Elegy for Turkey, Now a One-party State*

Haaretz: "The grotesque sight of parliamentarians being dragged into police cars, mouths covered by the hands of the security forces, is the latest sign that [Turkey]...is reaching a point of no return."

In late night raids last Thursday (November 4) , Turkish security forces rounded the heads of the mostly Kurdish HDP party and 11 of its Members of Parliament. The government accused them of an array of charges alleging membership in, or support of, the outlawed Kurdish PKK terrorist organization. The two leaders, Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag, are now officially under arrest and in prison awaiting trial. 

With the recent sequence of aggressive government clampdowns, it would be a lie to say that many in Turkey were surprised at the arrests. Just last week, the HDP co-mayors of Diyarbakir, including a former MP, Gultan Kisanak, were also arrested. However even for seasoned observers already used to the Erdogan government’s accelerated post-coup authoritarianism, the speed and manner of the operation to arrest the HDP leaders was nonetheless shocking. The sight of lawmakers being forced into police cars, at times pushed around by security officials young enough to be their children, was a grotesque show of force. One former MP, Sebahat Tuncel, was literally dragged and gagged while being detained at a protest.

With the arrests, Turkey has erased this summer’s sympathy and support, not least internationally, following the ruthless attempt a group of army officers to take down the state on the night of July 15, bombing the country’s parliament and shooting down hundreds of civilians who were defending its country’s democracy. Internationally, and despite fears by many that Turkey was already well on its way to turning into an authoritarian state, the Turkish government’s slate was wiped clean and it was in effect given a window of time to “clean house.” 

Inside Turkey, in the attempted coup’s immediate aftermath, it had seemed that a new found unity between Turkey’s religiously-oriented AKP-led government and the CHP, the major secular opposition party, might lead the country on a new path: of stability and hope for change. 

However, following the post-coup purges, which have left over 100,000 citizens fired from jobs in the private and public sectors and almost 40,000 arrested, those among the opposition who had supported the summer’s unity slowly started to realize that what they had imagined as a new beginning was merely a passing midsummer delusion. The Wall Street Journal has termed these collective events as "the largest mass purge the world has seen in decades."

This feeling has only been exacerbated by the fact that the purges are extending far beyond the Gulenists—followers of the U.S.-exiled Fethullah Gulen, blamed for the coup attempt—to include diverse opposition voices as well as harsh critics of the government. 

It was reported that among last week's purge of academics, some signatories of the January 2016 pro-peace petition have been sacked. One outspoken human rights activist and world renowned author, Asli Erdogan, has been under arrest for over two months as well. At the same time, a recent decree has targeted the autonomy of Turkish academia by cancelling the election of rectors by universities themselves. Now the head of each university will be appointed directly by the president, from among candidates chosen by the government-appointed Council of Higher Education. 

Then, early last week, the secular newspaper Cumhuriyet, the closest press organization to the opposition CHP (the same party that supported national unity after the coup) was raided, with its Editor-in-Chief detained along with twelve other executives and journalists and staff members. Included among those rounded up is Kadri Gursel, a well-seasoned and mainstream journalist. The clear message from the government was: Everyone is within our reach and we can shut you down too, if needed, just as we forced the closure of 15 other media outlets just days before. Those outlets are part of a total of a 130 media outlets forbidden to broadcast or print in Turkey. 

It is important also to remember that aside from the famous journalist, authors, musicians, and politicians detained or arrested, there are many more ordinary citizens who have been deemed guilty by association and rounded up. 

As in previous crackdowns, they’re especially hard to keep track of: they lack the name recognition or specific affiliation which attracts the attention that facilitates keeping track of the progress of the charges against them; Turkey has famously untransparent procedures regarding their treatment or trials. We can only imagine how many innocent people have been caught up.   

Turkey seems to be quite close to the critical threshold where other countries will simply write it off. The barrage of bad news is just too much to absorb. Where news stories about Turkey use to excite interest, today, I imagine most readers of the international press don’t even bother to read them. The country that for so many years captured their attention and led them to visit, study and even move there, and invest in it. The Turkish government is caused extreme damage to the country’s image, a degradation that will take years, if not decades, to reverse. 

