Soner Cagaptay
Turkey’s Elections: Exploring the Political Landscape and Future Implications
Soner Cagaptay - Turkey’s Elections: Exploring the Political Landscape and Future Implications
- Well, welcome back everybody, and hi Soner, and thank you very, very much for joining us today.
Hi, Wendy.
[Wendy] How are you?
I’m doing great, thank you for hosting me. I’m pleased to be invited to Lockdown University today to discuss Turkey, but over to you.
No, you know what? I was absolutely thrilled that you agreed to do this. To everybody, I met Soner at the Washington Institute Conference and we hit it off. I went to an outstanding presentation, asked him to come and talk on Lockdown, and he very kindly agreed to do so. So before I hand over to Dr. Cagaptay, to Soner, I want to just give you a brief introduction. Soner Cagaptay is the Beyer Family Fellow and the director of the Turkish Research Programme at the Washington Institute. He has written extensively on US-Turkish relations, Turkish domestic politics, and Turkish nationalism, publishing in scholarly journals and major international print media, including the “Wall Street Journal,” “Washington Post,” “New York Times,” “Foreign Affairs,” and “The Atlantic.” He has been a regular columnist for “Hurriyet Daily News,” Turkey’s oldest and most influential English language paper and a contributor to CNN’s Global Public Square blog. He appears regularly on “Fox News,” “CNN,” “NPR,” “BBC,” and “CNN-Turk.” His latest book, “A Sultan in Autumn: Erdogan Faces Turkey’s Uncontainable Forces,” was published in June 2021 by I.B. Tauris. His books have been translated into Turkish, Italian, Greek, Romanian, and Croatian. A historian by training, Dr. Cagaptay wrote his doctoral dissertation at Yale University on Turkish nationalism. Dr. Cagaptay has taught courses at Yale, Princeton University, Georgetown University, and Smith College on the Middle East, Mediterranean, and Eastern Europe. His spring 2003 course on modern Turkish history was the first offered by Yale in three decades. From 2006 to 2007, he was Erdogan’s professor at Princeton’s University Department of Near Eastern Studies. Dr. Cagaptay is the recipient of numerous honours, grants, and chairs, among them, the Smith-Richardson, Mellon, Rice, and Leylan fellows, as well as the Ertegun chair at Princeton. He has also served on contract as chair of the Turkey Advanced Area Studies Programme at the State Department’s Foreign Service Institute. In 2012, he was named an American Turkish Society Young Society Leader. After training in India, Dr. Cagaptay certified as a registered yoga teacher in 2018. Now that is it, isn’t it?
Yes, I think so.
Well, as I said before, thank you very, very much. It was an honour meeting you and it was a treat listening to you, and I really feel so thrilled that you agreed to do this presentation today on the Turkish elections, and I’m sure our audience are really going to enjoy it. I also want to just mention your book, which I hope you will mention as well. And so at the end of your lecture you’ll talk a little bit about your book please and I’m quite sure that our listeners will be able to order on Amazon.
Absolutely.
All right, thank you very much. Over to you. Thank you.
Thank you Wendy. I’m pleased to be with you today and on this edition of Lockdown University. Thank you also for mentioning in my bio that I was a Turkish-American Young Society fellow. I like the young adjective in there. Appreciate it. I have spent about two decades at the Washington Institute following the career of Turkish president, Erdogan, who came to power in 2003 as prime minister, Ran Turkey as prime minister for three terms. He ran into something in, quote, inconvenient, quote, term limits, changed his job to bypass this limit, changed Turkey’s constitution in 2018, made himself executive-style president, continued to rule Turkey at the helm with a new job title and now is perhaps going in to win elections once again on Sunday. Very competitive race, but likely front, the top candidate at this stage is a really fascinating personality. I’ve written hi biography called “The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey.” And I think that Erdogan is a Janus-face leader to begin with. He’s got a bright side. He delivered quite phenomenal growth in the context of Turkish history. 15 years of unbroken growth from 2003 to ‘18 and he lifted many people out of poverty, improved access to services including healthcare. Basically people started living better under him compared to the earlier era. And for that, he has a base that loves him. That’s his bright side. He also has a darker side, sadly, and that’s the autocratic side of Erdogan or the maybe you could say the authoritarian populist side. Erdogan, like other leaders such as Hungarian Prime Minister Orban, the two I think are among the inventors of this kind of politics In the 21st century. Erdogan demonises, brutalises, and cracks down on demographics unlikely to vote for him. Those demographics include leftists, social Democrats, liberals, Kurdish nationalists, and Alevis in Turkey. Alevis are liberal Muslims. They are to Islam what the Unitarian church is to Christianity and they constitute about 10% to 15% of Turkey. So the groups Erdogan has demonised constitute around half of the population and is got a base of mostly conservative voters.
Many of them love him because he lifted them out of poverty. That’s the other half of the country. Erdogan won many elections, primarily delivering quite phenomenal growth, but he’s been in trouble lately and what I will do in the next few minutes is explain to you what kind of troubles he faced going into these crucial elections on May 14th and how he is hoping to overcome them. So May 14th, Turkey citizens, little bit of background, voted in simultaneous polls for parliament and presidency. Erdogan’s block led that race. Came at just about 49.5%, but the Constitution says that you need to get 50% to win. So he did not win the presidency, though his block won majority in the parliament in the simultaneous vote. His contender, opposition presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu won 45%. The race now goes to a runoff between the two on Sunday and polls show that Erdogan is leading. So what were the troubles Erdogan faced going to the polls and how does he think he can overcome them? He’s got two major issues going to the polls. One was, remember, he wins elections primarily by delivering growth. He has never won elections nationally speaking while not delivering growth. And for him, that was a big problem. In 2018 under Erdogan, the economy in Turkey went into recession for the first time. This is the reason why he lost the following year, elections for local government, his candidates rather. They lost mayoral races in Istanbul and Ankara and that’s a big thing. It was not national government, but controlling Istanbul is like controlling half of Turkey’s economy. It’s the global city. So Erdogan suffered from that and he wanted to make a comeback. He had the second problem, unified opposition. I think both the economic problems and the unified nature of the opposition are his own doings. He has embraced in the last few years an unorthodox economic policy whereby he believes that interest rates drive inflation. Now anybody took Econ 101 in college or reads the “New York Times” or listens to NPR, we know that basically if you have high inflation, interest rates go up.
