Turkey’s democratic resilience

Cambridge, UK |  AYSE ZARAKOL – PROJECT SYNDICATE |   Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14 have been called the most important of the year. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) is trailing in polls behind his main opponent, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) who is backed by a broad opposition alliance. If Erdoğan is defeated, the elections will have global significance, demonstrating that the erosion of democracies worldwide in recent years can be reversed – and that even firmly entrenched strongmen can be shown the door.

While other leaders cut from the same cloth, including former US President Donald Trump and former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, have also lost elections in recent years, the Turkish opposition faces a tougher task. The country’s slide towards full-blown authoritarianism is nearly complete. Erdoğan has been in power for more than 20 years – much longer than either Trump or Bolsonaro was – and has used this time to shape the state in his own image.

Erdoğan formally or informally controls all of Turkey’s political institutions, further centralizing an already-centralized state. There are hardly any checks on his executive presidency: the parliament is a rubber stamp, and the judiciary answers to him. The military is defanged; the police are loyal. His alliance with the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) means that he has a semi-organized civil militia at his disposal (the opposition suspects that such a group was involved in the stoning of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and his supporters at a campaign rally in Erzurum last Sunday). A nationwide network of cronies and political appointees feed on the regime’s corruption, with much to lose if Kılıçdaroğlu wins.

Erdoğan also maintains a firm grip on Turkey’s media. Most TV channels and print outlets run nonstop pro-AKP coverage, while opposition candidates must campaign via online interviews and social media. Selahattin Demirtaş, the erstwhile leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), campaigns from prison.

Many international observers are understandably skeptical that the opposition will win or, rather, that Erdoğan will allow a loss. After all, leaders who amass so much power do not tend to give it up willingly. Opposition voters are being warned not to get their hopes up.

But such “realism” misses a key point: the fact that we are even speculating about the possibility of Erdoğan’s ouster next Sunday (or later in the month, if the election goes to a run-off) is the result of the opposition bloc’s dogged refusal to give up hope. As Max Weber said in his 1919 lecture Politics as a Vocation, “man would not have attained the possible unless time and again he had reached out for the impossible.”

It is forgotten now, but a common complaint about pre-Erdoğan Turkey was that its citizens lacked a proper civic culture and understanding of democracy. It was said that Turks always looked to the armed forces to save them from political crises. Had this characterization been true, Turkey’s opposition would be as cowed as Russia’s by now. Yet here we are.

Regardless of the outcome on Sunday, Turkey’s democratic forces have truly proven their resilience. Most of the country’s opposition parties have united behind one presidential candidate, who has promised to restore the parliamentary system that Erdoğan overturned in 2017. Many journalists, politicians, and civil-society leaders have been imprisoned, yet others continue working. Many ordinary citizens have been detained on spurious charges of insulting Erdoğan or for their social-media posts, yet people continue criticizing the regime.

Individuals volunteer to monitor voting and protect ballot boxes. Civil-society groups organize buses to take those displaced by the recent earthquake back to the cities where they are registered to vote. At the heart of these efforts is the belief that no strongman is as strong as he seems in the face of determined opposition.

Moreover, those fighting for democracy in Turkey can rely only on themselves, not on the military – or even on the international community. The support Erdoğan receives from other autocratic leaders is more visible, but democratic governments have also given him free rein. Western leaders may complain about Erdoğan but are willing to make deals with him as needed, whether to reduce irregular migration or to restart Ukrainian grain exports. In some ways, an opposition victory would create more uncertainty for the West.

If the opposition wins more votes than Erdoğan, the credit will belong wholly to Turkey’s citizens. By standing up to an autocrat, they have shown, once again, that the demand for democracy is not confined to the West. No matter what happens on or after Sunday, their commitment is the best guarantee that democracy will prevail.

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