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Turkey's protests & crackdowns complicate EU relations
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from Stockholm, Sweden.
Do you think the Signal controversy in the US will have an impact on the transatlantic relationship?
Well, not in itself. It does betray an attitude to security issues that is somewhat too relaxed, to put it very mildly. But what does betray as well is the disdain, the resentment, the anger against Europeans that is there from the vice president, the secretary of defense, and others, and that is duly noted. And of course, something that is subject of what we have to note it. It's there. It's a fact.
What impact do you think the Turkish protest and instability will have on Turkish relationships with its European allies?
Well, it's certainly not going to be a good thing. We have an interest in good relationship and stable relationship with Turkey. It's a significant EU strategic actor. It's a significant economy. But of course, when we have these arrests of a prominent opposition, politicians, we have massive protests that are repressed, that we have massive violations of social media and arrests of journalists and things like that. It does complicate things to put it very mildly. We haven't seen the end of that story yet.
Ekrem Imamoglu, from Republican People's Party, is seen as one of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's strongest political rivals.
Turkey arrests Erdoğan’s chief political rival days before presidential primary
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan launched a widespread crackdown on his political opposition Wednesday when police arrested Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu just days before the popular opposition leader was set to win his party’s presidential nod.
İmamoğlu emerged as Erdoğan’s chief rival after winning the top job in the nation’s largest city in 2019. Erdoğan’s conservative religious Justice and Development Party, whose candidate came in second place for a position seen as a stepping stone to higher office, demanded a recount – then a rerun – of the election. İmamoğlu netted even more votes the second time and won reelection last year.
The mayor’s secular Republican People’s Party was expected to nominate him for president on Sunday.
On Tuesday, Istanbul University revoked İmamoğlu’s diploma, citing alleged irregularities in his transcripts from when he transferred in 1990 from a private college in northern Cyprus. İmamoğlu was expected to appeal the decision, which effectively barred him from seeking the highest office.
Then, on Wednesday, police arrested İmamoğlu and more than 100 of his political allies amid a corruption and terror probe.
“A handful of minds are trying to usurp the will of the nation by using our beloved policemen … as an instrument of evil,” İmamoğlu said in a video filmed in his closet as he donned a tie while the police were outside his house. “Let my nation know I will continue to stand firm. I will continue to fight against that man.”
Financial blowback: The Turkish lira plunged Wednesday to a record low against the dollar.
Public response? Erdoğan’s allies issued a four-day ban on public demonstrations and press statements but that has not stopped protesters from taking to the streets in a show of anger. A representative from İmamoğlu's party is set to address supporters in Istanbul today, and several demonstrations are planned on the city's university campuses.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan waves as he addresses his supporters in Ankara following his victory in the second round of the presidential election.
Erdogan wins reelection — what's next for Turkey?
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won Sunday's presidential runoff election, beating opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu by a not-too-shabby 4 percentage points in a deeply polarized country. It’s a big victory for Erdogan, who ahead of the first round many thought would finally lose — yet eventually defying the polls to advance, win another term, and enter his third decade in power.
For the next five years, Erdogan will be "politically unencumbered" as his party also won a majority in parliament, Eurasia Group senior analyst Emre Peker explains in this Twitter thread. That will likely mean the Turkish leader will double down on some of his most divisive policies to please his base, including what to do with Syrian refugees.
Things are not looking good for the economy. The lira crashed after Erdogan's runoff victory, as investors fear the president will try to get the country out of its economic crisis with more of his unorthodox policies known as Erdonomics. The same goes for the state of Turkish democracy, while on foreign policy expect Erdogan to continue his delicate balancing act between the West and, well, the enemies of the West.
In Peker's words: "Quite an explosive mix — politically for Erdogan, and personally for all Turkey."
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.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 election in Istanbul.
Is the Erdoğan era in Turkey coming to an end?