That’s what’s happening everywhere. Erdogan says the opposite is true. That’s called an unorthodox policy. That has resulted with the country’s foreign exchange resource being depleted because the lira is being devalued and there’s generally a lack of confidence among markets in Turkey. That’s problem number one he created. Problem number two, unified opposition. I described to you guys when I started this conversations that Erdogan won elections, although half of Turkey, more than half of Turkey opposed them. That is because the opposition was divided. The gap between opposition groups was often times wider than the gap between them and Erdogan. So he could win oppositions in a parliamentary democratic race such as the race in Germany where you have seven parties running. Nobody gets 50%, of course, and the plurality, the party that gets plurality of the votes gets to form government. That was Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, AKP. He won races comfortably because his party was always the biggest, if not the majority vote holder in these parliamentary democratic races. But as I said earlier, he switched systems in 2018 to create a new job definition for himself, a new title rather, executive style presidency that increases powers, but it also called for a presidential system, which means the race is now two-way. It’s no more six parties competing, it’s two leaders competing. So whereas earlier he never had to get 50%, now he has to get to 50%. It’s difficult for him even given his control of institutions and erosion of checks and balances and the fact that he controls or rather businesses involve around 90% of the media. So the opposition divided for a long time, united in 2019, because they realise that if they don’t unite, they’ll disappear themselves. So they have ideological differences. Opposition is everything from the right to the left and in between. And that united front worked.
Opposition candidates won elections for mayor in Istanbul and Ankara, and the opposition wanted to repeat the same experiment this time around. They decided to be united. They said, “When we are united, we can defeat everyone. Look at Istanbul in 2019.” And they said, “Economy’s not doing well. Let’s take him down.” With 50% inflation, huge crackdowns on freedoms, economy collapsing, lira lost 500% of its value in the last 50 years, and a unified opposition, on paper, Erdogan should be losing. But in reality, it doesn’t look like he will. So let me explain how he bounced back. Starting with the economy. Economies, macroindicators were not great. Inflation is 50%, lira losing its value. Erdogan leaned on to his allies, starting with Vladimir Putin. I think Putin sees Erdogan as a like-minded leader with whom he can challenge the US-led international order. Putin wants Erdogan to win Turkey’s elections. He made some really generous cash transfers to Turkey’s economy last year, perhaps as much as $20 billion. Erdogan used that monies, those funds, number one, I guess to stabilise the currency. Selling exchange, foreign exchange so to stabilise the currency. That’s what the central banks do. And secondly, he’s handed it out in the form of very generous social security benefits. 45% of Turkey citizens are paid a minimum wage. They got three increases in the last year. Overall more than 100%, that’s twice the inflation rate. So that helped. Other benefits, law and forgiveness, cheap credit, and wage increases for public sector employees. In this regard, Erdogan was helped also by resetting ties with wealthy Gulf monarchies.
Turkish ties with Saudi Arabia, UAE had collapsed after Erdogan started to support Muslim brotherhood in the Arab uprisings, and also because he incriminated Saudi crown prince for his role in the murder of Khashoggi. Erdogan reset ties with the Saudis, transferred jurisdiction over the murder of Khashoggi from Turkish courts to Saudi courts, case closed, and that came with $5 billion the Saudis put into Turkey’s economy. With no strings attached, they said, “You can use it as you like.” That money probably helped stabilise the lira and also turn into generous social security handouts. Emiratis, I think similarly have helped. That’s the economy part. Everyone basically I think stabilised the sense of economic downfall and perhaps gave the citizens enough relief. I would say that there was a bounce back. There’s still the factor of the unified opposition and I think he was able to really go after the opposition using his complete control of information flow, which has now become a game changer in democracies. 90% of the media in Turkey is controlled by pro-Erdogan businesses, 80% of Turkey citizens. It’s a very large country, 84 million people. 80% of those 84 million people can read news only in Turkish. So Erdogan can curate the news for this 80%, and if business is loyal to him, write something, even if that’s a lie and repeat it enough many times, that becomes a reality for that 80%. That’s what political scientists call post-truth narrative. So as the opposition was running a campaign, it was framed as being backed by this Kurdish group called PKK, Kurdistan Workers’ Party. It’s a terror designated entity by US and NATO allies. And false and fake, but this image, a narrative form that opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu was backed by this terrorist group and I think the elector got stuck there. Of course I think Kilicdaroglu did quite an impressive job given that he had huge disadvantages going into the race.
