Municipal elections in Turkey have traditionally been quiet local affairs that rarely garner much international interest. Yet yesterday’s highly anticipated elections in Turkey were set up as the opening salvo in a yearlong referendum on the decade-plus rule of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been facing unprecedented protests since last summer’s Gezi Park movement and allegations of scandal since last December’s corruption probe. With Turkey’s first direct presidential election set for the summer and national parliamentary elections no later than next spring, the significance of yesterday’s elections cannot be overstated.
As Turkey’s most gifted campaigner and successful politician in living memory, Erdogan almost singlehandedly defied his critics, opponents, and pundits alike by taking 46% of the total vote. These results improved on the 39% threshold that had been set in the last local election of 2009, with Erdogan holding onto his key constituencies like Istanbul and Ankara despite not being on any ballot himself. Perhaps more importantly though, no domestic opponent or opposition party was able to claim the mantle of challenger or equal to Erdogan. In his victory speech, the Prime Minister promised revenge on his foreign enemies from Islamic scholar Fetullah Gulen in Pennsylvania to parties in the Syrian civil war.
Erdogan has been campaigning for his party with a new sense of mission and purpose since the beginning of the year. Simultaneously running for Mayor, President, and Prime Minister of Turkey in a populist tone, his aggressiveness has puzzled many outsiders not used to the confrontational style of Turkish politics. As a former professional soccer player who, as a striker, was always on the offense, Erdogan the politician has demonstrated a similar knack for playing defense by being on the offense. Having risen to fame from the rough and tumble streets of Istanbul’s Kasimpasa district (similar to New York’s the Bronx), Erdogan has never shied away from a fight. His confrontational and controversial style has most recently involved taking the unprecedented step of blocking Twitter and YouTube after several damaging leaks and national security breaches threatened his government.
Turkey’s international reputation ranges from ‘amazing economic success story’ to ‘polarized den of corruption’ via sensationalized headlines, and analysis has always lacked nuance and sophistication. Turkey defies the simple dichotomy of being either a secular democracy or Islamist free market economy. Without understanding the deeper roots of Anatolian conspiracy and victimhood, few outsiders understand the school age adage that “The only friend of a Turk, is a Turk himself.” Appealing to his conservative base, Erdogan’s combative nationalist tone on the campaign trail and on display last night in his victory speech made clear that 2014 is his year of destiny, or kismet, for better or worse.
Indeed, amidst Turkey’s most consequential set of elections in decades, the longer marathon of Turkish politics is just getting started. Election years seem to bring out the worst in Turkey, like many more familiar democracies. The lessons learned from last night about how close races will be settled in the courts may be as consequential as the headline of Erdogan’s domestic triumph. Damage done to Turkey’s international reputation will matter little in the short-run given the election results, but with an economy and foreign policy that relies on critical Western alliances, Turkey’s long-term future will be written over the course of the next year.
Continued chaos in the ongoing Ukrainian and Syrian crises are contributing to Turkish frustrations with what once was considered a mutually beneficial relationship between Turkey and the West that made global sense. 2014, it seems, will be as much about weathering the short-term storm of domestic Turkish politics as defining and focusing on the long-term relationship with both the United States and the European Union that has existed since the end of World War II and the declaration of the Truman Doctrine originally brought Turkey into the transatlantic community.
Reinvigorating Turkey’s relations with the West continues to represent the best guarantee that the country’s domestic election results and decade-long transformation will culminate in a standard of democracy that make it a guiding light in the region rather than a mirror of its neighborhood’s dysfunctionality. The transatlantic anchor provided through NATO, and hopefully one day TTIP and the EU, must provide incentives for Turkish leaders to embark upon promised reforms in the wake of elections that they are claiming mandates from. In 2014, Ankara, Brussels, and Washington need a new, more comprehensive framework to coordinate and implement policies jointly. Without a fresh, holistic approach that persists regardless of domestic politics in all capitals, the EU-U.S.-Turkish relationship could miss its full potential.
Healing the deep divides after a brutal campaign season and cooling the heated rhetoric will be necessary preconditions for Turkey’s leaders. Similarly, admitting that Western policy towards Turkey has been stale for too long and that the West has been used as a whipping boy too many times in Turkish campaigns will help set the stage for re-engaging Erdogan. Historically, betting against Turkish civil society and its people has never been a smart move, yet its government and institutions have rarely lived up to the promise of Ataturk’s republic born from the ashes of the Ottoman Empire over 90 years ago. Therefore, even as Erdogan revels in his domestic victory, seeing this as only the opening salvo will be critical for Turkey’s future.
Dr. Joshua W. Walker is a longtime analyst of Turkey who studied in Ankara on a Fulbright Fellowship and previously worked for the US State Department. He is currently a Truman National Security Fellow. Views expressed are his own.