In fact, just last week, the United States ordered consulate staff families in Istanbul to leave the city due to fears of an ISIS orchestrated attack against Americans. Just a week before that the U.S. State Department warned Americans they could be subject to attack or kidnapping in Istanbul by “extremist groups,” such as ISIS. These warnings confirm a deep and telling lack of trust in the Turkish security apparatus by Western intelligence agencies. 

As someone who led educational trips to Turkey, can I honestly take international students there now? With what can I convince academic colleagues to bring groups to a place where the freedom of speech they enjoy and uphold is disappearing, where newspaper editors and parliament members are being arrested and media outlets are shut down on a whim? 

It would be wrong to ascribe all Turkey’s problems to the coup attempt and its aftermath. But rather than using a rare moment of unity to push forward a new agenda, its government has set it back on a path of continued turmoil. However, Turkey’s democracy and civil society won’t be rescued by another round of scathing criticism, from the U.S. or by the European Union, which has already demonstrated its disinterest in prioritizing democratic freedoms over a deal keeping Syrian refugees in at bay from Europe. 

The answers to Turkey’s problems can only be found inside Turkey. If its government adamantly continues on this dangerous path of usurping power, it won’t only be the opposition who will face an unrecognizable homeland. It will also be the fate of government members, blindly marching forward in an insatiable hunt for more power, who, in their quest to rule the country, are tearing the country apart at the seams. 

*This appeared in Haaretz on November 6, 2016. Click here for the link.  

Death Watch for Democracy in Israel and Turkey?

Haaretz: "By methodically eroding liberal democracy, Netanyahu and Erdogan could endanger their states' domestic and international legitimacy. At least if the current diplomatic moves bear fruit they’ll have each other."

Louis Fishman, May 25, 2016-Haaretz

For six months Turkey and Israel have been negotiating to normalize the relations that deteriorated so swiftly following the controversial 2010 Turkish flotilla to Gaza, in which nine Turkish citizens died in clashes with Israeli naval commandos. As the sides inch ever closer together, both countries’ leaders—the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu—seemed to have come to the conclusion that regional interests must trump their own, considerable personal and national pride. What the two leaders don’t explicitly acknowledge is the growing – and depressing - similarity between the two countries’ political culture.
   
The renewal of ties that now appears on the horizon comes at a time when both countries are showing worrying signs of the erosion of their democratic character. Over the last few weeks, the news reports emerging from both Turkey and Israel point to governments that have crossed red lines, with failed oppositions unable to keep the system in check. In fact, both countries, which for years were propped up by the U.S. as the only two “democracies” in the Middle East, are at a critical turning point, despite differences in scope and substance. 

When Netanyahu recently ousted his Defense Minister, Moshe Yaalon, in favor of ultra-nationalist Avigdor Lieberman, Yaalon returned the favor in his resignation speech, highlighting what he called the “extremist and dangerous elements [that] have taken over Israel and the [governing] Likud Party.” He vowed to return to politics after a time-out “to compete for the national leadership of Israel.” Following on, former PM Ehud Barak declared that Israel “has been infected with the seeds of fascism.”

The recent straws that broke Yaalon’s back relate to signs that the social and political consensus upholding critical liberal values (such as the fair and equal application of the law, the disavowal of racist attitudes and legislation) seem to be breaking down.

The most dramatic example was the wave of public and lawmaker support enjoyed by a soldier involved in the extrajudicial killing of an incapacitated Palestinian. Disgusted, Yaalon spoke out against the shows of solidarity that reached up to the PM himself.

The validity of Yaalon’s assessment has been strengthened by Lieberman’s first legislative focus in office: the introduction of the death penalty for terrorists but only to be applied to military courts, effectively excluding its application against Jews. The areas of culture, education and civil society are also under ideological surveillance: the funding for leftist and human rights organizations is being targeted, and “loyalty bills” proposed which aim to cut funds to artists and theaters who criticize the state.

The Labor party’s inability to offer an alternative to the Likud and its coalition, thanks to its own infighting and desperately weak electoral traction, means there are fewer obstacles preventing the deterioration towards an oppressive state.

