Erdoğan roars back

By Alev Scott

A frightened, weary Turkey votes for stability over uncertainty.

ISTANBUL — Jubilant car horns and cheers rung out over the streets here on Sunday night as supporters of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) celebrated their historic win at the polls. Opposition supporters, meanwhile, were left in stunned disbelief at the results of an election which attracted an 86 percent turnout, and which was described by the prime minister as “a referendum on New Turkey,” a reference to the AKP’s vision of a country radically altered from its founding roots.
While some international observers voiced concern over the results, and doubts over possible electoral fraud, Turkish stocks rose by 5.4 percent on Monday morning, suggesting renewed confidence in the economy under a single-party government after a summer of uncertainty.

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Having apparently secured a historic 49.4 percent of the vote — nearly 9 percent more than its share in June’s general elections — the AKP has regained the ruling majority it lost five months ago and won a fourth term as a single-party government, an unprecedented feat in Turkish history. While confirming the AKP’s majority win and the presence of three further parties in Parliament — including the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which just managed to pass the 10 percent threshold for representation with 10.68 percent — the Supreme Election Board has said that results will be officially announced in 11 days’ time.
Published results have come from representatives of all parties who monitored voting and ballot counting; so far the opposition has not contested the results, despite concern in some parts of the country about electoral fraud and the speed of vote-counting, which was finished nearly two hours earlier than the count in June. However, the opposition’s acceptance of results is likely based on the fact that any fraud would not be extensive enough to account for the sheer magnitude of the AKP vote share; if any of the three opposition parties had fallen below the 10 percent threshold which controls entry to Parliament, there would almost certainly have been a challenge to results, as well as severe upheaval in the Kurdish communities in the southeast. As it is, the mood among the opposition is somber but resigned.
The lack of any warning from opinion polls as to the extent of the AKP win, coupled with extreme changes in voting patterns since June, have left analysts stumped. The latest polls prior to elections predicted results almost identical to those in June, despite five months of upheaval, hundreds of casualties from renewed violence in the southeast of the country, the deadliest terror attack in Turkish history and a steadily worsening economy. While some analysts predicted the AKP might lose votes due to the country’s deterioration, the opposite seems to have happened: Rather than punish the interim government, voters opted to give it the sole power to set things right, withdrawing the trust they placed in opposition parties when the outlook was brighter.

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Critics of the AKP have characterized the party’s 4.5 million-vote gain since June as a direct and calculated result of encouraging political polarization over the summer. They see the party not as the savior but as the author of the violence and instability which gave it back its ruling majority, as weary voters opted defensively for single-party stability over a possibly impotent coalition in troubled times. The enormous drop in support for the pro-Kurdish HDP, which lost 1.3 million votes across the country, failing to make gains even in the Kurdish stronghold of the southeast, reflects concern among voters over renewed conflict between Turkish forces and the Kurdish militant PKK, on whose behalf the HDP negotiated a now-defunct peace process three years ago.
However, the HDP also suffered from a media boycott in the run-up to elections, and had to cancel its rallies due to security concerns after the Ankara bombings on October 10, which killed 102 HDP supporters and peace activists, among them HDP’s Ankara candidate, Kübra Meltem Mollaoğlu.
“It was not a fair or just election period. We could not campaign to protect our people,” said co-chair Selahattin Demirtaş at the HDP press conference on Sunday night, citing the restrictions suffered by their party as being largely responsible for the drop in votes. Demirtaş and his co-chair Figen Yuksekdağ have blamed the government for indirectly facilitating the Ankara bombings by failing to provide security measures at HDP gatherings.
Other measures taken by the government in recent weeks, including the dramatic police raid of an opposition media company four days before the election, have also been cited by those who accuse the AKP of a campaign of oppression and fear-mongering in the lead-up to elections.
“This was not an election it was a battle,” wrote a Turkish citizen on Twitter in the aftermath of Sunday’s results. Another tweet sarcastically listed some of the ingredients to electoral success: “1. Create instability & conflict, 2. Disinformation, 3. Deny #freespeech, 4. Intimidate media.”

