Turkey: AKP Pays the Price

Having suffered a defeat in local elections, the ruling AKP will either move to curb its recent authoritarianism or further tighten its grip, Gareth Jenkins writes for ISN Security Watch.

Turkey’s 29 March local elections were a milestone in the short history of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). For the first time since the party was founded in August 2001, the AKP not only failed to increase its vote compared with the previous election but suffered a significant decrease in support.

The party also failed to achieve its goal of becoming a truly nationwide party by increasing its vote in geographical regions traditionally supported by a specific opposition party - such as the Aegean and Mediterranean coasts, which have long been strongholds of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP); and, more significantly, the Kurdish southeast of the country, which remains dominated by the pro-Kurdish Democratic Society Party (DTP).

The results of the local elections also suggest that public perceptions of the AKP have begun to change. Since it first came to power nationally in November 2002, the AKP has based its electoral success on the combination of its ability to project a Muslim identity - while simultaneously refuting opposition claims that it harbored long-term plans to establish an Islamic state - and its successful management of the economy.

Even though the campaign for the 29 March elections was fought primarily on national issues, religion played a very minor role. However, the downturn in the Turkish economy - which had begun to make itself felt before the global crisis broke in October 2008 - has severely undermined the AKP’s economic reputation.

In addition, over the last six months, the opposition parties have been able to open a new front against the AKP by accusing it of authoritarianism, abuse of power and increasing corruption.

Losing its foothold

In the 3 November 2002 general election, the AKP won 34.3 percent of the national vote. In the local elections of 28 March 2004, it took 41.7 percent of the overall vote, which rose to 46.6 percent in the general election of 22 July 2007. In the run-up to the local elections of 29 March, AKP officials were confidently predicting that the party would probably win over 50 percent.

However, it soon became clear that the AKP had fallen far short of its target. When the unofficial results were announced late in the afternoon of 30 March, the AKP’s total vote stood at 38.9 percent, ahead of the CHP with 23.1 percent and the ultranationalist National Action Party (MHP) with 16.1 percent.

Although the AKP had retained control of 10 of Turkey’s 16 metropolises, including Istanbul and Ankara, it had lost its two footholds on Turkey’s southern coast: Antalya to the CHP and Adana to the MHP. It had also been resoundingly defeated in areas which it had expected to wrest from the opposition. In the municipal election in the Aegean port city of Izmir, a traditional stronghold of the CHP long been targeted by the AKP, the CHP won 55.0 percent, up from 47.2 percent in the previous local elections in 2004. The AKP could only manage 31.1 percent, down from 32.6 percent in 2004.

After the 2007 general election, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan had set replacing the DTP as the largest party in southeast Turkey as one of the AKP’s main targets for March 2009.  The DTP has long been regarded by many supporters and opponents alike as being closely affiliated with the outlawed - and very secular - Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been waging a 25 year-old insurgency for greater political and cultural rights for Turkey’s Kurdish minority. As a result, the DTP has often faced difficulties in securing funding from the central government and its members have been harassed, prosecuted and even imprisoned by the Turkish authorities.

Even allowing for such difficulties, when it has won local elections, the DPT has acquired a reputation for inefficiency and an inability to provide basic services. As a result, the party appeared an easy target for the AKP. Not only was the AKP able to mobilize the resources of the state - including distributing huge amounts of free food and fuel in what has long been the most impoverished region of the country - but, unlike the main opposition parties, it was able to try to undercut the DTP’s secular Kurdish nationalism by appealing to a sense of Muslim solidarity in what is also the most conservative region in Turkey.

In addition to state-run institutions, in the months leading up to 29 March elections, Islamic charities and NGOs worked vigorously to try to boost the AKP’s grassroots support.

However, when the results of the elections were announced not only had the DTP retained its position as the dominant political party in the region but had actually increased its share of the vote. In the municipal elections in Diyarbakir, the largest city in southeast Turkey with a population of 1.5 million, the DTP won 65.4 percent of the vote, up 7.1 percent points from 58.3 percent in 2004. Despite all of its efforts, the AKP’s vote fell by 3.7 percentage points to 31.6 percent.

Hubris and hegemony

The reasons for the decline in the AKP’s vote are still unclear. Although local factors - such as the popularity of individual candidates - undoubtedly played a role in some areas, they cannot explain the decrease in support for the AKP in the country as a whole.

Nor were there any significant changes in the leadership or policy initiatives of the main opposition parties. Indeed, during the election campaign, the long-term leaders of both the CHP and the MHP - Deniz Baykal and Devlet Bahceli, respectively - appeared as uninspiring as they had been during their patent failure to impress voters in July 2007, March 2004 or November 2002.