In this sense, the Labor party greatly resembles the Turkish opposition in parliament, the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The CHP attracts a solid 25% of the Turkish electorate but has no mandate and no leverage thanks to its inability to attract communities beyond its core secular Kemalist base.

Although Israel is progressing down the path Turkey has already trod – towards silencing the opposition and hounding competing ideologies out of the system – the comparison breaks down when it comes to the figure of the head of the government/state. PM Netanyahu is not working for a complete transformation of the system: Rather, after two decades of political maneuvering, he has managed to solidify a strong hold over the state’s institutions. This is quite different from Erdogan’s quest to rewrite the constitution and transform the state into a presidential system, in what many critics, both in Turkey and abroad, describe as a complete transformation of Turkey to an authoritarian state.

For these critics, Erdogan’s recent replacing Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu with his confidante Binali Yildirim was just another sign that Turkey’s days as a democracy are numbered.

But the kiss of death for Turkish democracy could actually come from another legislative effort. The government succeeded last Friday to pass a bill lifting the parliamentary immunity of lawmakers facing legal challenges, primarily aimed at prosecuting the 59 MPs of the mostly Kurdish HDP party, the third largest party in parliament. There are numerous current cases that accuse the HDP of supporting terrorism and working against the state. Readings of the bill were marked by fist fights within the legislative chamber itself. Even though some opposition CHP parliamentarians could also be subject to prosecution for the crime of insulting President Erdogan, some CHP MPs themselves voted for the bill, presenting the ruling AKP with a major victory (some explained that this was a tactical move aimed at blocking it from going to a national referendum).

Not surprisingly, right-wing parties in Israel too have sought—albeit unsuccessfully—to lift the immunity of Arab MPs, such as Haneen Zoabi, whose candidacy was saved by the Supreme Court after the Election Committee tried to ban her from running. Just as in Turkey, center-leftist nationalist—or if you prefer Zionist—MPs voted with the government against Palestinian lawmakers. Three Arab MPs including Zoabi were suspended by the Knesset two months ago for meeting with the families of slain Palestinian terrorists (in a precise parallel one of the HDP members faces charges relating to her visit to a family of a Kurdish suicide bomber).

Here, regarding relations with each state’s ethnic national minority, Turkey and Israel are the most comparable: Most Jews in Israel don’t recognize the possibility of building political coalitions with the state’s Palestinian citizens and Turks in Turkey likewise regarding ethnic Kurds. In both countries these minorities are often perceived as tantamount to a fifth column. However, a center-left party solely made for Jews, or one that gives precedence to Turks, limits its own electoral base, in turn strengthening the rising trend of exclusion, privilege and fascism in both countries.

Until now, the only party that worked to break this mode in Turkey was the HDP, built on various coalitions of Kurds and Turks, Muslims and Armenians (with Jewish and Greek support as well), Greens, Socialists and LGBT activists. Its remarkable success last June however was met with a campaign of delegitimation and their MPs in the very near future could even find themselves behind bars.

Nevertheless, its model of coalition building can provide some hope for Jews and Arabs supporting a new political and social discourse in Israel, working together for a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Arab-dominated Joint List in Israel has worked to fill this gap, however, it still lacks the dynamism which led the HDP to its original victory, and like Turkey, Israel does not seem ready for real change. As long as the opposition Labor Party and the far-left Meretz are unable to reconceptualize Israel as a state of all its citizens, it too, like the Turkish CHP, will remain largely irrelevant and on the way to oblivion.

While both countries can never claim to have been perfect democracies in the past as well —with Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands now going into its 49th year, and Turkey’s long history of oppressing the Kurds—the recent rise of intolerance in their societies, marked by a methodical disregard for human rights and democratic values by their governments, could end up endangering the international and domestic legitimacy of both states. But at least, if the current diplomatic moves bear fruit, they’ll have each other.


This article appeared in Haaretz on April 25, 2016. Click here for the link

Davutoglu’s Juggling Act: Can Turkey’s Re-elected PM Offer a More Moderate Future?*

This week, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s interim prime minister and the head of the religiously conservative Justice and Development Party (the AK Party), scored an astounding victory at the polls, sweeping almost 50 percent of the vote. 

