Turkish Parliamentary Elections: The Fall of the “Electoral Caliphate”

The June 7 parliamentary elections in Turkey were a truly historic occasion, putting an end to speculation about whether President Recep Erdoğan would be able to gain absolute leadership over the country by amending the constitution. Alas, he could not and Turkey will remain a parliamentary republic for the foreseeable future. The conservative Turkish population made it clear that they harboured no desire to change the political system, and the president will have to settle for the powers that he already had.

The June 7 parliamentary elections in Turkey were a truly historic occasion, putting an end to speculation about whether President Recep Erdoğan would be able to gain absolute leadership over the country by amending the constitution. Alas, he could not and Turkey will remain a parliamentary republic for the foreseeable future. The conservative Turkish population made it clear that they harboured no desire to change the political system, and the president will have to settle for the powers that he already had.

Breakdown of Parliamentary Seats

The Justice and Development Party (AKP), which has been in power for 13 years, received 40.9 per cent of the votes and 259 seats. Not only is this way below the 331 seats required for a constitutional majority, it is not even enough for a simple majority in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey. All in all, the AKP received 9 per cent fewer votes than at the previous general elections in 2011, a drop-off of more than 2.5 million votes. It was following those elections that the party set itself a target of 60 per cent of votes, which at the time seemed quite realistic.       

The Republican People’s Party (CHP) received just over 25 per cent of the votes, which translates into 132 seats in parliament. The two nationalist parties, the pro-Turk Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) secured 80 seats apiece, although the MHP received a larger share of the votes, with 16.3 per cent, compared to the HDP’s 13 per cent. This is due to the manner in which parliamentary seats are distributed in electoral districts.  

As things stand, the AKP will be unable to make changes to the basic laws of the country on its own, nor will it be able to set up a national referendum on the adoption of a new constitution. The number of seats is also important for the future government, the composition of which is determined by parliament.   

The Kurdish Contingent

The main question surrounding this year’s general election was without a doubt: Would the Kurds get the 10 per cent of votes required to enter parliament? In doing so, the HDP took seats away from the other parties, playing into hands of the ruling AKP Party.

This is a major breakthrough for the Kurds, who up until this point had only been represented in parliament by independent deputies. They numbered 36 following the 2011 elections. Now the Kurds, which make up 20 per cent of the Turkish population, have seen their representation in the Grand National Assembly more than double to 80, or 14.5 per cent of the 550 members of parliament.

There are many reasons for the HDP’s success. First of all, the 10 per cent barrier that had always worked in the favour of the AKP this time came back to haunt them. For the first time ever, the pro-Kurdish party attracted votes from Turkish people eager to bring the AKP and its leader Recep Erdoğan down a peg or two. Turkish voters who would have voted for the HDP had the barrier not existed were determined to “bury” the ruling party, as the saying goes in Turkey, “in the ballot boxes”. It is precisely for this reason that the HDP, having carried out a stellar election campaign, received far fewer votes than it should reasonably have expected.       

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Turkey´s 25th Parliamentary Elections
Results

Another factor is the HDP’s charismatic co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş, whose intelligent statements, subtle irony, humanity and occasionally eccentric behaviour (for a politician), such as playing the saz and singing songs, helped relieve the tension in a somewhat aggressive election campaign, endearing him to a large number of people in the country. He also moved away from nationalistic rhetoric, declaring the HDP the Turkish people’s party. Demirtaş will certainly be one to watch in Turkish politics throughout the 2010s and 2020s.     

One more reason for the HDP’s success is the fact that religious Kurds have turned away from the AKP at the polls. The failure of the Turkish authorities to support the Kurds against the Islamic State in the Siege of Kobanî (a city on the border with Turkey), saying that “there is no Kurdish issue” and “no possibility of holding peace talks”, forced the Kurds to reassess their political preferences. This happened despite the HDP’s obvious links to the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party and Selahattin Demirtaş’ ineffective statements about the irrelevance of the Turkish Ministry of Religious Affairs. President Recep Erdoğan’s belated rhetoric and the publication of the Quran in Kurdish served only to further convince Kurds that the government was looking to exploit religion to gain additional votes. 

The Party after Justice and Development

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HDP’s co-leader Selahattin Demirtaş

The ruling party lost votes elsewhere as well. And the finger must be pointed squarely at Recep Erdoğan for this. In his campaign for votes, the Turkish President repeatedly and openly violated the country’s constitution in the months running up to the election. As leader of the country, he should remain neutral and not get involved in political squabbles; yet, realizing that support for the AKP was waning, he began organizing rallies himself. The reaction, however, was for the most part negative and led to even more voters turning their backs on the party.  

The corruption scandals that rocked the country on December 17 and 25, 2013, which saw a number of individuals close to the government arrested and four ministers offering their resignation, hang like the sword of Damocles over the AKP. Voters were not happy with the decision to freeze the investigation and not put the disgraced ministers up in front of the Supreme Court. The first signs of waning support for the ruling party appeared during the 2014 municipal elections, when it received 2.3 million fewer votes than it did in the 2011 general election. And while it is perhaps unfair to compare different types of election directly, the AKP’s 2014 campaign slogan, “the war of liberation”, was in its own way a referendum of trust. Despite the fact that voters tend to think in terms of “they might steal, but at least they work”, the AKP nevertheless lost ground. Sociological research suggests that the first voters to turn their backs on the party were those who supported the ideology of the nationalistic Peoples’ Democratic Party, but had voted for Erdoğan because they disliked their own leader, Devlet Bahçeli, so much.

