Potential for Regime Change in Ankara
Episode Notes
Transcript
A solo Eric welcomes Gönül Tol, the founding Director of the Turkey Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington DC to discuss her new book, Erdogan’s War: A Strongman’s Struggle at Home and in Syria, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023) and her perspective on the upcoming Turkish elections on May 14. They discuss the complex inter-relationship between Erdogan’s foreign policy and his domestic aspirations to move Turkey in an authoritarian direction, Erdogan’s thirst for power and his pragmatism in pursuing Islamist, socially conservative and Nationalist constituencies as circumstances have changed, the impact of 20 years of AKP rule on Turkish society, and the prospects for the united opposition “Table of Six” in the election. They also touch on the potential for election fraud and Erdogan refusing to leave office despite the outcome of the vote. Finally, they touch on the reaction of civil society and the mess that the opposition will inherit if they win the elections.
https://www.amazon.com/Erdoğans-War-Strongmans-Struggle-Syria/dp/0197677320
https://www.mei.edu/blog/turkish-election-watch-week-april-23-30
https://www.ft.com/content/fd31eff7-b5e2-4424-82ed-215a93837c27
Shield of the Republic is a Bulwark podcast co-sponsored by the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia. Email us with your feedback at [email protected]
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This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors and omissions. Ironically, the transcription service has particular problems with the word “bulwark,” so you may see it mangled as “Bullard,” “Boulart,” or even “bull word.” Enjoy!
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Welcome to Shield of the Republic. A podcast sponsored by The Bulwark and the Miller Center of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Liptman during World War two. That a strong and balanced foreign policy is the shield of our Democratic Republic. I’m Eric Edelman. I’m a counselor at the center for strategic and budgetary assessments.
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A contributor to the Bulwark, and a nonresident fellow at the Miller Center at the University of Virginia. My normal partner Elliott Cohn is still traveling but he will be back in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, I have as a very special guest, Ganuel Told, who’s the founding director of the Middle East Institute Turkey
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program. She was educated at Middle East Technical University in Ankura, a place where one of my distinguished predecessors as ambassador of the United States to the Republic of Turkey had his armored Cadillac limousine overturned and burned Luckily, when I was ambassador and spoke there, it was much less eventful, but she’s also got a PhD from Florida International University where
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I’ve actually spoken on several occasions. It’s a really lovely place.
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And she also has taught at George Washington University and the National Defense University and is the author importantly of Erdogan’s war as strong man’s struggle at home in Syria, which has just been published by Oxford University press. Gunilla, welcome.
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Well, thank you so much for helping me.
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Your book, I think, is one of the very best I’ve read in a while on Turkey. I would put it in the company of Sundar Cheptose, the new sultan, about Taipur to One. But your book, really, I think, more than any I’ve read, captures the way in which Erdogan has both used foreign policy to further his domestic aims and the degree to which his foreign policy, in many ways, is subordinated to his domestic political gains during his twenty year rule and we’re now, you know, well into a period where he has ruled Turkey longer than Kamal Pasha Adi Turk did. And so the imprint that he has on modern Turkey is enormous can I just start off by telling us what prompted you to write this book?
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Well, two assumptions, Eric, that I kept hearing especially in this town. And one was that everything that is wrong with Adorn’s New Turkey has something to do with his Islamist background. I remember and that’s in the opening chapter of the book. Talking to a western diplomat who told me once an Islamist, always an Islamist. So the assumption there was And the main driver behind the country’s authoritarian turn was Ardon’s Islamist ideology.
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And the second argument that I hear very often in Washington, but also in Europe is that Turkish foreign poll Turkish domestic politics. Is not relevant for the Western world. What happens inside Turkey should not concern the Western world as long as Turkey behaves on the foreign policy front. So I wanted to challenge those two assumptions. So I made the case in the book that Islamism is only one of the factors that led to Turkey’s authoritarian transformation.
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And I define Ardon as first and foremost a populist. And now I know there’s a lot of confusion around that concept. But I would say the consensus is that populism is not an ideology. It’s a political style. But it doesn’t really offering solutions to economic, social, and political problems.
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So populist, they usually match their populist style with different ideologies. And I do understand exactly that when he came to power in two thousand two, he said that he was not an Islamist anymore, and that he defined himself and his new party as a conservative Democratic party. And to substantiate that, he used foreign policy. He used Turkey’s EU membership. And also a very cautious approach vis a vis the Middle East to tell the voters that he was a new man, that he was not an Islamist, that he was a and reformer in many ways.
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And that was an appealing statement. I think that appeal to a lot of people who would otherwise be very skeptical about an islamist rooted politician. So Adwan, in the first Few terms until twenty eleven. He used that concept and he used that identity that he picked for himself. That conservative democratic identity.
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And I think it was a brilliant idea because his number one goal when he came to power was to sideline the secularist establishment, but particularly the country country’s military. And he knew that he could not clash with the military directly. And instead, he pushed for a very pro EU, pro western agenda because getting Turkey into the EU would ensure that Turkish military was not gonna play an outsized role in in Turkish politics because that’s what EU membership called for. So that was a brilliant idea. And with regards to Turkey’s regional policy.
