The polls scheduled in Turkey for
May 14, 2023 will combine the election of 600 members of the Grand National
Assembly with the election of the President – his re-election, if Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, Turkey’s current president, has his way. Yet he is well aware that his
standing within the nation is far from secure, and he and his ruling AKP party
will be doing all they can in the interim to secure a favourable outcome.
While the Turkish
electoral system itself remains notably trustworthy, the campaign environment
has been consistently rigged ahead of polls and referenda by the AKP. Their
machinations have not always been successful – evidence, it is generally
believed, that the electoral system is robust enough to frustrate any attempt
to rig the actual results. The Turkish
public appears to have confidence in the system, and turns out to vote in large
numbers.
Under the current
constitution Erdogan is entitled to a further five-year term. His opponents, however, are only too aware
that in power Erdogan has form in changing the constitution. He has already revised the role of president
and abolished the role of prime minister.
He has consolidated his authority by placing the country in a state of
emergency over a long period, accruing vastly increased powers in his own
hands. He has shut down more than 150 independent media outlets and jailed
large numbers of journalists and opposition figures.
To contest the
forthcoming elections three main electoral blocs have taken shape: the People’s
Alliance, a grouping dominated by the AKP; the Table of Six, a loose assemblage
of opposition parties led by the Republican People’s Party (CHP); and the Labor
and Freedom Alliance, made up of six Kurdish parties led by the Peoples’
Democratic Party (HDP).
The AKP and its allies, accusing
the HDP of having links with the banned Kurdish Workers Party (PKK), have legally
challenged the party’s right to exist, and are seeking its dissolution.
In the last elections the HDP won nearly 12 percent of the national vote, and
holds 56 seats in the 600-seat National Assembly. The party
was due to receive $29 million of public funding, in accordance with Turkish
law that allows for partial funding to political parties that have received
more than 7% of the popular vote in the previous election.
On January 5, Turkey’s
Constitutional Court decided to suspend the HDP’s access to the finance it was
due until the petition submitted by the AKP to dissolve the party, currently
before the court, is resolved. Turkey's chief prosecutor made his final
case in court on January 10.
With the CHP’s very
existence under attack, the future of the leading figure in Turkey’s second
largest political grouping, the CHP, is also uncertain.
Imamoglu is the man who inflicted on Erdogan the greatest political defeat he ever suffered, and news of the sentence brought thousands of his supporters out on the streets in protest.
In the municipal
elections in 2019 the AKP lost political control to the main opposition party,
the CHP, both in the capital, Ankara, and in the nation’s commercial center,
Istanbul. In Istanbul the race for mayor descended into a neck and neck gallop
to the winning post, and the final result gave CHP candidate, Imamoglu, a lead
of 28,000 votes out of the more than 8 million votes cast.
Defeat in Ankara was bad
enough, since the AKP had held power in the capital for a quarter century, but
defeat in Istanbul, Turkey's largest city, hit Erdogan particularly hard. It was as Istanbul’s mayor that he began his
meteoric rise to power in the 1990s, and he is on record as saying:
"whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey.”
The AKP appealed against
the result, and petitioned for a rerun – a reaction that did not sit well with
the electorate. In the new vote Imamoglu boosted his margin of victory 57-fold
to win 54.2% of the vote against 45.0%. It was a record in the history of
Istanbul local elections.
In a press release, issued
in the heat of the political turmoil, Imamoglu referred to members of Turkey’s
supreme election council as “fools”. That was enough to get him arraigned on a
charge of insulting public officials, to be found guilty and sentenced to a
hefty term in prison. He has said that
he will appeal, but if the appeals court upholds his conviction he will
be debarred from holding any political office. That would hand Erdogan a double win. Not
only would it allow him to retake control of Istanbul, but it also would potentially
prevent his strongest challenger from running in the June 2023 election.
If Imamoglu’s appeal
succeeds, however, he becomes a potent electoral threat to Erdogan. Imamoglu
manages to appeal to voters from across Turkish society, including the minority
but crucial Kurdish groupings. He is from a secularist party, but is able to
recite the Quran in public, attracting religious voters as well. In short he
represents what Erdogan fears most – an opposition figure who can serve as a
“big tent” candidate. If not stymied by an appeal court confirmation of his
conviction, Imamoglu might just pull off his Istanbul achievement on the
national stage.
The 2023 presidential election
comes as Erdogan’s position in Turkey appears to have weakened, with polls
suggesting he could lose to a strong contender. The opposition have yet to
announce their candidate in the presidential election. One name suggested was CHP leader Kemal
Kilicdaroglu, but a recent public opinion poll indicated that Erdogan would
defeat him in a straight vote. According
to most public surveys, though, Erdogan is now less popular than either
Imamoglu or Ankara’s mayor, Mansur Yavas, both members of CHP.
Erdogan’s popularity
problem stems largely from the ongoing economic crisis. Turkey’s annual
inflation rate has soared above 80 percent, and much of the electorate blame
Erdogan. Whether dubious pre-election efforts to ensure
an AKP victory will be enough to overcome Turkey’s widespread economic and
financial distress remains, for the present, an open question.
https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-728730
Published in Eurasia Review, 27 January 2023:
https://www.eurasiareview.com/27012023-dirty-tricks-ahead-of-turkeys-elections-oped/
Published in the MPC Journal, 30 January 2023:
Published in Jewish Business News, 29 January 2023:
https://jewishbusinessnews.com/2023/01/29/dirty-tricks-ahead-of-turkeys-elections/
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