Political survival

POLITICAL survival dictates many mandates, some going against the inner beliefs of most politicians. However, it can be a useful instinct when the privately held beliefs would lead many leaders astray, whereas should they let themselves be conquered by canons of time-honoured international power politics, they could stand firmer on the political soil. We seem to witness more of conformity to power politics, and that is at least understandable, since it is rational behaviour. On the other hand, not all conflicts can be readily resolved through a rational prism. Today is the day of reckoning, and the incumbent party does everything in its power not to lose. They see the result of the upcoming elections not as the outcome of competition, but a matter of political and ideological survival, among other things.

WHY IS THAT SO?

What the AKP did was to muster the old centre-right diversity and to consolidate the mid-1990s median voters under one umbrella. Its ideology has increasingly become a remix consisting of religion-cum-nationalism. Its economic stance is clearly pro-business and the party in toto is pro-unregulated capitalism. Nevertheless, the process of investment and capital accumulation has been skewed in favour of the ideologically closer layers of business people. Actually, I coined these terms to be polite. It is a right-wing party but it is also a party that sees itself as a vehicle for social change. In the past, qua architects of political change, party activists worked diligently and wholeheartedly. Today they don’t seem to feel that way anymore. As the incumbent party spread its influence, even control, over distinct economic and social spaces, the clash between classical candidates –vote maximisers- and ‘believers’ intensified. However, no party can ever claim to occupy such a wide electoral spectrum, and tolerate a misalignment between party activists and “no matter what I should win or benefit” types. Even in Turkey, where the polity is divided into at least three ‘core constituencies’ along two dimensions – secular-cum-nationalistic moderns, religious-cum-nationalistic conservatives and the Kurdish electorate, which is also divided- a large majority party is subject to strong centrifugal forces. Over-reliance to ideology may be seen as a short-cut, a device to keep the loyalty of the believers intact. Otherwise, such a party has to form fragile ties between the adherents to all four quadrants, quadrants that underscore wide and deep differences.

POLLS SHOW A DIFFERENT PICTURE

I don’t believe in polls, especially when the possibility of surprise events, snowball effects, bandwagon effects, sparks & prairie fires (Timur Kuran) are distinct possibilities. There can be change but then, there can’t be. We simply don’t know and there is perhaps no way to know at this point. Polls differ widely in their predictions. However, one thing is certain. AKP has already lost support from time to time. Basically, there are three layers of voters in the AKP electorate. The first is the core constituency. Like in any ideological party –this doesn’t mean the party isn’t pragmatic or not pro-business; it just says that there is a core belief thereinthe core constituency is indeed the kernel of the whole project. It also has ramifications in the party organization. Now the core is about 28-30% of all voters. This is the irreducible core. Whether this is mostly a belief in the leader himself or a less politician-dependent ideological stance –or a clearly defined self-interest-based network- is unclear but this is so. Then comes the second layer; the protective belt. The protective belt has traditionally been in the order of 12-15%. Any votes that have been cast over 40% in the past can be called swing voters. They are mostly economic voters, pure and simple, if economic voting is ever pure and simple. They are all gone by now. They have been gone in the past also like in the March 2009 local elections or in the June 7, 2015 general elections. Nevertheless, this time around not only swing voters but also part of the protective belt displays centrifugal tendencies. Other than that the core and part of the belt are more or less intact, and that implies c. 35% in toto, including the newcomers, i.e. small religious parties that will run under the AKP umbrella.. Add to this the MHP vote, which may be around 7-8%, and something like 43-44% arises. Not sufficient to win the majority in the parliament under the current electoral rules perhaps, especially because MHP competes separately, but then there are many caveats. Perhaps the best wild guess for the parliament is something like 270 incumbents, 255 oppositionists, and 75 the Kurdish party HDP. The opposition in total would gather 330 seats in a 600-seats house, but who knows to what extent all these different parties will be in full accord over a vast array of complicated problems. And yes, it is the presidential race that matters most, not the parliament.

BODY NATURAL AND BODY POLITIC

In The Seventh Function of Language Laurent Binet tells about a secret capacity the language has qua discourse. In the novel, renowned philosophers, scientists, and artists search for the hidden meaning. If one uncovers the truth it will enable him to convince all others to look at events in the light of his political ideas. In the end Mitterrand seems to have found it. As a result he wins the 1981 presidential elections by a wide margin. Pure fiction of course! Spinoza, on the other hand, is said to possess little eloquence. However, his conversation had an air of geniality. He was persuasive in his own way,

and even in the absence of elegant diction he made everybody fall in with his views. Politics is similar except that it is very hard to find a leader with such an aura that none listens to him without deriving satisfaction. Mitterrand it is, and not Spinoza alas!

FACTS OR FICTIONS

Fiction aside, any candidate for high offices should be able to season his wit and have a complacent disposition. In modern politics, personalities matter even if offices are construed as detached from the person. The Tudor legal tradition had formulated the distinction in no uncertain terms. The king qua ‘body natural’ and the office of the king qua ‘body politic’ were seen as completely different, even distinct legal and political entities. It is difficult to distinguish between the two in the modern world though. In polities that admit both a House of Representatives and an executive President, the personality and the charming prowess of the candidate matter a lot. Therefore, despite so many opinion polls we have no idea what the elections will bring about because we still don’t know which candidate qua person has the upper hand.

IS IT ALL ABOUT POLITICAL PSYCHOLOGY?

Turkish capitalism doesn’t look like any of the possible blueprints that would characterize free market capitalism. For instance, after having performed the most recent vertiginous act of doing the apparently undoable, the incumbent party has backed itself into a corner. Yes, had it not been for the totally unnecessary home-made crisis and the resulting high inflation, the opposition would never have stood a chance. Monetary policy is so irrational that the policy rate is 8.5, official inflation 50, and lending and deposit rates hover somewhere between 25 and 35. Was it so hard to do the right – and simple- thing, and raise the policy rate at some point? What about the command & control vertices of economic management if not about its communication and information legs? Where are the “political prices” that are supposed to be the ornaments through which analysts are expected to indulge into “signal extraction”, itself an engineering device? What are we supposed to do, other than following the “read my lips” style custom-made solipsism? Because this is what current opinion polls tell us and nothing more. Everything seems to be in a flux. Has misconstruing AKP policies ever become a pastime nearly as popular as guessing the odds of a currency crisis? Could it be true that the organic interdependence of some layers in the AKP and its decision-making body has been down played? Is it simply an inimical cul-de-sac the AKP has unwisely locked itself in or is there something else lying behind the facade, a more dramatic kinship with an unacceptably erring deep conservatism? I think the CHP leadership knows that whatever happens preferences don’t change significantly, and core beliefs remain intact. So, CHP tries to upgrade the electoral chances of Aksener, Babacan and others because these are the only parties that can convince AKP and MHP voters to vote otherwise. CHP itself is firmly anchored around 25% and nothing changes that really. There is no transition from conservatives to moderns. Of course, CHP will possibly get 30+% this time around because four small parties run under the CHP ticket. Young people will prefer CHP and that’s another advantage.

THE UPSHOT

All in all, everything depends on two factors. First, the result depends on how many votes Muharrem İnce can obtain. Second, it depends on how many votes İYİ Party can bring aboard.