This kind of narrative that was sticking as well as the fact that many of the country’s institutions from courts to electoral boards these days are loyal to Erdogan. The way I would describe the race is that it was as if Erdogan was running 100 yards, 100 metres, and Kilicdaroglu was running a marathon and yet to come and catch Erdogan from behind. He did a good job. But in the first round, getting 45% of the vote to Erdogan’s 49.5, he could not quite catch up with Erdogan. He could also argue that while electorate in Turkey want to change, let’s do both sides. Erdogan, what did he do right, let’s do what Kilicdaroglu did not do right, opposition candidate. I think a perception formed in Turkey that there was a need for change perhaps. Economy was not doing so well. I’ll use a soccer analogy called football elsewhere of course and then I’ll translate it for American audiences. The electorate flashed a yellow card to Erdogan. That’s when you have a minor infringement, and the referee says, “Be careful, I’ll kick you out.” But the electorate did not flash a red card to Erdogan. That’s when the referee says, “You’re out.” But using the same analogy, the electorate did not give a green light, using the lights analogy, to opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu. I think ultimately he was not inspiring enough to tell the electorate, “Look, I have put together a team that can get the job done better.” In this regard, I think Erdogan’s control of information flow was significant. There was zero discussion going into the elections of 50% inflation, human rights abusers, journalists and activists in jail or the earthquake, massive saddening earthquake in which 50,000 people died in Turkey. Biggest natural disaster in the country’s modern history. Now the earthquake was massive, a record that in turn on the Richter scale that hit this part of the country and there is some destruction that nothing could have prevented. But then you have all seen pictures of a building standing next to a building that is pancaked. That’s not the earthquake, that’s corruption. There was no debate of that in the media. Similarly, government relief agencies gutted out by Erdogan were nowhere after earthquake to be seen.
That’s because Erdogan has been appointing loyalists to these agencies, not merit-based appointments and not people whose loyalties to the constitution necessarily, but bureaucrats whose loyalties to the president. And of course institutions have become zombie institutions. Turkey’s emergency relief agency was nowhere to be seen two days after the earthquake, while many people sadly waited under the rubble and perhaps died of cold or injuries. And so there was no discussion of that. There was no discussion of lira losing its 50% of its value. But the debate was, the narrative rather, was completely casted. Erdogan had made Turkey a great military industrial power. He had built an aircraft carrier, he’s found natural gas, he has built Turkey’s first nationally built manufacture, turkey’s first nationally built car, and also he’s made Turkey a respected military power with his drones. Now that’s part of the story. Turkey indeed has amazing drones. Everybody wants to buy them. Turkey has a very powerful military, but it’s not the entire story. The rest was missing. Economy, human rights. I guess how some people feel that government does not treat treat them equally. That applies to most women in the country and other groups that feel disenfranchised. So it was the narrative that he framed that helped them I think basically decide how his administration was viewed versus the opposition’s candidacy in the eyes of the electorate. I clustered these together and say these are Erdogan’s competitive advantages. They help them come up front. And my prediction on May 28th is that these advantages will have Erdogan cross 50%. He’ll probably win. The question before I wrap up is, how does he win? What kind of a margin does he win by?
That will determine so much of what Turkey does going forward. If he wins narrowly, that is Erdogan, by less than 1%, the opposition will contest this outcome. As always happens, if the margin is less than 1%, you want a recount. I have no doubt that Erdogan will shut down these contestations, will say, “Enough, the race was free and fair. Let’s move forward.” He can do that. Many courts and electoral bodies are loyal to him. He controls 90% of the media. He can throttle social media. Turkey citizens have migrated there, but Erdogan has threatened fines and bans on social media outlets that he can threaten than to throttle access or take off content offline. So if there’s a contestation, he’ll shut it down, he’ll move forward. But that leaves us with what I call the fragile Erdogan outcome. I’ll give you three outcomes. The first, wins by a narrow margin. Fragile outcome because he says, “Even with my complete control of, almost near perfect control of impenetrable, rather, control of institutions and media, I still got only 50.05%.” The margin is being 200,000 votes. He’s going to say, “Oh that’s not very good.” He’ll feel fragile. He’s probably going to double down unfortunately on more autocracy at home to prevent the opposition from surfing in a tsunami. And I guess on foreign policy, he’s going to continue to lean on to Putin for investment flows because although elections will be over, the next election cycle in Turkey is on 2024. Local elections, nationally held. They don’t change government but they act as a referendum. Everyone’s going to be worried that he could lose local governments again and maybe lose even others in the hands of his candidates.
So a fragile Erdogan outcome where he wins by less than 1%, I think results with him being autocratic and leaning on Putin more for inflows and perhaps doubling down on this economic unorthodoxy in terms of policies ‘cause he has no wiggle room to change. The opposite end of it is the second outcome. I’m going from the least plausible for the most, by the way, so you guys can follow. The second most plausible outcome is where Erdogan wins by a landslide. That will be 55 to 45. He wins 55%. Sort of possible. Only if opposition voters are disappointed, especially leftists who voted for the opposition candidate will might say if you can’t vote him out when inflation is 50% when they might not turn up at the ballot box and that would increase support for Erdogan because his voters will be there. So while the mood has not changed, those who vote has shifted, that could give him a landslide. It means, again, Erdogan doubling down on his model. He’s saying, “They told me economic unorthodoxy didn’t work. It worked. I won by 10% margin.” And he’ll lean on Putin because he’s going to say it worked. “He’s my best ally, he helped me.” So probably double down on that relationship and he won’t necessarily be more autocratic in this path. But given that he has a solid majority in the parliament of right wing parties and given that some of the members in the parliament that were in the Kilicdaroglu list are also right wing. When you add them up, the parliament is 2/3 right wing dominated. It’ll be the most right wing parliament in Turkey’s history since the beginning of this century. Erdogan might be tempted to listen to some of his far right allies in this coalition. And some of these allies have really archaic social views. They want to criminalise adultery, they want to segregate public education, ban LGBTQ groups. He could legislate towards that end gradually.
