Erdoğan leaves the door open to running "one last time" after his umpteenth blow to the opposition

No one knows what the Turkish leader's next move will be. Erdoğan is rushing the deadlines of his first presidential term as he awaits the next elections, which, if nothing changes, are scheduled for June 2023. He has not made any clear statements about his future and has changed his discourse several times in recent days. At first, he hinted that he would not run for the 2028 elections, but then he left the door open not only to a second term, allowed by the Magna Carta, but also to a third, which would violate the current constitutional framework designed to suit him after the 2017 referendum. Two uninterrupted decades in power, first as prime minister and then as president, seem to be too little for him.

"In 2023, we will begin the construction of Turkey's century and pave the way for the youth with the strength we will gain from the support we have last asked for on our behalf from the nation," the Turkish president moved from the Black Sea province of Samsun. Erdoğan's cryptic remarks at the rally of his Islamist AKP party suggested that he was facing his last presidential challenge. He was closing the door on a hypothetical third term, although he is counting on remaining at the helm of state for the next five years.  

Days later, Erdoğan clarified that the fact that he could not be a candidate for a third term did not mean that he would leave politics. "I am AKP. Will I leave the party? I created this party. Is it possible for me to leave my friends alone? We walked these roads together, we got wet together in the pouring rain," he told the media when asked about his future. The intention is to continue to pull the strings, either from the front line or from a comfortable background.

But this time he will have a hard time retaining the presidency. In recent months, the Islamist leader's popularity has plummeted, following in the wake of all economic indicators. Turkey has an unprecedented inflation rate of over 85 per cent. GDP has plummeted and debt is skyrocketing due to inefficient government policies, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine and Erdoğan's obstinacy in lowering interest rates against expert recommendations. As a result, unemployment figures have multiplied, and the value of the Turkish lira has devalued by 35 per cent so far this year.  

The delicate situation has meant that, for the first time in 20 years, Erdoğan is not favorite to win at the polls. The People's Alliance, the ruling coalition of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the far-right Grand Unity Party (BBP), could lose its majority in the National Assembly. There is even the possibility that Erdoğan could emerge victorious from the presidential election but face a hostile opposition-controlled parliament. In that scenario, though, he could govern without major problems.  

The elections will be a plebiscite on his figurehead, but the playing field is tilted in his favor. The president and his allies control virtually all the levers of power. They have access to both public and private resources, dominate the judiciary and dictate the narrative of most of the media, which they subjugate and manipulate to polarize society in their interests. As if that were not enough, the purges carried out in the security apparatus after the failed coup of 2016 have allowed him to place loyal cadres in the police and armed forces. Few institutions escape the tentacles of an Erdoğan who wants to give up nothing.

The Turkish president also has a foreign policy trump card. "Whenever Turkey has problems with international organizations, such as the European Union or NATO, Erdoğan tends to get a lot of electoral advantage in his favor. It has been proven," explains analyst Carlos Ortega, a PhD student in Politics and International Relations at the University of Istanbul, in an interview with Atalayar. Other options include increasing pressure on the Kurdish minority in the country, escalating tensions with Greece in the Aegean or, as he has done recently, deploying an offensive campaign in Syria. In this way it invokes the essence of nationalism and reaps the rewards.  

Erdoğan has been at his most ambiguous in the same week that the verdict against the popular mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoğlu, was handed down. A lower court sentenced the Republican People's Party (CHP) member to two years, seven months and 15 days in prison and disqualification from holding public office for insulting officials of the Higher Election Board. The court found that Imamoğlu had "publicly" insulted an official in the performance of his duties, an offence under Articles 125/2-1 and 125/3a, 125/4 and 125/5 of the Turkish Penal Code.  

No member of the Higher Election Board was part of the indictment against the Istanbul mayor, but it was the prosecution itself that called for a four-year sentence after accusing Imamoğlu of having disqualified the election committee in the speech he gave after the rerun of the 2019 municipal elections. "Those who annulled the elections on 31 March are idiots," he declared at the time. According to the defense, he did so in reference to the executing arm of the rerun election, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, a loyal Erdoğan ally who had previously insulted him for criticizing the Turkish government in European forums.

Imamoğlu, candidate of the social democratic CHP, a secular center-left party, heir to the Kemalist tradition that Erdoğan contests, beat his AKP opponent, Binali Yıldırım, one of the current president's lieutenants who, in fact, had just held the post of prime minister under his command. Alleged procedural errors, denounced by the Islamist formation, as well as the minimal difference in votes between the two candidates - less than 14,000 out of 8.5 million ballots - served as the legal basis for decreeing a rerun election, which Imamoğlu won again, this time by a much wider margin of more than 770,000 votes.  

It was the first time the Islamist party had lost the Istanbul mayoralty in 25 years, a major blow for Erdoğan in several respects. It is the country's largest city - the fifth largest in the world - and a center of power in the country. It is the city where he lived from a very young age and, moreover, the place where he emerged in political terms, precisely from the mayoralty of Istanbul that Imamoğlu now occupies, which he held between 1994 and 1998. Erdoğan had already warned that "whoever wins Istanbul, wins Turkey".  

Imamoğlu's election victory boosted the spirits of an opposition at a low ebb, Ortega notes. "People thought that everything was rigged and that it was impossible to win, and when he swept to victory in the second round, it gave hope. Since then, people believe that he can win the elections, that he can really influence the outcome, and that is very important in a country like Turkey, which is tortured by so many things", the analyst points out. 

