On the Turkish elections of 2018: Erdogan edges in securely again
With increasing media censorship and governmental interference, the re-election of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the conservative and Islamic Justice and Development Party (AKP) was a foregone conclusion, even if there was a good chance he would have to go to the run-off round in order to win. Both the presidential election-only the second direct one ever in Turkey-and the general election were held simultaneously, ostensibly to ensure AKP would once again receive a secure majority and in the hope of ousting the progressive HDP from the Grand National Assembly of Turkey.
Mr Erodgan managed to win the first round, but not by a true landslide. Despite widespread evidence of ballot box stuffing and other forms of electoral fraud, Mr Erodgan only managed 52.59% of the vote, which whilst enough to win straight away was an increase of a mere 0.8% on his 2014 result. The controversial constitutional referendum of 2017, which whilst increasing the number of MPs in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to 600, reduced the age for eligibility to election to 18, and abolished military courts, also introduced an executive presidency which allows rule by decree in some cases (notable given the increasingly authoritarian and hardline conservative style of rule Mr Erdogan has used throughout his tenure) and which transferred powers formerly held by the Prime Ministerial cabinet to the President. Only the AKP and their supporters are generally in favour of these powers, and the effects of the new constitution, following a flawed referendum where campaigning by "No" voters faced suppression via arrests on trumped on charges and media control to deny them airtime they should have been given, have divided the Turkish electorate. This left AKP's support vulnerable to the campaign of Meral Aksener, the only woman to contest this year's Turkish Presidential election, and her IYI party. The IYI Party is a liberal conservative party which was able to win over many lapsed AKP supporters growing uneasy over the increasingly authoritarian presidency of Mr Erdogan and his desire to exert personal control over all key bodies of Turkey, and which opposes ethnic nationalism of all types, perceiving it as divisive. Ms Aksener only won 7.29% of the vote, but in the west of Turkey it caused considerable splits in the AKP vote, but not enough to deny them victory even though IYI's best results were in rural areas, which delivered decisive AKP votes with AKP managing over 60% of the vote and the Ankara belt that has been strongly loyal to Mr Erdogan's regime.
The social-democratic and Kemalist CHP (Republican People's Party) finished second once again; it has secured representation most of the time within Turkish electoral history and usually finishes in the top two, so this is not surprising even though it has lost considerable support to the more socialist and forward-thinking HDP (Peoples Democratic Party). Its presidential candidate, Muharren Ince, managed 30.64%; given the increasingly tight AKP control of the media, making effective opposition almost impossible in some quarters, and more radical parties supporting the HDP's Selahattin Demirtas, this is a good result for the CHP. In parliamentary terms they ran in an alliance with IYI in a broad moderate liberal front to oppose AKP, and it worked well, giving them a total of 189 seats (CHP 146, IYI 43). Surprisingly, the Felicity Party, a hardline Islamist party, also participated in this alliance due to its historical opposition to Mr Erdogan, but it did not win any seats. Its antipathy towards the AKP stems from the fact they both sprung from the remnants of a previous Islamic party, the Virtue Party, which was banned by Turkey's Constitutional Court in 2001 for violating the secularist articles of the Turkish constitution (and that party's predecessor, the Welfare Party, was banned for similar reasons). The Turkish constitution states that political parties cannot have an agenda which involves tying religious tenets into the Turkish constitution or Turkish law. The AKP was the reformist wing of the Virtue Party splinter and came to power with a 2/3 majority in 2002, just one year after its predecessor was dissolved.
It was predicted that the HDP could potentially drop below the 10% threshold, the most stringent proportional representation threshold in the world by far, and thus lose all parliamentary representation. In the end it managed to win an extra 8 seats and increase its vote to 11.7%, mainly drawn from the Kurdish regions in the east; only in southeastern Turkish provinces did it top the poll with the exception of Tunceli, and in that southeastern corner it only lost Bitlis province narrowly to AKP. In the central hinterlands its support is very limited indeed; provinces close to the Turkish capital, such as Cankiri and Kirkkale, gave the HDP less than 5% of the vote compared to over 50% of the vote for the HDP in the southeast. The CHP's support was strongest west of the Bosphorous (and therefore in the European part of Turkey) and around the port city of Izmir, although around the Izmir coast it is now facing particularly strong competition from the HDP.
Despite an increase in seats, the AKP, even with its solidified base, could win a parliamentary majority on its own, and had to ally with the ultranationalist and pan-Turkic Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who managed 11.1%, to obtain a secure majority this year in the Grand National Assembly. In fact it lost the single-party majority it had even though the number of parliamentary seats increased from 550 to 600; its seat total decreased by 22 from 317 to 295, which without the MHP's 49 seats would have left it 6 short of an overall majority. Clearly, there is growing unease even from voters who would otherwise support the AKP without a second thought, not to mention open dislike from such a large proportion of the Turkish people. This is further illustrated, ironically, by the excellent turnout of 86.22%, an increase of 1.04% from November 2015, even with the harsh 10% threshold shutting out so many contenders from representation. Often political disillusionment and dissatisfaction is represented by low turnouts, but the constitutional changes have angered a large proportion of the Turkish people in addition to keeping rural conservative support flourishing, leading to greater turnout overall. This is comparable to the polarising effects of the EU referendum in the UK in 2016 and the marmite nature of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, which resulted in an increased turnout even with a Conservative landslide predicted at the start of the 2017 UK general election campaign.
It is likely that Turkey under Mr Erdogan will become increasingly more repressive; a notable aspect is that social media sites and Wikipedia are frequently blocked in Turkey for months at a time, and court orders to unblock them are repeatedly ignored by the Erdogan government, which has strengthened the President's executive powers and limited judiciary powers. Journalists are routinely arrested and imprisoned on politically motivated charges (e.g. insulting the president) and protestors face violent suppression as the Gezi Park protests showed in 2013.
