World Turkey goes to polls in election that may decide its president’s political future

Turkey goes to polls in election that may decide its president’s political future

Recep Tayyip Erdogan wants to scrap the parliamentary structure in favor of a presidential system that would give him greater executive authority.

• Ishaan Tharoor

World

Turkey goes to polls in election that may decide its president’s political future

A TV at a coffee shop in Diyarbakir, Turkey, shows President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who wants his center-right group AKP to gain greater more seats in the Grand National Assembly. (Emre Tazegul/AP)

By Ishaan Tharoor June 7 at 8:22 AM

ISTANBUL — Tens of millions of Turkish citizens went to vote on Sunday, casting their ballots in one of their country’s most hotly contested elections in years.
The acrimonious build-up to the parliamentary vote had raised the fear of violence and allegations of voter fraud clouding the day. On Turkish Twitter, the top trending hash tag translated to “protect your ballot box.”
Casting his vote in the central Anatolian city of Konya, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu expressed his wish for a peaceful election, and that the day would end with a “tolerant atmosphere.”
The tensions have to do with the election’s heavy subtext. Until Sunday, the central figure dominating the headlines was not on any candidate list, and wasn’t contesting any of the 550 seats in Turkey’s Grand National Assembly.
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is, in theory, a neutral head of state removed from the hurly-burly of electoral politics. In reality, both his critics and supporters say, he’s on a mission to transcend them and craft a Turkish republic in his own image.

A supporter of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party waves a poster of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic of Turkey, during an election rally. Sunday’s vote has turned into a referendum on the country’s political future. (Yasin Akgul/AFP/Getty Images)

His ability to do so hinges on the outcome of this election.
Erdogan, who since 2002 served three terms as prime minister before being elected president last year, wants to scrap Turkey’s parliamentary structure in favor of a presidential system that would give him greater executive authority. For this to happen, his ruling Justice and Development Party, a center-right group known by its acronym AKP, needs a wide margin of victory on Sunday night.
That scenario is in doubt. Opinion polls suggest the AKP will win more than 40 percent of the vote, considerably ahead of the secularist CHP and the far-right, ultra-nationalist MHP. But it remains unclear whether they will be able to clinch the 267 seats needed for a majority in government, let alone the 330 seats needed to put constitutional reform to a national referendum – the best chance Erdogan would have to consolidate power as president.
The stakes have risen dramatically after nearly a decade-and-a-half of AKP dominance, during which significant economic reforms have lifted a new middle class, and much of Turkey’s once entrenched establishment — from the military to the state bureaucracy to elements of the judiciary — has been cast aside.
Critics say the AKP’s embrace of aspects of political Islam in a country that is almost entirely Muslim has steadily eroded the pillars of secularism upon which the modern Turkish republic was built by its first president, Mustapha Kemal Ataturk, Turkey’s founding father.
If Erdogan is still president in 2019, he would have ruled longer than Ataturk, who died in office in 1938.
In the Istanbul neighborhood of Kasimpasa, a traditionally lower-middle-class area where Erdogan was born and an AKP stronghold, voters praised his years of rule.

A special forces police officer stands guard on top of a building in Konya, Turkey, during an election rally of the ruling AK Party ahead of Turkey's June 7 parliamentary election. (Umit Bektas/Reuters)

“Thanks to Erdogan, so much has changed. There is prosperity and stability,” said Hafiza Aktas, who cast her ballot at a polling station in the primary school where Erdogan was once a student.
Aktas says the AKP’s sweeping reforms of Turkey’s health system have been life-saving for her family. And, pointing to her red-and-black headscarf, she says the party has lifted decades of secularist suppression of the country’s devout Muslims.
“I can go everywhere now. I have real freedom,” said Aktas, referring to earlier bans on the wearing of headscarves at public institutions.
“Our goal is to create a new Turkey,” says Muhammed Akar, chairman of the AKP in the southeastern Turkish city of Diyarbakir. “The other parties cling to the past.”
Akar sits in a corner of Turkey that in some respects has taken center stage in the build-up to the election. Diyarbakir, a majority Kurdish city, is one of the main bases of strength for the Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, whose emergence in the past year as Turkey’s fourth-largest party threatens the AKP’s lock on power.
To gain any seats in parliament, the HDP would have to pass Turkey’s conspicuously high barrier of entry: 10 percent of all votes nationwide. Until this year, no Kurdish party has attempted such a feat.
But the HDP has surged, despite its direct ties to the PKK, a Kurdish separatist group that waged a bloody, three-decade war against the Turkish state and is considered a terrorist group by both Ankara and Washington. It now frames itself as a leftist party eager to represent everyone in Turkey, especially those who are opposed to Erdogan’s presidential ambitions.
“This election is really about whether HDP passes the threshold,” says Bulent Aliriza of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
If it does, its bloc of seats will come at the expense mostly of the AKP, the only other party with major support in Turkey’s Kurdish-majority southeast. That, in turn, could lead to a scenario in which the AKP could be forced to forge a messy coalition government or even find itself on the outside, as the opposition to a coalition of its rivals.
Tensions ahead of the election have been palpable, with the HDP reporting dozens of violent attacks on its party workers. On Friday, two explosions ripped through a HDP rally in Diyarbakir, killing two people and wounding more than 100 others. Familiar, distressing scenes followed of Kurdish youth protesting angrily against the Turkish state.
The HDP’s charismatic leader, Selahattin Demirtas, called for calm and urged supporters not to react to such “provocations.”
On Sunday, Demirtas cast his ballot to rapturous crowds in the Istanbul neighborhood of Sultanbeyli, an area home to a working class, Kurdish population.
Kurdish flags were waved and women in headscarves raised loud, ululating cries of joy. “I’m so proud to vote for him as a Turk,” said Melek Karmaz, while holding her baby.
Demirtas spoke briefly to reporters, saying that while the election campaign “was not fair,” he hoped the election itself would be carried out justly.
In Diyarbakir, many backing the HDP are convinced that if their party does not cross the 10 percent threshold, it would be the result of fraud and vote-rigging.
“There will be four million Kurds on the streets,” says Reha Ruhavioglu, an activist for a local Diyarbakir human rights group.
Beyond Turkey’s restive southeast, analysts say the acrimonious election campaign has exposed other fissures in Turkish society.
The AKP has run a religiously tinged campaign, appealing to the piety and faith of Sunni Muslim voters, including more religious Kurds. In a speech last month, Erdogan even waved a copy of the Koran as he criticized rival parties.
On Saturday, a number of pro-AKP Turkish newspapers ran alarmist headlines, warning of an international “crusade” against Turkey led by foreign media and their co-conspirators in Turkey.
Critics accuse Erdogan and the AKP of using their extraordinary power over state institutions as well as allies in the business community to put pressure on dissidents and political opponents.
“You can’t have a pluralistic society without a free press,” said Murat Yetkin, the editor of the English-language Hurriyet Daily News, which is part of a media group in the government’s cross hairs. “You can’t have a democracy without free courts.”
The uncertainty surrounding the course of Turkey’s democracy extends beyond Sunday’s election.
“I’m worried that no matter the outcome, we’re entering an era of chaos,” said Istanbul-based political scientist Cengiz Aktar.
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Ishaan Tharoor writes about foreign affairs for The Washington Post. He previously was a senior editor at TIME, based first in Hong Kong and later in New York.

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