Few could have imagined that the not-so-charismatic professor turned politician would be able to salvage his party from its poor standing in the June election, when his party received 40.7 percent of the vote, ending the party’s three term, 13-year, sole-rule of the country.  

As for the three other parties, the mostly secular main opposition party, the People’s Republican Party (CHP) faired about the same as it did in June, receiving about 25 percent of the vote. 
The real story of the night, however, was the sharp drop in support for the National Action Party (MHP), which fell over 4 points, coming in with only about 12 percent of the vote. The mostly Kurdish leftist party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (or HDP), which in June shocked all by crossing the ten-percent threshold with 13.7 percent of the vote, this time barely crossed it, with just under 11 percent of the vote. Needless to say, the election results came as a major blow to those voters of the CHP and the HDP, in addition to independent citizens, worried about Turkey’s future as a democracy. 

Furthermore, the initial shock was compounded by the failure of the vast majority of polls to predict that the AKP would repeat its election victory of 2011; the slight upward turn in the pre-election polls turned out to be a major understatement. Indeed, for many in the opposition, the election results were literally a slap in the face. So what happened? How is it that within five months the country’s politics have returned to a very similar place to where it was last June, with both the AKP and CHP having almost the same number of seats in the parliament that they had had before? 

First and foremost, credit for this "regressive triumph" must go to Davutoglu, who led a focused campaign, and understood that Erdogan’s intense campaigning in the months leading up to the previous, June elections did more harm than good. Erdogan then had deliberately overshadowed Davutoglu, undermining his role, and in his usual polarizing way, created a great deal of unnecessary controversy. 

This second round of elections was in effect forced on Davutoglu by Erdogan. After the last elections, which didn't produce the supermajority that the AKP sought, Erdogan pressured the prime minister not to enter a coalition government with the CHP, forcing Davutoglu to take his chances with a new popularity test at the polls. 

But it is Davutoglu who has now created an important balance between the two leaders. On the one hand, Davutoglu provided Erdogan with his due respect as the “leader,” by never short-changing or challenging Erdogan’s quest for extended presidential powers; in return, Erdogan remained “presidential” and more or less above party politics. This agreement seems to have been reached this September, at the AKP convention, when more and more disgruntled voices were emerged in the party, growing impatient with Erdogan’s often irrational behavior.  

The AKP’s gain can also be attributed to the other parties’ lack of ability in retaining their votes or gaining more electoral traction. Firstly, the AKP successfully pulled votes away from the MHP through its message that the AKP held the key to stability, as fighting between the PKK and the Turkish security forces entered a dangerous new round following the collapse of the peace process. Further, the poor political maneuvering of the MHP leader, Devlet Bahceli, was edged out by the AKP’s hyped-up nationalist rhetoric.  

As for the CHP, even if Kemal Kilicdaroglu, its leader, has consolidated the party’s powerbase, he has not been able to transform the party into one that embraces more conservative voices: He is not much of a coalition-builder and is not a particularly charismatic leader, whose 25 percent seems to be an election ceiling for the party 

The Kurdish-associated HDP, and the other opposition parties for that fact, can breathe a sigh of relief that it was able to cross the threshold for a second time; if it had not, the AKP could easily have reached the 367 seats needed to allot new powers to Erdogan, which would have set the stage for Turkey’s descent into a more authoritarian state than it has already become. 

However, the HDP's image has been badly dented. The HDP was able to create a special dynamic of change and hope for the Kurdish issue in the lead-up to the June elections, but afterwards, once the peace process began to break down, its inability to persuade the outlawed Kurdish Worker’s Party (the PKK) to halt its violence highlighted a major weakness of the party, which led more conservative Kurdish voters to return back to the ranks of the AKP.

At the same time, the attacks against HDP offices and affiliated businesses, even as the police turned a blind eye, coupled with the rampant state of violence in the majority-Kurdish cities, which have been subjected to extended curfews, did not provide the HDP with a chance to relive its impressive pre-June campaign, as it was preoccupied with the daily struggles of its constituency, not to mention the two ISIS-led suicide attacks on HDP-affiliated political gatherings.  

