Erdogan’s politics hurting Turkey’s national interest

Awounded tiger, it is said, is a dangerous beast. In the context of Turkey, the equivalent of the wounded tiger is the governing alliance led by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. As it licks its wounds after its battering in the local elections of March 31, the AK Party, together with its ultra-nationalist allies, is behaving in a manner that exemplifies the famous phrase from Macbeth,

“fair is foul and foul is fair.”

Such an attitude, however, is likely to compound the grave problems confronting the Middle East’s largest economy and an anchor of regional security when what is necessary is a mixture of exactly the opposite attributes — civility, good judgement, prudence and humility.

Seldom has the Turkish Republic been so badly let down by its political leadership since the chaotic 1970s, a Cold War-era decade when street battles between the Left and the Right, political factionalism and hyperinflation gave the country the reputation of a dysfunctional state. Following the loss of the country’s three biggest cities and several coastal municipalities in the local elections held on March 31, the ruling alliance has been showing the withdrawal symptoms of a patient addicted to power and control.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition CHP candidate, officially received the mandate for the Istanbul mayor’s office on April 17 after a series of recounts. However, the AK Party’s “extraordinary objection” could lead to a re-run of elections across Turkey’s biggest city and economic capital on June 2 if it is upheld by the election board. If the ruling alliance’s image has been tarnished by its ingrained belief that “if we win there is no fraud, but when the opposition party wins there is fraud”, the government’s handling of the economy so far has been nothing short of scandalous.

An April 18 report by the Financial Times has laid bare the central bank’s clumsy attempts to prop up the lira artificially in what is clearly another sign of desperation. The UK daily said that “investors, already skittish about putting money to work in Turkey given the direction of economic policy under ... Erdogan, are concerned that the state of the financial defences leaves the country ill-equipped to deal with any potential market crisis”.

Once upon a time, such a newspaper report would have sent shockwaves through the European Union and caused heads to roll at the Turkish central bank, with the government claiming credit for taking corrective action and limiting the damage. But in present-day Turkey, even central bank officials serve at the pleasure of a president who took on extensive new powers approved in a controversial referendum in 2017.

Thanks to Erdogan’s steady authoritarian turn, Turkey’s national interest has become indistinguishable from his political interest. If extra dollars have to be borrowed from local banks to inflate the central bank’s reserves data, then it has to be done, whatever the reputational damage to the country.

By the same perverse logic, what does not enhance the AK Party’s political standing cannot be in Turkey’s best interest. If the municipal-election losses signal an erosion of public confidence in Erdogan’s government, then the proper

response apparently is not a course correction but demands for recount and revote. Had Erdogan been a conservative moderate in the mould of two former prime ministers, Turgut Ozal and Suleyman Demirel, he would have long sought the advice and help of Turkey’s traditional friends and allies.

To be sure, Ozal and Demirel had manifold faults, but now those seem minor by comparison when unemployment is at its highest level in a decade, the lira has slid to a six-month low against the US dollar, and Turkey’s closest friends are not its Nato partners but Qatar, Iran and Russia. Many Turks will wonder how a politician who, as a young man, witnessed firsthand the ineptitude of civilian leaders and the blunders of military generals, could lead the country into such a fine mess. But then again, the seeds of self-destruction may have been planted in Erdogan’s formative years as a political activist and semi-professional football player in Istanbul.

As the Turkish American political scientist Soner Cagaptay notes in his book The New Sultan, “Erdogan’s ideological antecedents from the 1980s continue to shape him decades later, even as Turkey’s most powerful leader. The 2013 Gezi Park rallies and 2016 coup attempt, though starkly different events ..., were, for Erdogan, instances of the same phenomenon: conspiracies to topple the people’s will that were backed by foreign powers.”

The rhetoric of social conservatism and Turkish nationalism may have worked for the AK Party as long as enough jobs were being created, global markets were awash with cheap money, and the country’s friends outnumbered its adversaries. But ever since Erdogan began steering the ship of state into uncharted waters, ordinary Turks began joining foreign investors in voting with their feet in large numbers.

Fortunately, Turkey, due to its population size (79.8 million), strategic location and large free-market economy, is too big to fail. What’s more, the denizens of Turkey’s politically sophisticated urban hubs have emphatically given their verdict on the state of affairs via the municipal elections.

As Sinan Ulgen of Carnegie Europe wrote in the UK’s The Guardian newspaper, “despite being saddled with big problems, Turkish democracy demonstrated its resilience and vibrancy, and hinted at a future beyond populist and divisive politics.” No matter how loud the AK Party’s claims of voting irregularities, fair is not foul and foul is not fair.

Arnab Neil Sengupta is an independent journalist and commentator on Middle East

The denizens of Turkey’s politically sophisticated urban hubs have emphatically given their verdict on the state of affairs via the municipal elections.