So socially more conservative Erdogan I think is the outcome and socially more conservative, top-down Jacobin Turkey driven by Erdogan of course is the outcome of a landslide. But let me finish because I do want to give you guys an optimistic outlook of Turkey, a country in which I have great faith. It has tremendously age old institutions, that big middle class, well-educated citizenry, a youth that faces outwards, a deep economic ties with Europe. It’s chief trading partner and chief source of revenue. And of course deep historic ties with the west. So perhaps the most likely outcome whereby Erdogan wins neither by a narrow margin nor by a landslide, by a comfortable margin of two, three points. So 52 points, maybe 51, something about that or 53. And of course Kilicdaroglu is the opposite of that. Erdogan has won neither narrowly. He doesn’t feel fragile. Neither by a big margin, doesn’t feel embolden. I think we just see more of the same going forward. Transactionalist in foreign policy, more of the same, meaning more of what we had in the last few years. Erdogan will continue to play US and Russia against each other to get what he wants. Turkey’s Ukraine war policy will continue to be what it has been. I’ll describe it for you guys. I know this will sound complicated. I’ll describe it slowly so you can grasp it. Turkey will continue to be pro-Ukrainian militarily but not anti-Russian. So keeping ties with Russia open economically for example. And if everyone will leverage Turkey’s vote on NATO’s expansion regarding Sweden to get fighter planes from the United States, including F-16s and maybe a meeting with Biden.
On economy, I think Erdogan will say, “My model works. I will continue with it and rely on inflows from Russia and Gulf countries, but also bet on a really lucrative tourism season.” Turkey was last year, the fifth most visited country in the world. It’s competing with France and Italy for the fourth or the third position. It’ll probably climb up there this year. And if the lira is weak, it might become even weaker, Turkey becomes really affordable. So it could have a record breaking year of tourism. Exports will be cheap if the lira is weak. So that could help with revenues, that helps Erdogan sustain the current model. And then of course the last piece of it is that in terms of democratic rights and freedoms. The outcome that I think is most plausible where Erdogan wins by a comfortable margin also suggests more of the same alignment of politics at home. That means you have now new elections in Turkey in 2024 for local government. They don’t determine national government, but they are referendum on Turkey’s direction, and in this regard, have faith in Turkey’s democracy. I think it’s an incredible country. If the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan for us was that it takes a really long time to build a democracy, the lesson of Turkey under Erdogan is that it also takes a really long time to kill one. So even if he wins, regardless of what the margin is, most likely outcome, a comfortable, a few points. I think that then the next race of course is going to be local elections, which means I hope I come back to the Lockdown University and then talk to you guys around that within that timeframe. With that, I’ll turn over and thank you everyone for coming. Look forward to your questions and comments and then engaging debate and discussion.
Thank you very much, Soner. That was a incredibly fast withthrough of all of the issues. I thought we might start by taking a couple that you touched on and diving in a little deeper. And one of the things that we see in headlines is perhaps the, I don’t know if you want to call it a cultural change or the way Erdogan has used religion or brought in some of the more Islamist elements as part of the way Turkey functions now. How do you see the role of religion both in Erdogan’s government but also in Turkish society under him?
Great question, thank you. So I think the role of religion in Turkey is the Evergreen Debate is a country that’s both democratic and Muslim majority. Has deep ties with the west, perhaps more so than any other Muslim majority country, is part of NATO, but also accession talks with the European Union and a seven-decade-old ally of the United States, as well as being the first country to have recognised Israel among Muslim majority nations and being deeply entrenched in Europe economically because of this customs union in places 1995, which means industrial goods travel freely between Turkey and Europe. So I always thought that President Erdogan wants to change Turkey’s identity, but I always thought that there are limits to what he can accomplish. Let me take you guys back a little bit and look at another of Turkey’s great leaders, that’s Ataturk, who also wanted to fashion Turkey in his own image. Ataturk established Turkey out of the ashes of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I. And he was Turkey’s liberator and of course founder, simultaneously, and he also became its reformer. He wanted to shape Turkey in his own image as a secular, western and Europe facing society. You could argue that this work. if you travel to Turkey or if you’re there right now or have work, the Turkey has a very insignificant European vocation. And of course in Turkey, the debate, of course, doesn’t matter where you are, what side of the political spectrum is.
If you have enough money to travel abroad, you go to Europe. If you have kids, you want to send them school overseas, you send them to Europe. Even not in Erdogan’s elites are people sending their kids for education to Iran or Saudi Arabia or Egypt. They’re saying, “I want my kids to go to UK or France or other countries.” So Europe is still the source of fascination, but Erdogan has introduced some kind of recalibration to Kemal’s vision that is after the middle name of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founder. If the Kemal’s vision was that Turkey should be secular, European Western and religion should be a private matter. It should not be a public matter. Erdogan’s vision is the opposite, exact opposite. First of all, he believes religion should flood public space, education and government policy. He also wants to change Turkey’s identity. Erdogan wanted to be European. Western. and secular. Erdogan wants it to be Middle Eastern, socially conservative and politically Islamist. Has he succeeded, Erdogan? To an extent, he has. I think that many in Turkey love this idea and Erdogan does have a base that loves him. I call this political love, they’re fascinated by him. Even at last year when the economy was nose diving before his recess with the Gulf countries and financial transfers from Russia. Inflation was nearing triple digits, a record since decades. He was still polling at about 33%. A third of Turkey loves him regardless. So that Turkey I think has embraced Erdogan’s model of Turkey’s identity. But I would say Erdogan’s efforts to recast Turkey’s identity, Carly, have faced have only limited success because the Europeanization and of course Western vocation of Turkey is so deep that you can’t completely root that out. So I think Erdogan has had limited success. And maybe on balance, Turkey will settle somewhere between Erdogan’s and Ataturk’s visions in the future. it’ll be both European and Middle Eastern. It’ll be Islamic and secular simultaneously. Maybe that is what the citizens want because you got constituencies that want to see both.
