04.05.2023

Hanging on a knife’s edge

Though the opposition appears to have a narrow lead ahead of this month’s general election, the regime has plenty of dirty tricks up its sleeve. Esen Uslu reports on Erdoğan-style campaigning

With the May 14 election fast approaching, the last furlong of the long-drawn-out campaigning is becoming more and more intense and hectic. Opinion polls, if you trust them, suggest that the first round of the presidential election will be inconclusive, with no candidate winning the required 50%.

Most of the polling companies are biased towards a certain political party, so their predictions are to a large extent manipulative. The projections of a few respected and neutral pollsters suggest a very small difference, irrespective of the inevitable three percent margin of error.

The second round - between the two candidates who gain the most votes in the first round - will be held on May 28 and a majority of respected pollsters are predicting that sitting president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is likely to lose by a narrow margin.

How the votes for MPs are distributed is considered of secondary importance (at least for the time being), with everything focused on the presidential election. The People’s Alliance (Cumhur İttifakı), set up by Erdoğan’s AKP (Justice and Development Party) seems to be on course to lose votes, while the pro-establishment parties in the Nation Alliance (Millet İttifakı) should perform better than they did last time.

Party and state

Erdoğan’s campaign started well even before the election date was announced. Since last autumn he and his ministers have been clearly going all out to try and win another term of office. Not to mention the (Erdoğan-appointed) military top brass, as well as civil servant bureaucrats, who have been in full swing in a supporting role.

The two-pronged thrust of Erdoğan’s campaign has been, firstly, to placate working people suffering under the stresses of rampant inflation; and, secondly, to herd undecided voters into Erdoğan’s fold by fanning up age-old anti-Kurdish sentiments.

Occasional hiccups, such as the devastation of the recent earthquake (and the woeful response to it and lack of preparation of the state that was plain for everyone to see), or the unexpected shift in relations with China, Iran and Saudi Arabia, did not change the main thrusts of his campaigning, but did give them new dimensions.

All state bodies, including the judiciary, are playing their part in helping his election campaign. As things gain momentum, the speeches by Erdoğan and his ministers have become more and more venomous. In a passably democratic state, some of those speeches might be interpreted as either a confession of guilt or a declaration of intent to commit further misdemeanours, but in Turkey there is no leading judicial figure willing to question their behaviour.

Two MPs representing CHP (Republican People’s Party), who serve on the Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council, which oversees all public broadcasting services, gave a press conference and presented their findings regarding the use of public media as Erdoğan’s propaganda vehicle. They calculated that TRT broadcasted 32 hours of Erdoğan’s speeches in April, while his principal opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu of the CHP, had only 32 minutes. Erdoğan’s principal ally, the head of MHP, has got 25 hours, while the second party in Millet İttifakı bloc has had just 10 minutes.

Top officers of the police, the director general of security and the vice-commander of the gendarmerie, have been touring the provinces and principal cites under the pretext of reviewing security measures to be implemented during the elections. Everywhere they meet up with governors, vice-governors, district administrators, local police and gendarmerie commanders, and in fact have been acting as purveyors of Erdoğan’s campaign.

Their private talks in the eastern and south-eastern provinces have been oriented to pulling the reins of the bureaucracy: “If the Millet bloc wins, only passport holders will be able to come here”; “The Millet bloc is in collusion with the [Kurdish nationalist] PKK - don’t let it win”; “Tell everybody that the PKK supports the opposition candidate, while the state supports the chief [ie, Erdoğan]. Imbue everybody with this message”.

Splitting the opposition bloc and its Kurdish supports has been one of Erdoğan’s main preoccupations. His team has clandestinely supported minority presidential hopefuls - private companies that receive millions of dollars’ worth of public tenders have provided the required finance to ensure they are on the ballot. The third and fourth presidential candidates will not be able to get more than a few percentage points of the vote - but whatever they get will be beneficial for Erdoğan, since that will almost certainly ensure that his principal opponent could not win outright in the first round.

He also attempted an underhand move via a contact of Abdullah Öcalan, founder of the PKK, who has been imprisoned incommunicado for much of the time on Imrali prison island in the middle of Marmara Sea since 2002. The contact was a member of the judiciary, according to rumours. We do not know exactly what was offered, but apparently Öcalan refused to play ball.