Mr Erodgan managed to win the first round, but not by a true landslide. Despite widespread evidence of ballot box stuffing and other forms of electoral fraud, Mr Erodgan only managed 52.59% of the vote, which whilst enough to win straight away was an increase of a mere 0.8% on his 2014 result. The controversial constitutional referendum of 2017, which whilst increasing the number of MPs in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey to 600, reduced the age for eligibility to election to 18, and abolished military courts, also introduced an executive presidency which allows rule by decree in some cases (notable given the increasingly authoritarian and hardline conservative style of rule Mr Erdogan has used throughout his tenure) and which transferred powers formerly held by the Prime Ministerial cabinet to the President. Only the AKP and their supporters are generally in favour of these powers, and the effects of the new constitution, following a flawed referendum where campaigning by "No" voters faced suppression via arrests on trumped on charges and media control to deny them airtime they should have been given, have divided the Turkish electorate. This left AKP's support vulnerable to the campaign of Meral Aksener, the only woman to contest this year's Turkish Presidential election, and her IYI party. The IYI Party is a liberal conservative party which was able to win over many lapsed AKP supporters growing uneasy over the increasingly authoritarian presidency of Mr Erdogan and his desire to exert personal control over all key bodies of Turkey, and which opposes ethnic nationalism of all types, perceiving it as divisive. Ms Aksener only won 7.29% of the vote, but in the west of Turkey it caused considerable splits in the AKP vote, but not enough to deny them victory even though IYI's best results were in rural areas, which delivered decisive AKP votes with AKP managing over 60% of the vote and the Ankara belt that has been strongly loyal to Mr Erdogan's regime.
The social-democratic and Kemalist CHP (Republican People's Party) finished second once again; it has secured representation most of the time within Turkish electoral history and usually finishes in the top two, so this is not surprising even though it has lost considerable support to the more socialist and forward-thinking HDP (Peoples Democratic Party). Its presidential candidate, Muharren Ince, managed 30.64%; given the increasingly tight AKP control of the media, making effective opposition almost impossible in some quarters, and more radical parties supporting the HDP's Selahattin Demirtas, this is a good result for the CHP. In parliamentary terms they ran in an alliance with IYI in a broad moderate liberal front to oppose AKP, and it worked well, giving them a total of 189 seats (CHP 146, IYI 43). Surprisingly, the Felicity Party, a hardline Islamist party, also participated in this alliance due to its historical opposition to Mr Erdogan, but it did not win any seats. Its antipathy towards the AKP stems from the fact they both sprung from the remnants of a previous Islamic party, the Virtue Party, which was banned by Turkey's Constitutional Court in 2001 for violating the secularist articles of the Turkish constitution (and that party's predecessor, the Welfare Party, was banned for similar reasons). The Turkish constitution states that political parties cannot have an agenda which involves tying religious tenets into the Turkish constitution or Turkish law. The AKP was the reformist wing of the Virtue Party splinter and came to power with a 2/3 majority in 2002, just one year after its predecessor was dissolved.
It was predicted that the HDP could potentially drop below the 10% threshold, the most stringent proportional representation threshold in the world by far, and thus lose all parliamentary representation. In the end it managed to win an extra 8 seats and increase its vote to 11.7%, mainly drawn from the Kurdish regions in the east; only in southeastern Turkish provinces did it top the poll with the exception of Tunceli, and in that southeastern corner it only lost Bitlis province narrowly to AKP. In the central hinterlands its support is very limited indeed; provinces close to the Turkish capital, such as Cankiri and Kirkkale, gave the HDP less than 5% of the vote compared to over 50% of the vote for the HDP in the southeast. The CHP's support was strongest west of the Bosphorous (and therefore in the European part of Turkey) and around the port city of Izmir, although around the Izmir coast it is now facing particularly strong competition from the HDP.
Despite an increase in seats, the AKP, even with its solidified base, could win a parliamentary majority on its own, and had to ally with the ultranationalist and pan-Turkic Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), who managed 11.1%, to obtain a secure majority this year in the Grand National Assembly. In fact it lost the single-party majority it had even though the number of parliamentary seats increased from 550 to 600; its seat total decreased by 22 from 317 to 295, which without the MHP's 49 seats would have left it 6 short of an overall majority. Clearly, there is growing unease even from voters who would otherwise support the AKP without a second thought, not to mention open dislike from such a large proportion of the Turkish people. This is further illustrated, ironically, by the excellent turnout of 86.22%, an increase of 1.04% from November 2015, even with the harsh 10% threshold shutting out so many contenders from representation. Often political disillusionment and dissatisfaction is represented by low turnouts, but the constitutional changes have angered a large proportion of the Turkish people in addition to keeping rural conservative support flourishing, leading to greater turnout overall. This is comparable to the polarising effects of the EU referendum in the UK in 2016 and the marmite nature of Labour under Jeremy Corbyn, which resulted in an increased turnout even with a Conservative landslide predicted at the start of the 2017 UK general election campaign.
It is likely that Turkey under Mr Erdogan will become increasingly more repressive; a notable aspect is that social media sites and Wikipedia are frequently blocked in Turkey for months at a time, and court orders to unblock them are repeatedly ignored by the Erdogan government, which has strengthened the President's executive powers and limited judiciary powers. Journalists are routinely arrested and imprisoned on politically motivated charges (e.g. insulting the president) and protestors face violent suppression as the Gezi Park protests showed in 2013.
Comments
Post a Comment