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Israel's global image wanes further after killing of aid workers
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Is Netanyahu losing the PR battle amid public outrage over the IDF strike killing seven aid workers?
I think Israel is losing the information war around the world, not just with the Global South, which was certainly true a few months ago, but increasingly even with Israel's closest allies. I'm hearing from the Germans, from the French, you know, from the Canadians, from the United States, that there is really a lot of upset with the unwillingness to take far greater care about civilian casualties while the Israelis are engaging in massive airstrikes still across Gaza. And of course, especially if we see strikes into Rafah, where well over a million Palestinians are trying to shelter. It's a big problem for the Israelis. It's a big problem for Netanyahu, but no end in sight, right now. And the potential for the war to escalate continues to be very, very real.
What's needed to garner bipartisan support for Speaker Mike Johnson's bill for increased Ukraine aid?
We have bipartisan support. There is overwhelming majority support among Democrats and Republicans to pass aid for Ukraine, likely 60 billion. Could be structured as a loan. Doesn't really matter. It’s not like anyone believes the Ukrainians will be in a position to pay it off any time soon. Makes it more palatable for Trump supporters who have heard the former president say, “not one more dime in direct foreign aid,” has to all be structured as loans in case we don't like them in the future, then they have to pay it back. What if they can't? Who knows? But anyway, that's the structure. The point is that the Ukrainians who have continued to be able to mostly hold their defensive lines, they've lost some territory recently, in part because they don't have enough troops on the ground. They are pushing through more mobilization, but also because they don't have enough artillery and ammunition, enough military equipment. And that is coming some from the Europeans, more soon from the Americans this month, I suspect the next couple of weeks that happens.
What's the significance of Turkey's recent local elections setback for President Erdogan's government?
It is the first time in a couple of decades since Erdogan took power that his party did not win. They didn't get a majority, and instead it was the opposition. And that's a big deal. Even those municipal elections. Look, it doesn't mean the end of Erdogan. He doesn't have to stand for presidential elections, no parliamentary elections until 2028. So it's quite a while. But it does show that elections matter in a country like Turkey as much as Erdogan would like them not to. And it is mostly about lack of comfort with his government's performance on the economy, a lot more pressure to perform adequately. And the mayor of Istanbul is an erstwhile serious challenger to the Turkish president. So, I mean, his ability to change the constitution and consolidate more power, his ability to ensure that his party is going to be in control after 2028 has just gone down quite a bit. And that means he has to be more careful, more cautious and more focused on performing on the economy for his own people.
Turkey’s sultan Erdogan is not going anywhere
Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan is … strong.
Despite most opinion polls predicting a win for main-opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a soft-spoken technocrat who leads the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), President Erdogan received 49.5% of the votes in Sunday’s presidential election compared to Kilicdaroglu’s 44.9%. Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its People’s Alliance coalition, meanwhile, defied expectations to retain majority control of Turkey’s 600-member parliament.
On paper, the election was the most serious challenge of Erdogan’s 20-year iron rule.
Turkey’s economy is in shambles, plagued by soaring inflation, a plummeting lira, and a cost-of-living crisis at least partly caused by Erdogan’s kooky economic policies. The government’s shambolic response to February’s deadly earthquake in southeastern Turkey (which killed 50,000 and displaced 1.5 million), added to the AKP’s many corruption and mismanagement scandals, created more headwinds for the president. And, for the first time in ages, Turkey’s notoriously fractious opposition managed to unite behind a joint candidate able to broaden the bloc’s appeal, giving voters a credible alternative to Erdogan.
All this explains why almost every part of the country shifted against Erdogan relative to the most recent presidential election in 2018, forcing the president to a run-off for the first time in two decades.
But while his dominance has slipped, Erdogan remains the most popular leader in Turkey. He has outlived economic downturns, refugee crises, corruption scandals, protest movements, and even a coup attempt. He is a skilled populist with ample experience leveraging the bully pulpit, stoking nationalist sentiment, and exploiting identity politics and security concerns in his favor.
Having dismantled most independent checks on his power (including the military, the judiciary, and the media) and expanded presidential powers, Erdogan’s electoral strength is further underpinned by his incumbency advantages, which allow him to dominate the airwaves and use state levers to woo voters and weaken opponents. Yes, Turkey's election was free ... but it certainly wasn’t fair.
