Turkiye - Politics - 2023 Elections
Two major earthquakes rocked Turkey on February 6, killing more than 50,000 people and injuring thousands more. Hundreds are still considered to be missing, while millions of earthquake victims found temporary shelter with relatives and friends in other cities. The deadly earthquake and its aftermath served as the backdrop to Turkey's parliamentary and presidential elections on May 14, which had the potential to upend Turkey's political landscape.
Turkiye's next general election had officially been due on 18 June 2023. The expected vote came ahead of the 100 years anniversary of the formation of the Turkish Republic but parliament had the final say on the exact date. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signalled that he intended to bring the date of the country's general election forward by one month to May 14. Erdogan's control over Turkish politics, the administration and judiciary is equal to no other Turkish leader of the past 100 years. The announcement on 18 January 2023 set the stage for a vote that could extend Erdogan's presidency into a third decade. The president has been under pressure over the economy, the coronavirus pandemic, and the threat of further migration from Afghanistan, which would add to some four million refugees currently in Turkey. Erdogan also wanted to re-establish his image as a world leader for his domestic audience.
For the first time since taking office more than 20 years ago, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is not the favorite in the presidential race. During his two decades in office, first as prime minister then as president, Erdogan has shaped the country like no other politician before him. He has changed legislation to reshape the Turkish state in his image. Since introducing the presidential system he has ruled the country as a de facto autocrat, relegating parliament to insignificance.
Turkey is a constitutional republic with an executive presidential system and a unicameral 600-seat parliament (the Grand National Assembly). In presidential and parliamentary elections in 2018, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe observers expressed concern regarding restrictions on media reporting and the campaign environment, including the jailing of a presidential candidate, that restricted the ability of opposition candidates to compete on an equal basis and campaign freely.
Under broad antiterror legislation passed in 2018, the government continued to restrict fundamental freedoms and compromised the rule of law. Since the 2016 coup attempt, authorities have dismissed or suspended tens of thousands of civil servants and government workers, including more than 60,000 police and military personnel and more than 4,000 judges and prosecutors, arrested or imprisoned more than 95,000 citizens, and closed more than 1,500 nongovernmental organizations on terrorism-related grounds, primarily for alleged ties to the movement of cleric Fethullah Gulen, whom the government accused of masterminding the coup attempt and designated as the leader of the “Fethullahist Terrorist Organization.”
Significant human rights issues included credible reports of: arbitrary killings; suspicious deaths of persons in custody; forced disappearances; torture; arbitrary arrest and continued detention of tens of thousands of persons, including opposition politicians and former members of parliament, lawyers, journalists, human rights activists, and employees of the U.S. Mission, for purported ties to “terrorist” groups or peaceful legitimate speech; political prisoners, including elected officials; politically motivated reprisal against individuals located outside the country, including kidnappings and transfers without due process of alleged members of the Gulen movement; significant problems with judicial independence; support for Syrian opposition groups that perpetrated serious abuses in conflict, including the recruitment and use of child soldiers; severe restrictions on freedom of expression, the press, and the internet, including violence and threats of violence against journalists, closure of media outlets, and arrests or criminal prosecution of journalists and others for criticizing government policies or officials, censorship, site blocking, and criminal libel laws; severe restriction of freedoms of assembly, association, and movement, including overly restrictive laws regarding government oversight of nongovernmental organizations and civil society organizations.
According to the International Crisis Group, from 01 January to 15 November 2021, a total of 25 civilians, 51 security force members, and 268 PKK militants were killed in the country and surrounding region in PKK-related clashes. Human rights groups stated the government took insufficient measures to protect civilian lives in its fight with the PKK. The PKK continued its campaign of attacks on government security forces, resulting in civilian deaths. PKK attacks focused particularly on southeastern provinces.
The constitution and law prohibit torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment, but domestic and international rights groups reported that some police officers, prison authorities, and military and intelligence units employed these practices. Domestic human rights organizations, bar associations, political opposition figures, international human rights groups, and others reported that government agents engaged in threats, mistreatment, and possible torture of some persons while in custody.
Following the 2016 coup attempt, authorities continued to detain, arrest, and try hundreds of thousands of individuals with alleged ties to the Gulen movement or the PKK under terrorism-related charges, often with questionable evidentiary standards and without the full due process provided for under law.
On the fifth anniversary of the 2016 coup attempt in July, the Ministry of Interior announced that authorities had detained 312,121 and arrested 99,123 individuals since the coup attempt on grounds of alleged affiliation with the Gulen movement, which the government designated as a terrorist organization. Many lawyers were reluctant to defend individuals the government accused of ties to the 2016 coup attempt.
