18.05.2023

Triumph of rabid nationalism

Erdoğan looks set to win the second round and a third term as president. Esen Uslu probes the May 14 results and the expected outcome of May 28

As expected, the first round of Turkey’s presidential election has ended inconclusively and the eventual winner will be decided in the second round, to be held on May 28. However, that is not the case for the parliamentary elections, which were held simultaneously on May 14. There is a clear winner in the shape of rabid nationalism, although it was split into three components.

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) of current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has long proved unable to win an outright majority in any general election. However, it is still getting the largest share of votes - this time picking up 35%. It has consistently relied on the support of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), founded originally by the infamous Grey Wolves, in order to retain its majority in the national assembly.

However, as we approached the general elections, the MHP was in a sorry state. Cooperating with Erdoğan and his policies, without blinking a eye, caused internal tremors. A large group eventually split to form the Good Party (İYİ), which positioned itself as the main nationalist opposition and eventually aligned with the Republican Peoples Party (CHP) as the backbone of the Nation Alliance.

The state of the MHP was such a concern for Erdoğan and the AKP that they hastened, in April 2022, to reduce the electoral threshold to 7% from the 10% (designed to keep the Kurds out of parliament), in order to try and ensure sufficient MHP representation. But unexpectedly it received 10% of the vote - a loss of just one percent compared to the 2018 elections - and as a result of the reduced threshold won one more seat, taking it to 50. The result is that the AKP-MHP coalition has a working majority in the shape of 317 out of 600 seats.

Meanwhile, MHP’s offshoot, the İYİ, also got 10% (and 7% of the seats - one better than in 2018). The need for the opposition alliance to pick up Kurdish votes in order to win both the presidential race and a majority in parliament put the İYİ in a difficult position. Its policies have been based on an existentialist enmity to the Kurdish freedom movement (and especially the HDP Peoples’ Democratic Party).

Furthermore, the CHP was insistent that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who is from the Alevi Turkish minority, should be the presidential candidate of the Nation coalition, but İYİ president Meral Akşener was adamant that Kılıçdaroğlu was unelectable. Her proposal was that either the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, or the mayor or Ankara, Mansur Yavaş, with their impeccable nationalist credentials, should be selected.

When eventually Kılıçdaroğlu was agreed as the candidate by the six leaders of the coalition in March, Akşener withdrew from the Nation coalition. It took two days of intense negotiations to bring her back into the fold. There was a compromise whereby İmamoğlu and Mansur would serve as assistants to a Kılıçdaroğlu presidency.

As the Turkish saying goes, however, ‘Shredded pants cannot be held together with tacking’. From then on the İYİ was going through the motions of campaigning for the coalition but with no great enthusiasm. For example, on every possible occasion it emphasised its opposition to ‘terrorism’ - code for the Kurdish freedom movement.

Akşener’s slogan, “One vote for Kemal and one vote for Meral”, is indicative. Most probably the İYİ was unable, or unwilling, to carry the votes of its popular base for Kılıçdaroğlu, since the third candidate for presidency, Sinan Oğan, is also from the nationalist wing.

Oğan was elected as a MP from Iğdır province on the Armenian border in the 2011 elections on a MHP ticket, but in 2015 he was expelled from the MHP. He mounted a legal appeal and was taken back into the party as a result. But he was expelled again in 2017, along with the group that went on to form the İYİ, however, he did not join the new party.

Azerbaijan

His family is of Azerbaijani origin, his academic career was on the economy and politics of Azerbaijan and, after gaining his PhD in Moscow, he lectured at the Azerbaijan State Economics University. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, Oğan was close to Abulfaz Elchibey, the second president of newly independent Azerbaijan. He worked in the presidential office until a coup toppled Elchibey. Oğan also worked as the Azerbaijan representative of the Turkish Cooperation and Coordination Agency - designed to infiltrate the politics of Turkic populations in neighbouring countries - under the cloak of cultural cooperation.

He formed the Russia-Ukraine research desk of the Centre for Eurasian Strategic Studies (ASAM) - the main weapon in Turkish denial of the Armenian genocide during World War I. Oğan also formed the Centre for International Relations and Strategic Analyses - one of the most influential nationalist think-tanks operating nowadays. It presents itself as the “thought factory of Turkey”.