"What does it [Imamoğlu's conviction] mean? Is it the result of nervousness about the performance of the opposition or is it part of a large-scale plan? That's the million-dollar question. We can brood all day long, but I think it's a sign of unease," Ortega says. In his opinion, the levers of power from now on "are going to be tougher, they are going to get tougher". "I doubt very much that there will be a coup d'état, but they will certainly put sticks in the opposition's wheels", he predicts.  

The sentence is not final but must be ratified by a court of appeal. The process could take up to six months, probably until after the elections. In the meantime, he will remain mayor of Istanbul pending a ruling that would prevent him from running for public office. He would be automatically removed from the mayor's office and, above all, from a hypothetical race for the presidency for which he could run. 

The conviction should be seen as "a violation of rights and an unjustified and politically calculated attack on Turkey's political opposition ahead of the 2023 elections," Human Rights Watch said. The human rights organization believes the court decision "violates Mayor Imamoğlu's rights to freedom of expression and political association and interferes with the right of millions of Istanbul voters to elect a mayor of their choice as their political representative".

The opposition and an invaluable part of civil society have interpreted the ruling as a full-fledged judicial persecution. This would by no means be the first time this has happened during Erdoğan's presidency. In May, top CHP leader Canan Kaftancıoğlu was sentenced by the Court of Cassation to nine years and eight months in prison for insulting the president and terrorism-related charges, although her sentence was reduced to four years and 11 months on appeal. Kaftancıoğlu's trial coincided precisely with the election victory of his party colleague, Imamoğlu, in the city of sultans.  

Justice portfolio holder Bekir Bozdağ responded to the accusations by arguing that "no organ, authority or person can give orders and instructions, send circulars, make recommendations or suggestions to courts and judges in the exercise of judicial power", while acknowledging that the ruling issued by the 7th Istanbul Criminal Court of First Instance "is not final" to calm the waters.  

"Erdoğan's supporters are quite quiet," Ortega told this media outlet. "The justice minister has said that the law is the law, that the system is this and that [Imamoğlu] has committed a crime. But so far no one has said anything else". The silence of the president's inner circle may be a sign that the reaction from the street was not expected. Imamoğlu took advantage of the verdict to take a mass bath on the other side of the Bosphorus, on the European side of Istanbul, where Istanbul's city hall is located. Even before the verdict was announced, the mayor gathered his supporters in the centrally located Saraçhane Park.

Saraçhane’deyiz https://t.co/iNy3yXT8Js

— Ekrem İmamoğlu (@ekrem_imamoglu) December 14, 2022

Accompanied by opposition politician Meral Akşener, leader of the nationalist İyi Party, the still mayor of Istanbul improvised a speech to reassure the thousands of supporters gathered there. Akşener recalled the most symbolic episode of Erdoğan's political career, very similar to the one Imamoğlu went through. The current president recited an Islamist poem for which he was disqualified and imprisoned for "inciting religious hatred" from the same square when he was mayor of Istanbul. That event was a turning point in his rise to power. "There is a clear political reflex between these two events. There is an idea that Imamoğlu can be the new symbol, a victim punished by the system. A star is being born, a martyr who can unite the opposition", Ortega stresses.  

"The whole opposition is very indignant", explains the PhD student in Politics and International Relations at the University of Istanbul. "I see a double tendency. On the one hand, there are those who have realised that this event marks the beginning of the government's campaign for the next elections, which will be characterised by growing authoritarianism in the country. In other words, it was a political trial that has nothing to do with insult and that there will be more foul play from now on. There has been a certain pessimism, in that sense. Then there are optimistic people that think this is going to unite the opposition." 

The Istanbul mayor is one of the figures with the highest rate of support to topple Erdoğan in the upcoming elections over his own party's national leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, a grey man without charisma, and his name is in the running to lead a joint list. Six opposition parties are negotiating the choice of a unity candidate, which could be Imamoğlu himself. "The six parties have many differences. We tend to think that in the next elections the Turkish electorate will have to choose between the Islamist conservatism of the AKP and the pro-Ataturk secularism, but it is much more complicated because among these parties is the CHP, but also the IYI Parti, with 11 per cent support, which is markedly nationalist, as well as other Islamist currents led by former allies of Erdoğan", Ortega explains. "We are not just talking about the two traditional Turks, but about a Turkey that will mobilize so that the system is not completely corrupted and another that will close ranks with Erdoğan".

The leaders of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) say they are open to electing "a unitary candidate" if their premises are met, although they are separately negotiating a third alliance with several smaller far-left parties, such as the Trotskyist Workers' Party of Turkey. Ortega believes that the Kurds "will hold the key in the next elections".  

"Losing the presidency would be a blow to Erdoğan, who would be deprived of access to public resources to run the AKP machine. Given his frail health and advanced age, he might not be able to muster the strength to lead his party in opposition for long. Although his party has enjoyed strong electoral support, even during the economic crisis, its future after Erdoğan is uncertain. The party has recently become a personalist movement with very weak institutions. Although predictions of its demise are premature, the AKP would struggle to keep its opposition base intact," writes Berk Esen, assistant professor of political science at Sabancı University's German Institute for International and Security Affairs.  

"I would say that a lot will happen between now and the elections. It was already seen with the recent attack in Istanbul, which some defined as the start of the elections, and now with the conviction of Imamoğlu. Putting us in a scenario of defeat for Erdoğan, the challenge will be to reform a system that has been in place for more than a decade to recover the democratic guarantees that existed", Ortega predicts.