And perhaps these constituencies will conclude that neither can wish the other side away because both are really large, sizable, so coexistence. But economically, the European piece is probably fundamental. Politically, Turkey has different identities, Islamic or secular. Internationally, it has different identities, European or Middle Eastern. But economically, it’s European because it’s part of the European Customs Union. And Europe is still key trading partner. It’s also the source of 70% of FDI that comes to Turkey. So I think Erdogan has shifted Turkey’s identity. He has allowed for more room for Islam. He’s also eliminated the firewall that separates religion and government but has had some success. I think that he has reached a saturation point in this regard. Basically everyone who wants to convert to Erdogan’s political line has, and the rest, half of the country are saying no thank you. But I think economically, of course, it’s Turkey so deeply embedded in Europe that that’s probably a very fundamental aspect for us to understand where Turkey’s heading and what its vocation is like.
So you’ve touched there a few times on, no matter what basically, 33% of the country have a love for him. We always talk in political assessments about the role of the leader, about what it is, the special ingredients are. Growing up in the UK, we all have these conversations about, say, Boris Johnson or others. What is it about these leaders that make some people feel particularly passionate about them? What do you think it is about Erdogan that really speaks to people?
I’m glad you raised Boris Johnson because I was going to respond to your question and say, there are nations that were great power once have a romanticised but also malleable sense of their heyday. And I think this comes with a propensity or inclination-
Pop shot at the Brits.
Yeah, I think so. I think it comes with this inclination for nations that were great power once to look up the leaders who speak to this narrative of being great. So I think what the Brexit vote was in terms of the UK, sort of like what Erdogan is in Turkey. He’s telling Turkey citizens saying, “We’re a great power. We don’t have to play second fiddle to the European Union. I’ll make you great again.” And I think great powers, nations that were great powers once therefore have this really ease with which they can be inspired by politicians who speak to this narrative, but you can also manipulate it. In this regard, Erdogan has basically told Turkey citizens, “We are a great power and we should be treated as one.” The Romans had this concept called saeculum. It meant the number of years that had to pass between the time when an incident happened and all the people who were alive at the time of that incident died. By that measure, when Erdogan came to power in 2003, the Turkish republic was not even one saeculum old, established in 1923. So the memory of Ottoman greatness and imperial identity was fresh. Erdogan awakened it. I don’t think it’s going back. I think that even if he’s voted out on Sunday and Kilicdaroglu becomes president, the next president too will want Turkey to be recognised as a great imperial power. Now the Achilles’ heel, all of that is Turkey’s economy. If Turkey’s economy, which is huge, about $1 trillion, it’s the biggest economy between Germany and India. It’s also an advanced economy. Part of that is Erdogan’s credit. He really lifted people out of poverty, improved infrastructures, but the economy’s now in brittle shape. It went into recession in 2018, Carly, as I said. It’s why he lost the elections.
Economy came out of recession, but now macroindicators, including accounts balance is not great. If the economy tanks, I think this whole soaring imperial power, return of imperial Turkey project also has to come down to earth. If the economy continues to float, I think that Turkish foreign policy will continue to float and Erdogan will continue to inspire voters. That was part of his appeal. Remember I said the discussion was not about the earthquake or corruption, it was about Turkey becoming a great power. And I think, Carly, Erdogan is perhaps among these new breed of brand of politicians who speak the imperial greatness. He’s probably the best in terms of making that message believable and real and having a third of the electorate that loves him. They are in what I call political love with him, not personal of course, but I think that explains why there is a group that will never abandon him. And I think we see this also in the case of other leaders who speak to past imperial glory.
So you touched before on what Erdogan’s reelection may mean for certain democratic forces in society. What does it mean for the Kurdish community?
So in the elections, Turkey’s Kurdish community split three ways. We don’t have exact stats, but Turkey’s Kurdish community is estimated to be around 15% of the population. I think it’s split three ways. A big chunk, mostly leaning left went with the opposition. More specifically with opposition, Peoples’ Democratic Party that informally backed opposition presidential candidate Kilicdaroglu. That’s the largest block in the Kurdish community. A second block, conservative and mostly in big cities supports Erdogan and looks like they still did. A third block abstained. Fascinating. And I think that’s one reason why Kilicdaroglu could not win. He was relying on more solid support from the Kurdish community. And the idea was that the community was split two ways, majority supporting Kilicdaroglu, minority supporting Erdogan. It’s split three ways, plurality supporting Kilicdaroglu and minority supporting Erdogan and minority not going to the ballot box. I think that has a lot to do with the fact that Kurdish voters felt that their party’s alliance with Kilicdaroglu didn’t mean that they should vote for him. I think that I don’t identify with the entire platform of his presidency.
