TURKEY: Erdogan Sailing Into Reality

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis by Jacques N. Couvas

ANKARA, Jul 27 2007 (IPS) - Sunday’s elections have elevated Turkey to the rank of mature democracy. By giving an impressive 46.7 percent of their vote to Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkish citizens have expressed determination for social stability, economic growth, and political emancipation of the urban middle class and rural populations.

The results show a gain greater than a third in votes for the winning Justice and Development (AK) Party, which had scored 34.3 percent in 2002. AKP has its roots in political Islam, but the outcome of the elections confirms that people did not cast their voices on religion only. It is hard to believe that half of the population turned Islamist in such a short period of time.

More than hailing AKP, voters seem to have disavowed the secularist and nationalist parties. The opposition leader Republican People’s Party (CHP), formed by the country’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, made tiny progress to 20.6 percent from 19.4 percent in the previous elections, confining itself to the west coast.

The third entrant to the Parliament, extreme Nationalist Action Party (MHP), progressed from 8.4 to 14.3 percent, but its voters remained concentrated in two southern provinces traditionally loyal to the party’s chairman.

Joining AKP’s historical electoral base, moderate voters from the centre and right, as well as ethnic minorities, showed signs of tiredness with the secularist and nationalist crying-wolf since the beginning of this year about the “imminent” threats of “Iranisation” of the country and allegedly U.S.-backed Kurdish separatism. Massive participation, at 85 percent, is indicative of the population’s willingness to speak out.

They also appear to have condemned the way the presidential elections of last May were handled by the opposition, and by its opportunistic piggy-backing of the military General Staff’s memorandum of Apr. 27 warning of a possible intervention by the Armed Forces, were the Parliament to vote for AKP’s candidate Abdullah Gul.

It would, however, be unfair to propose that Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s landslide, by Turkish standards, is due to his opponents’ shortcomings rather than to his own merits. The leader of AKP has in the past five years managed Turkey skilfully and led it to economic growth at a seven percent annual rate, low inflation, and record foreign direct investment. Although the benefits have not reached every part of the country, people from underprivileged classes for the first time believe that improving their fate is possible.

The unprecedented victory for a religion-rooted party in 2002 was credited to the population’s will to bar the corrupted traditional political class from power. Only two formations, AKP and CHP, were admitted to the Parliament. But the true concerns of the people were mostly related to unemployment and the continuing impoverishment of those living in the eastern provinces and the shanty suburbs of the big agglomerations.

Turkey has a rate of employment of 35 percent only, almost half of the EU average. As the birth rate in the least developed areas is high, the situation is aggravated year after year. The AKP has convincingly fought corruption, but pre-electoral opinion polls show that the level of citizen preoccupation about unemployment and poverty remains unchanged five years later.

Erdogan’s results will enable him to form a government without the need for coalition and alliances in the parliament, where he has 341 seats. It is less than the 363 he had in the last legislature, despite the additional two million votes AKP collected. The entry of a third party in the National Assembly changed the landscape.

Regardless of the votes reaped because of popular discontent with the opposition and the military, such a re-election for a second consecutive mandate with a higher score than in the first has not been seen in the country since the 1950s. This confers upon Erdogan additional aura and power, but also increased responsibility.

It is a fact that AKP was well funded, but it is also true that its campaign was the most effective and thorough among the 14 competing formations and 700 independent candidates. In addition to methodical marketing and mass actions, AKP members systematically visited every single household throughout the country, MPs say.

This close contact with the population has been a constant in AKP’s strategy since its creation in 2001. It is probably the reason why Recep Tayyip Erdogan comes across not only as a charismatic leader but also as the only Turkish politician who understands his constituents.

This characteristic is likely to serve Erdogan in his new mandate. Because, after Sunday’s and Monday’s celebrations, it is time for landing back to the Turkish reality.

Although he has been a competent captain, Erdogan’s ship is still in the midst of a turbulent and iceberg-filled sea. Domestic and international policies cannot be dissociated, as in other nations. Half of the population certainly opted for rational behaviour and moderation, but 35 percent still voted in favour of nationalistic positions, such as secularism, muscular handling of the Kurdish issue, and anti-western positioning of Turkey. The risk of polarisation and unrest is high for the new government.

In fact, AKP’s powerful victory may prolong and accentuate rather than resolve the crisis triggered in the spring by the invalidation and postponement of the presidential elections. The subject is not closed, and the Parliament will still have to elect a new head of state in the forthcoming weeks.

Those who voted for the party will expect to see an AKP candidate occupy the Cankaya palace. Opposition supporters, on the other hand, will not tolerate a headscarf in the wardrobe of Ataturk’s former home. As the AKP is short of the 367 votes needed to elect the president of its choice, the prime minister will have to make a compromise in this appointment – unless he calls the 29 independent, mostly separatist pro-Kurdish MPs to his rescue.

A compromise is unlikely to be digested by AKP’s core voters. Erdogan may, as an alternative, drive for a referendum to change the Constitution and have the president elected directly by the people. He will again need a coalition.

It would not be surprising, however, if such referendum elected a secularist rather than Islamist presidential candidate. AKP’s 2007 electorate is a mix of both ideological trends, for the reasons explained earlier. But it is almost certain that the prime minister will come up with a “third way”, which will minimise disappointment in both camps.

The northern Iraq crisis is another potentially explosive area for the new government. Turks, independently of their party preferences, expect that the army will cross over and wipe out the Kurdish Worker’s Party (PKK) strongholds, in an operation that may last several years and cost in excess of 10 billion dollars.

Erdogan has so far avoided taking military action, and would prefer a negotiated solution, although he had to brand the war axe during the electoral campaign. He will have to think carefully of his next move, as he knows that the U.S. administration will not tolerate this, and Turkey will be seen by the international community as the aggressor against a small ethnic minority. The relative importance of the pro-Kurdish MPs in the National Assembly will also have to be taken into account before a decision.

AKP’s leader can be credited with succeeding in taking forward Turkey’s move to join the EU. But the initial excitement of its citizens, with the exception of the ethnic minorities, has diminished, and the reforms demanded for membership have become unpopular.

The government’s strategy has recently been to send signals to the U.S. and the EU that Turkey does not need the West any longer. Seeking regional leadership in Eurasia, awarding public contracts to South Korea and Malaysia instead of the U.S. and Europe, or flirting with Iran, Russia, and China are intended to show both home and abroad a willingness of emancipation.

Now that he is again in control, Erdogan will have to show whether his country’s independence from its allies is his true intent, and a realistic one. Pre-electoral rhetoric and post-electoral reality don’t necessarily overlap. The map is not the terrain.