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The military always had red lines vis à vis the region. And the number one red line was preventing Turkish separatists and Number two was preventing spread of of political Islam. So I don’t after he came to power, he made sure he did not crossed those red lines in the Middle East. And instead, he built his Middle East policy on trade and investment. He didn’t really refer to common Islamic heritage, ottaman heritage, he stayed away from those concepts, not to provoke the military.
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So those strategies I think paved the way and he managed to sideline the secular community and and centralized power in his own hands. And in twenty, by twenty eleven, he had already controlled the country’s main institutions, including courts, media, Turkish prisoners saw he had centralized power, so he was done with that conservative democratic brand. And he needed a new identity for himself and for his party. And his new goal was to switch the country’s parliamentary system to a presidential system without any checks and balances. And he understood that he could not really secure the backing of his previous allies like Liberals, conservative conservatives, social Democrats, and what was basically to establish an autocratic rule.
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So he turned his attention to a different constituency. Which was the country’s Turkish and Turkish conservatives. So from two thousand eleven onwards, he embraced an Islamist ideology, and he defined himself as the protector of Muslims and an Islamist
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And
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I think the Arab of pricings came at a perfect moment for him because the Arab of pricings allowed him to basically extend that Islamist platform beyond Turkey’s borders. So he threw his support behind the Islamist of the region trying to topple regional autocrats, and he framed that support as his way of protecting Muslims demands across the world. So it was a perfect fit for his domestic narrative that he was the protector of Muslims. But then that strategy, when it failed to work, when it failed to secure him what he wanted, then he switched tactics and he became a nationalist. So the book tells the story of how he managed to lead from one ideology to the other.
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So ideologies that he embraced change, but one thing remained, which is he’s always his first and foremost, a populist. So that’s the main theme of the book. And when I talk about how he transformed the country, from an aspiring democracy to a competitive auto resilient regime, I focus on something that’s I think largely been ignored, both in the political science literature and in policy circles, and that is the role of foreign policy. So foreign policy is not just about what Ardern does on the foreign policy on in in international affairs, but It’s closely tied to his domestic calculations to centralized power.
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You and I were joking before we came on in the green room about the fact that I was having PTSD as I I read this book, and and it’s true because so much of your description of this rings true with my own personal experience, which in some ways actually even antidates my arrival in ACRA as ambassador. So just to provide some validation for you. In two thousand, early two thousand three, as you recall, he won the buy election in SIRTT to get a seat in parliament after having been banned from politics for a number of years. And this occurred just after the failure of the Turkish Grand National Assembly’s vote on allowing the fourth infantry division into Turkey for the Iraq War And so I actually I bumped into Condellizza Rice. We were both getting coffee at the at, like, six thirty in the morning after the election.
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In the White House mess. And I said, we really should get the president to call, you
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know,
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air to one. Maybe we could, like, reverse this thing. And she said, no, I don’t think the president’s gonna do that, but you should get the vice president to do it. So vice president Cheney did in fact call Erdogan and congratulated him on winning his parliamentary seat. And I was listening in on the call and taking notes and one of the things that transpired in the call was the vice president said, are you gonna have another vote?
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On the test today to let the troops in. And I’ll never forget Erdogan’s answer. He he basically said, I don’t know yet. He said because I’m a populist type politician and I have to go from strength to strength because of the opposition forces I face. I can’t afford to ever lose anything.
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And but, you know, so I’m gonna look at it and decide later and and course, they didn’t in fact have a second vote at that time. But, I mean, it stuck with me because that was his own description of himself. As a populist type politician to use the political science term gonna which you use in your book Eric Erdogan was trying to desicuritize Turkey’s foreign policy in order to accomplish what you suggest he was setting out to do, which was clip the wings of the military. And in that regard, the EU accession program, as you pointed out, was one very useful tool because the the the EU made it quite clear that the military needed to retreat from its oversight political role in Turkey for it to be considered for membership. And then he was able to use the program articulated by Amit Davoutulu, who was one of his advisors and later became his foreign minister and his prime minister, that Turkey should have zero problems with its neighbors.
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I mean, and, you know, Davoutoulou’s vision was, as you know, very Grandiose, it looked at Turkey as a potential as he would describe it, sometimes Muslim superpower. Of course, Davittolo having, you know, played out his role for Air to One was that ultimately cast aside and now is leading one of the opposition party is in the table of six, which I think is polling at around one percent. His party, that is not the table of six. But anyway, I go through all of that because you make a very interesting point, which is a lot of us were, you know, spending a lot of time, you know, parsing Davittoli’s writings to try and decipher Ergon’s policy. But you make the point that While Davittola was an ideologue, Erdo Erdo one was not.
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Erdo one really was much more flexible. He was happy to use this as a way of as you put a de securitizing the environment so that there weren’t, you know, a lot of enemies on Turkey’s periphery that would justify the military playing a large role. The irony of course is that once this policy was implemented, it ended up, you know, with nothing but enemies on Turkey’s periphery after a a while. How
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do
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you explain that irony?
