Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, was considered one of the most influential leader of the early twenty-first century. In his two-decade reign, he has changed the face of his country and established a political style that foreshadowed the advent of numerous nationalist extremists worldwide.
Researchers have spoken boldly of freedom expansion around the world in 2003, the year Erdogan and the religiously minded Justice and Development Party, or AKP, won power, and praised the aroma of change in authoritarian Turkey. Recent findings have placed Turkey at the pivot of a global democratic recession, that has endured for more than a decade.
Erdogan’s own progress over the last 20 years reflects the pattern of world politics at the time. As prime minister in the first decade of the twentieth century, he was a facilitating reformer who fueled an economic change and growth.
As Turkish hopes of joining the European Union faded and the West suffered economic crisis, he shifted his to become a religious nationalist, focusing on undoing the repressive legacy of decades of Kemalist secularism. Following the Arab Spring crises in 2011, he used his soft-Islamist influence to promote a Turkish style of democracy for the region.
Erdogan’s “neo-Ottoman” discourse had little chance in the face of a wave of Arab counterrevolutions, and as long as he was in government, it became vividly clear that, the president’s entire goal was to retain and maintain power.
By the 2020s, Erdogan’s style reflected something entirely different, a template for indefinite electoral autocracy, based on majoritarian grandstanding, divisive cultural wars, anti-Western grievances, and suspicions about domestic and foreign plots, not forgetting seizure of key government agencies, oppression and detainment of opposing parties and civil society members, and the gradual downfall of free press in Turkey.
A Swedish Institute has released a report detailing a decade-long process of autocratic rule around the world, with the world’s electoral autocracies expanding to 56 countries by 2023. Erdogan’s Turkey is an obvious leading member of the pack, shaping an illiberal course followed by conservative regimes such as Hungary and India, and mobilizing populist rage for a political mandate, long before the Trumps and Bolsonaros assumed power in their respective countries.
The May 14 General Elections
As voters goes to the polls in the first round of presidential and legislative elections, Erdogan and the AKP are facing the toughest test to their reign ever. Polls project that, Erdogan falls behind Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the affable 74-year-old Presidential Candidate endorsed by a coalition of opposition parties.
Kilicdaroglu, a member of the secularist Republican People’s Party, or CHP, has positioned his candidacy, as that of a one-term public servant intent on restoring Turkish democracy and demolishing the authoritarian rule that was introduced by Erdogan in a 2017 referendum.
Given Erdogan’s command of the reins of power and control over the mainstream press, the chances are still stacked against him. However, the opposition’s appeal has never been more intense during Erdogan’s presidency.
This has been tragically highlighted by the outrage over the loose government oversight in the aftermath of the February catastrophic earthquake, which claimed over 50,000 lives in southern Turkey and destroyed countless of buildings that experts suspect, officials failed to effectively examine for earthquake proofing.
More so, Turkey’s new generation of voters, most of whom only have encountered life under Erdogan, appears to be campaigning for change. Some analysts have cast Kilicdaroglu as a figure similar to President Biden, who campaigned on ending the rancor and division of the Trump era, and as a bridge to a political generation.
A win for the Turkish opposition and the demise of Erdogan’s dictatorship might have far-reaching implications. There may be a major change in national economic policy. In a prior era, Erdogan could campaign on his economic achievements, but years of unorthodox tactics to boost the Turkish economy, has led to a rising cost-of-living crisis, which may lose him votes.
On the global level, his defeat might lead to a better relationship between Turkey and the West, softens Turkey’s stands on Sweden’s NATO membership, and bring Turkey’s contradictory attitude on Russia-Ukraine conflict closer to NATO mainstream.
