As Turkey’s May 14 general election looms, the nation finds itself at a critical juncture in its political history.
The incumbent President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and his neoliberal conservative party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), have been in power since 2002, a tenure marked by accusations of transforming the country into a problematic democracy.
The AKP’s actions have included undermining the institutions of the secular republic, intensifying authoritarianism, shifting to a security state, and imposing severe limitations on freedom of speech and press. The two-decade reign also marked the introduction of a new neoliberal growth regime which boosted the growth based on financialising the traditional Turkish economy, aggressively privatising public assets, boosting urbanisation through a construction sector lead model and maximising foreign debt.
Alongside this, Erdogan’s AKP has pursued the development of a new military-industrial complex that has allowed Turkey to demonstrate its hard power in both regional and global affairs.
Subsequent to the implementation of a presidential system in 2017, President Erdogan astutely orchestrated his dominance in the realm of Turkish politics, establishing himself as the paramount authority. Despite the substantial economic downturn that commenced in 2018, coupled with the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Erdogan tenaciously clung to his position, exhibiting an unwavering determination to retain power.
This resolute stance was sustained even in the aftermath of the dual February earthquakes, which inflicted catastrophic damage upon 10 cities and caused more than 50,000 casualties.
But the upcoming election marks a turning point, as six main opposition parties have united under the banner of the Nation Front, also gaining indirect support from the Kurdish movement and the Left.
The stakes are high, with the future of Turkey’s democracy hanging in the balance. As voters head to the polls, they will face a critical choice between the continuation of Erdogan’s neoliberal authoritarianism and the possibility of significant change towards restoring democracy. The outcome will determine whether Turkey remains on its current path or charts a new course towards a more democratic future.
In order to understand how Turkey ended up here, it is very important to take a brief look at its journey since the military coup of 1980.
An authoritarian constitution, drafted by the military junta in 1982, erased the left-wing parties and movements. Turkey attempted to abandon the political framework of the coup many times but failed to change its course toward restoring democracy.
The new millennium greeted Turkey with a major economic crisis, democratisation struggles, and the long-lasting effects of the 1999 earthquake, all of which combined to undermine the coalition of centre parties. This enabled AKP, a newly formed political Islamist party, to present a conservative reformist alternative to the political stage, consolidating the long-excluded Islamist masses against the elitist secular republic and gaining popularity among pro-Western liberals and business circles by adopting the agenda of integrating with the EU.
AKP came into power in 2002 and has continuously gained electoral victories since then.
The secret of AKP’s successes was its attempt to fill the historical gap between the state and society. However, replacing the state also prepared the end for AKP and Erdogan.
Gaining confidence, AKP replaced the state with the party and promoted Erdogan as both the leader of the Islamist movement and the neoliberal state.
Becoming president in 2014 and surviving a coup attempt in 2016, Erdogan began to openly monopolise his personal power inside this new party-state regime and managed to legalise it with the referendum for the transition to the presidential system in 2017.
In the new regime, Erdogan’s absolute control over the institutional framework and bureaucracy has allowed him to micromanage appointments, meetings, election campaigns, security and social policies.
But this form of governance has weakened Turkey’s institutional capacity, which was entirely dependent on Erdogan’s performance and personal relations.
Immediately following Erdogan’s re-election in 2018, Turkey faced severe consequences of problems accumulated during the AKP era. A substantial depression began, triggering multiple currency shocks, skyrocketing inflation and depleting Turkey’s long-accumulated central bank reserves.
On the eve of the pandemic, Erdogan’s AKP suffered a major defeat in the municipal elections, losing all the metropolitan provinces to the opposition parties.
The Covid-19 pandemic revealed Turkey’s declining capacity to respond to the global crisis. While struggling with the long-term and continuing impacts of Covid, Turkey was hit by double earthquakes, which caused catastrophic damage in the country’s southeast.
All of these crises have served to underscore the declining institutional capacity of Turkey, as well as the problematic relationships the country has established with the Middle East, Russia and the EU.
Turkey’s involvement in the Syrian conflict has only added to the complex web of issues facing the country, including a major immigrant problem.
The Memorandum of Understanding on Common Policies agreed upon by the opposition promises to restore parliamentary democracy, recover from the economic downturn, re-institutionalise Turkey’s long-undermined republican framework, realign with the EU and the West, end the uneven and personal relations with Putin’s Russia and normalise relations with Syria.
Up until now, there have been no historical examples of two-decades of authoritarianism being defeated in a democratic election. Although Erdogan has control over the entire state apparatus, the opposition is closer than ever to ending his authoritarian regime.
It is obvious that the elections in Turkey have consequences beyond the Turkish people. The outcome of the election will have significant effects on geopolitical and geostrategic imbalances, influencing the Russo-Ukrainian War, the Syrian Conflict, Nato expansion and the EU economy.
— Berkay Kocak is a doctoral researcher at the University of Waikato and a former politics teaching fellow at the University of Otago.