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Well, to go back to what you said, Eric, about the March parliament’s decision not to allow the U. S. To use Turkish territory to go into Iraq. I’m sure you know, I don’t actually wanted the parliament to pass that motion. And he was one of the very few and maybe the only person in his party who pushed for that.
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So that tells you how big of a pragmatic art on has always been. Because I think at the time he really wanted to secure US support. But others in his party like Abdulhakar, for instance, who who later became the president. And and I think they’re more a lot more ideological and they were opposed to this. Based on on ideological grounds.
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And you’re right. I think he is the ideal or here, and Adorn is not, and Adorn was happy to use his ideas when the time was right for him. I do the total wrote about these things in the nineteen nineties in his column for Ying Shafak newspaper. And at the time, he said, you know, Turkey should work with regional autocrats, but there will come a time when real Muslims will rise against their oppressors. And when that time comes, we have to back.
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Those forces. So from the total’s point of view,
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twenty
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ten late twenty ten and twenty eleven was that time. When the article pricing started, he really thought that it was a historic moment. Fort Turkey to become the leader of the region again and people close to him and himself too. They often refer to they are about pricings as the Arabs way of their efforts to top off their own CHP. Because in their narrative, the AKP had come to power and they toppled what they call the godless entities regime that was not in tune with society.
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And the ATP in in many ways carried out a revolution. That’s how they saw it and democratized the country. So when developing’s began, those who thought that, finally, I was right, that the people, the real Muslims, are now rebelling. I guess they’re all pressers and we have to back them. So that’s how he saw it.
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But from Adam’s point of view, being a very pragmatic leader, he saw that there’s a golden opportunity for him to once again substantiate the claims he was making on the campaign trail, and that was I am the protector of the Ooma, the Muslim nation. So I I I I didn’t just save Turkey’s Muslims from the CHP, but I’m gonna do that for for others in the world too. So that’s that’s his way of telling the voters that he was the protector of of Muslims across the world. But I think, obviously, we now know. And later, himself admitted that it was shortsighted.
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And for this book, I talked to Abdul Akul. I I interviewed him. And at the time, I asked him what he thought of Turkey’s support, which began very early in the uprisings for Muslim brotherhood.
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And he
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said also that it was shortsighted. And particularly, the pro the most problematic part was in Syria because in Syria, In Turkey, there’s a large group of Muslim brotherhood members who have been living in Turkey since the 1980s after the Hama massacre. Which killed thousands of Muslim brotherhood members at the time who had rebelled against your thought regime. So many of them fled the country, and they started living in Turkey. Many of them went to Turkish universities.
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They all Turkish passports. So after the uprising in Syria started, they had the ear of Ardon and and Ahmed Abdul. And they saw what was happening on the ground through the lens of Muslim brotherhood in Turkey, which obviously did not reflect the reality on the ground because from Syrian Muslim brotherhood members living in Turkey, they the way they conveyed developments on the ground, basically told that we are very influential on the ground, which was not the case. And obviously, there was something else that was really wrong with the way Erdogan and Donald Trump saw developments in Syria and that was they didn’t understand and appreciate how much resentment there was towards Muslim brotherhood. Among Syrian society.
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And another problematic assumption about Syria by Ahmed Abdul was that he always assumed that Poshore Lasad only had ten, fifteen percent support of society from from LAVV community. He didn’t understand that a large group of Sunni Muslims, including middle class, business class, they supported the regime. They benefited from the regime. So for me, for a country like Turkey who has been there, on the ground because of the PKK presence there, how come they did not understand this neighboring country. And the reason, I think, the answer to that question was because I doubt this ideology really clouded his judgment.
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Mhmm.
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And and one, he is he’s always been clueless. About about the world. But I think David told to let him to believe that Asad was gonna leave in a matter of few weeks even. Right. And I long believed him.
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So obviously, that was a miscalculation. Yeah.
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I mean, then, of course, it wasn’t just in cereal. I wanna come back to Syria in a moment, but also backing for the Muslim brotherhood, Morsi regime in Egypt, which ended up backfiring, the support for the Muslim brotherhood in Syria, which immediately aroused the antagonism of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the UAE e, which were concerned about the brotherhood. In their own sphere, it got Turkey very involved in in Libya as well. I think it’s very important to point out that this kind of regional activism was really the antithesis of what Turkey had been used to in the sort of comolus dispensation, which was, you know, peace in the world, peace at home, you know, Turkey should not play this outsized role in the region in part because Atul Turk and the Qamalas were trying to get away from the Ottoman legacy and concentrate on Turkey as a, you know, western oriented nation state But as as you point out, this is really kind of first of all, it was not a very popular policy to begin with in Turkey. Lot of reticence about getting involved in Syria and in the civil war.
