TONY BURMAN

How Turkish voters seized power from an authoritarian ruler,

Last Sunday’s stunning parliamentary election in Turkey was a dramatic personal rebuke to its increasingly authoritarian president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

But that, as they say, is his problem.

Far more significant was that the results reaffirmed the deepening strength of Turkey’s new democracy.

At the crossroads between Europe and Asia, Turkey shares borders with Syria, Iran and Iraq. It is at the centre of the world’s most volatile region. By blunting its power-hungry president and reminding him who is still in charge, the voters of Turkey provided a rare victory for democracy.

Turks went to the polls in astonishing numbers, with a turnout of more than 86 per cent. They denied Erdogan’s ruling party the governing parliamentary majority needed to control the 550-seat national assembly for the first time in 13 years. Turks also provided a historic political breakthrough for the country’s large Kurdish minority. The Kurds will be represented by a political party in parliament for the first time.

Erdogan’s party saw its share of the popular vote drop to about 40 per cent, considerably less than the 49 per cent it achieved in 2011.

In political terms, this will force the president to create a coalition with one of the smaller parties. If that fails, there is the possibility of another election. But for now, at least, the election has derailed Erdogan’s galloping ambitions.

The result has prevented the president from amassing more and more power in his efforts to impose an autocracy on Turkey.

In Turkish politics, Erdogan is a conflicting figure. In his early years as prime minister, his accomplishments were striking. He brought the economy under control and reined in the country’s powerful military. He shaped what was widely regarded as a constructive foreign policy in a region fraught with challenges. As a NATO member, Turkey’s stature grew.

But recently, Erdogan has indulged his dark and authoritarian instincts. He has bullied and insulted anyone in his way.

During the campaign, he directed threats and accusations against female activists and non-Muslims. He dismissed the pro-Kurdish party as a haven of gays and atheists.

He has imprisoned opponents who challenged him and disgracefully warned against the threats of “Jewish capital.” Erdogan has intimidated judges and journalists who have crossed him. Also, the stench of corruption has been increasingly evident.

He ascended from the post of prime minister to president last year. Although he was not on the ballot himself last Sunday, he led his party’s campaign. The election turned on whether Turks would give his party a big enough majority to allow him to alter Turkey’s constitution. He wanted to change Turkey from a parliamentary government to an executive presidency, which would grant him virtually unlimited power.

In this quest, Erdogan was compared by his critics to Vladimir Putin, president of Russia. In Putin’s own move from prime minister to president, the Russian gradually changed his fledgling democratic state into one-man rule. Many in Turkey feared that a similar drift toward dictatorship was underway.

But Turkey’s voters put a stop to that, at least for now. Without constitutional change, Erdogan faces the dismal prospect of remaining in the ceremonial post of president, while someone else wields the real executive power as prime minister.

If Erdogan was the big loser in the election, a big winner was the pro-Kurdish secular party. It achieved the 10-per-cent threshold necessary for representation in parliament. Its success was not only due to Kurdish support. The party also gained votes from the young, secular, left-leaning protesters who caused Erdogan so much trouble in the June 2013 Gezi Park protests against the government’s growing authoritarianism.

This will provide Turkey’s Kurds and other secular voters with a powerful national platform from which to challenge Erdogan’s pro-Islamist assault on the country’s secular tradition.

Erdogan has emerged from this election as a battered and diminished figure. So far, his initial response has been cautious, implying that he is prepared to work with Turkey’s new reality.

Regardless, Turkey’s democrats are seeing their increasing power consolidate. And that is wonderful news for a region that is otherwise on its knees.