This is why I expected him to clinch reelection, despite polling data showing as much as a five-percentage-point lead for Kilicdaroglu ahead of the first-round vote.
What’s next
While Erdogan came half a point short of the 50% he needed to avoid a runoff, he is the overwhelming favorite to secure the presidency in the second round on May 28.
The math is simple. Erdogan was within just 275,000 votes of winning the presidency outright on Sunday, whereas Kilicdaroglu’s shortfall was 2.8 million. The president will carry that 2.5 million advantage into the runoff, where Kilicdaroglu would need to not only increase or at least maintain his turnout – a huge hurdle given the demoralizing impact of his Sunday losses – but also win virtually all the voters who backed the far-right nationalist Sinan Ogan (5.2%) and the populist Muharrem Ince (0.4%) in order to unseat Erdogan. That’s not going to happen.
Ince had surprisingly withdrawn from the race three days before the vote but remained on the ballot. Most of his supporters are protest or anti-establishment voters who won’t head to the polls for the runoff. Even if they did, at less than 250,000 votes they wouldn’t move the needle for Kilicdaroglu.
Ogan, on the other hand, drew his 2.8 million votes roughly evenly from both Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu. Among them, nationalist voters who typically vote for the Erdogan-allied Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) or the ruling AKP will be highly motivated to cast their ballots for the incumbent to prevent a Kilicdaroglu presidency. But backers of the opposition-aligned, Turkish nationalist Good Party (IYI) are less likely to turn out to support Kilicdaroglu.
Ogan himself has said he’d only endorse the opposition leader if he distances himself from his Kurdish supporters, playing into Erdogan’s baseless accusations that Kilicdaroglu is “backed by terrorists.” But Kilicdaroglu can’t risk alienating the Kurdish vote, which makes up around 10% of Turkey’s electorate.
These numbers alone give Erdogan a nigh insurmountable edge. And that’s before you even get to the campaign trail, where the president will use his incumbency powers and scare tactics to energize his base, depress opposition turnout, and tilt the balance further in his favor.
Why it matters
A victorious Erdogan will be emboldened to double down on the playbook that has hollowed out Turkey’s democracy, turned its economy into a basket case, and distanced it from its traditional Western allies.
The president’s insistence on unorthodox economic policies will prove unsustainable sooner rather than later, pushing the country toward a full-blown economic crisis it’ll have a hard time recovering from.
Little by little, one-man rule will replace the rule of law as Erdogan makes himself sultan for life, pushing Turkey ever closer to autocracy and away from representative democracy.
Abroad, Erdogan will continue his delicate balancing act as he seeks to expand Turkey’s global clout, deepening ties with Russia and China to the chagrin of its longstanding allies, the United States and Europe.
Despite growing mistrust and tension, Turkey’s economic and security dependence on the West means relations will continue to be ruled by pragmatism. Erdogan will continue to both expand trade with Russia and support Ukraine and avoid Western sanctions. He will ratify Sweden’s membership in NATO but only once the US finally agrees to sell him F-16 fighter jets. He will keep Turkey in NATO but increasingly act as a spoiler.
This approach to foreign policy will help cement Turkey’s role as a geopolitical swing state (see today’s Moose treat), but it will also make Ankara a more unreliable ally and increase the risk of miscalculation. As we’ve seen in Russia and China, extreme consolidation of power, centralization of decision-making, and suppression of dissent are a recipe for bad policies. Unchallenged power means unchallenged ability to make mistakes.
A third Erdogan term will bring about a more unstable, authoritarian, and unpredictable Turkey. Short of a miracle on May 28, the future of Turkey looks bleak.
Expect another Erdogan presidency for Turkey
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden, shares his perspective from Stockholm, Sweden.
How was the outcome of the Turkish election?
Well, we haven't seen the end of it, but the first round, which was not decisive concerning the presidency. Erdogan just short of 50%, but his coalition did capture the majority in parliament and that will be decisive advantage when it goes to the second round for the presidency on May 28th. Erdogan managed to mobilize the nationalists more conservative, more sort of proud Turkish, somewhat more rural Turks against the more modern, Western, younger. We'll see. But in all likelihood, May 28th for Erdogan.
How are preparations shaping up for the NATO Summit in Vilnius in mid-July?