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As you point out, a lot of how can I put it, naive day about what was going on? I mean, I I recall Davittoli even privately telling people some of the Islamist groups were just misled Muslim youth. They weren’t really terrorists. So, I mean, a real misreading as you say of the facts on the ground. But it’s ultimately led to a presence of four million Syrian refugees in Turkey, which has create an enormous problem domestically for Erdogan politically along with his economic mismanagement as well.
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I wanna kinda get to what the political consequences of all this might be, but just tell our listeners a little bit about how much this intervention in Syria, both has impacted Turkey as a society and a polity, but also the role that’s played in Erda wan’s increasing authoritarian turn and and taking the country in a very authoritarian direction. Well,
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I think Syria played and that that it played a very key role in iPhones that tends to consolidate his power, and that was one of the reasons why I picked Syria to tell Adan’s story of transforming Turkey into an authoritarian regime. Syria played a critical role due to several things. And the first one is, again, it came in very handy for Ardon. To burnish the image he picked for himself. From two thousand eleven, as I said, he defined himself as an Islamist as someone who would who would protect interest and democratic aspirations of of other Muslims in the region and in the world.
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So initially, I think that led it to really struck a nerve, it became very popular, particularly among Ardon’s supporters. Because his goal at home was to secure the support of conservatives, both conservative Turks and Kurds to switch to a an all powerful president. See, that was his goal. And and he used our apprisedings to to who reach that goal to burnish that image. So initially, that narrative, that islamist narrative.
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That he developed. I think it it it worked. And the Syrian war, the conflict there, and our lost support for the Muslim brotherhood. Helped Arderon and burnish that image, but it also helped Arderon to weaken his opponents. His constant reference to the CHP, he always equated the CHP to country’s main opposition secular party with the Assad regime.
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And that, in many ways, de legitimize the CHP further in the eyes of the country’s conservatives. So he used foreign policy in general, but Syria in particular, to strengthen his image at home and to weaken and divide his opponents. But his calculations to rely on the conservatives and the the Kurds to switch to the presidential system failed, mainly due to cracks on his Islamist front, cracks with the Islamist problems with the Islamist and also I think more importantly, Turkey’s Kurds refused to back Ardon’s autocratic vision. So that’s why in twenty fifteen, he didn’t get what he won. He lost elections.
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He lost the parliamentary majority. And mainly because of the historic victory that the pro Kurdish party captured, and the Syrian conflict there played a role. Because before twenty fifteen, there was a ceasefire in place between the PKK and and Turkey, and that was part of Ardon’s plans to to secure Kurdish clothes. He had launched a Kurdish opening in Kurdish opening. In an effort to secure Kurdish clothes, But in twenty fourteen, developments in Kibani, if you remember, ISIS was about to capture Kibani And Erdogan said jubilantly that Kibani is about to fall.
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And he didn’t open the borders on time to allow Kurdish fighters from different countries including Turkey and Iraq to go in and help the Syrian Kurdish militia there. So that really created a backlash. I remember the Kibanye protests at the time thousands of people took to the streets in protest. They were protesting outdoors in action in the face of this bloodbath. So that was a turning point.
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In two main ways, I think, from the Kurdish point of view. And at the time, I was traveling across the country, especially in the Kurdish region talking to the Kurds. And many of them said, we are on the verge of creating our own state. So we’re not gonna settle for Ardon’s cosmetic changes, the cosmetic changes that he’s offering to us. We want more.
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So their hopes were up. And from Abdul’s point of view, he had thought before he launched the Kurdish opening, he had thought that he he had sec he could secure Kurdish support. For the presidential system. And he realized with providing protests that that was not gonna happen. So that was the first indication.
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And an important impact of what was happening in Syria and Turkish domestic politics. But the the most critical point came a few months later after the pro Kurdish party’s court chair, who is now in jail, said acting dinner declared, we’re not gonna make you president. So I think that was the moment when I don’t decide that this is not gonna happen. Chorus are never gonna back. My efforts to switch to a presidential system.
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And we saw that very clearly when he lost elections in twenty fifteen. Right. So think changed dramatically afterwards, and he allied himself with the Turkish Jonathan Last, he resumed the fight against the PKK. And the most chaotic, I think, period in the country’s history unfolded. In few months between the two elections.
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So you could see how directly Turkish domestic politics was impacted by what was happening in Syria. And how did that one use that? I think that’s very critical and we don’t speak about that very often. So imagine you’re in Turkey In twenty fifteen, you’re a Turkish Jonathan Last. You are so fearful that church are there about to establish a Kurdish state with American weapons.
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So there’s a lot of anxiety among Turkish Jonathan Last. And I don’t want
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In in Northeastern Syria to
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Northeastern Syria. That’s exactly right because in twenty fourteen, the United States air drop weapons. To the Kurdish militia fighting against ISIS in Kibani. So that was a very important moment for Turkey’s Jonathan Last. They were really afraid that finally, a Kurdish state was being established with US support.
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And from Kurdish point of view, the courage themselves in Turkey, they again thought that we are achieving something big here. And Erdogan is not is only gonna grant us some cultural rights. And we’re not okay with that. So imagine two nationalisms on the rise, Turkish nationalism and Turkish nationalism in Turkey are on the rise. And everyone exploited that.
