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Recep Tayyip Erdogan is re-elected as Turkey’s president


As in many elections before, rumours of Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s political demise turned out to be vastly exaggerated. With nearly all the ballot boxes opened in the second round of Turkey’s presidential elections on May 28th, Turkey’s leader had earned 52.1% of the vote, enough to claim victory. His challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, had 47.9%. Mr Erdogan, who has already ruled Turkey for 20 years, first as prime minister and then as president, will now be able to do so for another five, and perhaps more.

Mr Erdogan, who has already ruled Turkey for 20 years, first as prime minister and then as president, will now be able to do so for another five, and perhaps more(AFP) PREMIUM
Mr Erdogan, who has already ruled Turkey for 20 years, first as prime minister and then as president, will now be able to do so for another five, and perhaps more(AFP)

Speaking to supporters from the top of a campaign bus parked near the Camlica Mosque in Uskudar, a district of Istanbul, Mr Erdogan sounded a few notes of unity, before reverting to form. “The only winner today is Turkey,” he proclaimed. Minutes later, he called the opposition LGBT sympathisers. “For us, family is holy,” he said. He remained in campaign mode, looking ahead to Turkey’s local elections, scheduled for March of next year. “There is no stopping,” he said.

In Sekeroba, a village some 1,000 km away, a middle-aged woman stood in front of the rubble of her house, waving a Turkish flag mounted on a long metal bar. Cars screamed past, honking approvingly. Nearly 200 people died in Sekeroba four months ago, when powerful earthquakes ripped through the village, destroying hundreds of homes. Rescue teams never showed up. As in many places across the south, where the same quakes claimed more than 50,000 lives, the disaster made no dent in support for Mr Erdogan. Turkey’s president won 78% of the vote in Turkoglu, the district to which Sekeroba belongs, in elections in 2018. Five years later he came away with 82%. Locals said they trusted only one man with their votes, and with the earthquake recovery effort. “We love him,” said the woman waving the Turkish flag. “For the call to prayer, for our homes, for our headscarves.”

Turkey’s opposition had the best shot in a generation of unseating Mr Erdogan. Six opposition parties had settled on a comprehensive reform programme, and on a presidential candidate. The economy had been, and continues to be, ravaged by inflation that topped 86% last year, largely the result of a bizarre monetary policy that saw low interest rates as the way to bring down consumer prices. The February earthquakes, which covered an area the size of Bulgaria with rubble, exposed shoddy building methods, corruption and a lack of preparedness.

But none of that was enough to defeat Mr Erdogan. Using the same playbook that has helped him win election after election, Turkey’s strongman won again by fanning the flames of Turkey’s culture wars and depicting the opposition as a threat to Turkish culture and national security. He used the backing Mr Kilicdaroglu received from the country’s main Kurdish party to accuse his opponent of teaming up with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), an armed separatist group. A few days before the vote, Mr Erdogan casually acknowledged that a video purporting to show PKK fighters singing Mr Kilicdaroglu’s campaign song, which he aired at one of his mass rallies, had in fact been a fake.

Media bias helped too. Private news channels, mostly run by businessmen beholden to Mr Erdogan, and the state media, which has become an arm of his government, offered the president limitless air-time, refusing to challenge his unfounded claims when he was in front of the cameras and regurgitating them when he was not.

Mr Kilicdaroglu appeared mostly on social media, and on a handful of channels close to the opposition. His late attempts to win over the hard right, by promising to send millions of refugees based in Turkey back home and ruling out peace talks with the PKK, did not go according to plan. The nationalist candidate Sinan Ogan, who won 5.2% in the first round, endorsed Mr Erdogan in the second. Many of his voters appeared to do the same. Mr Erdogan’s margin of victory, of some 2.3m votes, was only slightly lower than his lead of 2.5m in the first round.

A chance to repair Turkey’s democracy and its economy has been lost. The opposition had promised to reverse Mr Erdogan’s creation of a powerful executive presidency, a blueprint for one-man rule; to release at least some of Turkey’s political prisoners; and to hand power back to nominally independent state institutions, starting with the central bank, and to parliament. Mr Erdogan now retains a free hand to rule as he pleases, using the unchecked powers he has accumulated to keep the courts, the central bank, and his own party in line.

Soon, instead of poll numbers and election results, Turks will have to start watching the exchange rate. To help Mr Erdogan’s chances in the elections, the central bank has been selling billions of dollars in foreign reserves every week, so as to prevent a run on Turkey’s currency, the lira, and keep inflation from spiralling out of control. The result is a currency that is overvalued, despite having lost 80% of its value against the dollar over the past five years.

But problems are mounting. The central bank’s net foreign reserves are now in negative territory for the first time since 2002. Including swaps with local lenders and foreign countries, net reserves are estimated to be over $70bn in the red. Signs of stress are already visible. The lira has fallen by 2% since the first round of the presidential elections, dipping to a record low of 20 to the dollar. Unless Mr Erdogan reverses course and decides to raise interest rates, the currency will plunge as soon as the central bank runs out of ways to defend it.

Mr Erdogan has suggested this will be his last term. That does not necessarily have to be true. According to constitutional amendments that Mr Erdogan pushed through in 2017, a president in his second term can run for a third if parliament calls a snap election before the end of his mandate. Since Mr Erdogan’s coalition has 323 out of 600 seats in the assembly, this could easily be made to happen. Assuming his health holds up, Mr Erdogan, who is 69, could remain in power well into the 2030s.

© 2023, The Economist Newspaper Limited. All rights reserved. From The Economist, published under licence. The original content can be found on www.economist.com



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