HISTORICAL CHOICE

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is the new president of Türkiye after a landslide victory over his rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the second round of general elections. There are times when the election of any country's leader is not just a result of the vote, but a historical choice. Like President Erdogan's victory. He ruled the country during a historical transition period, proving that he can confidently hold the helm of the ship called the Republic of Türkiye.

Mr. Erdogan and Mr. Kilicdaroglu were supported by 52.14% and 47.86% of the electorate, respectively. Remarkably, right after the announcement of the primary election results, the Turkish president received congratulations from the leaders of the vast majority of states, indicating international recognition of the legitimacy of results.

The opposition candidate has effectively conceded, saying that he would continue the struggle. This means that the opposition will start preparations for the 2024 municipal elections.

Choice of nationalists

Political battles for Türkiye's number one post have become particularly intriguing ahead of the second round of the presidential election.

The real question was who Sinan Ogan, the third candidate in the first round, would support. He represented the interests of the Ancestral Alliance (ATA), which consists of right-wing and far-right parties.

Following his defeat in the first round, Sinan Ogan imposed a number of conditions on the main contenders for the presidency. He met with them to discuss these conditions and decide which of them he would campaign for in the second round.

Convinced that Kilicdaroglu was unlikely to cease cooperation with the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party of Türkiye, Ogan backed the incumbent President Erdogan. The decision was announced a week before the election, on May 22.

And it was quite a predictable one. The German Sueddeutsche Zeitung argued that it was the right-wing vote that would determine Türkiye's next president. "It is no longer the Kurds who make kings, but their enemies from the extreme right. We can talk about 'nationalist hegemony'," the article concluded.

To some extent, this is a fair observation. After the first round, political preferences of voters visibly favoured the right, taking on distinctly nationalist hues.

Yet neither Erdogan nor Kilicdaroglu are the leading voices of the nationalist political spectrum in Türkiye. They mainly rely on the support of their coalition allies. It is the nationalist parties that form the backbone of political alliances led by the presidential candidates. The second party in Erdogan's People's Alliance is Devlet Bahceli's Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). In the National Alliance led by Kilicdaroglu, the interests of the nationalist part of the electorate are represented by Meral Aksener's Good Party (IYI). By the way, she made her political career in MHP, but after losing her leadership bid in October 2017, she set up her own political organisation also based on nationalist ideology.

Sinan Ogan was also a member of MHP until 2017. It was therefore clear from the outset that neither candidate could do without the support of the nationalist part of the Turkish electorate in the second round.

Looking back at history, 2015 was a turning point for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) that defined a rapprochement with the nationalist electorate. At that time, the opposition pro-Kurdish Democratic Party of Peoples (HDP) was elected to parliament with more than 13% of the vote.

In order not to remain a parliamentary minority, where HPP had major influence, it was decided to form a coalition with MHP. But it was Bahceli's decision to ally with the pro-Islamic AKP that split his party. As a result, IYI Party splintered off led by Meral Akshener, who regarded the move as a deviation of MHP from its secular foundations.

Bahceli, on the other hand, has demonstrated that he was a flexible enough politician to guide his party under new circumstances, which dictated the need for neo-Islamists to join forces with nationalists if this strengthens the electorate and promotes similar ideas in foreign policy.

Thus, Aksener had no choice but to go for a rapprochement, albeit reluctantly, with Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the rival of the Erdogan-Bahceli tandem.

The controversial Six

Apparently, there are contradictions within the alliance of the six opposition parties, as Kilicdaroglu's People's Republican Party (CHP) expresses the interests of both the left-wing forces and the Kurds. CHP is also ideologically close to the pro-Kurdish left-wing HDP. By contrast, the Islamist Felicity Party (SP) is extreme right-wing, Islamic and anti-European.

