Handshakes and Tensions in Elections Countdown

Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, January/February 2023, pp. 38-39

Talking Türkiye

By Jonathan Gorvett

WHEN TURKISH PRESIDENT Recep Tayyip Erdogan grasped the hand of Egypt’s President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at November’s opening of the soccer World Cup in Qatar, jaws dropped from Doha to Cairo, and from Luxor to Ankara.

The Turkish leader had supported the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) government in Egypt—and even adopted the MB’s four-finger salute after el-Sisi’s troops killed hundreds of MB supporters in August 2013. He had spent years slamming el-Sisi and his military rule.

Yet this enormous U-turn was only one of several undertaken by Erdogan recently, with peace overtures also now underway to President Bashar al-Assad in Syria and the government of newly re-elected Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in Israel.

On the domestic front, former foes in Türkiye’s Kurdish political movement have also been courted by senior figures in Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP)/National Movement Party (MHP) coalition government. 

Those overtures ended when a horrific bomb explosion on Istanbul’s crowded Istiklal Caddesi Avenue killed six and wounded many more on Nov. 13. Blamed by the government on Kurdish militants, the bombing led to a wave of Turkish airstrikes and artillery barrages on Kurdish targets in northern Syria, along with repeated threats of a ground invasion.

For many, what lies behind these expected and unexpected developments is a single event: the June 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections. Widely described as the most significant in two decades, the balloting will pitch Erdogan and his AKP/MHP coalition against a collection of opposition parties, who have their best chance in years of taking office.

Yet Türkiye’s veteran president has a range of cards to play still and a lot of new hands to shake.

THE LONG AND THE SHORT

Elections are often won or lost on the back of economic concerns—and Turks certainly have plenty of those right now.

In October 2022, inflation was running at an official 85.51 percent, although many would claim that was an under-estimation. The Turkish lira has received a battering in recent times, too, making vital imports, such as oil and gas, much more expensive.

At the same time, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered lockdowns, which in turn led to a major slump in one of the country’s most important sectors, tourism.

These factors—and a perception that Erdogan’s unorthodox economic policies were fanning the flames of inflation and currency depreciation—have led to a significant boost for the opposition. Six of the opposition parties have also managed to establish an alliance, dubbed the “table of six,” which many Turkish voters appreciate. 

Yet Türkiye’s wily leader is still very much a force to be reckoned with. On the economy, Erdogan has recently announced a new housing incentive program and an early retirement scheme, popular policies previously advocated by the opposition. 

Inflation is likely to fall, too, due to the “base effect”—prices have already risen so much that further rises will start from a much higher baseline. The summer of 2022 was also a good one for the tourism industry; currency devaluation made Türkiye a much cheaper destination than its European rivals.

Erdogan’s foreign policy has also helped the economy. NATO member Türkiye has maintained good relations with Russia, receiving a flood of Russian oligarchs, oppositionists and draft-dodgers—along with their money—since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. More discreetly, Türkiye has also become a sanctions work-around for Russian trade with Europe and the West. 

Iranians now constitute the third largest foreign purchasers of real estate in Türkiye, as their country rumbles with protests and uncertainty. 

Erdogan’s sudden friendships with old regional foes also have a major economic angle. “With the economy on a tightrope, Erdogan needs to find as much investment as he can,” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli, from the German Marshall Fund in Ankara, told the Washington Report. “So he has been much more conciliatory with countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE.”

A major influx of foreign exchange has thus recently enabled the central bank to stabilize the currency, which in turn should help bring down inflation and ease the burden on Turkish voters. 

OPPOSITION DILEMMAS

Erdogan’s domestic woes have been eased further by the inability of the six-party opposition to coalesce around a single presidential candidate to run against him.

The 73-year-old Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the largest opposition grouping, the left-of-center Republican Peoples’ Party (CHP), has made it clear he would like to run. But so would Meral Aksener, leader of the right-wing Good Party (İYİ Party). And most opinion polls suggest that the CHP mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, would be more popular than either.

A further divisive issue is the “seventh leg” of the six-leg opposition table—the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP). This is also very much opposed to Erdogan and the AKP/MHP coalition. The CHP is open to including the pro-Kurdish party, but the right-wing İYİ Party cannot work with a group many of its members see as a front for the outlawed Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), with whom the Turkish state has been fighting since the 1980s. 

Sensing this division, the AKP made some conciliatory moves toward the HDP earlier this year, consulting them on possible future constitutional changes and allowing the HDP’s imprisoned leader, Selahattin Demirtas, to visit his ailing father. 

After the Istanbul bombing, however, those goodwill gestures ended. The AKP/MHP now uses the HDP (and its alleged connections to the PKK) as a wedge issue to break support away from the İYİ Party. 

Meanwhile, on Dec. 14, Imamoglu was sentenced to two years and seven months in jail and banned from politics for criticizing the election officials who overturned his mayoral election victory back in March 2019. While Imamoglu was elected mayor again a few months later, he had called the decision by the AKP/MHP-appointed officials “foolish.” His sentence and the ban must be confirmed by an appeals court.

This illustrates another of Erdogan’s weapons in the 2023 vote: the AKP/MHP’s control over what can and can’t be said, thanks to a battery of draconian media laws. 

This control was tightened further in November with the passing of a new online censorship law, which introduced the crime of “disinformation.” This received its first usage after the Istanbul bombing, when social media channels were shut down and TV was banned from broadcasting news of the blast.

That blast was blamed on Kurdish militants from Syria, with the chief suspect described as having got to Istanbul via a shortlist of places Ankara has been looking to attack for several years. 

These include Kobane—where U.S. special forces are also deployed, alongside the largely Kurdish Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) and People’s Defense Units (YPG)—and Tell Rifaat, where Russian forces are stationed alongside the SDF and YPG. 

Retaliatory strikes on these areas, which came shortly after the bombing, were thus likely limited by the presence of these foreign powers, both of whom have warned Türkiye against wider action. 

With winter now here, a Turkish ground offensive is less likely, although further air and artillery strikes are almost certain. In the spring, with the Turkish elections by then only a few weeks away, that calculation could change.

“We’ve seen this all before,” Erdem Aydin from the political risk and corporate intelligence consulting firm RDM Advisory in Istanbul told the Washington Report. “In 2015, 2016, 2017—there was an escalation of violence in the run up to elections.”

Until Nov. 13, there had been no bombings in major Turkish cities since 2017. Many will be hoping and praying that the atrocity in Istanbul does not signal a repeat of those grim old days as the Turkish Republic prepares to celebrate its centennial in 2023.

Jonathan Gorvett is a free-lance writer specializing on European and Middle Eastern affairs.