The maximum time an arrestee can be held pending trial with an indictment is seven years, including for crimes against the security of the state, national defense, constitutional order, state secrets and espionage, organized crime, and terrorism-related offenses. The trial system does not provide for a speedy trial, and trial hearings were often months apart, despite provisions in the code of criminal procedure for continuous trial. Trials sometimes began years after indictment, and appeals could take years more to reach conclusion.
Prosecutors used a broad definition of terrorism and threats to national security and, according to defense lawyers and opposition groups, in some cases used what appeared to be legally questionable evidence to file criminal charges against and prosecute a broad range of individuals, including media workers, human rights activists, opposition politicians (primarily of the HDP), suspected PKK sympathizers, alleged Gulen movement members or affiliates, and others critical of the government. In some cases charges resulted in government seizure of company, charity, or business assets.
The government engaged in a worldwide effort to apprehend suspected members of the Gulen movement. There were credible reports that the government exerted bilateral pressure on other countries to take adverse action against specific individuals, at times without due process. According to a report by several UN special rapporteurs in May 2020, the government reportedly coordinated with other states to forcibly transfer more than 100 Turkish nationals to Turkey since the 2016 coup attempt. The UN rapporteur’s report specified that 40 individuals were subjected to enforced disappearance.
Individuals in many cases could not criticize the state or government publicly without risk of civil or criminal suits or investigation, and the government restricted expression by individuals sympathetic to some religious, political, or cultural viewpoints. At times those who wrote or spoke on sensitive topics or in ways critical of the government risked investigation, fines, criminal charges, job loss, and imprisonment. The government convicted and sentenced hundreds of individuals for exercising their freedom of expression. The government frequently responded to expression critical of it by filing criminal charges alleging affiliation with terrorist groups, terrorism, or otherwise endangering the state.
Mainstream print media and television stations were largely controlled by progovernment holding companies heavily influenced by the ruling party. Reporters without Borders estimated the government was able to exert power in the administration of 90 percent of the most watched television stations and most read national daily newspapers through the companies’ affiliation with the government. Only a small fraction of the holding companies’ profits came from media revenue, and their other commercial interests impeded media independence, encouraged a climate of self-censorship, and limited the scope of public debate.
The 68-year-old Erdogan stamped his mark on Turkiye, becoming the country's most influential leader since the presidency of the founder of the republic, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a century ago. He oversaw years of economic booms and a devastating Covid-19 pandemic, wars and thwarted a bloody coup attempt. His supporters revere him for giving a voice to the marginalised and creating a thriving new middle class in the nation of 85 million people.
Born in Istanbul to a family from the Black Sea, and with dreams of becoming a professional football player in his youth, Erdogan proved highly appealing to those who are sometimes called "Black Turks": conservative, often religious, and poorly educated voters, who had long felt abandoned by previous secular and Western-leaning governments. Over the last 20 years, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) put them in the driving seat of the country.
His early years marked one of the most open periods of modern Turkish history: opening up the economy to attract foreign capital; holding direct negotiations with the Kurdish PKK (since 1984, a civil war had killed tens of thousands); and allowing veiled women access to university, the army and civil service.
The former Islamist militant allowed yearly Gay Pride parades until 2014, when close to a million revellers filled the streets of Istanbul. His country was the first to ratify the Council of Europe's Convention on preventing and combatting violence against women (informally known as the Istanbul Convention).
But in May 2013, protests against a plan to build a shopping centre in Gezi Park in Istanbul marked a turning point, with police violence. Soon afterwards, the emergence of Kurdish groups close to the PKK in the Syrian conflict contributed to the breakdown of negotiations with the terror group in Turkey. In 2015, the government launched a bombing campaign in the southeast of the country.
In July 2016, following a failed coup d'Etat, Erdogan declared a state of emergency. In the months that followed, tens of thousands of people were arrested, and the army was purged. Officially, they were accused of supporting Fethullah Gülen, a preacher and former ally of the head of state. In reality, all those who denounced the government's policies – in particular regarding human rights – were targeted. In July 2021, Erdogan pulled Turkey out of the Istanbul Convention.
Erdogan's opposition entered the campaign divided over everything from policy to strategy and hadnot agreed on a candidate to field against Erdogan. The six opposition politicians intended to hold their next discussions about a presidential candidate on January 26.
