Another Erdoğan Victory: Why?

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been elected. Again. 

First sweeping to power in 2002 as Prime Minister, Turkey has been under Erdoğan’s rule for 16 years. He and his Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, have won every general election with at least a plurality since 2002. They have also presided over two nationwide referenda in 2010 and 2017 respectively, in which their desired policy change has come into effect both times.

Under Erdoğan and the AKP, Turkish democracy is alive, but fragile and sickly. Staggering numbers of journalists sit in Turkish prisons. The press, especially television news, is mostly dominated by pro-AKP talking heads. Two of Turkey’s leading newspapers which regularly criticize the government, Hürriyet (Liberty) and Cumhuriyet (The Republic) have been put under extreme pressure by the government. Though not implemented by Erdoğan, the 10% threshold for political parties to get representation in the Turkish Grand National Assembly has proved restrictive, especially for the Kurdish left-wing People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which lacks any sort of support outside the majority Kurdish regions in the southeast part of the country.

President Erdoğan is often compared to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the sense that he still attempts to pursue some facade of democracy but has increasingly pursued an authoritarian rule. Like Putin in Russia, Erdoğan has a loyal following in Turkey, though his is not as large as Putin’s. The two men came to power at similar times, during internal crisis and widespread uncertainty, and both have gained followings for their insistence that their respective administrations represent stability and prosperity.

Western media outlets, however, cautiously predicted that while Erdoğan’s AKP would win the June 24 election, it would do so with only a plurality resulting in a hung parliament, and that while Erdoğan would win the most votes for the Presidential election, he would fall short of 50% and would need to win a runoff against a second-place contender. This was the year Erdoğan’s power would start to wane, it was claimed, and he may even lose the runoff. The economy was sputtering and the Lira was steadily losing value, Erdoğan’s claims of stability were weakening, it was said.

It looked like the opposition had learned some lessons as well. The Kemalist, social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) had nominated a charismatic man of the people for the presidency in Muharrem İnce over the bureaucratic Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, and he was commanding enormous rallies in Izmir, Istanbul, and Ankara. Meral Akşener, the center-right nationalist “she-wolf” of the newly established İYİ (Good) Party was going to cut into Erdoğan’s base and inspire MHP voters angry at Erdoğan to ditch their crimson three-crescent banners for the blue and gold sun flag of the İYİ Party. 

This was not to be. 

While the AKP did not win an outright majority in the Parliament, its partner in the People’s Alliance, the right-wing populist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), saw a mostly-unexpected surge in the polls. Expected to gain only around 4-6% of parliamentary votes, the MHP entered Parliament with a much stronger 11.1%, ensuring the AKP-MHP alliance would retain its majority in parliament. 

İnce won a respectable 30.6% of votes, but couldn’t bring Erdoğan below 50% and the CHP's parliamentary vote declined from 25% in November 2015 to 22.6% in June 2018. 

Meral Akşener, expected to get between 9-15% in the Presidential Election, slumped to 7.3%, and her İYİ Party only scraped 9.9% of votes. Together, Akşener and İnce barely managed to match the performance of the generally unpopular joint CHP/MHP candidate in 2014, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, who lost to Erdoğan 51.7% to 38.4%. 

Selahattin Demirtas, jailed presidential candidate for the Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), managed 8.4% of the vote while the HDP crossed the 10% threshold with 11.7% of the vote. 

Why did this happen? Why did the predictions of both the Western media and many of Turkey’s own polling agencies turn out wrong? 

The MHP Strikes Back

Perhaps the most surprising performance of the election was that of the aforementioned far-right Nationalist Movement Party. In 2015, the MHP, while not the loudest voice of opposition, was generally against the ambitions of President Erdoğan. It refused to become part of a possible coalition government with the AKP after the June 2015 election, ensuring a second round of elections in November. Its position in Parliament was weakened in the November 2015 elections. 

Not long after the November 2015 election, the MHP shifted from opposing Erdoğan to supporting him. In 2017, they backed the constitutional referendum that set in motion Turkey's transition from parliamentary democracy to presidential democracy, a referendum many saw as a thinly veiled power-grab by Erdoğan. This was viewed as a very risky move on party leader Devlet Bahçeli's part. Many MHP voters were vocally opposed to this referendum and the party's geographic stronghold in the south of Turkey voted predominantly against it. Bahçeli's shift to support Erdoğan also inspired Meral Akşener, a former member of the MHP, to try to usurp power from him. Akşener lost and left the party, founding the more centrist, civic nationalist İYİ Party in response. 