After dominating Turkish politics for two decades, opinion polls suggest that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could face his toughest elections ever on May 14. The charismatic, tough-talking politician became prime minister in 2003 after his moderate Islamist party swept to power, breaking with a long tradition of secular government. In 2014, he won the country’s first-ever direct presidential election and then expanded the powers of the office with a new constitution passed in 2017.
A deepening economic crisis – with inflation just under 50% – and a bungled initial response to devastating earthquakes in February have created an opening for an opposition candidate to prevent Erdoğan’s rule from extending into a third decade. That could have implications far beyond Turkey. Though a NATO member, Turkey under Erdoğan has pursued closer relations with Russia and various other policies that have created tensions with its Western partners.
We spoke with Turkey experts at Eurasia Group to get a better sense of what to expect from the upcoming elections.
The polls point to an unusually tight presidential contest – is Erdoğan’s dominance slipping?
Erdoğan’s public support has been steadily weakening since he became president in 2014. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) briefly lost its parliamentary majority in the June 2015 general elections but quickly recovered it a few months later in November snap polls. Ever since, Erdogan and the AKP have had to rely on alliances — primarily with the Nationalist Movement Party, but also some fringe Islamist parties — to maintain his legislative majority and secure reelection as president. Meanwhile, unorthodox policies such as keeping interest rates low despite high inflation have magnified economic challenges, causing fatigue with the AKP’s long rule. First-time voters who have known no leader but Erdoğan are eager for change. While Erdoğan, 69, remains the most prominent Turkish politician, he has largely lost his magic touch for communicating with voters. For example, his reference to the recent earthquakes as “an act of fate” in an effort to downplay their impact stoked more outrage with the government response. All these factors suggest that the Erdogan era is nearing its end — at least in the public psyche.
Who is the leading challenger and what does he need to do to win?
Six opposition parties have joined forces in the Nation Alliance and chosen Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as their joint candidate. The 74-year-old will be Erdoğan main challenger. To be successful, he needs to maintain the cohesion of a fractious coalition of social democrats, secularists, Islamists, and nationalists. Moreover, he needs to secure the support of Kurdish and left-wing voters. More importantly, Kılıçdaroğlu needs to convince voters that he can effectively preside over a six-party coalition and work with a diverse legislature to fix Turkey’s economic problems. On a practical level, the opposition will have to ensure the security and integrity of the ballot and the vote count.
What does Erdoğan need to do?
The president needs to energize his conservative, Islamist, nationalist base. To that end, Erdoğan will use scare tactics. He will try to associate Kılıçdaroğlu with terrorism, citing his support among pro-Kurdish parties. (Turkey has suffered from a long-running battle with militant Kurdish separatists that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.) Erdoğan will also play on pious voters’ fears of a return to the hardline secularism of pre-AKP governments, insinuating that Kılıçdaroğlu will not respect their religious beliefs. Meanwhile, Erdogan will use the advantages of incumbency — electoral handouts, control of the bureaucracy, influence over the media, etc.— to undermine the opposition campaign.
Is fraud likely?
There have been disputes and allegations of wrongdoing in every Turkish election since 2014. Those involved arbitrary pauses to vote-count updates, allegations of multiple voting, acceptance of irregular ballots, blocking of poll observers, and a forced re-run of the Istanbul mayoral election in 2019. Similar risks exist for the upcoming polls.
How likely do you think it is that Erdoğan would try force a re-run of this election?
If Erdoğan loses the presidential election by a very narrow margin (by less than 1% of the total vote), he could lean on the Supreme Election Council to force a repeat of the election, as he did when his party’s candidate lost the Istanbul mayoral election by less than 14,000 votes to the CHP candidate. (The CHP went on to win the re-run with 800,000 more votes than the AKP.) If Erdoğan manages to cling onto his parliamentary majority with a surprise win in the legislative elections being held at the same time as the presidential vote, he will likely be more inclined to seek a re-run. Should Kılıçdaroğlu win the presidency with a wide margin (more than 2% of the total vote) and the opposition secure a comfortable majority in parliament, Erdogan would be less likely to disrupt the electoral process.
