Turkey held simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14, 2023, in the second round of elections since the country transitioned to a presidential system. Despite successive speculations over the past three years that the country will go to early elections, the elections were held on time, five full years after the previous parliamentary and presidential elections in 5. These were certainly the most anticipated electoral rounds in decades, not only for the level of polarization that preceded it in Turkish public opinion, but also for its internal and external political connotations, especially if the Turkish people decide to follow the path that the Justice and Development Party and its leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan took two decades ago, or choose to turn off this path and give the old ruling class another chance to return to power.
Polling Day was preceded by a relatively short election campaign, given the country's preoccupation with dealing with the consequences of the February 2023 earthquake, which affected a large area and millions of residents of southern Turkey. However, as soon as the election campaign began, the Turkish political scene witnessed an unprecedented exchange of accusations between presidential candidates and rival party blocs. The competitors also made generous promises to all social blocs, and other promises to implement policies and actions that were not always realistic and feasible.
Turkish elections may not have attracted as much regional and international attention as they did. Leaders of the OAS member states have called on the Turkish people to support President Erdogan, as have public figures in the Arab neighborhood, but a prominent number of the most important Western print media, both in Western Europe and the United States, have taken an anti-Erdogan stance, encouraging or hoping for his defeat. In the few days leading up to polling day, it seemed that these elections were no longer just a Turkish affair, but a matter for the future of the entire Levant, as well as the Balkans and the Caucasus.
Contenders' line-ups
From left to right (Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Muharrem Ince, Kemal Kilicdaroglu and Sinan Ogan) (Reuters)
There were four candidates running in the presidential elections: First, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who leads the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the country, has been prime minister and then president of the republic since 4. Second: Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP) and leader of the opposition for more than a decade. Third: Muharrem Ince, a former leader of the Republican People's Party (CHP) and its candidate for the presidency in 2003, who ran this time as a candidate for the Balad Party, which he founded after defecting from the People's Party a few years ago. And the fourth: Sinan Ogan, candidate of an alliance of small radical nationalist parties, called the Ancestral Alliance.
Opposition media websites have launched a massive campaign against Muharram Ince since he announced his candidacy, believing that his votes will come from the votes of the two main opposition parties, the Republican Party and the Good Party. A few days before election day, images of a sexual nature appeared on social media sites close to the opposition, reuniting Muharrem Ince with an unknown girl, and it was clear that a final attempt had begun to destroy the man's reputation and force him to withdraw from the competition. Although most of those who have seen the photos have found them to be fake and that the attorney general has opened a case to prosecute those who released and circulated the images, Ince, who appeared burdened by the burden of confrontation, had already announced his withdrawal just days before polling day. Ince's withdrawal came late, and his name could not be removed from the ballot, but the presidential election effectively became a race between three candidates, not four.
The second surprise in the presidential election arena came from a surprise meeting Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu held with the leaders of the Kurdish nationalist Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which ended with the HDP's decision not to field a candidate in the presidential elections and to announce support for Kılıçdaroğlu. The HDP's candidate in the 2018 presidential election won 8.5 percent of the vote, a significant and likely percentage. There is no doubt that it was such a mass of votes that drove Kılıçdaroğlu to venture to appear allied with a Kurdish nationalist dissident party.
Erdogan and Kılıçdaroğlu were the main parties to the presidential electoral struggle due to the large party mobilization behind each of them, but this does not mean that Sinan Ogan was without influence, from the beginning it became clear that the size of the votes that Ogan would receive would determine whether the presidential election could be decided from the first round, or that the decision would be delayed to a second round on May 28, given that the Turkish electoral law requires the winning candidate to obtain more than 50%. of sounds.
Parliamentary elections were more complex, although they required only one round of balloting, regardless of the nature of the winners' map. Turkey's parties competing in the parliamentary elections have come together into two major alliances, and two less important alliances.
The first alliance was the People's Alliance, which included the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has ruled the country since 2002, the nationalist-oriented Nationalist Welfare Party, the Islamist-oriented New Welfare Party, the Kurdish Islamist Party of Hoda Bar, the conservative nationalist Grand Unity Party, and the center-left Democratic Left Party. Unlike the PJD and the MHP, the other Popular Alliance parties are small parties, and none of them was expected to obtain a significant percentage of the vote, but their presence gave the alliance the image of an inclusive national political framework and boosted its candidates' chances in specific areas where one of these parties enjoyed privileged influence.
