President may be chastened with wafer-thin majority, but that won’t change how he rules
After 15 years of dominance, Turkey’s high-handed and authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdogan has squeaked home in elections marred by allegations of rigging and government-dominance of the media.
Mr Erdogan used to be the posterboy for Western hopes that Islam, democracy and prosperity could mix happily. But 15 long years in power fed his authoritarianism and pasha-like caprice.
Millions of Turks, who had backed him for stabilising the economy and liberalising official attitudes to the country’s minorities such as the Kurds, felt deceived as the economy tanked and Mr Erdogan used emergency rule to crackdown on political rivals as well as the coup plotters of 2016.
Although Mr Erdogan argued that Turkey needed a strong presidency to secure the country, in fact the stronger he has become, the more disruption has hit the economy and his country’s relations with its allies in Nato. A chastened President Erdogan is hardly likely to change his style of rule.
He has thrived on crisis.
Many Turks’ desire for economic stability and less trouble on their borders with Syria and Iraq explains the surge in support for the opposition. It may not have toppled Mr Erdogan, but it indicates disenchantment that his dominance of the state and election system could not hide.
If he is dependent for his majority in parliament on the nationalist MHP party, then he will be using its new, vastly enhanced powers from a much weaker parliamentary base.
A wafer-thin margin of victory in the residential poll means that the parliamentarians could be emboldened to defy Mr Erdogan, especially if the economy continues to dip.
Like a generous sultan, Mr Erdogan gave a sop to parliamentarians when he devised the new constitution by giving them the right to impeach the executive president, despite his vast powers over government, the courts and so on.
He assumed his party would dominate parliament, but not any more.
With allegations of corruption swirling around key family members, and charges of abuse of power against him, Erdogan’s victory could be reversed by the very constitution that he intended to cement his hold on power for the next decade. Westerners will probably rejoice at Mr Erdogan’s hollow victory, but his opponents are not happy that the EU and US supported for him for so long.
Ironically, as Mr Erdogan has veered away from his Nato partners, to embrace Russia and Iran, his domestic rivals have also been calling for an end to Nato’s anti-assad line. Turkey houses huge numbers of Syrian refugees. Mr Erdogan’s failure to resolve the Syrian issue was one of his rivals’ most popular charges against him.
Sadly, though Turks are bitterly divided at home, they have voted for politicians united only by being disillusioned with the country’s traditional Western partners.
♦mark Almond is Director of the Crisis Research Institute, Oxford