While it is too early to understand the greater trends of these elections, it is clear that the AKP’s winning 317 seats in parliament (a number that is subject to change with later electoral adjustments) returns the party to a very similar bind to the one it was in before. It is still short of the 330 seats needed to bring constitutional changes via a referendum, or the much higher 367 needed for the party to pass constitutional changes without putting them to a popular vote. 

In other words, this election was no more of a landslide victory than past AKP wins. However, only time will be able to answer the pressing question of whether Davutoglu will be able to balance the various factions in parliament and create a new atmosphere of change. He has shown some talent for difficult juggling acts – not least, he has just managed Erdogan's pressures on him and with the electoral need to minimize Erdogan's presence in the election campaign. 

With the increasing polarization of the electorate, the continued clamp-down on the press and personal freedoms, the timing for change could not better. 

*This article appeared in Haaretz on November 3, 2015. Click here for article 

Bombings, Bans and the Ballot-box Turkey on Edge*

No words can express the tragedy that hit Turkey last Saturday, when over 100 people were killed and hundreds more injured following a twin suicide-bomb attack at a peace rally in the capital Ankara. The rally was sponsored by labor unions, heavily attended by the mostly Kurdish left HDP party, and joined by a symbolic representation from the main opposition party, the CHP.

Just hours after the attack, the Turkish government declared an official three-day mourning period in recognition of the nation’s largest terrorist attack ever. The finger of blame is increasingly being pointed at Islamic State, or ISIS, sympathizers. However, rather than uniting Turkey, the bombing only has strengthened existing divisions.  

After the initial shock of the sheer scope of the bombing, anger was the reaction of many to the bombing - directed at the Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and the religiously conservative AKP interim-election government, led by the Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoglu. For many Turkish citizens it was no surprise that such an attack had happened to begin with.  

Over the course of the last few months, the mostly Kurdish HDP has been the target of violent attacks, including a deadly bomb attack at their election rally just two days before the June 7 parliamentary elections, and an ISIS linked-suicide attack targeting a socialist youth group affiliated with the HDP on July 20, killing 33. These major security breaches made it clear to all that another attack was highly likely. Last month, HDP offices around Turkey were vandalized and burnt to the ground in racist attacks, with the police remaining largely indifferent.

Of course, things soured for Erdogan’s AKP following those June elections, when it lost its parliamentary majority, and the HDP crossed the 10% voter threshold. This lead to political deadlock, since the AKP was not able to form either a coalition with the main opposition CHP, or a narrow government with the nationalist MHP, leading the country to snap-elections to be held on November 1.

Both Erdogan and Davutoglu have done their utmost to delegitimize the HDP, a campaign that began even before the June general elections, once it was clear that the HDP would not support Erdogan’s quest to allocate further extensive powers to the presidency that he holds. Following the elections, the embryonic peace process facilitated by Kurdish MPs between the outlawed Kurdish separatist movement, the PKK, and the Turkish state collapsed, both sides now fully immersed in fighting each other.  

Following the Ankara attack, HDP’s head, Selahattin Demirtas, lashed out at the government claiming not only was it delinquent in preventing the bombing but that members of the state institutions were also complicit in the attack. No evidence was provided, but for some in Turkey such a damning accusation didn’t seem so far from an obvious truth; many others believe that Ankara has consistently turned a blind eye to ISIS sympathizers, with fatal results.

While the AKP denies these claims as completely preposterous, Turkey’s long history of its intelligence services working within its own autonomous and unaccountable set of rules fuels such claims. Indeed, on Wednesday an Ankara court upheld the government’s request for a complete media blackout on the bombing (covering “all kinds of news, interviews, criticism and similar publications in print, visual, social media and all kinds of Internet media”) only heightening the suspicion that few details will ever come to light. The ban came into effect just as reports that the suicide bombers had been identified; both were known to the  police and intelligence services, one suspect's brother is said to have committed a suicide bombing blamed on ISIS only three months earlier 

The fear that the full account of the attack will never come to light is hardly unfounded in recent Turkish history: in the past, when the media was banned from reporting on specific events, such as the 2011 Uludere affair (34 Kurdish civilians mistakenly believed to be PKK terrorists killed in an airstrike), or the 2014 alleged transfer of Turkish arms to Islamist radical groups in Syria, perhaps even to ISIS, the censorship seemed to have been aimed at covering up government complicity, with the benefit of a complete lack of transparency.