So the assumption was that the Kurdish were going to be the king makers, but because they did not vote in mass for Kilicdaroglu, they did not end up becoming king makers. Now President Erdogan is a excellent student of 180s. He destroyed Turkey’s ties with Israel. He reset them. He angered Saudi Arabia’s conference and now became one of his best friends. He has demonised this party, and the HDP that is, pro-Kurdish party in the election process, and he’s unlikely to reset bridges with it. But I can see him do another Kurdish opening as he has done in the past by reaching out to other constituencies. And so I think the best way to describe Turkey’s Kurdish community is that it’s not a monolith. It’s got a different political inclinations. It votes not as a group but splits up. And perhaps one of the successes of Erdogan in this election was that he framed Kilicdaroglu as being backed by the Kurdish community and Kilicdaroglu lost some votes for that. But then not all Kurds voted for Kilicdaroglu so he lost more votes because of that. So it’s like he couldn’t satisfy neither side and perhaps that’s one reason why he underperformed compared to how polls were expecting him to do.
So one of the challenges that Turkey, as much of the world has navigated in the last decade or so, has been the Syrian civil war. And the pressures that’s placed on Turkey, economically, security. With Assad being welcomed back into some of the fold of the League of Nations and Erdogan’s now reelection, do you see some of those pressures declining and do you see that having any effect going forwards?
Oh, I think the big issue right now is a handshake between Turkey and Syria. That is because there’s a pressing or rather burning issue in Turkey, the status of refugees. Around four million Syrians are in Turkey right now. That’s nearly 20% of Syria’s pre-war population is in Turkey. Turkey citizens should be given a really huge applause for welcoming these refugees with a warm welcome or warm embrace for about a decade, considering that these refugees, four million people, made up a nearly 5% addition to Turkey’s population of 85 million people. It’s as if you had 15 million refugees coming to the United States in a decade. The reaction by the public was they’re escaping brutality. They’re not immigrants. they’re not choosing to come here. They’re refugees, they’re escaping war. Of course we have to help them. But that welcome is now wearing thin, mostly because the economy is not doing well in Turkey. Anti-refugee sentiments are spreading. People are blaming refugees for pushing prices, rents up, taking jobs away. And there are at least two politicians who campaigned only on this issue, anti-refugee platform. And although one of them dropped out of the race totally, we have seen that maybe 5% of the vote went to a third poll candidate who had just a single issue, a platform, send the Syrians back. With that, that candidate got almost three million votes. And I think the movement is organic and will continue to grow. So Erdogan knows that going to local elections or in general, the population disagrees with his open embrace of Syrians and that he therefore wants to have a handshake with Assad so that some of these Syrians will be repatriated. Assad, however, does not want to shake Erdogan’s hand before Turkey commits to withdraw all its troops in Syria. Turkey launched troops and encourage them to Syria to oust the Assad regime. Some of these troops are now almost permanent there.
But for Turkey, the challenge is that the groups that Turkey has backed, many of them Syrian, may bite the hand that feeds them if Turkey leaves them alone and withdraws. And so for Ankara, I guess the challenge is if you withdraw too fast from Syria, it becomes like the US withdraw from Afghanistan. Complete collapse. And so Turkey can withdraw on a limited scale. And so that means Assad can take only some refugees. So I think, Carly, what we’ll see is not a global handshake that ends the war in Syria. Turkey says to Assad, “You are the government.” Assad says, “Fine, I’ll take all refugees back.” Turkey says, “I’ll take my old troops out.” I think it’s a nod more than a handshake, a nod where everyone says, “I commit to eventually withdraw all my troops.” Assad says, “I commit to eventually take all the refugees back,” but the war comes to an end. The fighting comes to an end, maybe a summit where a third leader will bring Assad and Erdogan together in a cold handshake. It won’t be warm and fuzzy. That leader could be Putin. Putin wants the war in Syria to end because he’s putting resources there to prop up Assad. And that is taking energy and effort away from the Russian campaign or war against Ukraine. I think Putin wants to focus on Ukraine. So he wants Erdogan and Assad to say, “We are not fighting anymore,” so Putin can pull planes, air force, assets all out. So we could see that cold handshake. Neither Erdogan nor Assad will be showing teeth or smiling too much. And even a nod, which suggests that Turkey’s population that the refugee problem is to be solved. But honestly, I think this is the status quo. The refugees staying in Syria is about to become permanent. Maybe some will be repatriated. About a million are born in Turkey. They’re kids. They speak Turkish, they go to Turkish schools, they have never lived in Syria. So for them, it will not be going back. And so not everybody will be eager to go back.
So perhaps there is no ideal solution for this from the Turkish perspective of the repatriation of refugees. And I think Assad knows that. He knows that for Erdogan, return of refugees is a big deal. So he’s going to hold on to his demand. Turkey withdraws completely out of Syria before he agrees to that. So I think the war in Syria comes to an end, I’m sorry, the conflict comes to an end, but the dynamics created by the war, Turkish troops in Syria and refugees in Turkey do not necessarily get reversed to the pre-war status quo.
So you’ve touched on Erdogan’s famous 180s and there’s two particular ones I want to touch on. The first is where does Erdogan see his role on NATO going forwards? Obviously he gave the nod to Finland’s entry, but is currently blocking Sweden joining. Some things I’ve read imply he’s blocking Sweden joining because of his claims of housing and shielding of Kurdish groups. But do you see him now considering changing his position on Sweden and what would he want in return from NATO countries?