Is violence expected around the elections?
The offices of the AKP and opposition parties in various provinces — including Istanbul — have been attacked by gunmen and vandals. Kılıçdaroğlu has also faced some aggressive heckling and threats around his public gatherings, which caused him to cancel some rallies. Some opposition politicians have also voiced concern over an assassination attempt against Kılıçdaroğlu. While major unrest is unlikely, spontaneous outbreaks of violence are possible in the lead-up to the elections. If there were blatant election disruptions or a very close race, that could trigger demonstrations and street violence, too — albeit likely limited.
Edited by Jonathan House, Senior Editor, Eurasia Group.
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.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party, greets his supporters accompanied by his wife during a rally in Istanbul.
The man who could beat Erdogan
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has dominated Turkey’s politics for the past 20 years, first as prime minister and now as president. By drawing support from long-ignored socially conservative voters in the country’s rural Anatolian heartland, he broke the stranglehold on his country’s politics long held by a business elite in Turkey’s three largest cities who governed with frequent interference from the military.
But in the process, Erdoğan has also demonstrated a willingness to undermine his country’s democracy by marginalizing, and sometimes jailing, critics and independent-minded journalists and by remaking Turkey’s political and court system to protect his power. A failed coup attempt in July 2016 only heightened Erdoğan’s drive for tighter control of Turkey’s politics.
Now, after more than two decades of political dominance, a looming presidential election leaves Erdoğan facing a serious challenge. Runaway inflation, a currency crisis, and scandals arising from devastating earthquakes in February that killed tens of thousands and left millions homeless have combined to put Erdoğan in a tight spot headed into the first round of voting on May 14.
Perhaps most importantly, the country’s opposition appears much more unified than in the past.
Who is Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu?
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (pronounced Da-ro-loo) has been the leader of the social-democratic Republican People’s Party – a party established by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of modern Turkey – since 2010. The head of Turkey’s largest opposition bloc, Kılıçdaroğlu is also the formally chosen presidential candidate of five other parties that have little in common beyond a shared desire to defeat Erdoğan.
Unlike Erdoğan, who was born in a working-class neighborhood in Istanbul, Kılıçdaroğlu is from rural Anatolia, where he grew up poor. He’s not exactly a fresh political face; he’s a 74-year-old career politician with a professorial public demeanor who is as cautious in his speech as the charismatic Erdogan is bold and blunt.
But recent polls suggest a mild-mannered technocrat capable of uniting opposition parties of left and right might be just what many Turkish voters want. In sharp contrast to Erdoğan’s pugilistic political style, Kılıçdaroğlu has pledged to “rule Turkey with consultations and compromise.” The race is expected to be close. A potential runoff would be held on May 28.
Despite Erdoğan’s political dominance since 2003, the CHP and its allies have scored some important recent wins. In 2019, Kılıçdaroğlu’s party won mayoral contests in five of the country’s six largest provinces, including Istanbul and Ankara, Turkey’s capital.
If he wins …
If Kılıçdaroğlu beats Erdoğan, the world could expect big changes in Turkey’s complex foreign policy. Erdoğan has made his country the wildcard of NATO, an ally who must be continually placated to maintain unity on the alliance’s approach to Russia. But Kılıçdaroğlu would probably prove a much more reliable security partner, even if the need for decent economic relations with Russia gives the Kremlin weapons it will use to punish Turkey in response.
But Kılıçdaroğlu has also called for a reconciliation with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad, one that might allow a large number of the nearly four million Syrian refugees now living in Turkey to return home. That would quickly become an important and complex story that could reignite violence in Syria and make it harder for the US to continue to target ISIS fighters there.