Erdogan faced a tricky re-election campaign amid a woeful economic context, as a currency and debt crisis has racked Turkey since 2018. The key issues in Turkey's elections are, of course, mostly domestic - the abysmal economy and the question of [Syrian] refugees. But Erdogan clearly benefits from taking a tough stance on Finnish and Swedish accession to NATO. Not only do the Turkish public like to see Turkish leaders playing important roles in the world, it is also probably true that many share Erdogan's distrust of the West and belief that Western governments have given safe haven to Turkey's enemies.
An alliance of opposition parties in Turkey promised to reduce the powers of the presidency if it wrests control from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AK Party in presidential and parliamentary polls in May, widely seen as the most consequential elections in the country in decades. In a ceremony in Ankara, the six parties presented their joint 240-page, 2,300-point programme for Turkey’s post-election future while promising to name a joint candidate to run against Erdogan by February 13.
The Nation Alliance, also known as the Table of Six, pledged to roll back measures implemented by Erdogan and his allies that it said have brought the country towards “one-man rule”. They include introducing a presidential system in a 2017 referendum that abolished the office of the prime minister, concentrating more powers in the hands of the president and cracking down on dissent in the wake of a failed 2016 coup. The promised reforms include limiting the president to a seven-year term while making an empowered new prime minister accountable to legislators. Constitutional changes must be ratified by 400 votes in the 600-seat parliament or put up for a national vote if the opposition can pass a 360-vote threshold.
The program was announced after months of meetings by the opposition groups, composed of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Good Party, Felicity Party, Democrat Party, Democracy and Progress Party, and Future Party. Excluded from the alliance is the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, which is the second largest opposition party after the CHP. That party has faced closure after a crackdown by the government for alleged links to outlawed Kurdish armed groups.
On foreign policy, the opposition stressed the importance of restoring “mutual trust” with the United States and achieving Turkey’s stalled goal of gaining “full membership in the European Union”. It said it would also strive to return to the US-led F-35 fighter jet program, from which Turkey was removed in 2019 after the government’s purchase of Russian-made missile defence systems.
Turkey's opposition alliance fractured on 03 March 2023 after one of the leaders refused to endorse a joint candidate against President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The cracks emerged a day after the six opposition party leaders held a meeting in Ankara to discuss whom to field against Erdogan in the May 14 polls. Five parties endorsed Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a bookish former civil servant who heads Turkey's main secular party, as the frontrunner in the bid to end Erdogan's rule. But Meral Aksener, leader of the nationalist IYI Party, has resisted Kilicdaroglu, backing instead Istanbul's popular opposition mayor Ekrem Imamoglu or Ankara's mayor Mansur Yavas. Aksener's rejection of Kilicdaroglu marked a serious blow to the political opposition's election prospects,
The leader of the Republican People's Party, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, was declared the sole candidate of the opposition People's Alliance in the general elections in Turkey scheduled for May 14, he will oppose the Republican Alliance's candidate, the country's incumbent President Tayyip Erdogan. The name of Kiliçdaroglu as an opposition candidate was announced 06 March 2023 by Temel Karamollaoglu, Chairman of the Happiness Party. It was at the headquarters of the party that a meeting of the "table of six" (this is how experts and journalists in Turkey call meetings of the opposition bloc) was held, as a result of which the name of the candidate from the opposition alliance was expected to be made public. The parties reportedly reached a consensus that the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavash, would have the powers of vice president if Kiliçdaroglu is elected president.
Although Kemal Kilicdaroglu was never considered the opposition's natural leader, he has managed to prevail and will compete in May's presidential election representing a six-party opposition alliance. The 74-year old is regarded as an anti-corruption bureaucrat, and one of his nicknames is "Democratic Uncle." He has been chairman of the secular Republican People's Party (CHP) since 2007.
Kilicdaroglu and his six-party opposition alliance are promising to transform Turkey and turn it back into a "strong parliamentary system." They want to undo as many of Erdogan's constitutional changes, which increased his power, as possible. The alliance wants to restore parliamentary democracy, the rule of law, freedom of expression and media freedom, and ensure the separation of powers are respected again. Kilicdaroglu recently told DW that, if elected to office, he would abolish the article which makes it a criminal offense to insult the president — an article that has enabled Erdogan to take numerous people to court.
Kilicdaroglu is also backed by Istanbul's popular mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and his equally popular Ankara counterpart Mansur Yavas. Should Kilicdaroglu win the election, Imamoglu and Yavas will be named deputy presidents. Many influential Kurdish politicians expect Turkey's Kurdish voters — who make up between 15 and 20% of the electorate — to support Kilicdaroglu.