The second alliance is the Umma Alliance, which included the largest opposition bloc, including the secular Kemalist Republican People's Party (CHP), which led the republic alone for a quarter of a century, and the Nationalist-Nationalist-Oriented Good Party, both weighty parties, as well as the Happiness, Future, Democracy and Progress Party, and the Democratic Party, all of which are counted on the conservative or Islamist wing of Turkish politics, but these four parties are considered small parties, to the extent that none of them was expected to receive 1% of the vote. To be sure, the impetus for forming the Nation Alliance was not necessarily parliamentary elections, since the People's Party and the Good Party, which are the center of gravity of the alliance, did not desperately need support from other forces. This alliance was motivated by the presidential elections, since the opposition parties were aware that a candidate from any of the opposition parties could not defeat Erdogan, and that winning the presidential election required a large-scale, multi-political mobilization behind the opposition candidate.
The third coalition, called Effort and Freedom, is led by the Kurdish nationalist Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which is accused of being the political arm of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which is classified as a terrorist organization by the Turkish state. However, because the HDP faces an unresolved issue in the Supreme Constitutional Court, he decided – as a precaution – to run in this coalition on behalf of the Green Left Party, along with a number of weightless leftist parties.
The fourth alliance, the Ancestral Alliance, includes several small radical nationalist parties, including the racially oriented Victory Party, which stands behind the presidential candidate, Sinan Ogan. Finally comes the fifth coalition, the Union of Socialist Forces, which includes the Communist Movement Party and other marginal Marxist organizations.
Coalition electoral entities did not always contest elections on single lists; in the case of the public alliance, the MHP decided to run alone, and the good party option in the case of the Nation Alliance.
Surprising Electoral Results
(French)
The results surprised all parties interested in the elections, whether Turkish, regionally or internationally. During the few weeks before election day, a consensus was born in Turkish political circles, even in AKP circles, that the AKP-led People's Alliance would lose its majority in parliament to the opposition Umma Alliance and the Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party together, but what resulted from the elections was the return of the People's Alliance to parliament with a comfortable majority, with about 322 seats out of the 600 seats in parliament. It is true that the AKP's share of the vote fell slightly from its share in 2018, but the MHP not only increased its share of votes and seats, but also outperformed its splinter Good Party, which was seeking to become the country's main nationalist party and its leader, Meral Aksener, to become the next prime minister if the opposition won the elections and managed to return the country to the parliamentary system.
Because the Turkish electoral system requires any party running in its name, or any electoral alliance, to obtain 7% of the vote to be allowed to enter parliament, the votes of small parties and coalitions that failed to cross the electoral threshold are distributed in each electoral district to the parties and coalitions that succeeded in crossing the electoral edge in proportions consistent with their votes. It is this system that has provided the People's Alliance with the opportunity to return to parliament with a comfortable majority.
Turkish Guidance Party leader Zecharias Yabicioglu (left) next to Erdogan (Getty Images)
In addition, two small parties allied with the Justice and Development Party (PJD) in the People's Alliance succeeded in entering parliament for the first time, with the Islamist-oriented New Welfare Party winning 5 seats and the Kurdish Islamist Huda Bar Party winning at least 3 seats. There is no doubt that Hoda Barr's entry into parliament carries with it a prominent symbolic significance, given that it will raise the banner of the Islamist Kurds, reveal the extreme diversity of the Kurdish voice, and that not all Turkish Kurds are dissidents and opponents of the Turkish state. As for the new Welfare Party, its well-deserved victory nominates it to inherit the entire Islamist Felicity Party, after the latter chose to join the Nation Alliance and enter parliament, not with its own votes, but with the votes of the Republican People's Party.