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He wrote on that run Jonathan Last search and Thanks to that alliance with the Turkish Jonathan Last, he managed to switch to the presidential system and managed to win election after election. Until twenty nineteen. So that National Search, Erdogan himself boosted did wonders for him. So that’s why I think everything that happened in Syria really shaped things in Turkey and other way around. Erdogan’s own decisions.
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The steps that he has taken in Syria changed things dramatically for the people of Syria too. And and one last thing I think one of the most dramatic implications of the conflict in Syria for Turkey is Turkey’s society has changed. Turkey’s social fabric has changed forever. We have four million Syrian refugees in Turkey. And and Turkey is not known to be a tolerant country when it comes to other ethnic identities.
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It it hasn’t been able to resolve its own Kurdish problem for for decades. So I can easily imagine a scenario where Turkey will be confronting a huge problem, economic, political, social problems if it fails to integrate those four million Syrian refugees. So in that way, I think what happened in Syria helped Erdogan in many ways establish his autocratic regime change Turkey forever. But then there came a time when Syria became a liability for unemployment.
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I wanna turn to the election. I mean, we’ve talked a little bit about the presidential system. I think just as I’d prelude to talking about the election, it’s worth pointing out that when he finally took this idea of a presidential system, which abolished the position of prime minister, for instance, among other things, to a referendum in the country, did it because he had succeeded in referendum in the past. So in two thousand eleven, I think it was. He introduced a number of measures by referendum that allowed him to neuter the judiciary, basically to stack stack the courts, which had also been, along with the military, one of the pillars of the Kamala secularist establishment before he came to power.
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Two thousand ten, I think.
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Or two thousand ten. Yeah. So, you know, he he had a track record for success, and I’m sure he assumed that that, you know, would replicate itself in twenty seventeen. But in the event, twenty seventeen ends up looking more like June twenty fifteen in the sense that this was a very closely run thing And there’s pretty good reason to believe that at the end of the day, it may not have even passed, actually, that it that the vote may have been fiddled, particularly in the southeast. And that’s a huge I mean, I think it’s worth for our listeners understanding that.
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So kind of a huge break with Turkish tradition since nineteen fifty when two party or multiparty elections were first held in in Turkey in the sense that elections have never been completely fair in Turkey because they governments always had outsized power, whoever was in government, the incumbents, had outside power over the media, which were controlled by a very small number of conglomerates, all of which benefited from government contracts of one sort or another
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But
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they’ve always been free. I mean, there’s never been a sense that people were engaged in massive, you know, vote fraud. But in twenty seventeen, for the first time, that really was something that people became concerned about. In twenty nineteen, of course, you were saying he won elections until twenty nineteen and twenty nineteen, then miss municipal elections are a huge setback for Eriduan, notably including loss of Ankura and where Mansur Yavash was elected mayor and Istanbul where a premium maimola was elected mayor. Erdogan, of course, having been mayor of Istanbul himself, Understood how important that was, basically tries to unall the election in Istanbul.
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But the consequence politically for him, again, back fires because IMO is reelected in the second round when they rerun it in in June of twenty nineteen by an even larger plurality or majority actually at that point than he had initially. So coming into the election now, he’s got a lot of baggage. He’s got all his Syria baggage. That you’ve described. He’s got a a lot of baggage from economic mismanagement.
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I mean, Turkey’s inflation rates between depending on how you calculate, it’s between sixty five and eighty percent, the economy has been very badly mismanaged. In part because Erdogan in the face of all modern economics insists on keeping interest rates low. This is part of his populism. Right? His, you know, desire to bribe voters with cheap credit and, you know, a lot of government money.
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So the inflation rate is kind of through the roof. COVID was sort of mismanaged, you know, as well. And he’s been running for a while kind of kind, you know, most of the opposition candidates. What’s in store on May fourteenth? You know, you know, which is two weeks, I guess, from yesterday in this election.
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How how do you think it’s likely to play out?
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Yeah. Before sharing my what I see is the most likely scenario in the upcoming vote limit, say something about about elections in Turkey. You’re right, Eric. I think Turkish democracy I mean, even before I don’t I came to power. It’s never been a perfect democracy.
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But one thing worked well, well enough, enter again. That was the elections. Turnout has always been high, even in twenty eighteen as late as twenty eighteen, the turnout was eighty six. Percent. So that’s a very high high figure.
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And people always, even now, even now imagine we always talk about how Turkey has become an authoritarian country, and political scientists refer it as a competitor authoritarian regime, which means by definition elections are not free and fair. But even now, go to any embassy here, Turkish embassy. You’ll see how excited people are. About the upcoming elections. They still have faith that change is possible through elections.
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So that’s I find it remarkable. So that means elections Bulwark. But obviously, twenty seventeen referendum was a critical turning point because it changed something. In the minds of people. It was a very controversial referendum.
