Turkey's choice: An early assessment

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) managed to win its third consecutive general election, while increasing its vote percentage again. AKP’s single-party government had received 34.28% of the votes in 2002; then 46.58% in 2007 and now 49.90% in 2011 elections, exceeding many expectations and analyses that foresaw AKP’s probable vote percentage around the mid-40%.

However, the result falls short of the two-thirds majority needed to rewrite Turkey’s 1982 military constitution without having to consult parliament.The Republican People’s party (CHP), came second with 25.9%. The only other party to gain seats in parliament, the Nationalist Movement party (MHP), took 13%, seemingly unaffected by a sex tape scandal that caused the resignation of 10 senior party members.Thirty-six independent candidates, most of whom are backed by the Kurdish BDP, were also voted in, among whom was Kurdish campaigner Leyla Zana from Diyarbakir. Turnout was 84.79%.

There are several aspects of AKP’s consecutive victories since 2002, the most important being its management of Turkey’s chronically crisis-prone economy. Greatest of AKP’s involvement in the economy has been its successful management of a process that had started in the 1980s: creation of an alternative bourgeoisie in Anatolia by state investment and subsidies. This emerging bourgeoisie had acted as the financial engine of the electoral campaign of the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) in the 1990s. Being led by the reformist wing of the Welfare Party, AKP elite had retained this objective, while reformulating Refah’s strict Islamist agenda with a more ambiguous ideology of progressive-modernist-conservatism. Much of this new Anatolian bourgeoisie demanded expanded religious freedoms, although they did not want to stay at odds with the Armed Forces or the secular character of the Republic. AKP’s economic success was to strengthen this Anatolian capital and its reach into the state apparatus, while rendering them independent of state economic policies, easing their integration into the global economy.

Rapidly growing in influence and financial strength, this Anatolian bourgeoisie acted as the main financer of AKP’s electoral campaigns and being perhaps the most important driving force behind the party’s election victories. In turn, AKP’s economic policy and political stability enabled Turkey to grow %8.9 annually and emerge with minimal wounds from the global financial crisis. Furthermore, AKP’s focus on the Anatolian bourgeoisie did create a modernizing influence over the Turkish mainland. Newly rich classes have been integrated into the state apparatus and were given preferential treatment in state tenders. AKP created a new rich that is closely linked with the state, but rendered relatively independent comparatively – in a historical sense.

However, AKP has been coming under increasing criticism in the recent years on three fronts and these issues will remain the most important policy areas in the post-election period:

1) Growing authoritarianism. A NY Times report quotes:

<“I support some of the party’s politics for stability in the country,” Bahar Forta, 62, a dermatologist, said as she was leaving a polling station at a high school in Sisli, an upper-middle-class neighborhood in Istanbul. “However, I also see that the power they hold — almost like a single-party system — will ultimately pave the way for an autocratic regime.”For many younger voters, their biggest concerns were violations of civilian liberties.“There is a thin line between stability and democracy,” said Mustafa Guler, 27, a computer technology consultant, who was on his way to vote.“Freedom for minorities is still an issue, alcohol use is controlled by a government agency,” he said, adding: “Even leave all that aside — what can be more absurd in this day and age than to close down YouTube? My vote is to break their majority.”Many Web sites, including YouTube, have been blocked in recent years by the government Internet Monitoring Agency, often without explanation.Critics point to the fact that Turkey currently has more than 60 journalists in jail, many charged with crimes related to their published work, according to the Turkish Press Association.At least two — Nedim Sener and Ahmet Sik, both investigative journalists critical of the A.K.P. and supportive Islamic organizations — have not been notified of their charges since their arrests in March.>

2) Collapse of AKP’s Kurdish policy:

AKP’s main election campaign policy was to attract nationalist votes by increasing its patriotic rhetoric and hardliner discourse on the Kurdish question, hoping that it would get enough nationalist votes to push the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) below the %10 electoral threshold. While this policy failed and MHP ended up getting more than the %10 threshold, a growing nationalist rhetoric also lost the AKP a considerable portion of the Kurdish votes, reversing the progress it had made in its ‘Kurdish opening’. A Eurasianet report quotes:

<“[T]hey saw the benefit of getting nationalist votes away from the nationalistic party,” commented political scientist Nuray Mert, a columnist for the Turkish daily Milliyet. “They saw there is solid [ground for support] and they can easily get more votes by underlining their nationalist credentials, rather than democratic credentials, and this explains their present policy.” Opinion polls show the AKP should retain power in the parliamentary vote. Down the road, however, concerns are growing that the threat of confrontation could undermine one of the AKP’s key democratic achievements, — the decoupling of the Turkish army from politics. “In their [the AKP’s] minds, there are plenty of bad Kurds and a few good Kurds who belong to their party” said Bahcesehir University Professor Cengiz Aktar, who has advocated reconciliation between the government and Kurds. “When there is a vacuum in policy, others come in and fill this vacuum. Both the Turkish military and PKK may come back. Unless the government solves the Kurdish problem through political means, the military will always be around.” Kurdish parliamentary candidate Aysel Tugluk gave a stark assessment of how relations between the government and Turkey’s Kurdish minority could play out. “We are in limbo, and responsibility belongs to the state and the prime minister,” Tugluk said at a May 5 meeting. “If we end up in heaven, we will live there together, and if we end up in hell, then we will burn together.”>

3) Drafting a new Constitution:

The drafting of a new Constitution was one of the most important themes in this election, with every political party promising a new and more democratic constitution to replace Turkey’s current one, which was drafted and adopted shortly after the 1980 coup d’état. Erdoğan has promised that the new constitution would include “basic rights and freedoms,” replacing the 1982 Constitution implemented under the tutelage of the military after the Sept. 12, 1980 coup d’état. However, he has provided relatively few details on a possible new draft. During campaigning across the country, Erdogan had announced that his target was to obtain a two-thirds majority in the Turkish parliament, a total of 367 of the 550 seats. Instead, Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won just 326 seats, slightly down from the 331 seats it had in the outgoing parliament. That is certainly a stable absolute majority, but it falls far short of the “super majority” that would have allowed the AKP to unilaterally change the Turkish constitution. Erdogan will now serve a third term as prime minister.Erdogan’s declared goal had been to launch a debate on a new constitution immediately after the elections. He wanted to convert Turkey’s existing parliamentary system into a presidential system based on the French model, with himself as president.In order to push through a new constitution based on his ideas, he would have needed at least 330 seats. That would have allowed the AKP to approve a new constitution in parliament as a first step, which would then be submitted to voters in a referendum. Erdogan would probably have won such a referendum. A super majority of 367 seats would have allowed the government to change the constitution without a referendum. Now the prime minister will be forced to cooperate with at least one of the other parties represented in parliament over his constitution plans. Indeed, it is unclear whether Erdogan will even tackle the issue of a new constitution right after the elections, in light of the AKP’s result that is described as ‘disappointing’ by some observers based on its earlier goal of obtaining a parliamentary super-majority.

Parties’ votes and parliamentary seat allocation

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Mr. Erdogan, in an address to hundreds of cheering supporters at his party headquarters in Ankara, the capital, acknowledged the need to work for a consensus if constitutional reforms were to be realized, a priority shared by the country’s political parties and civil organizations.“Our nation delivered to us a call for consensus and dialogue in making this new constitution,” Mr. Erdogan said. “This constitution will be established upon brotherhood, support, sharing, unity and togetherness.”

However given his blunt political style and authoritarian approach in the recent years, his message of ‘sharing, support and togetherness’ was received with a pinch of salt, not only by the opposition, but by some pro-government circles as well. Commenting on the Prime Minister’s speech on a pro-government TV channel ATV, a pro-government professor of political science, Ihsan Dagi expressed: ”Somebody will have to remind the Prime Minister this speech almost everyday, so that he won’t forget what he said later”.