The new Welfare Party led by Fatih Erbakan announced on March 22, 2023, joining the "People's Alliance" (AP)
On the other hand, the CHP voted slightly more than its share in 2018, but only slightly exceeded 25 percent of the vote. Worse, the People's Party (YP) seats fell from the 163 it achieved in the 2018 elections as the deal Kılıçdaroğlu signed with the conservative Small Nation Alliance parties gave them a total of 34 seats in parliament. In other words, these parties won these parliamentary seats after running on the People's Party lists, in exchange for the support of Kılıçdaroğlu and the provision of Islamist and conservative cover for him in the presidential elections.
Similarly, the share of the Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which ran on behalf of the Green Left, fell short of its share of the vote in the 2018 elections, achieving less than 10 percent of the vote. The Good Party's share has also fallen to around 9 percent of the vote, three or four points lower than polls had expected before the six-party dispute over the presidential candidate.
Meanwhile, all other radical nationalist and leftist Marxist alliances and parties have failed entirely to enter parliament, except those that ran in alliance with the Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) or on its lists. Al-Balad also failed to cross the electoral edge.
Sinan Oğan, a nationalist-racist, won 5 percent of the vote because a segment of Turkish citizens is perceived to be concerned about the burden of the growing number of refugees in the country. (AP)
In the presidential elections, the results also revealed the inability of opinion polls from all walks of life to predict the outcome of the confrontation between the three candidates. Sinan Oğan, a nationalist-racist, won 5 percent of the vote, not because there is a racist nationalist orientation among all those who voted for him, but because a segment of Turkish citizens is perceived to be concerned about the burden of the country's growing refugee population. But Sinan Ogan's 5% was enough anyway to prevent the first-round presidential election from being decided.
The surprise of the second presidential elections came in the large difference between the two main candidates, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. It is true that Erdogan could not decide the elections in the first round, but he achieved at least forty-nine and a half percent of the vote, compared to just under 45 percent of the vote for Kılıçdaroğlu. That is, the results showed that the two main candidates' share of the vote was not as close as most polls and observers inside and outside the country had predicted before the elections, and that Kılıçdaroğlu's victory was not only difficult, but almost impossible.
Election dynamics
It is difficult to understand the forces that pushed for the crystallization of these results and their interactions without returning to the previous presidential and parliamentary elections, because the presidential system of government in Turkey is a new system, and the only presidential-parliamentary elections that have taken place before under this system were the 2018 elections.
What took place in the 2018 elections was a heated presidential contest between four main candidates, each from a bloc that is part of the mainstream political mainstream: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, candidate of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP); Muharrem Ince, candidate of the Republican People's Party (CHP); Selahattin Demirtaş, candidate of the Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP); and Meral Aksener, candidate of the Nationalist-oriented Good Party. Erdogan won that election in the first round, beating 50 percent by more than two points, and his three rivals collectively received just over 45 percent of the vote. The fact that the total votes of Erdoğan's rivals in the 2018 elections exactly match what Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu received in this election, and the reason behind this is clear: all the party forces that stood behind the three opposition candidates in 2018 have lined up behind the People's Party candidate.
In some detail, it can be said that Kılıçdaroğlu received the most votes of the traditional CHP voters, a significant part of the nationalist vote, and more or less, to one extent or another, than the traditional rate of the Kurdish nationalist vote.
Kılıçdaroğlu's failure to win the first round or even to beat Erdogan is certainly due to the fact that a significant segment of the Kurdish voice, especially the conservative Kurdish vote, refused to vote for him. A small percentage of the CHP, or so-called "Sunni Kemalists," and a significant percentage of the Good Party, who opposed Kılıçdaroğlu's alliance with the nationalist Kurds, also abstained from voting for Kılıçdaroğlu. The four small Islamist and conservative parties, which lined up behind Kılıçdaroğlu, seem to have failed to convince enough conservative votes to tip the fortunes of the secular Alawite opposition candidate who carries the CHP's heavyweight legacy on his shoulders.
Erdogan could have decided the elections from the first round, of course, but his inability to achieve almost the percentage of votes he achieved in 2018 is due to what Sinan Ogan succeeded in achieving from the nationalist voice, and to Erdogan's problem with the Kurdish voice, and the dissolution of part of the conservative Kurdish voice from him, the voice that used to vote for the Justice and Development Party until the Kurdish peace process stopped in 2016. It is likely that a difficult part of the young vote, especially first-time voters, even some from conservative families, has not been decided to vote for the president, for one reason or another. There is no doubt that the country's economic crisis, and inflation rates that remain high, have had some impact on the reluctance of traditional votes for Erdogan and the AKP to vote for them this time.
