May 29, 2023 - 7:30am
By grinding out a narrow 52% victory in Sunday’s election, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has cemented his legacy as Turkey’s most significant historical figure since Kemal Atatürk founded the republic exactly a century ago. While opposition supporters went into the elections with high hopes of overturning the strongman’s 20-year rule, by the second round Erdoğan’s eventual success had come to look inevitable. But that his victory was not absolutely certain highlights the nuances of the political system he has created: while the scales were always heavily weighted in his favour, Erdoğan still requires a significant degree of genuine acclaim from the voting public to maintain his legitimacy.
As the academic Howard Eissenstat noted back in 2021: “as egregious as Turkey’s authoritarian slide has been, Erdoğan portrays himself — and likely sees himself — as a democrat.” A closely-fought two-round election ending in a narrow victory is in this sense a better result for him than a landslide, preserving the illusion of meaningful democratic competition. But for all his faults and missteps, it is undeniable that Erdoğan retains significant popular support, evidently outweighing the fractious coalition of liberals, secular nationalists, Left-wing Kurds and far-Right ultranationalists assembled beneath Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu’s banner.
Certainly, Kiliçdaroğlu would have been no one’s first choice of candidate against such an entrenched opponent. Old, markedly uncharismatic, and from Turkey’s Alevi Muslim religious minority, Kiliçdaroğlu was a poor second best to Istanbul’s young and popular mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu, who Erdoğan managed to remove from the running early on through a conviction on charges of mocking election officials. Kiliçdaroğlu perhaps performed better than expected, but for Turkey’s opposition as well as its Western supporters, his campaign still fell distressingly short of their hopes.
The election has been widely interpreted as representing a new nationalist wave in Turkish politics, with both candidates relying on the support of fringe nationalist parties to widen their support base. This interpretation may be overstated, however. Turkey has always been a profoundly nationalistic country, as the Turkish political scientist Sinem Adar remarked recently: “there is this kind of narrative now, nationalism being the dip dalga [silent wave], but it is not. Nationalism is the sea itself.”
Yet for all that Turkey’s politics are a product of its unique historical path, many of the specific skirmishes of the election campaign, from Erdoğan accusing Kiliçdaroğlu of devotion to LGBT causes to fears of demographic change through mass immigration, echo the new political battlegrounds of Western democracies. As the Turkish analyst Selim Koru observes: “we live in the age of nationalism. Something about the political moment we live in across the world — be it the state of technology, economic current, or the geopolitical climate — seems to be conducive to far-Right nationalism.”
Viewed in this sense, the Turkish election is as much a local reflection of trends increasingly shaping all democratic systems as it is an exotic eastern spectacle. In Greece, the celebrity socialist Yanis Varoufakis was widely mocked for his petulant losing claim that Kyriakos Mitsotakis’s first-round victory was the result of the country’s “Erdoğanisation”, yet it highlighted a certain direction of travel across Europe and beyond. Through his stacking of the courts and media in his favour, the system of managed democracy Erdoğan has constructed has marked analogues in Central Europe.
Perhaps more strikingly, Anglo-Saxon conservatives increasingly believe the system is just as weighted against them, in a liberal inversion of Erdoğan’s heavy thumb tilting democracy’s scales. It is significant, after all, that the now-widely held concept of the “deep state” was borrowed from Turkey’s opaque and conspiratorial politics. For all its unique national quirks, in some ways Turkey’s “free but unfair” election indicates not the country’s divergence from liberal democracy’s mainstream, but democracy’s seeming eventual path.
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SubscribeThe Hunter Biden laptop is the most jaw-dropping example of deep-state manipulation in modern history. On behalf of a political party, and working with big tech and the regime media, the FBI and the CIA made a potentially explosive scandal disappear. And they wave it away – nothing to see here folks. Just another day at the office for these righteous defenders of democracy. There’s no consequences for this morally bankrupt behaviour so don’t expect any changes. And the Democrats have the audacity to call Jan. 6 an insurrection.