Two other politicians are running for the presidency, though neither are especially popular. It was considered certain that the Turkish opposition would field a joint candidate against Erdogan to pool its votes against him and increase their chances of winning the election. Two opposition politicians nevertheless decided to run on their own. Their candidacies have therefore attracted heavy criticism.
One of these politicians is 58-year-old Muharrem Ince, who ran for the presidency in 2018 for the CHP. He lost against Erdogan, despite winning 30% of the vote. He then resigned from the CHP and founded his own party, the "Homeland Party" (Memleket Partisi). He accuses the CHP of not having supported him enough five years ago, when he ran for office. Many CHP supporters are now calling on Ince not to run. But negotiations between Ince and Kilicdaroglu could not persuade Ince to withdraw his candidacy. Ince's election promises include strengthening the rule of law and press freedom, which he expects will also strengthen the Turkish economy and its tourist sector.
The final candidate is Sinan Ogan, who probably has the slimmest chance of winning the presidential race. He is supported by an alliance of small, ultranationalist parties. In 2011, he entered parliament with the MHP, when it was still in opposition. He was expelled from the party in 2015, though rejoined after a court case. In 2017, Ogan was expelled yet again. The MHP said his behavior had "seriously damaged the unity of the party" and accused him of "severe indiscipline toward the party chairman." Although he was considered a possible candidate for the MHP party leadership at the time, today, he has no realistic chance of winning the presidency. As a staunch nationalist, his foreign policy stance is clear: He promises to stop celebrating Greece's Independence Day and stresses that Turkey must pay special attention to the Turkic states, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan.
Two months after the earthquake and one month before the vote, polls point to a close race between the government camp and the leading opposition alliance. Some institutes have predicted a defeat for Erdogan's electoral alliance. In the race for the presidency, Erdogan is trailing his main challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who leads the largest opposition alliance.
Erdogan, however, remains an excellent tactician: he hasn't lost an election since 2002 and survived mass protests, including the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations and an attempted coup in 2016. Even now, he knows how to look out for himself politically. The 69-year-old recently secured the support of small Islamist splinter parties for his electoral alliance, the People's Alliance — and they could tip the scales in a close race.
The New Welfare Party (YRP), which recently joined Erdogan's People's Alliance, is rooted in the ideology of Milli Gorus, whose structures are under surveillance in Germany. It wants to replace the "Western order of injustice" with an Islamic "just order," Erdogan's People's Alliance demand to abolish Law 6284 — which obliges the state to protect women from violence and, if necessary, to guarantee them anonymity — has led to indignation in Turkey. At least 234 women in Turkey were victims of femicide in 2022, and the We Will Stop Femicide platform lists an additional 245 suspected cases.
Laws protecting women have long been a thorn in the side of Islamist communities and parties in Turkey. They have blamed such laws for rising divorce rates, and see them as an expression of Western interference in Muslim-Turkish family structures. These Islamic groups have put significant pressure on Erdogan's AKP government to reverse such laws. Just two years ago, Turkey withdrew from the international Istanbul Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence Against Women.
The addition of the YRP brings Erdogan's electoral alliance to four parties, the other three being the Islamic-conservative AKP, the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Great Unity Party (BBP).
The MHP and BBP are rooted in the nationalist "Ulkucu" movement, better known as the Gray Wolves. German authorities list the far-right organization as ultranationalist, antisemitic and racist. Convinced of the superiority of the Turkish nation, they see mainly Kurds, Jews, Armenians and Christians as their enemies. They aim for a homogeneous state of all Turkic peoples under Turkish leadership, from the Balkans to western China.
Erdogan's largest partner in the alliance, the MHP, is "the original organization of the Gray Wolves," the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV) told DW. The Federation of Turkish Democratic Idealist Associations in Germany represents the MHP's interests in Germany, according to the BfV. It says that, with 7,000 members, it is the largest umbrella organization within the Gray Wolves' group.
Erdogan's second major partner, the BBP, is also rooted in the Gray Wolves' ideology. The party sees Islam as an important component of Turkish identity. The BBP is believed to be behind numerous political murders in Turkey, and its members are also alleged to have been involved in the 2007 assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink. Its organization in Germany, according to the BfV, is the Federation of World Order in Europe.
The Islamist Hüda-Par party is close to Turkish Hezbollah — also supports Erdogan. Back in the 1990s, Turkish Hezbollah tortured and murdered numerous human rights activists, businesspeople and politicians in Anatolia. According to German authorities, the group has 400 members in Germany and is also being monitored.