Well, first there's the question, of course, with whether Turkey and Hungary will by then have ratified the Swedish succession as well in addition to Finland. We'll see. But then is the rather controversial question of Ukraine's application for membership. One doesn't want to avoid the trauma, the failure of the Bucharest Summit of 2008, so I guess there will be afford some sort of compromise, with just short membership, not quite membership, and hopefully concentrate on the concrete need and aid and assistance that Ukraine is needing right now on the battlefield and financial for its rather depleted state coffers.
- Why is Erdogan still popular? ›
- War in Ukraine heading to "violent" new phase, warns NATO's Mircea Geoană ›
- António Guterres: Ukraine war united NATO, but further divided the world ›
- Should NATO embrace Ukraine? ›
- Hard Numbers: Iranian atheists hanged, Lithuania’s costly NATO summit, Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, Russian drones over Kyiv, lollipops and wine in the Aussie bush ›
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, accompanied by his wife Ermine Erdogan, greets supporters at the AK Party headquarters in Ankara, Turkey.
Why is Erdogan still popular?
By many measures, things aren’t great in Turkey right now.
Inflation is at 44% (down from 85% in October), and analysts say it’s likely higher than official numbers suggest. Meanwhile, the lira, Turkey’s currency, is tanking, having fallen 76% during President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s latest term in office (since 2018).
That’s to say nothing of the 1.5 million people left homeless by February’s devastating earthquake, which killed 50,000 in the country’s south and exposed the depths of Ankara’s cronyism and corruption. The list goes on.
The rules of democratic politics are pretty simple: When the economy is hurting, the incumbent gets punished. But Sunday’s poll shows that Erdogan remains the most popular figure in Turkish politics. The longtime leader reaped 49% of the vote, just below the 50% needed to avoid a runoff, which he is expected to win on May 28. He defied polls that had him playing second fiddle to his rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a technocrat leading an alliance of six opposition parties. So what explains Erdogan's enduring appeal?
Populist moves are popular for a reason. A savvy populist dating back to his days as Istanbul’s mayor (1994-1998), Erdogan has long understood that bread-and-butter issues motivate Turkish voters above all else. In many ways, he’s been a modern populist pioneer, with his rallying against the global order and espousal of populist-driven economic policy – dubbed Erdonomics – having inspired similar styles by leaders across the Western world (though notably they haven’t replicated his approach of keeping interest rates low to fight inflation).
Indeed, Erdogan’s penchant for handing out free money to woo voters also helps explain his popularity. Over the past year alone, he has made cheap housing loans a central tenet of his domestic policy and implemented a debt-relief program for millions of Turks. What’s more, six months before the election, he passed a law allowing more than 2 million Turks to retire immediately.
Boosting wages has also been an electoral priority for Erdogan, a strategy that’s resonated in a country where more than 40% of workers earn minimum wage. He hasn’t forgotten those in urban areas either, having also raised the minimum wage for the private sector by 94% year-on-year in Jan. 2023.
Voters tend to care less about rampant inflation and currency crises when they are getting free money.
A pragmatic Islamist. Over the past two decades, Erdogan has managed to appeal to conservatives in the heartland who felt isolated by the secular elite that governed the Turkish Republic since its founding in the 1920s.
A proponent of political Islam, he succeeded where many failed by putting democratic reforms at the top of his agenda to comply with EU regulations and to help integrate Turkey’s economy with the West, while at the same time also reversing the republic’s ban on Islamist education and Islamic dress.
This delicate dance has been a winning strategy in a country where more than a third of Turkish women covered their heads but where adherence to strict religious customs is also slipping.
While other would-be Erdogans have been relegated to the dustbin of history (Egypt’s Mohamed Morsi is a case in point), Erdogan has managed to skillfully integrate Islam into mainstream politics without imposing it on secular Turks.
Things are far from perfect in Turkey. But for many Turks who have seen the Middle East go up in flames since the Arab Spring, Erdogan represents stability, diplomatic clout, Islamic values and economic fruition … and in a tumultuous neighborhood that counts for a lot.
