Filenews 10 April 2023
By Bobby Ghosh
As Turkey's election campaign enters its final phase, a group of opponents is determined to dash Recep Tayyip Erdogan's hopes of extending his political dominance for a third decade. On May 14, voters will essentially choose between an increasingly authoritarian president and a square of opposition leaders committed not only to defeating the country's strongman, but also to limiting the powers of any future president.
Square
The main opposition candidate for the presidency is Republican People's Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a veteran politician who conspicuously lacks political charisma. He is supported by three figures who have this element in abundance: the head of the IYI ("Good Party") Party, Meral Aksener, and the popular mayors of Ankara and Istanbul, Mansour Yavas and Ekrem Imamoglu.
This collective represents the strongest challenge Erdogan has ever faced, and comes as the president and his long-dominant Justice and Development Party (AKP) are particularly vulnerable. There is widespread discontent with the dismal state of the economy and anger at the government's inadequate response to the twin earthquakes that devastated southeastern Turkey in early February.
Opinion polls show the opposition coalition, known as the Nation Alliance, ahead of the AKP-led People's Alliance. Among those betting on the outcome, foreign and bond traders are showing signs of optimism that the Erdogan era may be about to end.
What would take his place? The only safe prediction is that there will be a change of tone at the top. While Erdogan is known for his combative and quarrelsome speech, Kilicdaroglu has been likened to Mohandas Gandhi because he is extremely calm — there is even a slight physical resemblance between them.
To keep his allies on his side, however, Kilicdaroglu will be required to possess the leadership skills of another historical figure: Abraham Lincoln. Like the group of opponents that the U.S. president assembled alongside him during the Civil War, the four Turkish leaders of the anti-Erdogan front are far from being heartfelt friends: each had hopes of becoming Turkey's president.
The weakening of the office of President
Ironically, they are now collectively committed to weakening the office of head of state. Perhaps the most important promise in the opposition's common platform is a return to a presidential parliamentary form of government, reversing the transition to presidential democracy that Erdogan achieved after a referendum in 2017.
It's a promise they may not be able to keep. To radically change the constitution, Kilicdaroglu would need to win the presidency of the republic and at the same time the Alliance of the Nation would need to win a three-fifths majority, or 360 of the 600 seats in parliament. That doesn't seem very likely. A simple majority (at least 301 out of 600 seats) would be enough to call a new referendum, but Erdogan and the AKP would fight against such a plan tooth and nail.
However, if he won the presidency, Kilicdaroglu could voluntarily relinquish some of the powers Erdogan has amassed and strengthen institutions that Erdogan has weakened. A good start would be to restore the independence of Turkey's central bank, which in recent years has come under increasing scrutiny from the presidential palace. Monetary policy has been forced to submit to Erdogan's quixotic ideas about interest rates, leading to high inflation, a plunging currency and a loss of investor confidence in the Turkish economy.
Over the past five years, foreign investors have pulled more than $60 billion out of bond and equity markets and reduced their holdings of lira assets to their lowest level on record. Foreign holdings of lira-denominated bonds fell to $1.2 billion last month from $72 billion in 2013, according to data from Turkey's central bank. Foreign share ownership fell to 29 percent from an all-time average of 61 percent, according to official data.
An autonomous central bank is vital for a thorough reform of the Turkish economy, which all opposition parties recognize as necessary. "The current system is unsustainable," Bilge Yilmaz, an economics professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a policy adviser to Aksener, told Bloomberg News. Yilmaz is expected to have a top role in the economic staff if the opposition wins.
Divisions
Of course, not all the challenges that await Kilicdaroglu (if elected president) would be related to Erdogan's legacy. Some would come from the ambitions and agendas of his group of allies.
The four differ on political ideology: Kilicdaroglu and İmamoğlu are social democrats, Akşener is a nationalist, and Yavas has moved from the second camp to the first. Aksener, hailed by her supporters as a "wolf", poses a constant danger: only in early March, she broke away from the alliance, only to return at the urging of the other partners to the opposition table. The two mayors are likely to succeed Kilicdaroglu as CHP leader.
If Kilicdaroglu does win, the other three are expected to become Turkey's vice presidents — in an unusual, unstable structure for any government. Managing them could be just as difficult as undoing Erdogan's legacy.
Perhaps Kilicdaroglu should start reading Doris Kearns Goodwin's Pulitzer Prize-winning account of Lincoln's presidency right away.
Source: BloombergOpinion
