TURKEY: Erdogan’s 300 At The Gates

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Jacques N. Couvas

ANKARA, Jul 19 2007 (IPS) - After a quiet start, in relative indifference by the population, the electoral campaign has since last week gained momentum and decibels. Banners flying party colours alternate with the vivid red national flags in all public areas. Buses and vans, featuring aggressive patriotic slogans and moustached portraits of political leaders, parade their disco-like loudspeakers through the streets of all cities and villages throughout Turkey.

The sudden burst of excitement has not spared the shores of the Bosporus and the creeks of the coastal towns of the Aegean, where barges and boats make sure that tourists and holidaymakers do not miss the “message”, by day or night.

Exiting members of parliament and new aspirants alike devote entire workdays distributing their “programmes” and saying a friendly word to unknown passer-buys at the disembarkation platforms of the sea-buses in Istanbul’s Eminonu, Karakoy or Besiktas ports. The few female candidates are particularly active in this race for votes.

Adrenaline-flow among politicians is increasing exponentially each day. And for good reason: the hour of popular judgment is near – Jul. 22. These anticipated elections, normally scheduled for Nov. 4, but advanced after the aborted presidential election of the President of the Republic last May, are considered by many as the most important since 1983, when Turkey returned to democracy after the latest military coup.

A high rate of mobilisation of voters from all sides is expected, in spite of the summer vacations. Hundreds of thousands of citizens have made travel plans to return to their voting places, just for that date. The determination of the secularists to set roadblocks on AKP’s road to power seems to have reached an unprecedented degree.

Turkey became a republic in 1923, under the direction of its founder and national hero Mustafal Kemal, better known as Ataturk, and, despite periodic military interventions, has remained in the democratic camp of world’s nations. Headed by the President, the country has a unicameral legislative system, embodied in the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA), composed of 550 members directly elected by universal suffrage for a five-year term of office.

Each one of Turkey’s 81 provinces is entitled to an initial National Assembly seat. The remainder is distributed to the provinces on the basis of their respective populations, according to the largest average proportional representation method.

The door to the Parliament is, however, not open to any and all. Parties must obtain at least ten percent of the vote in order to participate in the distribution of seats. Earlier elections have seen major political formations excluded from the TNGA because of this provision. Out of the recognised 26 to 30 parties in the past decades, only two to five generally get to the law-making hemisphere.

Winning 34.3 percent of the vote cast in 2002, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is in a good position for an electoral victory. But its direct challenger, the Republican People’s Party (CHP) founded by Ataturk has made substantial progress in voters’ preferences between the past two elections. Five years ago it jumped to 19.4 percent in polls, gaining 11 percentage points.

An emerging rival for AKP is the National Action Party (MHP), which obtained 8.4 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections but no seats. Recent political events have revived its electorate and drawn to it those among the citizens who fear an Islamic republic, and those who would like to see tough action against the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Kurds in general.

With a very young population, Turkey keeps adding between three and four million new voters in each election. This year the number of electors is estimated to rise to 44 million from 41.4 million five years ago.

Participation has varied, with a trend towards greater absenteeism, and in 2002 it declined to 79.1 percent. These fluctuations, together with the rapid changes in electoral demography, make result forecasting difficult.

Most of the young people, who expand the electoral lists, live in the eastern part of the country, whose population depends on welfare, the provision of which is part of the AKP’s ongoing strategy, consistent with its pro-religious convictions.

At the same time, many of these youngsters move into large urban areas, where the secularist ideal prevails. Moreover, nationalism is strong among younger members of the rural and blue-collar classes, and the current challenges faced by the country in northern Iraq encourage affinities with the more radical parties, which seek all-out revenge against the Kurds.

Opinion polls have evolved in Turkey into sophisticated political market research tools that have nothing to envy from the U.S., the UK or France. Their objectivity is questionable, however, as some organisations are too close to specific parties or controlled by one or another of the wealthy families that dominate the Turkish industry and economy.

After a period of contradictions, many of the opinion polls now seem to concord that the incumbent Prime Minister’s AKP will win with a large score. The discrepancies among results published or the predictions of political analysts are confined to the number of seats AKP will obtain and, therefore, its ability to govern alone.

In fact, the most frightening nightmare of the leader of AKP, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is to have to form a coalition with a smaller party sympathetic to his programme, and become hostage to such an alliance. Whether genuine in his feelings, or histrionic in his effort to get his voters to the urns Jul. 22, Erdogan threatened in a television interview on Monday night to exit Turkish politics should he be forced to cohabitate with another leader in order to form a government.

A report published last May by a U.S. financial institution gave a landslide victory to AKP – no less than two-thirds of the vote. A few days later, the author of the report, a Turkish executive of the firm, resigned to join the AKP as candidate.

Other international financial institutions have attempted to predict the outcome of this election. On Tuesday, a global brokerage firm published a poll which projects a total of 307 seats for AKP (363 in the 2002 elections), 116 for the CHP/DSP (Democratic Left Party) alliance (CHP obtained 178 seats in 2002), 87 for MHP (0 seats in 2002), and 40 for independent candidates (from 9 in 2002), whose majority serve the Kurdish electorate in the country.

A party needs at least 276 seats to receive vote of confidence. A better margin than this will be necessary for AKP to implement its programme unobstructed and to influence, if not impose, the choice of the next President of the Republic.

Erdogan has in the past twelve months stood bravely against the pressures from President Ahmet Necdet Sezer and the military establishment on various domestic and international issues. Will he for the next battle manage to gather his 300?