In order to be a presidential candidate, Oğan needed 100,000 signatures. The president of the Zafer (Victory) Party, Ümit Özdağ, supported him. Özdağ is also an important figure in nationalist circles. He is the son of one of the officers of the junta that toppled the government in 1960 and a close associate of Alparslan Türkeş, the founding president of the MHP and another member of the 1960-61 military junta.

When Türkeş and his 14 fellow conspirators attempted to take over the junta, they were defeated and in effect exiled. They were posted as diplomats to faraway countries. Özdağ’s father was sent to Japan and he was born there. Educated in Germany he specialised, as an academic, in the political relations between the military and civilians. Özdağ also took part in the formation of ASAM and its Armenian Studies Institute.

He became a prominent member of the MHP and attempted to stand as a candidate against party leader Devlet Bahçeli at its 2006 congress - but found himself booted out two days before the congress was convened. He returned to academic work and became the president of 21st Century Turkey Institute - yet another think-tank of nationalists and ex-generals.

Özdağ rejoined the MHP in 2010 and was then elected to the national committee, becoming an MP in 2015. At the 2016 congress he declared himself as a candidate for the party presidency and, like Oğan, was expelled! He subsequently took part in the formation of the İYİ party and was elected as an MP in 2018.

He was also expelled from the İYİ in 2020, but once again this was overturned by the courts. So he returned to the party in 2021 - but then resigned to form the Zafer Party (ZP). In the 2023 presidential elections he floated the idea of Mansur Yavaş’s candidacy, but then switched to supporting Sinan Oğan. For the parliamentary elections ZP formed the ATA coalition with smaller rightwing parties and won only two percent of all votes - with no seats in parliament as a result, of course.

However, Sinan Oğan got over five percent, so the support he gathered may be quite significant in deciding the outcome of the second round.

Left results

First, there is the Green Left Party (YSP) - the form in which the Kurdish freedom movement was forced to participate in the parliamentary elections when the HDP was threatened with collapse if its electoral support did not improve. YSP votes were down to nine percent, but that was still enough for 61 seats.

In the 2018 elections the HDP had 67 seats after it won over 10% of the vote. We must bear in mind that in that election the threshold was 10% exactly, and many on the left supported the campaign to get it over that hurdle. This time the Turkish Workers Party (TİP) joined the Labour and Freedom Alliance along with the YSP, but fielded its own candidate. The TİP got less than two percent and won four seats. Had the YSP and TİP fielded a single list, they would have won more seats between them.

The TİP’s campaigning drew much criticism from the left, as its anti-Kurdish bias became very apparent despite its lip service to the Labour and Freedom Alliance. The other communist and left parties that took part in the elections, running independently, got dismal results as expected.

Now we have a parliament with a clear majority for the AKP-MHP coalition - although the AKP fielded on its own lists candidates from parties with apparent religious tones. As a result, the Huda Par - the Hezbollah-associated party in Kurdistan - now has three seats in parliament. And the New Welfare Party (YRP) got three percent of the vote and five seats - the YRP had made use of the AKP-led alliance to jump over the electoral threshold.

The CHP lists included members of the Nation coalition except those of the İYİ. The unanimous decision of Nation had been not to put up party leaders as candidates. Their expectation was that when Kılıçdaroğlu won the elections, they would be appointed as ministers, so they are no longer MPs and their last hope to remain relevant in politics is if Kılıçdaroğlu wins the second round.

Given the buoyant nationalist right, however, such a win seems unlikely. Their hope is to persuade the five percent who supported Sinan Oğan in the first round to switch to Kılıçdaroğlu, and to mobilise those who did not vote. Meanwhile, keeping up the level of support from Kurdish voters will be a major hurdle. The Kurdish freedom movement did an excellent job in supporting Kılıçdaroğlu - in some Kurdish provinces he won 70% of the vote. But asking them to do the same once again despite the dismal support in central and western Turkey of ‘white Turks’ could be quite a task.

In addition, the left-leaning urban petty bourgeoisie will be very difficult to mobilise once more, because their disappointment and apathy is tangible. Considering the immense logistics of transporting those who must be returned to the earthquake zone to vote, doing that once more on May 28, which is the start of the holiday season, could be very difficult indeed.

But, unless such efforts are made, the result of that election looks to be a foregone conclusion, with Erdoğan winning his third term as president.