Human and women's rights in the spotlight after Erdogan's victory

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has managed to consolidate his hold on power in the May elections. Despite his narrow victory, the Turkish leader will continue to maintain an iron fist in control of the Eurasian country, which is causing concern among activists, women and journalists. To analyse this situation and the role of the opposition during the elections, Atalayar spoke with Yunus Baris Erturk, CHP Youth’s Head of Foreign Affairs Commission.

With his new victory at the polls, Erdogan is perpetuating his power in Turkey. What consequences will this have for the country and the region?

The authoritarian regime will be severely deepened. This division in the country, which means polarisation and more authoritarian practices, will continue. But more importantly, Erdogan has founded the most horrible coalition in history with radical right-wing parties that oppose women's rights. In fact, on election night I saw many women crying because they are worried about their future.

On the other hand, in relation to our economy, the irrational policies being pursued by the government will also make the situation worse. Our economic power will deteriorate, as Erdogan's policies put pressure on the middle class, which is the sector that creates most of the wealth.

Regarding regional relations, it should be noted that Erdogan is one of Russian President Vladimir Putin's biggest allies. In fact, Putin did Erdogan many electoral favours, for example, he postponed our natural gas bill for this year, as there are not enough dollars to pay our debts.

For Europe, especially, it is a nightmare. Although I don't think European society is aware of this. But it is going to be worse for Europe. And it is going to be worse for Turkey. Nevertheless, some politicians in Europe have celebrated this victory because Erdogan is their key ally on migration. Erdogan manages to keep refugees away from Europe. These politicians are fuelling authoritarianism and, in return, refugees are kept in a horrible situation. This also increases internal division and pressure on them, which could cause many risks and tensions in the future. 

With this new victory for Erdogan can we expect more censorship and pressure on media and activists?

Yes, definitely. We really expected to win this election, as many actors came together: secularists, conservatives, even former Prime Ministers and former ministers of Erdogan. We became part of a coalition. But since the country's system was changed from parliamentary to presidential in 2017, there is no possibility to change governments easily. Presidential systems are strong, they have strong governing instruments. So I think there are very limited mechanisms that can stop Erdogan at the moment. So we could expect some horrible state practices regarding human rights, journalists or women's rights.

However, Erdogan's victory was very narrow and the CHP gained a lot of support. How did the party deal with these elections? How did you deal with the election campaign?

The problem was that Erdogan knew that we were a bit vulnerable when it came to consolidating. We tried to unite all the groups that are victims of Erdogan's regime. But, of course, these people are victims for different reasons: some of them because they are Kurdish, some of them because they have suffered economically because of these irrational economic policies.... So this is a problem even within this opposition, because some groups don't like each other so much, so we said: "Erdogan is attacking our consolidation and trying to divide us inside, so let's unite and agree on a political document". So we agreed on our joint political texts, drafting 2,500 articles on health, education, foreign policy and so on. The Kurdish party also supported us, although they are not part of the Six Table and they are not part of this joint text. 

This was one of the reasons why our expectations were high, because we thought that maybe if we clarified how we were going to govern we would convince people. We had high hopes.

Also the election polls gave us hope. It seems that many people, especially after the earthquake, hid their real intentions, that they still support Erdogan, an effect that is known in political science as the "Shy Tory factor". 

So people were ashamed to vote for Erdogan.

Yes, because of the economic situation and the earthquake management, I think a lot of people hid their real intention.

Therefore, we prepared very well and we wanted our election slogan to be love. We did not want to fight with Erdogan. We did not want to attack him personally. We presented ourselves as "a different way", a way of consolidation, of fair state institutions.

Erdogan, on the contrary, created this hate language against us and accused us of being terrorists and puppets of secret powers. Maybe there are people who wanted to believe in all this because Erdogan did not promise anything for the people and the economy. In fact, Erdogan's party lost almost 8% of its support. 

In this situation, what role should the CHP play as an opposition party? 

First of all, of course we have to dialogue and reflect on our defeat and problems, but we should not change our direction, nor our positive language and consolidation.

These are going to be difficult times and many people will suffer, but we have to be prepared for anything, for any opportunity. In 10 months there will be local elections, and in Turkey local elections are very important.

In 2019 we had high hopes and we got a record vote against Erdogan. We got Ankara, Istanbul and other big cities like Antalya. With our management we showed people that we are not as bad as the government says. We show that we are fairer than them, we will increase the wealth of the citizens.

Therefore, we have to prepare for these elections. It is impossible for any opposition party to win those cities alone, so we have to keep this coalition approach for the municipal elections, which will be held in March 2024.

We will analyse in our party organs why we failed, what went wrong, keeping the same way and approach that made us almost win. And then we will be ready for any opportunity that comes our way.