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In an unprecedented move, the Spring Electoral Council, which is Turkey’s top adaptoral body allowed non stamped ballots to be accepted as valid. And of course, many organizations, international organizations included they decried this move to be illegal. Claiming that as many as one point one million dollars balance were on stamp. So that really cast a shadow over whether elections in Ireland’s Turkey really matter or not. So that was a turning point and then came twenty nineteen which changed minds again.
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For the better because many people thought that, okay, I’ve lost elections, so maybe elections do matter. And maybe Turkish democracy does have it. Have a pulp. But still, I can see having traveled to Turkey very often this year and last year, and I talked to a lot of people, there’s there is a growing anxiety. There is hope on the one hand for a change, but people are also very anxious.
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About several things whether if I don’t lose this, is he just gonna walk away or is he gonna engage in our tried digging. So those are all the questions that that people are asking. And you’re right, everyone is facing a lot of challenges even before the earthquake. He has a long list of problems, including double digit inflation. And the most, I think, the most concerning thing in the country is food inflation, which is highest among the OECD countries.
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Everyone, you talk to raise this point. But that’s not the only problem. There is institutional breakdown. There is no rule of law. You have a growing young population who just don’t see their future in the country.
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There’s a huge brain drain. And the civil refugees, by the way, it’s really high among voters it’s one of the top worries of waters. There’s four million series refugees and people just don’t know how how this issue is going to be resolved. So a lot of problems and there’s a lot resentment even among Ardon’s own supporters and nineteen the earthquake, which obviously compounded Adorn’s problems. So now that might make you think that so domestic conditions are ripe for an acquisition victory because you put two and two together and you think about twenty eighteen when Ardon win elections, he captured fifty two percent of the votes in twenty eighteen.
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And in twenty eighteen, we didn’t have double digit inflation. We didn’t have any of the problems. I mean, we did, but in in many ways, they are worse now. So you tend to think that, you know, this is a time where your position stands a good chance of winning. But then the next question is, wait, but this is a controversy.
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Then why are we getting so excited about the elections? There are so many things that he can do because he controls everything. So my and here is my my prediction, and I can’t answer the question about an action security. But my prediction is that I think despite all the problems. The elections are not free and fair, and I don’t can’t do anything, but I still think that The most likely scenario is that your position is going to win, maybe not in the first round, but in the second round.
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So, couple of points here. One is, you mentioned his twenty eighteen presidential election victory against Muhammad Inja, and he got fifty two percent of the vote. It correct me, Gunilla, if I’m wrong, But I think in, you know, every in all elections since two thousand two, that is the first time that he or the AKP, which he embodies, got over fifty percent.
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That’s right.
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Which which tells you that Turkey’s a deeply divided society. It’s remained divided and that his populism has been based on kind of polarizing the society because he knows that the opposition is very fragmented, has a lot of fishers and that he can mobilize his supporters more easily by these kind of polarizing tactics than than the opponents can. So in this instance, the opponents got together and have united in the so called table of six, which is led by the CHP, the Kamalist party, this center left, but highly Jonathan Last. It’s kind of I mean, it’s regarded as a social Democratic party, but it’s it’s a little hard to explain to those who haven’t had experience with it. It’s not It’s not Tony Blair’s Labor Party.
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Let me just put it that way. And the national a splinter group from the Jonathan Last A MEDIAL ACTION R. THE FORMER MINISTER OF THE INTERIOR FROM THE MHP, THE NATIONAL’S PARTY HER EY PARTY IS REPRESENTED AS OUR PARTIES FROM a breakaway groups from the AKP itself. We’ve already talked about Amitavutulu, but also Ali Ali Babajan, the former deputy prime minister and treasury minister, actually, one of my favorite AKP ministers when I was ambassador as my wife sometimes described him, you know, one of the, yeah, AKP with a human face. But all of this effort may coalesce, but there are some deficiencies that they’ve got, right, which is even though Erdogan has been polling behind almost all of the other candidates.
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The one who we most people think had the best chance was Akrami Mimalu, the mayor of Istanbul. He was blocked however by Kamal Khilich Duralu, the head of the CHP, a kind of colorless former bureaucrat, charismaticly challenged, and who insisted as the head of the largest party that he be the presidential candidate. By the way, his hand picked presidential candidate, Bauma, in Jay, who we just talked about a moment ago, is also still running. So he’s draining one or two percent from the opposition, which is not helpful. Killage Sarulu has consistently pulled least well against Erdogan.
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There was a moment after the earthquakes is as you point out, which highlighted, you know, sort of the, what, you know, what’s, you know, wrong with Turkey after twenty years of you know, a k pay rule. Right? Which is Afad, the the disaster relief agency, the, you know, version of FEMA, a terrible job alleviating and remediating earthquake scenes, very slow to get there. Military wasn’t mobilized because there’s still fear about the military in the aftermath of the twenty sixteen failed coup attempt. Turks have set aside since nineteen ninety nine, unless me, like, forty billion dollars of tax money to earthquake proof the country because of the Istanbul earthquake in in that year.