Turkey’s broader foreign policy drivers will not shift if Erdogan wins again. Turkey will continue to be transactionalist, a great power that wants to be recognised as such, and pit US and Russia against each other. If Erdogan wins by a landslide or if he wins narrowly, Turkey will trend more pro-Russia. But it will never come to a point where it chooses Russia over the United States or the United States over Russia. I think it will remain as this large military power. It is the second biggest military in NATO. It has really good real estate. It borders Iran, Iraq, Syria, Russia and Ukraine across the Black Sea and formerly ISIS-held territories. So whatever US policies are regarding these entities, states, conflicts, Turkey’s essential. And the US view I think is that Turkey is, the Secretary of State Blinken, calling it a difficult ally. And I think Erdogan will continue to play for this idea that Turkey does not have to do everything 100% with the US. It also has its own interest to guard. So the question is what does Turkey do regarding this big issue for considering NATO’s expansion, NATO allies including President Biden of the United States, of course, leaders of the ally countries rather, as well as President Biden want this to happen before the alliance is building a summit in July. Now I think that’s where transactional zoom comes in. Turkey wants to purchase F-16 fighter planes from the US. Turkey bought these planes in the ‘80s. It wants to modernise the existing fleet and it also wants to buy a new batch of latest version of these planes. The sale is blocked in the Congress. I think Erdogan will signal to Biden, my guess is that President Biden will put in a call sometime next week after the polls are out if Erdogan wins to congratulate him, and Erdogan will probably use that call to suggest a non-quid pro quo, meaning it’s tit for tat but it’s not formally tit for tat.
So Erdogan will say to Biden, “Look, I’m happy to green-light Sweden’s NATO accession before July summit in Vilnius if you tell me F-16 sale is going to go through.” Of course, and both sides will say, and it’s not a tit for tat, but we know that it is and it could happen. I think what Erdogan really wants to get from a phone call is an invitation to Washington because that will brandish his credentials as Turkey’s newly elected president up for a new term. Biden will probably say, “Let’s meet in Vilnius because I have elections coming up.” Summer is busy. Debt ceiling and other problems in the US. So I think the negotiation, Carly, is going to be whether the two leaders meet in Vilnius, Biden’s offer, or if Erdogan comes to Washington, Erdogan’s request. If they can meet, if they can agree on one of these two formats, I would say Turkey will green-light Sweden’s NATO accession and Biden will green-light F-16 sale to Turkey. So US view is informed by the Turkish attitude, which is that global politics is all transactionalist now. “The Economist” had a fascinating article recently called Key 25. So these transactionalist economies, Turkey’s one of them, they don’t see the world binary. They just say, “I’ll do whatever’s best for them.” That includes some other countries, Brazil, China, sorry, Brazil, India, South Africa. And I think Turkey’s another example of these transactional 25 countries. They’re big economies. They’re not huge economies globally, but they’re significant economies in their regions and they want to be not aligned with one side or the other, whether it’s US versus China or US versus Russia. But they want to say, “I’ll just do whatever is in my interest.” And I think that’s how Turkey’s going to be going forward.
So talking of another leader waiting for an invitation to the White House, you touched on the Israel rapprochement and the next steps there. So Erdogan is obviously pragmatic in his approach to these situations and therefore there has been this rewarming of ties with Israel. But there’s also been some kind of behind the headlines, interesting moments. Yesterday in fact, a news story of a second Israeli spy ring shutdown in Turkey that was targeting Iranian nationals according to Turkish news. And similarly, security alerts issued for Israelis on the ground in Turkey. What do you see as the potential for the Israeli-Turkish relationship going forwards and where does Iran fit into that?
So I consider that a new power block has emerged in the Middle East. It includes Israel, Egypt, UAE, and Saudi Arabia. I call it the new Middle East quartet. These countries get along really well. They’re aligned almost on all issues. They also have deepening economic ties between Israel and Gulf countries. And all four considered the Muslim brotherhood and Hamas to be their greatest regional and domestic security threat. That is at the core of widest block, informal block as is, disagreed, would Erdogan vehemently oppose his policies in the Middle East in which Turkey backed the brotherhood, whereas these four countries considered it their biggest threat, including Hamas in the Gaza strip. Erdogan has not dropped the brotherhood as part of the reset with wealthy Gulf monarchies because he needed inflows to win the elections. Just as Putin helped him, I think he also got some really nice cash inflows from the Saudis and others. So when he reached out, I think he was told that Turkey had to reconsider its support to the brotherhood. Erdogan said, “I will do it, fine,” but that I will do it did not result in Turkey completely cutting ties up with the brotherhood. But I think Erdogan put those ties into the freezer. There’s no more active support, no more engagement, no more backing of these groups. And I think for the quartet, that is good enough. The quartet decided, “Look, maybe Erdogan has affinity for the brotherhood.
Maybe he’ll never drop this, but if it’s in the freezer and we can verify this, that’s enough for us.” So I think Turk-Israeli ties will continue to improve in the next year because Israelis, I think that this putting into Hamas support into freezers policy works. I think that I was just running a panel and I was moderating it and I finished it with asking my colleagues, I said, “I’m going to put you on the spot. I’ll ask you a question now.” I said, “Who are the first leaders whose calls to congratulate him Erdogan will take?” People will line up if Erdogan wins on the 28th to call him and Erdogan’s office and the palace will curate these calls and they’ll tell some leaders’ offices, “We’ll call you back,” and they’ll tell some others, “He’s on the other line, let me patch you through.” And I said, “Who are the countries whose leaders calls Erdogan’s office will patch through right away?” Everybody says, “Of course Azerbaijan.” It’s a big country for Turkey. Putin definitely, I think he is there, but I wouldn’t rule out MBS, Saudi Crown Prince call being among the top five, if not top 10. Qatari ruler Al Thani will also call. Qatar has been a strong ally. So I guess I’m trying to give you a sense that this reset with the Gulf is significant for Erdogan’s political survival. It will probably be part of the reason why he won the elections. And then because local elections are coming up, the referenda in Turkey never end on Erdogan’s popularity. So long as elections are free, of course he’ll be courting these states further. So I think overall, improvement in ties with Gulf countries under Erdogan. Economic ties with Israel will continue to be boosted. Israel I think now, whereas before Erdogan considered Turkey’s best military security, political ally in the East Med, now it thinks that Greece is probably the old Turkey, meaning the best military security political ally. But it also wants to cultivate ties with Turkey, perhaps not as much in the security domain or political domain, but on the economic domain because Turkey’s a huge economy, almost $1 trillion in size.