Erdogan likely to win Turkish election
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody, Ian Bremmer here, and a Quick Take to kick off your week. Beautiful Monday morning in New York. And elections, important elections in Turkey. We've been talking about them for a while, and the first round, results are now in. Erdogan not quite at 50%, but really close. You're going to have a second round, but it's almost certain now that he is going to win. Turnout's very high, almost 90%. That seems unheard of, inconceivable for Americans or Europeans, but actually normal turnout in Turkish elections are about 85%, higher this time around because a lot was at stake. You had consolidation around a single major opposition candidate and a lot of people unhappy with the economy, but a lot of nationalism at play too.
Also, keep in mind that Erdogan has a lot of structural advantages using the judiciary to go after and even disqualify some of the candidates that he didn't like, control of the media, almost all of which is either directly state-owned or state-aligned, and some level of influence over social media. You may have seen Twitter taking some lumps over the last few days because they were demanded to remove some pro-opposition content just literally 24 hours before the first round elections. Twitter complied. And that also, of course, has an impact at the margins. But what we're going to see here is consistency, is a leader who now has been working hard to undermine the Democratic checks and balances on his rule, some significant and credible claims of corruption, and also the ability to play a balancing role geopolitically between the United States and Europe and Russia. And that's despite the fact that Turkey is a NATO member. Geopolitically, Turkey's role has been increasing as we see more fragmentation more broadly in the region.
They have managed to improve and rebuild their relations with core Gulf states, for example, they've managed to stabilize their relationship with Syria to a degree, especially a place they've had a lot of fighting on the ground, and they've also played one of the few diplomatic roles of moderation between Russia and Ukraine. Now, one of the big stories that we've seen from Turkey internationally over the past months was their willingness to veto potentially a Swedish accession into NATO. Now that this election is going to be over in two weeks, and again, I think at this point, Erdogan is basically a layup, even a slam dunk, at that point, I think that Sweden, their objections will be removed, you will have that additional accession into NATO.
But they expect in return not only some support from Sweden in terms of the way that would-be Kurdish nationalists are treated on the ground inside that country, but also they expect a reduction of sanctions from the United States, which would also allow the Turks to purchase advanced fighter jets that they want, that are aligned and interoperable with other existing systems they have as a NATO ally, but that Washington has been unwilling to provide. I expect all that's going to happen. So Erdogan is not going to become a closer friend to the West, he will continue to be the most obstreperous of NATO allies, continue to look to use geopolitics in his favor, continue to undermine Turkish democracy, erode its institutions, month after month, year after year. And as well, the Turkish economy is in a hell of a lot of trouble. But the fact is that he was still able to pick up that election.
And final point I'd make here is that we didn't see significant shenanigans in the actual vote count itself. In the early measures, early hours of the day, the opposition was coming out with results that very much favored them, and they did that despite the fact that they hadn't been confirmed yet. While the government was contesting outcomes and they waited until those outcomes were confirmed, the interesting point here is that as we saw the final results from district to district, both opposition, as well as government, basically aligned on the same outcome. And Erdogan did say that he would accept the outcome no matter what. Frankly, that's more than Trump would do in his CNN Town Hall last week. So at the end of the day, there are structural challenges with making it an unfair election, but you would say that the election was free, and that's more than a lot of people might have presumed even a few weeks ago.
Supporters of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Turkey's main opposition alliance, attend a rally ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections.
Turkey headed to round two
Turkey's presidential election is almost surely headed to a runoff. With more than 99% of domestic ballots and 84% of overseas votes in on Monday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is just short of the 50% he needs to avoid a May 28 second-round contest with Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a technocrat who heads an opposition made up of six parties.
What's more, the president's Islamist Justice and Development Party also looks set to win a majority in parliament.
In an election that was widely viewed as a referendum on Erdogan's 20-year reign, a unified opposition alliance, surging inflation, a currency crisis, and scandals arising from devastating February earthquakes have made this race an uphill battle for Erdogan. But ahead of the vote, the incumbent pulled out all the stops to hold onto the job, including raising public workers' wages by 45%.
Erdogan has also used his increasing sway over the media to minimize his opponents’ exposure in recent months and has been accused of stacking the courts with loyalists and undermining his country’s democracy by marginalizing — and sometimes jailing — critics and independent-minded journalists.
Still, Turkey’s electoral institutions remain strong, and most analysts think the vote has so far been carried our freely.
This election is a big deal for several reasons. Turkey, a NATO member, is seen as a bridge between the Muslim and Western worlds, as well as a crucial conduit between Russia and the West. (Erdogan, for his part, has blocked Sweden from joining NATO, and has been crucial in negotiating a deal with Russia to allow Ukraine food shipments to travel through a safe passage in the Black Sea.)