The media ban is the latest expression of an accelerating clampdown on a free press in Turkey. Just a day before the bombing the editor of the English-language newspaper Todays Zaman, Bulent Kenes, was arrested on live television for allegedly “insulting” Erdogan, while two other journalists joined a long list of other citizens found guilty of insulting Erdogan. Fortunately this week Kenes was released but still faces prison if found guilty.

Sadly, the Ankara bombing victims make up just part of Turkey’s rampant death toll during the last few months. Since the June elections, over 600 Turkish citizens have been killed, whether in terrorist attacks, or Turkish security forces by the PKK, or in operations carried out by the Turkish army in the southeast of the country which is under partial military curfew, or PKK fighters (who are also Turkish citizens) killed by the army. Indeed, during the elections Erdogan insisted that only an absolute AKP majority would ensure Turkey’s “peaceful” transition to a new presidential system, leaving many to believe that he was actually threatening the electorate, and that things could get messy if it did not give the AKP a clear majority. Regardless of what he actually meant, his prediction seems to have been right on.

The AKP has radically failed on numerous fronts. If it had not been for the main opposition CHP leader, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, whose leadership bridges the country’s dangerous political polarization, and the determination of the opposition parties, Turkey could have very well have run off the rails of democracy by now. However, a culture of fear is consolidating in Turkey, and its effects will reverberate not only over the coming fortnight preceding the general elections, but in the weeks and months following it as well.

This week, Turkey’s national football team took on Iceland in the conservative city of Konya, an AKP stronghold. Jeers and whistles marred the moment of silence for those killed in Ankara. The lessons of the bombing have clearly still not been learnt.

*This article appeared in Haaretz on 15 October 2015, please click here for article.

Turkey's Snap Election: One Month to go (Turkey November 2015 election, part 1)

Turkish Snap Elections 2015: An Intro

In exactly one month, on November 1, Turkish voters will return to a new round of elections, following the failure of the religious conservative AKP to form a coalition government with the secular-orientated CHP, the nationalist MHP, or the mostly-Kurdish leftist HDP. It seemed clear from the past that this was an impossible feat, with the three other parties staunchly opposing AKP’s plan to transfer new powers to the nation’s president (and its former party leader and prime minister), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, essentially creating a “super-presidency.”

The fact that the AKP was not able to form a government was no surprise; in fact the only surprising part of the whole election was the party’s dwindling show at the ballot box, receiving just over 40% of the vote, down almost 9% from the 2011 vote. This of course was caused when the HDP crossed the 10% parliamentary threshold—a remnant of the 1980 Coup—and one that was kept in place by the AKP despite 13 years of single-party rule and promises to rid the country of the remnants of the coup.  

For my analysis of the June elections, please click link

Since the election however Turkey has seen some of its bleakest days in over a decade, once again locked in conflict with the PKK, with the Turkish security forces taking heavy blows. Let us remember that the peace process with the Kurds entitled the AKP and Erdogan continued support; however, as I stated recently in an article in Haaretz (related to the AKP’s Grand Congress):

“the days of hope have been buried with the widespread belief that Erdogan instigated the renewed violence in order to delegitimize the HDP and ensure the AKP’`s stability and electoral support. The question of whether the lives of soldiers, policemen and innocent civilians could have been spared by doing its utmost to keep the peace process on track will forever loom over the AKP.”

Therefore, placing aside whether Erdogan bears some responsiblity for the violence, the quick unravelling of the peace process, the growing number of dead (from among civilians and security forces), and the subjecting of large parts of the population to military curfews, is ample proof that the AKP’s peace process was wrongly mapped out from the start, and despite the best of intentions of many involved, it has turned into a massive failure. 

Nevertheless, even if a failure, on the flip side, the AKP can be credited with placing the process on the daily agenda and thus paving the way for a possible future deal.  

Now to the elections….