It’s an advanced economy and there are certain transactions and business deals, advanced economies can only do with other advanced economies. I’ll give you an example, a very real life example. So before the Erdogan came to power, Turkish-Israeli ties were very strong. Half a million Israelis a year visited Turkey. It’s a sign of friendship. Now, one million Israelis fly to Turkey. They don’t visit, but they use Istanbul as their hub. Turkish Airlines, it’s a global airline, competitive, great infrastructure, and of course, great Turkish food. Joking. Well, maybe not, it’s great food in fact. But I think the point I’m trying to raise is economic interdependency is going to be the shock absorber of Turk-Israeli ties and that’s where the relationship’s going to flourish more than other areas.
So if I can, I’ll sneak in one more in the last minute or two. So we’ve seen with other left that, slightly leaning authoritarian style and leaders that once they really feel like they’ve pushed through a number of elections that are clamping down on democratic freedoms and values is what sadly follows. Do you have concerns that some of the tightenings of, when we spoke the other day, you mentioned the unofficial, informal pieces of democracy that are important in society that can be easily shut down. Now where do you see the democratic freedoms and values? For Turkey, perhaps some of the less obvious ones of opposition leaders being locked up, but still those that are fundamental in society.
Absolutely. So I think that so much of democracy’s about unwritten rules. We forget that if a leader violates these rules, there’s really no way to sanction them because the rules are unwritten. THey’re gentle person’s agreements. You don’t demonise your opponent. There’s no punishment against that if you do it. And consensus is that in democracies, you don’t do that, but if you do it, you can get away with it. I think that autocratic populists have learned this lesson that they can violate these unwritten norms to their benefit to the disadvantage of their opponents and they can get away with it. Erdogan is among the inventors together with Hungarian Prime Minister Orban of this kind of politics. And what is significant is like as Orban, Erdogan has never been voted out. Other leaders who have copied these models, have failed to win second terms. Not the case for Erdogan. I think that’s because he’s been very gradualist in the way he demonises groups that oppose him. Leaders elsewhere have demonised half of the society at once perhaps. They lost. Erdogan demonised minorities, letting others believe that, majorities believe that he’s on their side. Of course, after he would be done with one specific minority, he would move on to the next one. And this can be political, social minorities, not just using in the US concept of racial, ethnic, social, political minorities. And once he’s done with one group, he’s moved on to the next. So perhaps, he’s done it with the gradual, a very gradual mechanism of taking really thin slices from these unwritten democratic rules and norms. And that has resulted of course with institutions eventually folding under him. He passed an amendment in 2010 to appoint a majority of judges to high courts without a confirmation process, erased checks and balances. So I think for Erdogan, his biggest strength in terms of a democratic-elected leader violating democratic norms.
It was his really uncanny ability to demonise specifically targeted groups while making everyone look like they were safe, that he was not going to target them. That’s not how it turned out. And I think what Turkey has ended up right now is if Erdogan wins elections again, he’s going to rely even more greatly on Vladimir Putin. And I always thought that Turkey’s not Russia. People ask me this question all the time. I say, “Look, Turkey is more like Hungary and Poland.” It’s a democracy that has fallen under an autocrat because it’s an old democracy. Turkey citizens have been voting in elections since 1950, longer than the citizens of Spain have. So Turkey is a democracy, it’s not Russia. What happened in Putin’s Russia, Putin losing elections for St. Petersburg and Moscow for example, it would never happen. That has happened in Turkey. Erdogan has lost elections for big cities. But if he wins again, I think that his reliance on Putin will probably bring Turkey a tad closer to Russia and a tad away from the East European models that I discussed earlier.
Thank you so much for that really, really deep overview, but also for giving those of us who are a long way from Turkey experts a good way to understand what’s been going on. I’m sure as things develop, especially as you said with the local elections coming up, there is a lot for us all to keep learning and your book is hopefully over your right shoulder for everybody to learn more about. I enjoyed the story where you told me that Erdogan didn’t necessarily take a sultan as an insult. So I think that that tells people a little bit more about what you’ve just touched on with the slipping into the authoritarian regime view. But we’ll all keep watching and read with interest for the 28th and look forward to, you can go on the Washington Institute website and I’m sure follow analysis that you will be giving after the election to hear more of your views. So thank you very much for joining us at Lockdown and we look forward to having you back on again soon.
Thank you, Carly. I appreciate it. Also the nice plug to my book, “A Sultan and Autumn,” that’s my latest. It follows a new sultan. I guess you guys get the theme of Erdogan’s evolution. I’m also on Twitter where I put my analyses and publications. You can find me there on LinkedIn as well. It was a great conversation. You asked amazing questions. I was really happy to be here. I think I was also delighted to be given the opportunity to explain Turkey, a country that’s infinitely fascinating. Never ceases to surprise and never give up on it because it’s a deep and old democracy. And I think that’s the one takeaway I would go away with after today’s conversation. Have faith in that resilience and memory. That means a lot in the society, even in the post-election environment. Thank you for hosting me everyone. Great seeing you online. And thank you Carly, and thank you also Wendy for inviting me and your kind words of introduction.
Thank you very much, bye for now.