Indeed, a change of leadership in Turkey would have big ripple effects across the world. While Erdogan this week accused the Biden administration of backing Turkey’s opposition, Kilicdaroglu has pledged to deepen relations with the West.
People look on from a balcony with a banner with the image of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan’s moment of truth
Perhaps no election in 2023 will have as much global impact as Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary votes, which begin this Sunday.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has dominated Turkish politics for more than two decades, now faces the toughest test of his political career. That’s partly because millions of voters are feeling the pain of Turkey’s economic crisis, and partly because five opposition parties have united behind a single challenger: technocrat Kemal Kilicdaroglu. Neither man looks poised to surpass 50% of the vote, meaning there will likely be a head-to-head runoff on May 28.
There are real fears that if Kilicdaroglu, who is leading in many polls, wins a close election, the pugnacious Erdogan will simply refuse to accept the outcome, stoking political and legal turmoil. Meanwhile, whatever happens in the presidential race, opposition parties have a strong chance of winning majority control of Turkey’s 600-member Grand National Assembly.
In all, it’s a pivotal moment for a country that is not only a prime player in the Middle East, but also a key interlocutor between the West and Russia, and a major partner of the EU on trade and migration.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan attends a ceremony to mark the delivery of nuclear fuel to the Akkuyu nuclear power plant, which is being built by Russia, in Ankara.
Turkey's looming crisis
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the man who has dominated Turkey’s politics for a generation, was once mayor of Istanbul, and that job helped vault him to national leadership. “Whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey,” he once said.
That’s why, in 2019, he took it personally when his party’s mayoral candidate, Binali Yıldırım, came up short. In a city with 10 million voters, the opposition’s Ekrem İmamoğlu beat Erdoğan’s man by a mere 13,000 votes.
But Erdoğan refused to accept the loss.
Instead, he pressed Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Board to annul the vote and rerun the election three months later. In the rerun, the opposition won again, this time by nearly 800,000 votes. Even Erdoğan had to accept that result.
That was four years ago. Now it’s time for presidential and national parliamentary elections, and here too the margin is expected to be razor-thin. After two decades of Erdoğan’s political primacy, latest polls show a dead heat.
A finally unified opposition alliance backing technocrat Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, surging inflation, a currency crisis, and scandals arising from devastating February earthquakes have put Erdoğan in a tight spot headed into the first round of voting on May 14. If no candidate wins 50% of the vote, the top two will face off in a second round on May 28.
If Erdoğan loses a frustratingly close election, might he rerun his rerun strategy, this time on a national scale?
That’s not only possible, argues political consultancy Eurasia Group, our parent company. It’s likely. A decisive outcome would be accepted by all sides. But if Erdoğan loses by a fraction, he’ll likely force another do-over. But knowing that he’d likely lose a rerun of free and fair elections, he would also create a crisis to improve his odds for reelection, according to EG’s Turkey research team.
What might that crisis look like?
EG predicts a close Erdoğan loss would provoke the president to demand an annulment of the results – which the board might still refuse to grant – but also call his supporters into the streets of Turkey’s largest cities. We could see barricades of public buildings, including parliament, and police managing surging crowds of both pro- and anti-Erdoğan demonstrators.
Turkey’s military, which has suffered large-scale purges since a 2016 coup attempt against Erdoğan disintegrated, would try to remain neutral, though its success might depend on the ability and willingness of police to maintain order. The period leading up to a hypothetical rerun election could be dangerously unpredictable, though the opposition, according to Eurasia Group, would likely focus less on demonstrations than on beating the president by a more decisive margin, as in Istanbul four years ago.
Here’s a footnote worth considering. Though Erdoğan did accept the rerun result in Istanbul in 2019, the victor in that race, Ekrem İmamoğlu, was later charged with the crime of insulting the officials who annulled his initial victory by calling them “fools.” He was sentenced to prison and banned from politics, though he remains free pending appeal. Critics say Erdoğan wanted him banned because he feared he’d make a good rival presidential candidate.
Erdoğan never gives up, but neither does the opposition. If Kılıçdaroğlu defeats him in the upcoming election, he has pledged to make İmamoğlu one of his vice presidents.