So-called Russiagate also waived aside as nothing to be concerned about.
“And the Democrats have the audacity to call Jan. 6 an insurrection.” – Especially given the latest revelation that 100s of federal agents were in the crowd.
Now that the Hunter Biden Laptop has proven to be Hunter Bidens, what else has it proved?
You jest, right? Or should I say ‘left’? Or ‘wrong’?
Does it have to prove anything? There are the allegations of influence peddling, but far more dangerous is the collusion between the FBI, CIA, big tech, the regime media and the Dems to suppress information during an election campaign. This collusion is far more dangerous than the actual bribery allegations. It allowed Biden to credibly deny the scandal and wave it away as Russian misinformation, which he did on the debate stage.
You jest, right? Or should I say ‘left’? Or ‘wrong’?
Does it have to prove anything? There are the allegations of influence peddling, but far more dangerous is the collusion between the FBI, CIA, big tech, the regime media and the Dems to suppress information during an election campaign. This collusion is far more dangerous than the actual bribery allegations. It allowed Biden to credibly deny the scandal and wave it away as Russian misinformation, which he did on the debate stage.
So-called Russiagate also waived aside as nothing to be concerned about.
“And the Democrats have the audacity to call Jan. 6 an insurrection.” – Especially given the latest revelation that 100s of federal agents were in the crowd.
Now that the Hunter Biden Laptop has proven to be Hunter Bidens, what else has it proved?
The Hunter Biden laptop is the most jaw-dropping example of deep-state manipulation in modern history. On behalf of a political party, and working with big tech and the regime media, the FBI and the CIA made a potentially explosive scandal disappear. And they wave it away – nothing to see here folks. Just another day at the office for these righteous defenders of democracy. There’s no consequences for this morally bankrupt behaviour so don’t expect any changes. And the Democrats have the audacity to call Jan. 6 an insurrection.
Good article. I do believe we have an analogous form of “managed democracy” here in the West, largely to the detriment of conservatives. Perhaps that’s why the Western left hate Erdogan: he holds a mirror to their own practices.
I think you’re right. Good article, bringing into focus how terms such as “deep state” have arisen from a century ago (and also the term “Young Turks”) whilst musing on the historical trend for democracies. This deserves wider consideration.
I think you’re right. Good article, bringing into focus how terms such as “deep state” have arisen from a century ago (and also the term “Young Turks”) whilst musing on the historical trend for democracies. This deserves wider consideration.
Good article. I do believe we have an analogous form of “managed democracy” here in the West, largely to the detriment of conservatives. Perhaps that’s why the Western left hate Erdogan: he holds a mirror to their own practices.
The centre-left administrative state is our equivalent of Erdogan, Orban and Putin packing the courts and controlling all their key industrialists.
Seems you can’t open up a newspaper in the UK without realising, whether through obstruction of policy (immigration/Rwanda etc) or tittle tattle (cakes, speeding tickets, he looked at me in the wrong way etc etc), we have our own version, run essentially by a claque of progressive Remainer civil servants in Whitehall.
The left literally controls all the institutions in the west – the media, education, the bureaucracy, culture, finance, big tech, the judiciary – and yet our elites pretend to fear for democracy when they see the same thing happening in countries they disapproved of. The hypocrisy is staggering.
The left literally controls all the institutions in the west – the media, education, the bureaucracy, culture, finance, big tech, the judiciary – and yet our elites pretend to fear for democracy when they see the same thing happening in countries they disapproved of. The hypocrisy is staggering.
The centre-left administrative state is our equivalent of Erdogan, Orban and Putin packing the courts and controlling all their key industrialists.
Seems you can’t open up a newspaper in the UK without realising, whether through obstruction of policy (immigration/Rwanda etc) or tittle tattle (cakes, speeding tickets, he looked at me in the wrong way etc etc), we have our own version, run essentially by a claque of progressive Remainer civil servants in Whitehall.