In recent years, Erdogan has built up a strong power apparatus. He created his own elite by means of state contracts, nepotism and corruption, and endowed numerous Muslim orders with privileges. Should he lose the election, that elite would lose influence and wealth — which is presumably why Menzil, Turkey's largest orthodox Sufi order, recently announced its support for Erdogan's alliance. Erdogan's electoral alliance is a combination of political Islam and ultranationalism. Menzil in particular has already replaced the Gulen movement as one of the AKP's most important religious networks since the coup attempt in 2016. So it makes sense for the order to try and defend its newfound privileges.
An election victory for the governing electoral alliance looks unlikely. Due to the failed economic policy and poor crisis management after the massive earthquakes in February, the AKP-led alliance is no longer backed by a majority of the electorate. Even in Turkey, elections can only be rigged to a certain extent.
Third-party candidate Muharrem Ince on 11 May 2023 withdrew from Turkey's tight presidential election in a shock move that raised the chances of an opposition first-round victory. The 59-year-old announced his decision after being targeted by an online smear campaign that included doctored images of him meeting women and riding around in fancy cars. The secular nationalist had picked up 30.6 percent of the vote when he challenged President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in 2018 polls. He then quit the main opposition party and launched his own movement that began to pull votes away from secular leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu – the joint candidate of the anti-Erdogan bloc.
Ince had come under fierce criticism from the opposition for entering the campaign just two months before the vote. Critics saw him as a spoiler candidate who could only help Erdogan extend his two-decade rule until 2028. He has already been in power since 2003. Ince argued that he offered voters a more vibrant alternative to the 74-year-old Kilicdaroglu – a bookish former civil servant with a dire national election record against Erdogan.
After processing 3.61% of the ballots, Ihlas news agency reported, citing CEC dataErdogan led in the election with 57.36% of the vote. After processing 11% of the ballots, the ruling Justice and Development Party received 349 seats in parliament out of 600, the opposition Republican People's Party - 98 seats. The turnout in the elections stood at 86.7%. With more than 99.87% of the votes counted, Erdogan's share of the votes stood at 49.50 percent while Kilicdaroglu's share stood at 44.89%. Sinan Ogan of Ata Alliance secured 5.17 percent and Muharrem Ince secured 0.44 percent but had withdrawn from the race.
There were five multiparty blocs in the running: the People's Alliance, Nation Alliance, Ata Alliance, Labour and Freedom Alliance, and Union of Socialist Power Alliance.
The Supreme Election Council (YSK) declared the presidential election will head to a run-off vote on May 28 after no candidate secured the minimum 50 percent required to win during the first round.
Third-placed presidential contender Sinan Ogan, the nationalist candidate backed by the ATA Alliance, secured 5.17 percent of the vote. The support of those voters will be vital as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 69, and opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, 74, head to a second round on May 28 because neither crossed the 50-percent mark needed for an outright win. “At the moment, we are not saying we will support this or that [candidate],” said Ogan. “Those who do not distance themselves from terrorism should not come to us.” A small constituency in this country does not particularly like Erdogan but is also very distant from the pro-Kurdish movement and finds Kilicdaroglu to be a weak leader. Ogan recruited those voters.
In the eyes of Turkish nationalists, both Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu have the support of those they consider aligned with terror groups. Kilicdaroglu’s candidacy was backed by the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which stems from Turkey’s wider Kurdish movement and is considered a political bedfellow of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) by nationalists such as Ogan.
Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party), meanwhile, received support from Huda-Par, a predominantly Kurdish political Islamist party. Three Huda-Par politicians have been elected to parliament by being included in the AK Party’s candidate lists. Huda-Par has historic links to Hezbollah, a Kurdish group that waged a brutal campaign of violence in the 1990s as it fought the PKK and targeted Turkish police officers.
The third-placed contender in the Turkish presidential elections on 22 May 2023 formally endorsed President Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the second-round runoff vote to be held on May 28th. The nationalist presidential candidate Sinan Ogan, 55, had emerged as a potential kingmaker after neither Erdogan nor his main challenger, opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, secured the majority needed for a first-round victory on May 14th. Ogan, a former academic who was backed by a far-right anti-migrant party, won 5.17% in the May 14 vote and could hold the key to victory in the runoff now that he’s out of the race.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan entered his third decade of power after narrowly beating his opponent, centre-left civil servant Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in the presidential run-off race held on May 28, 2023. The head of Turkey's election commission has declared Recep Tayyip Erdogan president again after voters took to the ballot box for a historic runoff. With more than 99% of the ballot counted, Erdogan held a near five percent lead over opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
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