Istanbul – © 4.murat/Shutterstock
Despite some early signs of moderation, after winning his third presidential term in contested elections, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has stuck to his customary repressive policies
It will soon be a month into Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s third term at the helm of Turkey. His victory and subsequent political decisions have been interpreted in various ways, even by those who argue that his government choices show signs of moderation. However, hopes in this direction seem premature.
Whether the problem is Turkey’s relationship with Europe, unorthodox management of the economy or the crackdown on dissent, the “new Turkey” promised by Erdoğan looks a lot like the country his Justice and Development Party (AKP ) has ruled for the past 21 years.
A head-to-head election
After falling below the 50% threshold needed to win presidential elections in the first round, Erdoğan won the May 28 runoff with 52.18%. In the parliamentary elections held at the same time, the AKP coalition retained its majority. Erdoğan was promptly congratulated by political leaders and international officials such as US President Joe Biden and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who said he “looked forward to continuing to build EU-Turkey relations “.
This victory came as a shock to 47.82% of voters who had voted for the opposition candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu of the Republican People’s Party (CHP). The latter had managed to bring together a conservative, a nationalist and even an Islamist party in a coalition known as the Table of Six. Additionally, the Green Left Party, which has a strong base of Kurds and Social Democrats across Turkey and the country’s southeast, has decided not to field its own candidate.
A wide range of allies had therefore united with a single goal: to defeat Erdoğan so that the country had a chance for change. Thanks to the growing economic crisis and the widely criticized government mishandling of the aftermath of February’s strong earthquakes, many thought Turkey could finally take a turn in a new direction.
Is Turkey still a democracy?
There are many reasons why the attempt to open a new chapter in Turkey’s history has failed. Firstly, there was no competition between Erdoğan and his opponent. While Erdoğan and his party have used state resources, including Turkey’s national television station TRT, to run their campaign, the opposition has been left with some beleaguered opposition channels and social media outlets. For example, in April alone, Erdoğan was granted 32 hours of airtime versus only 32 minutes for Kılıçdaroğlu.
The official report provided by the OSCE observation mission notes that “the incumbent president and the ruling parties enjoyed an unjustified advantage, including through biased media coverage.”
In addition to this disparity and to the widely reported irregularities and intimidation Erdoğan and his allies have waged a highly polarizing campaign, with some of the opposition’s most popular leaders jailed or facing long prison terms. According to an article by Fareed Zakaria on the Washington Post, this type of electoral climate is new in the history of democracy. “Are these elections free? Technically yes, but they are also deeply unfair,” she said.
Any hope for change should have been extinguished in the face of attacks on journalists immediately after the election. The High Council of Radio and Television has fined several broadcasters for comments made during election coverage. Opposition channel TELE1 has been fined for a program that covered electoral irregularities, while popular FOX TV journalist Çiğdem Toker faces a legal battle for saying on the air that “democracy doesn’t live only in the polls”.
Hopes for moderation are dying out
After the victory, Erdoğan started forming the new government. In his first cabinet speech he seemed to offer an olive branch to disappointed opposition voters: “All of Turkey won with us and our coalition. You won each of the 85 million [di cittadini]regardless of political preferences”.
Even some choices seemed at first glance to signal a softening. The bellicose Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu was sidelined. However, when successor Ali Yerlikaya was governor of Istanbul he was responsible for banning the annual March 8 International Women’s Day march in Taksim.
The head of the Turkish intelligence agency MIT, the US-educated Hakan Fidan, was appointed foreign minister. However respected he may be in international security circles, during his time at the head of the intelligence agency journalists overseas were targeted and spied on .
A similar pessimism has arisen regarding the relationship between Turkey and Europe, since so far foreign policy under Fidan seems to be the same as always. On July 12, officials from Turkey, Sweden, Finland and NATO will meet in Lithuania to discuss Sweden’s membership bid, but Fidan repeated the usual talk about Sweden as a haven for “terrorists” . Stockholm has made moves to address Turkish security concerns related to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), while remaining in compliance with local and EU law.
Most important at a time when the Turkish economy appears to be heading towards an even deeper crisis was Erdoğan’s choice of finance minister. The task was entrusted to Mehmet Şimşek, a man respected by the financial markets when he served from 2009 until his dismissal by Erdoğan in 2018. Şimşek’s return seemed to indicate that Erdoğan would allow a return to more orthodox measures and the abandonment of the policy of cutting rates despite galloping inflation.
In addition, Hafize Gaye Erkan, a former executive at First Republic Bank and Goldman Sachs in the United States and the first woman to hold the position in Turkey, was appointed governor of the central bank.
However, soon after these appointments apparently designed to calm the markets, Erdoğan communicated all too clearly that his view of the economy remained unchanged, even as the Turkish lira has lost 80% of its value against the dollar in the last five years and the cost of living is out of control. Speaking on June 14, he insisted that inflation in Turkey would drop to single digits, while also insisting that he is against raising interest rates : “Some of our friends shouldn’t be mistaken in thinking things like ‘The president is heading for a serious change in interest rates.'”
It is unclear how much autonomy the new finance minister and central bank governor will have, given that Erdoğan has sacked officials whose views differed from his in the past.
Markets seem unconvinced by these steps to signal a return to economic sanity. After the elections, foreign exchange reserves reached net negative levels, while the Turkish lira continued to depreciate for two consecutive weeks. With local elections on the horizon, including those for the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara which are currently in the hands of the opposition, it is unclear whether the president will risk returning to rational ground, which would be bitter medicine that could initially cause economic stagnation and even a further rise in inflation.
The repression continues apace
There are also signs that the crackdown on civil society, human rights activists and opposition figures will continue and perhaps even worsen. On the eve of the elections, Erdoğan gave a speech in which he promised never to let Selahattin Demirtaş, a popular Kurdish politician and former co-chairman of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), out of prison. The crowd listening to the president responded with cries of “Death to Selo”, demanding the politician’s execution. This came despite the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) again ruling that the rights of Demirtaş and other HDP politicians had been violated.
Meanwhile, many high-profile human rights activists remain in jail. One of them is the lawyer Can Atalay, elected as a deputy by the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP). He is one of eight people jailed in the 2013 Gezi Park protests case and convicted of orchestrating popular protests. However, Atalay is now a deputy. According to Article 83 of the Turkish constitution, parliamentarians cannot be arrested or detained without Parliament having voted on the matter. Despite TİP demonstrations across the country, Atalay remains in prison.
Erdoğan and the AKP-led coalition have made anti-LGBT+ rhetoric another pillar of their electoral strategy. In his first speech after taking office, Erdoğan promised to introduce a constitutional amendment to “protect the family” from “perverts”.
Key coalition partner figures such as Yeniden Refah Partisi (YRP) said they would work to shut down civil society initiatives and LGBT+ NGOs. Turkey now has its most right-wing parliament in its centuries-old history, with extremist Islamic parties like YRP and Hüda-Par, a party with ties to the terrorist organization Hezbollah, as allies of the AKP. Both parties are strongly against gender equality in the law. They also took aim at laws aimed at preventing violence against women and challenged current alimony laws, age limits for marriage, the right to divorce and other topics.
This grossly misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric continues to have real ramifications, especially as Turkey’s LGBT+ community prepares to celebrate its Pride month. For example, on 7 June a film collective had a screening of a film about miners and LGBT+ people in Britain canceled by local governors in Istanbul. When the group went ahead with the film screening anyway, the police surrounded the building and he took both the organizers and members of the public into custody .
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