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And people have been asking where where did all the money go, you know, since the, you know, eleven province disaster across the south east with. So widespread. And the answer to that most people know is it went into the pockets of Erdogan’s cronies in the construction industry. So given all that in the first few weeks after the earthquake, there were a couple of poles that showed him maybe ten, twelve points behind. Most most recently, the polls have closed up.
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And I think most observers are saying it’s kind of too close to call. I know I noticed
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the
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the other day there was an l monitor poll that showed literally neck and neck. I think actually Erda Wan was slightly under one percentage point ahead in the raw tally, but it was statistically insignificant given the sample size. So am I wrong that people were more confident when it looked like it was a ten to twelve percent spread because it makes it more difficult to cheat. Mean, part of the problem with nineteen or with the twenty seventeen presidential referendum vote was it was so close that you could steal enough votes to to win. Part of the problem they had with the Mamolo in twenty nineteen was in the second round, he won by such a huge margin that it was too hard
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cheap.
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So if it’s really close, I mean, most people are using, like, I think, a two percent standard. If the real vote is like within two percent, he can steal it. If it’s more than two percent, then, you know, then it’s harder for him to steal it. Is that the right metric people should be looking at when they’re watching election returns come in on May fourteenth from Turkey?
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That’s right, Eric. I think and and and one other thing, it’s really difficult to to steal in big cities. More problematic is the Kurdish region especially. But now that we have after the earthquake, eleven provinces have been hit by the earthquake, and there are eight million voters there. So it gives a lot of opportunity to to do things for Aragon, but you touched upon a couple very good points.
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And and the first one is I don’t actually has always relied on alliances to maintain his majority. Right? When he came to power, it was just not Islamist, you have conservatives, democrat, social Democrats, you have Liberals, Kurds, kurds, large majority. Later on, it was the Islamist and and Kurds. And later, from two thousand fifteen, it was the Jonathan Last.
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But now it’s things stand today, he doesn’t have that many options to turn to. He has exhausted his options. And that’s one of the reasons why he’s now reaching out to these French Islamist parties, like Hidalmar, for instance, the Kurdish Islamist party, That has a vital past, but he wanted to ally with them. And then you have Arabicansons party now, which falls around one percent and one point five percent. And there were rumors that before in March, he sent a delegation to speak with the PKKs imprisoned leader, Abdul Arjalan, something that he used before in twenty nineteen elections to to rule the Kurdish voters.
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So All those things tell me something. And that is he really means every vote he can get. He’s not in a comfortable, very comfortable position. And the second thing is that, obviously, autoclaves, they don’t need the majorities to to remain in power. All they need is a divided opposition.
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And that was the case in twenty eighteen. In twenty eighteen, we had six presidential candidates. We had settled in Demetage, who is a very popular figure, the Turkish leader. And then we had in twenty eighteen epart, manual action act e party, which is a splinter party that had been established in twenty seventeen. So a year after she was the she was fielded as as the candidate.
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And then you had Muhar, I mean, just so six, your position was very divided in twenty eighteen. But today, they are much less divided. You have two parties, two presidential candidates, There are different figures about their votes. They will probably their vote is somewhere between five to seven percent and that will push the vote to a runoff, but not significant enough to deny the opposition when in the second round. So I think what is different for Adwan is he just cannot set your alliances anymore.
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And once he
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he
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rode on the nationalist wave, he really relied on the Jonathan Last in twenty eighteen, the Jonathan Last space was not fragmented enough. Today, you have a growing nationalist opposition. You have people who are fed up, like MHP supporters, far right supporters, who are fed up with ally and with Icon, and you have You have a party. So there is a Turkish nationalism that’s become increasingly uncomfortable with Erdogan, which was not the case in twenty eighteen. And also in twenty eighteen, we didn’t have popular figures such as manga studio or Shankaraz mayor from the CHP and H.
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R. M. Momo, Istanbul mayor. So they have joined Couche Taro’s campaign. And all those things, I think, make me more optimistic about your position’s prospects this time.
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And one last thing about college tiro, are you right? He is always He lagged behind others in the polls. He was the least popular candidate. H. M.
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Momulu and Mansuriyawashi were the most popular. And yet your position fielded him. But I see it this way. First, I think he’s he he turned out to be a better campaigner than I had expected. He’s doing a good job.
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And the second thing is I think he’s the right man. And for some reason, he reminds me of Biden and I see him as Turkey’s Biden because when president when Biden was campaigning, a lot of people were talking about how he was not charismatic enough that he he didn’t have the power to beat Trump. He wasn’t aggressive enough. He wasn’t this that. So people were very critical and didn’t see him as as the most ideal candidate.
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And yet, I remember talking to people here who told me, well, he’s the right man. We’ve suffered four years under President Trump, very polarized country. He divided the country very aggressive rhetoric. So we need a man like Biden, who can unite the nation, who can reach across the aisle, who can talk to the Republicans. So I think which the role as that person for Turkey.
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Maybe he’s not as charismatic. Yeah. He’s an old man. Yet still He’s
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younger than Biden.
