Turkey is sailing away
It's a strange thing: the markets and The Economist know little of what is going on and being talked about “on the ground.” But when decision time rolls around, the people “on the ground” also care little about what the markets or The Economist have to say. This became apparent in Turkey on Sunday night – just as it had in Greece in the summer of 2015.
Few expected Recep Tayyip Erdogan to show such resilience and to come first in the presidential race after everything that’s happened. Washington, Brussels and the markets were almost certain he’d lose. They were looking at the election through the prism of their own wants and they were taken by surprise. The difference is that Erdogan is a battle-scarred veteran of politics, who knows, as few others do, how to feel the pulse of the average Turk and knows exactly what’s happening “on the ground” – and played the game accordingly.
There is another similarity between the Turkish elections and Greece’s in 2015, however. Then, as now, statements, publications, interventions by foreign leaders and officials had the opposite of the desired result. They boomeranged. We remember the turbulent period of the bailout referendum, when every intervention by a domestic or foreign player simply boosted support for the vote against it. The same happened in Turkey. Those who want to see their country become a modern, European nation share the same sense of desperation as the “Stay in Europe” camp in Greece in 2015. They are watching their country sail down a different route, and there’s very little they can do about it. But citizens and voters do not always act cerebrally and coolly – and anyone who ignores them is inevitably in for an unpleasant surprise.
What happened in Turkey is that Erdogan benefited from a strange mixture of emotional reliance on his part, of rising nationalism and of anger toward the West and its dictates. The votes cast for him were very likely based on an illusion. The markets may fail to capture the zeitgeist, but they do have a way of delivering a no-nonsense wake-up call to leaders and voters that puts even the staunchest deniers of reality on their toes. Turkey is on the precipice of a major economic crisis and Erdogan is either going to continue challenging the basic rules of economic science and doing his own thing, or he’s going to steer the country into a massive storm. Either he will work things out with the West and perform a volte-face that will allow him to proceed in a more moderate manner, or he will create a rift that he will blame on the West, on blackmailers and his sundry other usual foes.
Where was Greece different? We expressed our desire for independence, but stayed where we belong and where we have the most to gain. The majority in Turkey has been on a different route for some time now, one that departs from the part of society that is watching with desperation as the country sails even further away from the West, but also from Greece.