Two other political movements—Ahmet Davutoglu's Future Party and Ali Babacan's Democracy and Progress Party—have splintered from the Justice and Development Party and are considered pro-European, committed to the ideas of economic liberalism and protection of minority rights. In contrast, Aksener's IYI Party advocates distancing itself from an overtly pro-European course.

It is clear that the Six is more of a situational alliance aimed at removing Erdogan from power and reforming the country's current political system. More precisely, the goal was to dismantle it and ensure the return of the parliamentary form of governance. That is why the future of this alliance depends entirely on how long the current Turkish president and his party remain in power. The longer Erdogan is in power, the longer the Six coalition will last.

Remarkably, it does not seem innocent either. As soon as Sinan Ogan announced his decision to support Erdogan, we saw serious changes in the Future Party (GP). 11 high-ranking party figures—former associates of Ahmet Davutoglu, including party founders—resigned, writing a letter to the opposition alliance reproaching them for failing to deliver on their promises.

Similar but less significant resignations took place in Ali Babacan's Democracy and Progress Party.

And given Kilicdaroglu's electoral defeat, we can expect more dramatic scenarios, up to individual parties quitting the coalition.

Geography of elections

Geographically, the coastal regions of Türkiye and a large number of districts in Eastern and South-Eastern Anatolia with the densely populated Kurdish minority traditionally cast their votes for the opposition, with little to none change in popular preferences.

Meanwhile, it is interesting that the earthquake affected districts voted for Erdogan. Apparently, due to the extensive reconstruction work in the area and Erdogan's promise to provide an overwhelming number of victims with new homes as early as early next year.

The Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi (GAP) is more than fifty years old, but only the incumbent Turkish government has made significant accomplishments in its implementation. The dams built under the GAP have earned the Turkish economy about ₺200b. In recent years, new jobs have been created in the area, including through major infrastructure projects and the introduction of hundreds of thousands of hectares of irrigated lands.

The local population has an interest in maintaining and multiplying the scale of public investment programmes that support employment and help reduce the socio-economic problems of the region. Maintaining the current government in the country is a kind of guarantee for the local population that the implementation of these programmes is not threatened.

Incidentally, judging by the distribution of votes, not all Kurdish regions preferred the opposition representative. Part of the Kurds densely residing in the east of the country support Erdogan's plans for the economic development of the Eastern and South-Eastern Anatolian regions, stimulating economic activity and employment. Another part supports the AKP as its ideological ally through pro-Islamic Kurdish organisations.

Most of the electorate critical of the current Turkish government resides in the country's major coastal cities and provinces. Apparently, the major cause of their criticism is the effect of high inflation on the socio-economic problems of these regions.

The government's policy of lowering interest rates, although encouraging consumption, has increased consumer inflation. In annual terms, the price index in Türkiye hit 64.27% in 2022. In September 2022, annual inflation rate in the country exceeded 85% for the first time since 1998.

Amid President Erdogan's pledges to keep lowering the rate last September, the Turkish lira exchange rate against the dollar has fallen to its all-time low. The economic policy of Turkish authorities has been dubbed Erdoganomics.

This approach is largely based on the theory of neo-Fisherianism. The founding father of this theory, American economist Irving Fisher, argued that central banks should raise nominal interest rates when inflation exceeds the target and vice versa. In contrast, neo-Fisherianists believe that interest rates should be kept low when inflation is high.  Yet, such policies have stimulated consumer spending, leading to inflation.

For the residents of Turkish cities, it has resulted in higher costs of living. With the rising price of imported fuel, the cost of living in cities has increased even further. In addition, the scale of values in urban centres is somewhat different from that in the hinterland and predominantly rural regions. Therefore, the pro-European electorate was more inclined to support Kilicdaroglu than Erdogan, who advocates the preservation of traditional values and greater independence in foreign policy.

It is still possible that the next municipal elections in 2024 will repeat the pattern that has been observed for years, with political parity achieved by redistributing votes in local government elections, as there will be no other elections in the country in the coming years.