So the question is how do you hold elections in this terrible state of violence and turbulent times? Well, the answer is, the show must go on. And, based on most polls, the Turkish electorate is not about to change their vote, with almost all showing a similar outcome to the previous June 7 elections with Turkey most likely witnessing the fact that the days of AKP’s sole rule is over.

Over the next month, I will be covering different aspects of the election, recapping major points leading up to the vote, and highlighting each points related to each party and its leadership, so stay tuned!

The Real Winner is Hope! A Look at the Turkish Election results

The recent Turkish elections dealt a major blow to the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and a greater blow to the die-hard fans of Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan. It was clear in the run-up to the elections that this was a mandate on whether-or-not Turkey was headed to a super-presidency, or what I called in an earlier article a ‘Putinization’ of the Turkish political system. The Turkish people gave an overwhelming no to the AKP’s plans; the AKP received only 40.8% of the vote, dropping a whopping 9% since the 2011 vote. For the first time since 2002, the AKP can no longer rule as a single party, well under the 276 seats needed. 

This number of seats have not been finalized and are fluctuating; however tehy will remain within
 one-two seats of the above estimate. Source Hurriyet 

The real source of evening’s exhilaration was that the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) strong showing with an impressive 13% of the overall vote. Their success is attributed to its charismatic leader, Selahattin Demirtas, and its inclusive ticket, which promises social and political justice not just to Kurds, but to all socially oppressed groups, such as women and the LGBT community. They also have created coalitions with socialists and environmentalists. Through dedication and hard work, the HDP managed what had seemed impossible: a mostly Kurdish party shattered the high 10% threshold.  

In addition to this, while the Republican People's Party (CHP) remained about the same, at 25% of the vote, it held ground, even with the flow of CHP voters to the HDP, who were determined to block Erdogan’s plans for a super-presidency.  As for the National Movement Party (MHP), it gained votes, up to 16%, stolen from the AKP. In fact, this was exactly what Erdogan had feared, on the campaign trail he often inserted nationalists rhetoric. However, this backfired, with it alienating the AKP’s conservative Kurdish voters, who also ended up not buying into Erdogan’s “Koran-thumping” politics.

So what went wrong for the AKP?

Since the Gezi Park protests, Erdogan has done his utmost to alienate moderate voices in his party. In fact, with the breakout of the December 2013 corruption scandal, Erdogan has increasingly built a wall of political cronies around him, who join with him in creating a chorus of hate and fear. In fact, during the election season, Erdogan overshadowed the main AKP candidate, Prime Minister Davutoglu, regularly rallying, never missing the chance to curse Gulenists, Armenians, Gays, and Jews. This might have worked or been brushed aside when Turkey’s economy was booming, but certainly would not be tolerated in a sluggish one.  Not to mention the fact that many Turkish citizens seem to have become fed up with Erdogan whose politics are the main source of polarization. 

Unable to stop Erdogan and his hateful press, Davutoglu figured that he could balance the die-hard Erdoganists by staying close to more moderate and sensible politicians. However, the problem is that Erdogan has become impossible to control; yet, without Erdogan, the moderate voices of the AKP simply do not amount to much in terms of political clout. This is exacerbated by the fact that the public clearly sees the moderates' silence in the wake of corruption, disregard for law, and Erdogan’s extravagance.   

Thus this election has shown that not only Turkey is at a crossroads, but also AKP’s moderate voices. While it is hard to imagine they will fight for the full control of the party, if they don’t show the public that they are serious about abandoning Erdogan’s plans for a super-presidency, it seems the party could be doomed to a bleaker future. In short, it seems hard to imagine that the CHP, MHP, or the HDP, will allow Erdogan to move forward, blocking the AKP’s chances of entering a coalition government.  

So what now?

Of course, it is still early to tell. Already CHP leader Kilicdaroglu has made public his thoughts of the possibility of a CHP-MHP-HDP coalition. While it seems like a long shot, Turkey has seen equally strange coalitions in the past. In his article on the election, political analyst Serkan Demirtas states that this could happen based on "certain conditions and with the purpose of undermining Erdoğan’s position. This large coalition would later take the country to polls with, for example, a reduced election threshold and other legal amendments for the further normalization of the country.”