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And he’s younger than Biden, and that’s always a plus. But I think he also has all those qualities that Biden hence he can talk to everyone and he’s and they call him quiet force. So he’s quiet he wants to embrace everyone. He wants people to go beyond device device issues, identity issues. So that’s why I think he is the right man.
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He is the man that this country needs at the time at this time. So I think that’s why he’s he’s he turned out to be a good choice And again, this campaign is is I find it very successful. He’s not only trying to unify the country, but he’s offering tangible solutions to the country’s problems. And as for the vote, you’re right, if at one, if your position wins by an aero margin, Adnan is a track record. We he might pull a Trump and not accept the results.
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That’s I can’t I can’t see that scenario. But obviously, what will change the election result, whether the election result will be accepted depends on where Turkey’s bureaucracy stands. To Turkey stop, electoral body, including military, including a police force. Where do they stand? Imagine a scenario.
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I mean, god forbid, let’s say, your position wins when a raw margin argument says, I’m not gonna accept this fall to vote, and he calls on his supporters to take to the streets. And this time something which didn’t happen in the past, but this time it can happen. Opposition supporters will take to the streets too because they’re so hopeful. And that could lead to a street violence. So in that scenario, what will the country’s institutions do?
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Will they back and add on who has lost? And I think it’s not a foregone conclusion that they will support him. I’ve seen some signs from bureaucracy that Turkish bureaucracy is hedging its bets. It’s some look at some of the recent decisions made by the constitutional court, despite Erdogan’s protests. And a decision made by electors is a top electoral body despite protests from the AKP.
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So that tells me that that Turkish bureaucracy is hedging its bets, and it’s not gonna be as easy for Adorno to manipulate the result as he did previous.
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We’re running out of time, Gennuil. So I have one more question before we wrap up. Which is this. I mean, you’ve already talked a little bit about this, which is some very potentially dark scenarios about what happens if he tries to steal the election. But what strikes me about Erdogan is he’s a lot like you know, Putin or Orban or these other strong man or wanna be strong man, which is for him, an electoral loss is almost an existential question because he has every expectation that if he loses the election, he will be indicted and perhaps and his family will be indicted and and jailed.
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There’s a widespread perception that he has profited enormously from his twenty years in office. He’s becoming a fabulously wealthy man, which he obviously didn’t didn’t happen on his state state salary. So can he actually afford to lose this election? Does he have to win just for his own personal security and and safety and that of his family?
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Great question. I think you mentioned Putin. I think Turkey is not Russia yet. Again, as I said, elections are not symbolic. Competition is real.
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They might be unfair and unfair, but the competition is real. So in that regard, I think elections matter a lot more in Turkey than they do in Putin’s Russia. But in terms of high stakes. Yes. The stakes are very high for Ardon.
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And I know a lot of people from the opposition ranks, your position supporters, they want him to be tried for what they see as as the crimes that he had committed in the twenty years he’s been in power. And that raises the stakes for Ardon even further and his family, but here is what I think. It’s going to be a very messy process. Imagine if Gucci start all the wins, it’s not going to be easy to open the old chapters because there are so many people in the opposition ranks right now who worked very closely with Ardon who served as his ministers. So I think and and I I one journalist said, you know, after the elections, there will be two AKPs in the parliament.
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Referring to R. D. K. P. And the AKP, former AKP members of parliament who who are running on CHP now.
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So that is something to consider. And I think that tells you that it’s not going to be easy for your position after winning the elections to try everyone, to try Ardon. So I think that should give some comfort to either and just to walk away peacefully if he wins if he wins the elections. And the second thing is I think even if he loses the election, the other one is not going to to disappear. We’re not gonna see a ball sonaro.
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He’s not gonna flee country because we’re talking about m n who still commands forty to forty five percent of the vote. So he’s gonna be there waiting for the opposition to fail. Because your position will be hitting a
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huge
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big problems. From economy rebuilding the country, rebuilding the institutions, switching to the parliamentary system. So that requires a lot of political capital. And Erdogan and others in the opposition to expect the new government to fail because the problems are so huge. So that’s why I think Erdogan is gonna remain in the country after even if he loses the election, And I think that’s another thing to consider when we talk about, is he gonna do something really crazy?
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To change the election results. I think that will be a consideration for him too. So why push for a scenario that could turn violent and risk a trial maybe while you could just wait for your position to fail. So I think we should take these things into consideration. Howard Bauchner:
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Well, on that relatively speaking upbeat note, Gannole, we’re gonna have to to wrap up. My guest has been Gunhild Told, the author of Erdogan’s war, a strong man’s struggle at home and in Syria. Published by Oxford University press,
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terrific book. If you wanna understand what’s going on in Turkey and you wanna read something before the election to give you a good basis for decoding what’s happening. I highly recommend the book. If you enjoyed this episode of Shield of the Republic, let us know. You can register that approval with a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify wherever you get your podcast.
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And drop us a line at shield of the Republic at gmail dot com.