The state of the economy also plays an important, if not decisive, role in the changing preferences of the electorate. Recep Erdoğan’s attempts to build a kind of “electoral Caliphate” led to the reallocation of public funds to businesspeople that were close to him and the appointment of incompetent but loyal staff to key government positions. Everything in the country is being politicized, and business is no exception. The concentration of all the branches of power in the same hands led to the breakdown of the court system, the removal of tens of thousands of oppositional posts in government organs, a spike in the crime rate and a growing number of protests among voters. The risks have increased, foreign investors are losing confidence, and all this is happening against the background of a faltering international economic and political situation. As a result, the Turkish economy has been at a standstill for years, wealth inequality and unemployment are growing, the Turkish lira is falling, and foreign capital is fleeing the country. The almost two million Syrian refugees living in Turkey are putting a serious strain on the national budget. The elections have demonstrated that voters are losing faith in the ruling party’s ability to solve these problems and are looking for an alternative (link in Russian).

REUTERS/Osman Orsal
A supporter of the Pro-Kurdish Peoples'
Democratic Party (HDP) cheers during a gathering
to celebrate the party's victory during
the parliamentary election, in Diyarbakir,
Turkey, June 8, 2015

A large proportion of the country is equally tired of the struggle against the fictitious “parallel state” led by the followers of preacher Fethullah Gülen (the Hizmet Movement). Eighteen months have passed since the government’s attempts to make them scapegoats, calling the corruption scandals in December 2013 an “attempted coup”, although not a single shred of evidence has been produced to support this claim. The demonization of any institution that is even remotely affiliated with Hizmet provokes antipathy towards the authorities, even among those who dislike the movement. The labelling of charity organizations as “terrorists”; the arrest of the country’s largest (and only national) Islamic bank; the very public handcuffing of journalists and TV screenwriters – all this has turned into a poor quality and thoroughly unconvincing show. If we add to this the dissatisfaction of the countless other Muslim communities that Recep Erdoğan is trying to win over, then we get a picture of a political lumberjack who chops down the very branches he sitting on. Despite the fact that these Muslim groups were unable sway the outcome of the elections, they did contribute to the weakening of the electoral and ideological positions of the AKP, which now openly declares its religious affiliation. By steering his party out of the pro-Muslim centre, Recep Erdoğan is leading it deeper into a politicized Islamic ghetto, which has never been popular among the Turkish people.           

Any conversation about the falling popularity of Recep Erdoğan and his administration would not be complete without mention of Turkey’s disastrous foreign policy. Having abandoned the successful “Zero Problems with our Neighbours” policy in favour of an ideological Islamic-cum-neo-Ottoman project, Turkey has become the object, rather than the subject, of politics – it has gone from being a leader in the region to a country without a voice. Turkey’s prestige on the international stage has plummeted, while the political situation in the Middle East has turned into a nightmare, and this has a knock-on effect on domestic politics. The issue of Syrian refugees and border security, for example, are particularly troubling (link in Russian). The proclivity of the Turkish authorities to put foreign policy failures down to the underhand practices of their enemies or conspiracy theories is met with ever-increasing scepticism among the people.

Choosing Friends and Enemies

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If the AKP leaves Recep Erdoğan in power with all his constitutional powers, then a viable coalition is possible.

Leaving aside all the other elements of this variegated political picture of the general elections in Turkey, we ought to say a few words about what the immediate future has in store for the country. To begin with, parliament needs to form a government. But the parties are being very guarded in this regard, as any government that is formed could be held responsible for the economic and political crisis. Right now, both nationalist parties are strongly opposed to forming a coalition with the AKP. However, the possibility of a joint AKP–MHP government cannot be ruled out entirely, as it would satisfy a number of conditions that the Turkish nationalists have: the president would stay in power, the investigations into the corruption cases would be reopened and negotiations with the Kurds would come to an end. The Republican People’s Party has yet to take a clear position, although it is more than likely negotiating with the AKP and putting its demands forward. And while this process could lead just about anywhere, one thing is clear – if the AKP leaves Recep Erdoğan in power with all his constitutional powers, then a viable coalition is possible. If Erdoğan becomes actively involved in the AKP’s policies and tries to push an unpopular super-presidential project through, then a parliamentary crisis and early parliamentary elections are virtually inescapable. Time is not on the AKP’s side, and the party has been backed into a very uncomfortable corner, one that will be impossible to get out of without significant losses with two people at the helm. If the party does not reinvent itself and if Recep Erdoğan doesn’t leave it well enough alone, then other political powers may sweep in and create new party that caters to the centrist, democratic and pro-Muslim electorate. Whatever happens, Turkey will see some exciting and dynamic political processes in the coming years.