It was Selahattin Demirtaş, the jailed former president of the HDP, who revealed the attempted contact, and reminded what Öcalan had instructed the HDP delegation that was allowed to visit him on Imralı during 2015 peace process. Öcalan said to them:

You are the elected representatives; you represent the will of the people and you are free. I am attempting to do my best to further the peace process through my very limited resources within the confines of this island. I am doing my best - I am sincere and serious on this issue. But, if you realise that the government is attempting to deceive me, to deceive you and the people, that their approach is insincere and oriented to utilise the process to further their selfish aims, you have a responsibility. You may not be able to contact me again, but you must prevent them deceiving the people.

The HDP, as the principal Kurdish party, kept its cards close to its chest until the last possible moment. The Constitutional Court was supposed to hear the defence of the HDP on April 11 in a case where prosecutors were demanding the party’s closure and the banning of its principal leaders from legally participating in politics. But the HDP declined to submit a verbal defence, and the case file was transferred to a special rapporteur. At any moment his report could be presented to the members of Supreme Court to make a judgment.

Meanwhile, the HDP has decided not to take part in the elections under its own name. Instead its candidates are on the lists of the Green Left Party. But this move does not protect all of them. Some of the current leading members are there and, if the HDP is closed down, they would become ineligible. Similarly the HDP cannot be represented on the local election committees which oversee the contest.

HDP election campaign offices and volunteers have also been targeted in violent attacks, especially in the previous strongholds of the AKP-MHP coalition. That bodes ill for volunteer observers in many areas, where security officers, bureaucrats and Cumhur bloc members are in collusion.

Glad tidings

On the economic side of the election campaign, winning the hearts and minds of ordinary working people is not an easy task. Since last autumn Erdoğan has been conceding nominal wage increases, creating 2.5 million new pensioners by reducing the retirement age at a stroke and providing financial giveaways to farmers and petty traders in towns and cities, not to mention generous subsidies to small and medium-size enterprises.

Erdoğan’s spending spree is, of course, countered by the current rampant inflation rate - all the nominal increases awarded have already been wiped out by price and tax rises. However, all this has still been presented as good news to many facing financial hardship.

The central budget has already meant a $13 billion deficit in the first quarter of this year. The projection is that the annual deficit will reach 6% of GDP. In addition, the massive effect of the earthquakes will be felt for years to come and, irrespective of who wins the elections, a review of policy and a supplementary budget will be required.

But the apparently carefree Erdoğan is acting as the harbinger of glad tidings almost every day of the week. On the day Turkey’s Black Sea gas fields started pumping natural gas to a land terminal, there was a televised ceremony with much fanfare to celebrate. His glad tidings that time were the provision of gas free of charge for one month to all domestic users, plus a reduction in invoices for the rest of the year.

Then there was the delivery of nuclear fuel pellets from Russia for the first nuclear reactor for generating electricity. Erdoğan announced with much fanfare that Turkey is becoming a ‘nuclear power’ - even though the power generation plant, with its four nuclear reactors, is actually being built by the Russians and is years away from producing any electricity.

And so the ‘glad tidings’ go on. Earlier this week it was the opening of “Europe’s largest solar energy farm” in central Anatolia, that will supply all the electricity needs of two-million people. However, it is mainly the military-industrial complex that is to benefit. Every day a new drone, new plane, new helicopter, new warship, new tank, new artillery … is either reported to be ready for production or is being commissioned. Of course, each and every one them requires a televised ceremony with much fanfare.

The Technofest - the brainchild of Erdoğan’s son-in-law, who himself designs and produces drones - is an air show which brings together aviation enthusiasts, industrialists and the military to present their wares each autumn. This year it was brought forward to the end of April, providing yet another televised ceremony.

The laying of foundations for the housing of earthquake victims is providing more opportunities for televised celebrations. But the time available was too short to make comprehensive designs for such an endeavour, so simulated - or plainly fictitious - foundations have been laid in many cities. In Turkey we are accustomed to the government’s fictive schemes: so long as there is a backdrop with cranes, girders and suitably attired construction workers, a ceremonial pouring of concrete can be filmed. Afterwards the simulated project will be put on hold until ‘an appropriate time’.

That is exactly how fictive democracy works - and, if the opposition’s support is clearly increasing, there is a chance that the coming elections may be simulated too. What would follow that, should it happen, is anyone’s guess.