Voting rates for the PJD have been declining since the 2018 elections, and the party can no longer win a parliamentary majority on its own as it did from 2002 to 2015. (French)
The results of the surprise parliamentary elections must be read in light of the solidity of the AKP and MHP bases. Clearly, a significant proportion of Felicity voters sided with the new Welfare Party. The Huda Bar Party has also succeeded in mobilizing a significant number of its Kurdish Islamist supporters in Diyarbakır and the Kurdish-majority areas in the southeast, and voting for it despite the climate of fear and threat created by Kurdish nationalist activists in the region.
On the other hand, the PJD voting rates are declining dramatically in the 2018 elections from the November 2015 elections, and in these elections from the 2018 elections, and the party is no longer able to win a parliamentary majority on its own as it was from 2002 to 2015. Such a decline is bound to push the party's leadership to a more serious and comprehensive review at the level of organizational structure and leadership at all levels, as well as at the level of policies and how to manage governance, if the party still has the incentive to continue leading the Turkish state in the coming years.
In general, it is not true that the elections showed a growing tilt of Turkish voters towards the nationalist camp. The traditional nationalist bloc is represented by the Nationalist Movement Party and the Good Party, and what happened in these elections is that a section of the supporters of the Good Party came back and gave its vote to the parent party, the Nationalist Movement Party, which is the reason for the decline in the share of the good vote and the significant increase in the share of the Nationalist Movement Party.
Implications of the first round and prospects for the second
(Getty Images)
The results of these elections clearly indicate that the majority of the Turkish people still want to continue the path of the past two decades of AKP rule, and the stability of the Turkish state, despite the economic difficulties that Turkey has been facing in the last two years. The huge and unprecedented opposition alliance has not been able to convince the Turkish voter that it represents a serious alternative, a credible alternative to lead the country in the midst of an economic crisis, regional turmoil, and shifts in the international landscape.
There are indications that the majority of Turkish voters are still convinced that the AKP, with its great record of achievements in the past two decades, can get Turkey out of the economic crisis, and that Erdogan's policy of independence in foreign policy is the best for Turkey and its role in the region and the world. It seems that the Six Alliance, with its wide ideological variations, did not succeed in convincing the majority of voters that it would be able to form a stable and coherent government, and that it would not return the country to the era of anxious coalition governments, which caused socio-economic deterioration during the nineties and made Turkey hostage to international wills and financial lending organizations.
All this does not mean that Erdogan's victory in the second round of the presidential elections is guaranteed, or that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu's argument that the directions of change shown by the first round will make his victory in the second round achievable. The first second-round challenge for the two rivals relates to their ability to motivate those who participated in the first-round elections to return to cast their votes again in the run-off. There is a danger that a number of Erdoğan's supporters feel that victory is secured and that it is not necessary to go to vote, and a corresponding danger that threatens Kılıçdaroğlu's chances of despair and despair among a segment of his voters, losing hope of victory, and that their votes will not make a difference anyway. The second challenge is the 5% bloc of voters who voted for Sinan Oğan, and whether they will abstain in the second round, or whether they will be divided between supporting Erdogan and Kılıçdaroğlu, in varying proportions.
Most predictions were that voters in the first round would exceed 89% of those eligible to vote, but it was likely that this percentage was already two points lower, and that most of those who abstained from voting decided to abstain from voting for Erdogan, in particular, for economic reasons, especially among voters in Istanbul, the largest city most affected by the economic crisis. Erdogan will need to find some way to convince them that he will pay special attention to the economic and financial situation, that they should put their trust in him and not in the opposition candidate, and that their participation in the second round is about the future of the country as a whole and not just his political future. In the end, there are those who say that President Erdogan can win the second round without much effort if he announces the names of a small handful of his next government team, provided that these are heavy figures capable of gaining the trust of large segments of the people.
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This report is copied from Al Jazeera Center for Studies. To view the original click here.