How the MHP managed to rebound in Sunday's election is still a bit unclear, but its resurgence and continued support for Erdoğan and the AKP turned out to be a successful gamble and the party now holds the parliamentary majority for the People's Alliance. 

İYİ Underwhelms

Meral Akşener's İYİ Party appeared on the scene in October 2017. Akşener, a charismatic and seasoned figure in Turkish politics, quickly attracted substantial attention. Early polling for the Presidential Election had Akşener winning second place and heading to a razor-thin runoff against Erdoğan as well as nearly 20% of the votes in the Parliamentary election. 

The İYİ Party was a party that looked like it would become a force to be reckoned with in its infancy. It was led by a popular new candidate. It railed against the establishment. Its center-right platform seemed to be perfect to combat the right-wing AKP and far-right MHP voters who opposed Erdoğan. 

Its momentum did not last, however, and the main reason for that may be its main ally, the CHP. 

In May 2018, the CHP put forth its presidential candidate, the popular and eloquent ex-physics teacher Muharrem İnce. Akşener's presidential bid had been announced months earlier than İnce's, but İnce quickly surpassed her in the polls. The two candidates were not adversaries in the way they would be with Erdoğan. Akşener welcomed İnce when he announced his running for president and expressed her preference for a wealth of candidates. Both İnce and Akşener pledged to support the other if the presidential election went to runoff. Nevertheless, İnce's campaign may have stopped Akşener's momentum cold. 

Despite that seemingly sudden momentum shift, İYİ is still in its early stages. Akşener isn't president, but she's still the leader of the party and may be able to grow its support in the coming years. The only question is whether she'll end up pulling support away from CHP voters or from the AKP/MHP coalition. 

Anti-Erdoğan Islamism Falls Flat

In Turkey, a political party must win 10% of the vote if it hopes to win seats in the Parliament. This rule was implemented in the 1980s and is often criticized by the opposition as excessive and exclusionary. In order to circumvent this obstacle, both pro- and anti- Erdoğan camps mobilized under the banners of alliances. The pro-Erdoğan People's Alliance consists of the AKP, MHP, and much smaller Great Unity Party, known by its Turkish initials BBP, while the opposition National Alliance is made up of CHP, İYİ, Saadet, and Democrat parties.

If you're familiar with Turkish politics, one of these parties should stick out like a sore thumb, and that's the Saadet (Felicity) Party. While the CHP, İYİ and Democrat parties are all secular Kemalist parties (the CHP is center-left, İYİ and DP are center-right), Saadet is a far-right Islamist political party. 

Why would a far-right Islamist party ally with secular parties, you ask? A shared distaste for President Erdoğan. Saadet is vehemently anti-Erdoğan, but it is far too small of a party to win seats with the 10% threshold, so it joined the National Alliance in hopes of accomplishing both parliamentary representation and the ability to chip away at Erdoğan's Islamist base. Temel Karamollaoğlu, Saadet's presidential candidate, never polled particularly high, but he did at times reach 4-5%. Had Saadet reached that 4-5%, Erdoğan would not have won the election outright and Turkey would have been headed to a runoff election. 

However, Saadet underperformed already-small expectations. Temel Karamollaoğlu only won 0.89% of the vote and the party received a paltry 1.35% of the vote for Parliament, which translates to 0 MPs. 

Turkey's next election will be at the latest, in 2023. Erdoğan is stronger than ever, but his grip on power isn't quite absolute yet. The Turkish economy is starting to sputter and slow down. The lira is losing its value - in 2013, $1 bought you 2 lira, today it buys you 4.7 lira. A major reason for Erdoğan's popularity has been the strength of the Turkish economy under his administration, but the cracks are starting to show, and so far he's been remarkably stubborn in tackling the emerging issues.

Erdoğan will have to play it safe with MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli in order to keep his majority in parliament. One day before the election, the Hurriyet Daily News reported that Bahçeli warned of a possible collapse of the alliance. His criticism was vague, but could result in early elections if it's not heeded.