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Erdogan’s Grand Ambitions – Part II

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In order to defeat Erdoğan, two main opposition parties, the social democrat Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), agreed on a joint candidate, conservative professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu (pictured above) who had run the Saudi-sponsored Organization of the Islamic Conference.
The late Bülent Ecevit was the former prime minister of Turkey

(Continued from last week)

The Winner Wins Again

On March 30, 2014, Erdoğan’s AKP emerged as the winner, garnering 43.3 percent of the national vote, based on votes cast for city councils in which voters choose “a party” not a municipal candidate. But it was a slightly bitter victory. Erdoğan had managed to defeat his rivals despite a slew of embarrassing scandals but was given a polite warning. His votes had dropped to 43.3 percent from 49.8 percent in 2011 as two million fewer Turks voted for him.

This was important because Erdoğan’s longer-term game plan is to amend the constitution to launch an executive presidency instead of the present largely symbolic powers the president has now. To take any constitutional amendment to referendum, a party would need at least 330 seats in parliament. If March 30 were a parliamentary election instead of municipal, with 43.3 percent of the vote, Erdoğan would only have won around 290 parliamentary seats.

All the same, 43.3 percent was good enough to convince him that he should run for the presidency on August 10. In order to defeat Erdoğan, two main opposition parties, the social democrat Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), agreed on a joint candidate, conservative professor Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu, who had run the Saudi-sponsored Organization of the Islamic Conference. The opposition strategists had calculated that a conservative candidate could snatch votes from Erdoğan’s grassroots supporters. Maybe he did, but it appears he lost more from CHP’s left-wing and social democratic grassroots.

Erdoğan won 51.8 percent of the vote while Ihsanoğlu finished at 38 percent. Erdoğan had succeeded in becoming Turkey’s twelfth president. During his presidential campaign, Erdoğan already signaled that he would be an unconventional “running and sweating” president, an explicit reference to his intention to force the limits of the constitution through executive powers. All he needed was a new prime minister to succeed him, someone to whom he could entrust the executive branch and whose strings he could pull from the presidential palace. That man was Ahmet Davutoğlu, his foreign minister. Davutoğlu happily took the job and pledged absolute loyalty to Erdoğan.[21]

Behind the Numbers

The March 30 and August 10 elections require more detailed analysis to understand what really lies behind what looks like a simple victory for AKP. The following table helps explain where AKP’s popularity stands today in comparison to when it first emerged on the political scene in 2002.

The table at right shows that AKP’s votes doubled in number between 2002 and 2014 from nearly eleven million to more than twenty-one million. But caution is required. Despite this sharp increase, votes cast for Erdoğan in presidential elections do not reflect votes for the party. First, some Turks outside the AKP base (especially from among the nationalists and non-AKP Islamists) voted for Erdoğan due to ideology and his personal charisma. Second, some fiercely anti-Erdoğan Turks also voted for him, calculating that he would pose less danger to Turkey if he took up the largely symbolic post of presidency and gave up his executive powers as prime minister. Third, the voter turnout in August was exceptionally low (74 percent, compared to nearly 90 percent in March), which resulted in a slender 51.8 percent for Erdoğan. Many opposition voters did not show up, expecting that Erdoğan would win.

Another careful analysis is required to understand how Erdoğan’s popularity changed since 2011 when it peaked. In 2011, AKP won 21.4 million votes, or 49.8 percent when the total number of voters was 50.2 million. Between 2011 and 2014, some 2.5 million new voters were registered, bringing the total number of voters to 52.7 million. If in the March 30 elections AKP (or Erdoğan) had maintained the same level of support as in 2011, the party would have garnered 26.2 million votes. Instead, its votes stood at 19.4 million—a loss of 6.8 million. This assumption excludes invalid votes but does not change the fact that AKP lost a significant number of votes despite what it portrays as an overwhelming election victory. There has been widespread speculation about election fraud, but none has been officially or independently proven. A report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe expressed “a certain level of confidence in the electoral process.”[22]

“Champion of Turkey’s Greatness”

In the days when the world’s foreign policy intelligentsia had the habit of mentioning Davutoğlu’s name with euphemisms such as “Turkey’s Kissinger,” “champion of Turkey’s greatness,” and “always the hero of his own narrative,” this author referred to him as “Dr. Strangelove,” “The Man Who Made Tomorrow,” or “The Man Who Rides the Thunder.” Turkey’s foreign policy under Davutoğlu was “a not-so-funny Turkish opera buffa with the main characters resembling those of [Miguel de] Cervantes’s famous book.”[23]

Davutoğlu is otherwise known to be a fine gentleman: an honest, modest, hard-working man who wants the best for his nation—though not always in the most realistic way. His tolerance for dissenting opinion is considerably more Western compared to Erdoğan’s. Davutoğlu is also Turkey’s first prime minister—after the late Bülent Ecevit—who is entirely free of any corruption allegations. In other words, Davutoğlu is Mr. Clean.

Unfortunately, the fundamentals of Davutoğlu’s foreign policy will not miraculously metamorphose from blind ideology into reason. Previously, Turkey essentially had two foreign ministers, Erdoğan and Davutoğlu; now it will have three with the appointment of EU minister, Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu, as foreign minister.

It is out of the question that the third man will devise his own foreign policy independent of Erdoğan and Davutoğlu: It will be old wine in a new bottle. So from now on, three gentlemen, instead of two, will be fighting coup makers in the Middle East if they oppose the Muslim Brotherhood, hoping to pray at the al-Aqsa mosque in the “Palestinian capital Jerusalem,” working to depose Syria’s Bashar Assad, maintaining a game of pretension between the neo-Ottomans and the Iranian regime, aggressively seeking Iranian regional hegemony, and working day and night for the advancement of Turkish Sunni Islamism in former Ottoman lands.

But Davutoğlu could be Erdoğan’s unwilling gift to Turkey, especially if Davutoğlu, with his intellectual honesty, reviewed the applicability of twenty-first-century Turkish Sunni supremacy in former Ottoman lands. Or if he stopped viewing Ankara’s foreign relations with the former Ottoman lands as domestic Turkish affairs. Or if he stopped believing that he has a holy mission to correct the “incorrect” flow of history.[24]

Everything May Not Be Coming up Roses

Ostensibly, everything in the house of AKP proceeds perfectly. The party is heading for its ninth election victory within thirteen years, a first time in Turkish political history. Erdoğan remains unchallenged: The opposition is weak, to put it mildly. Turks continue to admire the president despite embarrassing graft scandals. He won the presidential election in the first round as he promised. He has a loyal man as prime minister in Davutoğlu, who is not likely to object to his leader’s de facto executive presidency and one-man show. Davutoğlu is known to every Turk, and to nearly half of them, he is the champion of a foreign policy that promises the revival of their collapsed imperial power. He is pro-Hamas and anti-Israeli, a perfect recipe for popularity at the ballot box.

FOOTNOTES:

[21] Al-Jazeera TV, Aug. 27, 2014.

[22] “Republic of Turkey, Presidential Election, 10 August 2014,” Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Warsaw, May 7-9, 2014.

[23] Hürriyet, Sept. 13, 2011.

[24] “Turkey’s Foreign Policy Objectives in a Changing World,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 2012.

 

Burak Bekdil, a Middle East Forum Associate Fellow, is an Ankara-based columnist for Hürriyet Daily News. He has also written for the U.S. weekly Defense News since 1997.

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