also many people in the AKP, a party with a very hierarchical structure that operates on a clientelistic basis, who at some point in their careers began to collide with the glass ceiling and feel frustrated. So the weaker the polls get, the stronger the voices expressing doubts about Erdoğan’s leadership will become. Nonetheless, it seems highly unlikely to me that anyone else could lead the AKP in the 2028 elections.
Elections may open the way for Turkey’s retreat from authoritarian path?
After Erdoğan’s targeted failed 2016 coup, the situation in Turkey has radically deteriorated. Freedom House even relegated it to the group of slave states in its classification. However, there has been a bit of a thaw in recent years, which is also evident in the international rankings. So one can hold out some hope that Turkey will once again become a partially free country. Perhaps the recent elections have shown that it is nevertheless a hybrid regime, combining democratic and authoritarian elements, or so-called “hybrid regimes. Electoral authoritarianism.
AKP may lose the next election?
Maybe. The long-term trend is clear: support for the party is declining. It is very unlikely that today the AKP will be able to win, as it did 10 years ago, nearly half of the votes. This is due to social and demographic changes. If elections were held only among people up to 35. year, the ACP’s failure would be significantly greater.
However, the AKP has its ironclad identity electorate, which will not abandon it unless there are some extraordinary scandals. The party will not suffer a complete defeat in the next election, but its support may fall to 25-30 percent. If Erdoğan becomes a symbol of this failure, the AKP may be in for a very profound change.
Erdoğan will not feel tempted to deal with the opposition by going further into authoritarianism?
It cannot be ruled out that he will reach for similar measures in desperation. But the AKP itself knows what kind of crisis such a policy can lead to in a highly polarized country, where many people have guns legally or not quite legally.
It is not a coincidence, but complex social, ethnic, cultural, etc. conditions that have kept Turkey from turning into a closed authoritarianism. In Poland, Turkey is often compared with Russia and Erdoğan with Putin. These are misguided comparisons. Let’s see how the recent presidential elections in Russia looked like: after all, there, they no longer even tried to maintain the pretense that there was any real democratic mini-competition, no candidate was allowed who was in any real opposition to Putin. This is a very different situation from Turkey.
Will defeat in local elections somehow “dampen” Erdoğan’s very assertive international policy?
Turkey is again compared to Russia in this regard. It is true that, like Russia, it is an assertive country, sometimes capable of military intervention in other countries or support of allies at war, such as Azerbaijan recently. But Turkey is as much able to quarrel with someone as it is to reconcile later and turn from a hawk to a dove. Not coincidentally, we do not find an example of a full-scale Turkish invasion of a neighbor in recent decades.
Erdoğan’s international policy will be constrained more by the economic situation, the need to control inflation and the exchange rate of the lira, than by the outcome of local elections.
Turkey, on the other hand, is undoubtedly a regional power that is developing its defense industry by working with foreign partners. And regional powers are playing sharper. If Erdoğan is replaced by another team, it will be a more democratic one that will probably play the international game in a more subtle way, but it will not give up its belief that Turkey is a former empire, today a regional power, and its foreign policy must reflect that.
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