Erdogan has called for elections, no prizes for guessing who will win
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has called for snap elections on June 24, almost a year and a half before the scheduled date in November 2019. He is expected to win because he has, once again, managed to stack the odds — militant nationalism, strong economic growth, a post-coup state of emergency that allows him to deploy security forces to crush his opposition and almost complete control of the Turkish media — in his favour.
The Turkish economy grew at 7.4 per cent last year. Erdogan is seizing the moment to take credit for the strong economic performance before the economy shows signs of overheating. And there are worries stirred by a credit boom: The annual inflation rate peaked at 13 per cent in November, the highest in 14 years. The current account deficit swelled to 4.7 per cent of the gross domestic product in December, and the lira tumbled to a historic low in April.
Erdogan is enjoying popular support because of a surge of Turkish nationalism after his victory in the Afrin area of northern Syria, which the Turkish army and its affiliates took from the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, or YPG. The YPG is linked to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, the terrorist group that Turkey has been fighting for decades.
But there are concerns about the elections being held while the state of emergency, imposed in the aftermath of the failed 2016 coup, remains in place. The state of emergency gives the police, controlled by the central government, the right to arrest anyone without a court order and gives the government administration the mandate to curb freedoms of expression, assembly and association.
The Turkish government has used these extraordinary powers to crack down on the opposition parties and activists. Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party, or HDP — one of three parties in the nation’s parliament that oppose President Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP — has been imprisoned, along with eight other HDP lawmakers.
Turkey’s deputy prime minister labelled Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the Republican People’s Party, or CHP, the main opposition party, a “national security issue.” Enis Berberoglu, a prominent CHP lawmaker, was sentenced to five years in prison after being accused of leaking a video to
Cumhuriyet, an opposition newspaper, purportedly showing Turkish intelligence sending weapons to Syria.
It is not a fair playing field for Erdogan’s opponents. Turks get their news mostly from television. Nowadays news networks in Turkey almost exclusively broadcast Erdogan’s message. According to a study that analyses live news coverage in Turkey’s 17 largest networks, last March — before the April 2017 referendum on constitutional amendments for and against an executive presidency — the president’s party received 470 hours of airtime, the CHP 45 hours, the MHP 15 hours, and the HDP zero minutes.
With the sale of the Dogan Media Company, the largest Turkish media group, in March to Demiroren Holding, a pro-government conglomerate, 90 per cent of the Turkish media is now controlled by pro-Erdogan businesses.
Recent changes to Turkey’s election system may also tilt the playing field in Erdogan’s favour. Turkey has a paper-based voting system. A new law mandates that the chairman of the election monitoring board in every district of the country be a government official. Previously, the chairman had been elected by majority vote by the board, which included representatives of all parties. The change raises fears that these officials might not be honest during the vote count.
Traditionally, the paper ballots were placed in official envelopes after being stamped by ballot-box officials to prevent voter fraud. The new law stipulates that even ballots missing the stamp of the polling officials will be considered valid, raising fears of ballot stuffing.
The AKP will have a solid majority in the new Parliament. June 24 — the polling day — will be a historic day in Turkey. Erdogan narrowly won a referendum in April 2017 to change the Turkish political system from the parliamentary to the presidential system.
The executive presidency, which would repose great powers in Erdogan, will kick in after June 24, and Turkey will formally switch to a new era where the president will be the ultimate head of state, government, police, army and the ruling party. — NYT Syndicate Soner Cagaptay is an author and a senior fellow and director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy.
The new law stipulates that even ballots missing the stamp of the polling officials will be considered valid, raising fears of ballot stuffing.