Is Turkish President an Autocrat?

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been forced into a second round of voting in Turkey’s much-scrutinized presidential election.

Erdogan came in first with 49.5 per cent of the vote, against the 44.9 garnered by Kemal Kilicdaroglu, on May 14. Since neither candidate crossed the 50 per cent mark, they will again face off in a runoff on May 28.

A former civil servant who is part of the Alevi minority, Kilicdaroglu led a 24-day march for justice in 2017 which was seen as the biggest show of defiance against President Erdogan’s rule for years. His foreign policy is no more “pro-western” than Erdogan’s.

In the aftermath of Turkey’s dramatic result, a new name is on the lips of political commentators: third-place presidential contender Sinan Ogan, leader of the MHP Nationalist Movement Party. Backed by the ATA Alliance, a block of four far-right parties, he secured 5.2 per cent of the electorate, and the support of those voters will be vital for President Erdogan going forward.

Erdogan seems to have survived a string of disasters, including a soaring inflation rate at about 50 per cent, and a botched response to twin earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people three months ago. And he faced a newly unified opposition.

The major cities of Istanbul, Izmir and the capital, Ankara, went for Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the CHP Republican People’s Party, who cobbled together a six-party NATION Alliance, but most of the country’s heartland backed Erdogan and his AK Justice and Development Party’s PEOPLE Alliance.

Even eight of the eleven provinces that were affected by February’s twin quakes voted for him in the presidential poll.

Following the first round, Erdogan asserted that his country showed it has an “advanced democratic culture.” Most of us consider this an exaggeration, which it is. But is Turkey even a democracy, whatever that word means these days?

In the west we have become accustomed to calling presidents or prime ministers we don’t like authoritarians. The word has been used against, among others, Erdogan, Victor Orban of Hungary, the PiS government in Poland, and, of course, Vladimir Putin. And maybe even Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel. At most, we grant them the adjective “illiberal.”

But what exactly does that mean? That these rulers have great advantages, in terms of controlling the levers of power, when facing their opponents at the ballot box?

Of course they do. But how different is this, really, except in degree rather than kind, from the ideological hegemony and political legitimacy granted to parties like Canada’s Liberals or the Democratic Party in the United States?

Don’t they also find massive support from the media, academia, and elsewhere? Don’t their opponents find themselves not only criticized, but vilified as well, as “bigots, racists, purveyors of hate,” and therefore unworthy to govern?

So let’s get back to Turkey and use a sports analogy. How many people would show up to watch a wrestling match knowing it was “fixed” and the participants were basically just going through the motions? How many people would have bet against Saddam Hussein or for that matter Hitler or Stalin, even if they did hold elections? How many people would stay up half the night watching the results on television?

But let’s review the recent Turkish vote. The campaign was intense and both sides had ample access to the electorate to disseminate their programs. The May 14 turnout was nearly 89 percent, underlining the great faith Turks put in elections. This was far, in fact very far, greater than what we have seen in recent Canadian or American elections.

Erdogan allowed his opponents to create a six-party coalition to try to unseat him. The voting itself appeared not to have had any noticeably major irregularities. And surely a genuine authoritarian would have seen to it that he won in the first round, even if only by a point or two? In the concurrent parliamentary election, Erdogan’s AK Party and its nationalist MHP ally also have eked out a slim majority of 316 out of the 600 seats.

Does this mean Erdogan is genuinely popular? Yes – at least for a slim margin of the electorate. And the same is true of the others I’ve mentioned, and probably -- much as we may not like to hear it – even Vladimir Putin himself.

So should we cease criticizing their politics and activities at home and abroad? Of course not. But there’s no need to paint them as dictators who rule simply by the gun and stay in power by terrorizing their people.

That allows us to “hate” them without recognizing they are representative of a very big chunk of the Hungarian, Israeli, Turkish, and Russian population, just as Volodymyr Zelensky is in Ukraine. (And remember, one of Zelensky’s elected predecessors, Viktor Yanukovych, who won the presidency in 2010, was removed in 2014 via what amounted to an extra-legal insurrection.)

Erdogan will win on May 28, mainly because he will gain the votes that went to Ogan, the nationalist on his right. And then he’ll have won fair and square, not that different than was the case when Emmanuel Macron beat challenger Marine Le Pen 58.5 to 41.5 per cent in last year's French election, winning the presidency in a second round where the popular vote came in at just 71.9 per cent.

If “authoritarian rule” can be ended via a non-violent change of government through an election, is it really that? Calling people like Erdogan autocrats means we don’t have to face the difficult task of confronting the political cultures of these states that allow them to win office.