As a result, the shift in voter preferences in the 29 March election was probably primarily a reaction against the AKP government rather the manifestation of newfound confidence in the opposition.

It is likely that the AKP was damaged by its failure initially even to acknowledge that Turkey was facing an economic crisis, much less take measures to try to ameliorate its impact.

In late October 2008, Erdogan confidently assured the Turkish people that the crisis had already bypassed the country. In January 2009, he rejected the offer of a loan from the IMF because it would have required limits on government spending in the run-up to the local elections. By December 2008, the unemployment rate in Turkey stood at a record 13.6 percent, up from 10.6 percent in December 2007. Youth unemployment was 25.7 percent, up from 20.6 percent one year earlier. On 31 March 2009, the Turkish Statistical Institute announced that Turkey’s GDP had declined by an annual rate of 6.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008.

Even though they have not produced any policy initiatives, the opposition parties do seem to have helped alter public perceptions of the AKP through changing the political agenda.

After its landslide victory in the general election of July 2007, the AKP became recklessly over-confident. Incidences of nepotism and corruption became more widespread and more flagrant; and party officials began to act as if they believed the AKP’s electoral mandate gave it carte blanche to do whatever they wanted.

After a brief respite through mid-2008 - when the AKP was eventually allowed to remain open after a case for the party’s closure was filed with the Constitutional Court - the abuses of power began to increase again in late 2008 and accelerate rapidly in the run-up to the local elections. In addition to using state aid to try to buy votes, AKP sympathizers in the bureaucracy openly discriminated against opposition parties; whether on state-controlled television channels or in creating obstacles to them holding public rallies.

In September 2008, the CHP - which had previously based its opposition to the AKP on what it alleged was the party’s long-term plans to establish an Islamic state - began to publish a stream of documents to support its allegations of corruption against AKP officials at both local and national level. Erdogan reacted by instructing party supporters not to allow newspapers that published the allegations into their homes.

In February 2008, the Finance Ministry abruptly fined the Dogan Group, the largest media organization in Turkey, US$500 million for alleged tax irregularities; even though the group immediately published documents apparently refuting the allegations. Few believed that it was coincidence that it had been the Dogan Group whose newspapers Erdogan had told AKP supporters not to read.

Erdogan’s attacks on the Dogan Group came at a time when a large number of outspoken AKP opponents were being detained on suspicion of alleged links - mostly without any convincing evidence - to a tiny violent ultranationalist gang known as Ergenekon. In early 2009, this was followed by the publication in pro-AKP newspapers and websites of what appeared to be police wiretaps of telephone calls by the AKP’s opponents. In most cases, the main aim of the leaks appears to have been to discredit the party’s opponents rather than prove any illegality. Although the publication of even legally approved wiretaps is a crime under Turkish law, the AKP made no effort to identify, much less punish, the culprits.

For Turkey’s Kurds, unease at what appeared to be the AKP’s increasing authoritarianism was compounded by frustration at the party’s failure to lift continuing restrictions on the expression of a Kurdish identity. Although the AKP had lifted some limitations on the Kurdish language during its first term in office - and had even launched a Kurdish language TV channel on state-controlled television in January 2009 - education in Kurdish remains illegal; as does any expression of a Kurdish political identity, such as forming an explicitly Kurdish political party or NGO.

Liberalism or increased authoritarianism?

On the evening of 29 March, a visibly shaken Erdogan held a press conference to express his dissatisfaction with the election results and announce that the AKP would hold a series of meetings to assess what went wrong before deciding how to proceed.

The general expectation in Turkey is that, after receiving what even pro-AKP commentators describe as a warning from the electorate, the AKP will curb the authoritarianism of recent months and focus on passing liberal reforms to reinvigorate its stalled bid for EU membership and sign a loan agreement with the IMF to underpin a comprehensive package of measures to address the economic downturn.

However, there is also a danger that the AKP will attempt to tighten, rather than relax, its grip on the reins of power and become even more authoritarian and intolerant of criticism.

Whatever the AKP does nationally, there is no doubt that the election results have demonstrated the need for a new approach to the Kurdish issue. Most of the votes won by the DTP were almost certainly not for the party itself but for Kurdish nationalism.

In cities like Diyarbakir - where the average income is considerably lower and rate of unemployment, particularly among young people, much higher than in the country as a whole - such a strong showing by the DTP should be cause for concern in Ankara.

The AKP’s attempted appeal to Muslim solidarity over ethnic identity has clearly failed. But whether the AKP will be willing or able to formulate a new policy to address Kurdish aspirations remains unclear.

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