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At a polling station in the religious district of Fatih, Istanbul, on Sunday, volunteers belonging to the non-partisan Oy ve Ötesi (Vote and Beyond) group, which monitored voting in June’s elections, were forced to keep a low profile among official party representatives after pro-government papers described the group as “terrorists” in the pay of foreign powers. Meanwhile, a clandestinely filmed video circulating on Twitter appeared to show voters in Adiyaman, the hometown of the Ankara suicide bomber, being paid to accept pre-stamped AKP ballots, with the promise of extra money for persuading others to join the scheme.
The extent of electoral fraud will not become clear for several days, if at all. In the meantime, opposition parties are taking stock and promising to evaluate themselves in the light of results — the main opposition party, the CHP, failed to gain any votes since June, and analysts speculate that its leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, may step down at the party conference in December. Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which has lost 1.9 million votes since June, was forced to deny rumors that he was set to resign. His party is now projected to get 42 seats, losing nearly half of the seats it won in June, and leaving it with fewer than the HDP. This is being seen by democrats as one of the few, faint silver linings in the wake of the disappointment of the AKP’s win.
“This was obviously a bad result for the opposition parties, but now their challenge is clear,” said Erik Tillman, associate professor of political science at DePaul University and a specialist in Turkish politics and elections.
“The AKP remain the dominant party in Turkey, but they also have an electoral ceiling of about 50 percent. The opposition parties now have four years to identify a strategy to gain new voters in order to change the current electoral alignment that has formed since 2002.”
Other analysts are less optimistic; one notable voice declined to give comment on the grounds of being too depressed.
“An emboldened Erdoğan will make it more difficult to end the current atmosphere of polarization,” said Elmira Bayraşlı, an independent Turkish analyst based in New York. “Whether it is the Kurdish peace process or reaching across the aisle to the opposition, Erdoğan will now bulldoze through his own policies. Where that is most dangerous is his plan to move Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system. A presidential system in Turkey is dangerous because Turkey’s institutions are so weak. There are few checks and balances; under a presidential system there will be even fewer.”

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It is worth noting, however, that the HDP’s success in passing the 10 percent threshold and entering Parliament robbed the AKP of the 330-seat majority it needed to put the presidential system to referendum. If the HDP had not passed the threshold, the AKP, as the strongest party, would have received its forfeited votes and gained not only its existing majority but the 367-seat supermajority needed to pass constitutional changes without referendum. As it is, the party will be theoretically dependent on the support of opposition parties for any changes it puts to Parliament, although the analyst Bayraşlı points out that “Erdoğan is a masterful politician.”
Despite the lira rallying in the wake of the election results, Bayraşlı also has concerns about the economy.
“Turkey, like many emerging markets, has struggled to maintain growth; the lira has dropped 25 percent this past year — without a clear plan for growth and, more importantly, in the hands of an increasingly authoritarian leader it is unlikely that the Turkish economy will rebound. Amid a difficult economy you can be sure to see more nationalistic and polarizing rhetoric coming out of the AKP leadership; smoke and mirror tactics to cover up the inability to put the Turkish economy back on track.”

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The question of President Erdoğan’s future role is one of the most pressing to emerge from these results. He was quick to make his mark on Sunday night, declaring that “the national will had spoken” and that “the whole world must respect the results,” while Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu repeatedly included the president in his speech, promising that “President Erdoğan’s vision of 2023 [the centenary of the founding of the Turkish Republic] will be built by the AKP.”
Yet some Turkey commentators — including editors of opposition newspapers — are saying the results will embolden the prime minister, who has starred as the official leader of the AKP while it made extraordinary gains, even as many of his detractors describe him as Erdoğan’s stooge. The power play between the two men will likely come under intense scrutiny in the coming months.
While critics of the AKP reel from Sunday’s results, there is some cause for hope. The AKP did not achieve a constitutional majority; and as Tillman points out, while the party could get away with placing the blame for this summer’s unrest on other factions, the term ahead is entirely its responsibility. It has no alibis.
“The big advantage for the opposition parties is that they do not have to share responsibility for whatever happens in the next four years. Voters tend to reward and blame the governing party for the state of the economy, foreign policy problems, etc., so the AKP will be the sole target of blame for anything that happens in the next four years.”
Amid serious worries over the economy, problems of polarization, a controversial deal with the EU over refugees and a dangerous level of involvement in the Syrian civil war, it seems there might be a far-off cause for hope — Turkey just needs to wait four years for it.