On the radio this morning – Turkey is a “divided” nation because of the 52-48 election result. If the result had been an Erdogan landslide, then the headline would be “Turkey’s slide towards dictatorship”.
On the radio this morning – Turkey is a “divided” nation because of the 52-48 election result. If the result had been an Erdogan landslide, then the headline would be “Turkey’s slide towards dictatorship”.
They probably won’t say it as it contradicts the waffle about ‘democracy’ but quietly I suspect many EU leaders are relieved about Erdogan winning. The opposition in Turkey appeared to want to reopen the idea of Turkey joining the EU, which I doubt is something most EU leaders would like to revisit for obvious reasons. Erdogan seems uninterested in the EU now, and it’s easy for the EU to bury the issue on the grounds Erdogan is a bad guy or whatever.
Using the flood of migrants to extract funds from the EU by making token gestures towards stopping them using Turkey as a thoroughfare showed just how callous he is, plus his arbitrary arrests of opposition including teachers and writers. We don’t quite have that as yet, although the police questioning so-called “hate-speech” and the cancelling of those with perfectly legitimate views around women’s rights might be seen as a slippery slope. This is why such things need calling out, loudly and clearly.
This may all be true (I don’t dispute the idea that Erdogan is callous) but doesn’t escape the fact that the EU may quietly prefer a despot in Ankara who can be paid off to control migration to a degree to a ‘democrat’ who wants to join the club so Turks all have the right to migrate to the EU and also have an open border with the EU.
This may all be true (I don’t dispute the idea that Erdogan is callous) but doesn’t escape the fact that the EU may quietly prefer a despot in Ankara who can be paid off to control migration to a degree to a ‘democrat’ who wants to join the club so Turks all have the right to migrate to the EU and also have an open border with the EU.
Using the flood of migrants to extract funds from the EU by making token gestures towards stopping them using Turkey as a thoroughfare showed just how callous he is, plus his arbitrary arrests of opposition including teachers and writers. We don’t quite have that as yet, although the police questioning so-called “hate-speech” and the cancelling of those with perfectly legitimate views around women’s rights might be seen as a slippery slope. This is why such things need calling out, loudly and clearly.
They probably won’t say it as it contradicts the waffle about ‘democracy’ but quietly I suspect many EU leaders are relieved about Erdogan winning. The opposition in Turkey appeared to want to reopen the idea of Turkey joining the EU, which I doubt is something most EU leaders would like to revisit for obvious reasons. Erdogan seems uninterested in the EU now, and it’s easy for the EU to bury the issue on the grounds Erdogan is a bad guy or whatever.
Erdogan’s victory may be good news for a peace deal in Ukraine. An opposition win would probably have positioned Turkey closer to the belligerent EU position on the war, making a peaceful resolution a more distant prospect.
Erdogan’s victory may be good news for a peace deal in Ukraine. An opposition win would probably have positioned Turkey closer to the belligerent EU position on the war, making a peaceful resolution a more distant prospect.
52% ? Here, we never see the end of that democratic %age. No doubt 48% of Turks will be up in arms for 7 years or more.
52% ? Here, we never see the end of that democratic %age. No doubt 48% of Turks will be up in arms for 7 years or more.
The monstering of Jeremy Corbyn in the Great Anti-Semitism Panic of 2017 is one such example of free but unfair. See also the Biden laptop etc
Shame he didn’t beat May then. There would have been a GE last year and Labour finished for the foreseeable.
Shame he didn’t beat May then. There would have been a GE last year and Labour finished for the foreseeable.
The monstering of Jeremy Corbyn in the Great Anti-Semitism Panic of 2017 is one such example of free but unfair. See also the Biden laptop etc
The question is how does a country get back to free and fair elections when the ‘free but unfair’ winners, of left and right, remain in power? (see BM and AH in 1920s/30s)