In my opinion, we will need at least a week or two to pass until we can speak wisely on what possibilities could emerge. If I could weigh in with my life experience, I am never surprised at politicians taking extreme turns with a whiff of power. We will need to play this one out. However, it seems safe to say that new elections, which could happen in 90 days would be a worst-case scenario for the AKP. There is no reason to imagine that in a second round that it could fare better, and another election could lead to deeper divides in the party.

For now, I will congratulate the HDP and convey my wishes that this will lead Turkey to a brighter future, one where the wounds of the past can begin to be heal. It will not be easy, and it would be foolish to think that Erdogan will take this election’s message to heart and begin relinquishing his attempts to receive extended presidential powers.

Nevertheless, as I watched the election results with a group of Turkish university professors and students, I could not help notice the relief on the numerous political analysts’ faces streaming live on Turkish television. A glimmer of hope emerged perhaps for the first time since the Gezi Park protests; indeed, the election results should be treated simply as a glimpse of what better days might lie ahead, providing some hope for a better future. 

Sadly, this all came at a heavy price. Just two days before the election, a bomb went off at an HDP rally, killing two and injuring many more. Today, as I write this, I have learned that that a third person died of his wounds. This just shows us that in no way are things as simple as they might seem now. 

    

Did someone say elections in Turkey? (Turkey Local Election coverage 2014, 1)*

At the end of March 2014, Turkey will once again head to the polls to vote in mayors for the country’s municipalities, marking five years since the previous ones, and almost three years since the 2011 national elections. While local elections do not always serve as an indicator for the general public’s confidence in a ruling party, there is no doubt that the upcoming elections in Turkey is quickly turning into a referendum for the ruling AK Party, which received almost fifty percent of the vote in the last national elections.  

Actually, it is not the opposition parties that are treating this as a referendum, who obviously know the stakes are high; rather, it is Turkey’s strong Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is pushing this stance. We have to remember that Erdogan is at his best during elections, and during the past few weeks he has been campaigning “full-steam ahead.” 

Ever since the Gezi Park protests, in fact, Erdogan has been on a non-stop campaign challenging his opponents, or anyone who has the potential to challenge his hegemony, one-by-one. Most recently, in an attempt to consolidate power within his own party, the Turkish prime minister opened a front against the Gülen movement, or what is known in Turkish as the Hizmet (Service) movement, or the Cemaat (the Society). However, it is still premature to see how the unfolding row will play out in the upcoming local elections. Clearly, the twitter wars between the two camps has showed us just how messy Turkish politics can become.  

What is clear is that Erdogan’s constant divisive “powerhouse” politics will most likely lead to a decline in his support, something I already claimed just two weeks before the Gezi protests. However, let us not lose sight, local elections can be misleading; it is important to remember that Erdoğan also treated the 2009 elections as a referendum and despite the opposition parties gaining some ground, just two years later, in the national elections, he swept the ballots, getting almost 50% of the general vote (see my former blogs on 2009 local election, and 2011 national elections). 

The key to any true success on behalf of the main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), will depend greatly on how dynamic their candidates are, and the party’s ability to open the door to communities they have shunned in this past. In Istanbul, and the other major cities, utilizing the space the Gezi Park protests created without exploiting it will be central; in other words, the party will need to capture the overall population’s imagination, heightening spirits that change is possible. 

During the next 3.5 months, I will be covering different aspects of the elections and focusing on how other parties, such as the newly formed Peoples Democratic Party (HDP) and how its candidate for Istanbul, the Gezi protester and MP, Sırrı Süreyya Önder, will influence the race. On the same token, I will be watching if CHP’s choice of Mustafa Sarıgul to run for mayor in Istanbul was a good or bad one (he will officially open his campaign this Thursday). Further, I will give a rundown of the other cities and regions, looking at which parties are most likely to make gains, or hold ground, such as the Peace and Democratic Party (BDP) in the southeastern Kurdish regions, and the National Action Party (MHP), in the western regions and some cities in the interior.  Indeed, this election should be an exciting one! 

*The coverage will be indexed as seen above in title

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