President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who’s ruled Turkey for more than a decade, may finally be facing defeat at the hands of an electorate increasingly concerned about his authoritarian methods.
His loss would spell good news not only for Turks, but for the West as well.
Having tried to pose as a father figure, standing above partisan politics, Erdogan has now been forced to resume the role he is best at: ruthless politician chasing power.
Kid gloves off, he’s entered the general-election campaign with gusto in the hope of keeping control of Turkey’s parliament for his Justice and Development Party (AKP).
Casting himself as a street-fighter, he tells hecklers simply to “shut up.”
“You have a job, haven’t you?” he shouts at one. “Remember who gave you that opportunity?”
He’s described mayors and local officials who refuse to greet him at airports as “miserable little nincompoops.”
He approved the arrest of two judges who released some of his media critics.
Business circles linked to his party are spending vast sums, in effect, to buy votes.
They claim a shadowy movement led by “religious scholar” Fethullah Gulen is doing the same on behalf of opposition parties.
Gulen, nicknamed “the Khomeini of the Internet” because of Islamist sermons he posts on the net from his exile residence in Pennsylvania, helped AKP win power under Erdogan. In the past three years, however, he has emerged as Erdogan’s nemesis.
To counter Gulen’s Islamist narrative, Erdogan — himself an Islamist — is trying to develop a counter-narrative based on a nationalistic illusion of Turkey’s past and future. He now casts himself as leader of a “Turkic civilization” that transcends Islam, as a matter of history.
In this neo-Ottoman narrative, Islam is part of a larger Turkic reality.
To illustrate that reality, Erdogan — who translated himself into president less than a year ago — created a Presidential Guard with bizarre uniforms that supposedly recall the many civilizations that existed in Asia Minor.
The guard’s parade often provokes nothing but laughter, even among those who appreciate Cecil B. DeMille spectacles.
If Erdogan’s AKP wins 367 of the 550 seats in parliament on polling day, June 7, it would be able to change the constitution without a referendum. Erdogan’s plan is to create a presidential system without much of the checks and balances that have helped Turkish democracy develop over the past eight decades.
After the election, he would have four years in which to dismantle the Kemalist secular system and start building his dream society, the contours of which remain blurred in contradiction and uncertainty. Some Turks fear that Erdogan may have lost all ability of thinking clearly.
The election matters for a number of reasons.
A big victory for Erdogan could speed up the nuclear program he launched with help from Russia to counter the Obama administration’s acceptance of Iran’s nuclear ambitions. That could trigger an even bigger nuclear-arms race in what is arguably the world’s most unstable region.
Erdogan has also hinted that, once the election is over, he might intervene militarily in Syria to help “moderate Islamists” come to power in Damascus.
So far he has used an unwritten alliance with ISIS in Syria to prevent the emergence of a Kurdish mini-state on Turkey’s borders. A clash with Iran over who dominates Syria is a possibility.
A more empowered Erdogan may also revive his policy of distancing Turkey from NATO and the European Union in favor of closer ties with Russia and China in the wake of the vacuum created by President Obama’s strategy of global retreat.
That would make it harder for the next administration in Washington to repair the damage done by Obama to US national interests.
The good news is that AKP’s share of the votes has been in decline for several years and the party may well end up without an overall majority to form a government on its own. AKP has won most of its electoral victories thanks to Kurdish ethnic votes.
This time, however, the Kurdish community is seeking an independent voice. For the first time in over a decade, Turkey may well decide it has had enough of Erdogan and his AKP.