The bottom line: It’s never a good idea to bet against Erdoğan, but public frustration with a tough economy and growing demand for change will make this race one to watch.President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan speaks at the coordination center of Turkey's Disaster and Emergency Management Authority in Ankara.
How Turkey’s Erdoğan responds to quake could impact his reelection chances
Turkey and Syria are reeling in the wake of Monday's 7.8-magnitude earthquake and subsequent aftershocks that claimed the lives of at least 5,000 people and left thousands more injured. It's the worst tremor to hit the region since 1999, when some 17,500 perished in the northeastern Turkish city of İzmit near Istanbul.
While offers of international aid pour in and rescue teams work around the clock to find survivors, one person wants to be seen as being firmly in command and on top of the recovery effort in Turkey: President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
After all, it’s an election year with very high stakes for him. Ahead of the May 14 presidential vote, Erdoğan’s reelection bid remains too close to call in the polls as he faces the biggest challenge to his leadership since he came to power 20 years ago, first as PM and later as president.
What's more, failing to rise to the moment amid a large-scale natural disaster can be a political death knell in Turkey.
Erdoğan knows he can’t have a repeat of 1999, when then-PM Bülent Ecevit bungled an even bigger disaster. His coalition government's inept and slow response to the İzmit quake was followed by a corruption scandal linked to licenses given to collapsed buildings – and later by the economic fallout of the tremor hitting heavily populated areas packed with businesses close to Istanbul.
The whole mess made Turks sour on mainstream parties; in 2002, citizens came out in droves to vote for Erdoğan’s upstart Justice and Development Party, which won that election and has remained in power ever since.
In sharp contrast, the president now wants to be perceived as a hands-on crisis manager. He can't afford to slip up as he did in the summer of 2021, when Erdoğan’s government looked ill-equipped to deal with the worst wildfires in Turkey's history and initially snubbed offers of international help.
The ruling party will benefit from a robust crisis response in the quake-hit areas as long as Erdoğan remains “visible on the ground and maintains momentum until the polls with not only immediate aid but also long-term reconstruction pledges," says Eurasia Group analyst Emre Peker.
Meanwhile, there's not much his rivals can do to stop Erdoğan from scoring political points on disaster management.
"The opposition's hands are tied," Peker adds. "The best they can do is mobilize aid and support government efforts." Otherwise, the president might (rather cynically) accuse them of politicizing the catastrophe.
Turkey’s leader will also step up his diplomatic game. Somewhat out of character for the famously pugnacious Erdoğan, it’s unlikely he will now want to pick even more fights with Sweden over its already stalled NATO bid, with eternal rival Greece over maritime sovereignty in the eastern Mediterranean, or with Kurdish militants over, well, being Kurdish militants.
"The devastating earthquakes will give Erdoğan an opening to engage with allies and testy neighbors alike in a positive manner,” Peker explains. “He will likely use it to support his foreign-policy balancing act."
Finally, this is not only a Turkey problem. The tremor also devastated vast swaths of the mostly opposition-held area on the Syrian side of the border, where the local infrastructure has been decimated by 11 years of civil war and millions of internally displaced Syrians live in squalid camps.
But there's a silver lining. After more than a decade of backing forces against Bashar al-Assad, and launching four cross-border operations against Kurdish militants in northern Syria, Erdoğan recently turned heads by announcing he was willing to meet the Syrian dictator to talk peace.
Now that Assad's army — supported by Iran and Russia — has reclaimed a large part of the territory once held by the opposition, both sides seem open to accepting the facts on the ground and moving on. (It helps that Erdoğan and Assad have a mutual interest in keeping Syrian Kurds at arm's length.)
"Erdoğan had already greenlit engagement with Syria, under Russian auspices, to normalize relations with Damascus," Peker says. The quake offers "a convenient reason for Ankara to accelerate that effort and segue into a leaders' meeting as Turkey and Syria show solidarity in the face of a humanitarian catastrophe."