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Turkey’s people head to the poles on Sunday June 7 for an important national election. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) wishes to secure a large enough majority to unilaterally change the Constitution to suit President Erdogan’s wishes. Although the President of the Republic is constitutionally mandated to remain above politics, this has become a bad joke in Turkey as Mr. Erdogan leads rally after rally across the country in support of his AKP and the Presidential system he wishes to turn Turkey into.
The other main parties – the Kemalist Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Right-wing Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Left-wing People’s Democratic Party (HDP) – have all come out against any changes to the Constitution that would further empower an already out of control Mr. Erdogan. While all these opposition parties feel that the last several years of Mr. Erdogan’s AKP rule have seriously damaged democratic institutions in Turkey, they agree on little else. The MHP’s Turkish nationalist discourse of fear, the illiberal Kemalist legacy that the CHP has had difficulty renewing or reforming, and an HDP discourse that is probably still too new and “progressive” for many Turkish voters all coexist uneasily. The main things working to the opposition’s advantage revolve around voters’ fatigue with the AKP after thirteen years of rule, corruption scandals, the increasing abuses of power and arrogance from a government in power so long, the behavior of Mr. Erdogan and most of all, a slowing economy.
Although the HDP in particular has tried to run an upbeat, positive campaign full of promises for a different possible Turkey, the final week before the election has only aggravated many people’s fears. The rhetoric coming from government AKP circles has become more polarizing than ever, with local and international conspiracies lurking behind every corner. This week the venerable Turkish newspaper Cumhuriyet was subjected to a lawsuits and verbal attacks from the President for publishing reports, complete with clear video footage and photos, of last year’s Turkish intelligence shipments of weapons to Jihadi fighters across the border in Syria. The weapons were hidden under crates of antibiotics and similar items, and designated as “humanitarian aid to Turkmens.” Cumhuriyet and the Dogan Media Group were accused by Mr. Erdogan of working for the “parallel state”, which is code for the Pennsylvania-based Fethullah Gulen movement that Mr. Erdogan had a falling out with last year.
The increasingly sensitive Mr. Erdogan also lashed out at the New York Times, CNN and the BBC, accusing them of intending to “weaken,” “divide” and “disintegrate Turkey” at the behest of the mysterious “superior mind.” Of course we all wonder who the “superior mind” is. Is Mr. Erdogan saying that Fethullah Gulen is smarter than him? Talk of a superior mind behind efforts to destroy Turkey predate the falling out between Erdogan and Gulen, however, so perhaps it is something else? The Jews? The illuminati? Freemasons? Space lizards? All of these, or perhaps Jewish Illuminati Freemason Space Lizards posing as “the international interest rate lobby” that Mr. Erdogan sometimes rails against as well?
Whatever the “enemy” is supposed to be, this kind of fear-mongering conspiracy discourse, a discourse that some leaders seem to have a knack and instinct for, is corrosive to the democratic process. The opposition parties, media just doing their jobs as journalists, international watchdog agencies, protestors in a park, foreign commentators – anyone who does not adoringly fall in behind the “Dear Leader” and his program are labelled mortal enemies. The need to fight such enemies could justify various shenanigans come election day. An election that should just be a civilized contest over different visions for the country becomes a much more menacing struggle for the very soul of society.
But perhaps that is what this particular election really is for Turkey. If the AKP loses votes, it loses its momentum and its ability to change the system and install Mr. Erdogan in power indefinitely. Down the road this could lead to a change of government soon, which could in turn lead to real investigations about shoe boxes full of money in the homes of government officials, covert arms shipments to unsavory characters just over the border, manufactured evidence for legal witch hunts, and a host of other transgressions that could land a lot of people in jail.
If, on the other hand, various shenanigans combined with the highest electoral threshold in the world (10% of the national vote needed for any seats to be won) completely shut out the voices of the opposition, then people may take to the streets, which will then give the ruling party an excuse for yet more authoritarian measures.
David Romano has been a Rudaw columnist since 2010. He is the Thomas G. Strong Professor of Middle East Politics at Missouri State University and author of The Kurdish Nationalist Movement (2006, Cambridge University Press) and co-editor (with Mehmet Gurses) of Conflict, Democratization and the Kurds in the Middle East (2014, Palgrave Macmillan).
The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Rudaw.
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