Erdogan: The people's president?

If the presidential elections’ results are based on the results of the first round, which is expected, then Turkey will have a new president on August 11. The fact that the new president will be the first to be elected directly by the people is important, as well as the fact that Erdogan is the favourite candidate, and there is a story behind this.

The last presidential elections were supposed to take place in 2007, but the secular Kemalist elites made great efforts to prevent any members from Erdogan’s party from running in the upcoming elections. If the process had been allowed to take its course, then the Justice and Development Party’s candidate would have been elected president by the members of parliament. The secularists’ announcement that a presidential candidate from the Justice and Development Party would be unacceptable coincided with their mobilisation of the judiciary and military on the eve of the elections, but the military issued a memorandum that acted as a soft coup.

This became known as the April 27 Memorandum. In the meantime, the judiciary resorted to sorcery, as it suddenly came up with a new condition that requires the president to gain 367 votes out of the 550 parliamentary seats. No one had ever heard of this condition nor had it been in effect before, but given that the Constitutional Court supported this irrational condition, it was impossible for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) to gain enough votes for their candidate, although it occupied half the seats in parliament, it still did not have 367 votes in accordance with the stipulation of the condition.

Despite all these pressures, Erdogan was able to put his name on an unprecedented event in Turkish political history; by responding to the military memorandum on April 27, Erdogan became the first elected official to challenge the military. This was a harsh blow to the secularists who did not expect a civilian government to stand up to the military. Until that moment, civilian governments used to take a step back and retreat every time the military issued a warning, especially since the secularist organisation, which is made up of the military and judiciary, had carried out four coups, one of which was against Erdogan’s party in 1997. Erdogan’s resistance was not expected and not only did he resist, but he took immediate action to organise a referendum on the reform of presidential electoral laws. In accordance with the referendum, the country decided that the president be elected in August 2014 through a direct ballot by the people, which is a first in Turkey’s political history.

The crisis of the Kemalist opposition

It is for precisely this reason, for the first time in history, that the main Kemalist opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, were unable to provide a Kemalist candidate for president. It is ironic that in its effort to prevent the AKP from running for presidency in 2007, the Republican People’s party are the ones who unintentionally paved the way to reforming the presidential elections system. In the end, the party was unable to nominate one of its members for the presidency, and after failing to nominate a Kemalist, the party was forced to cooperate with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP). Who did both parties agree to nominate? Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, the same individual Erdogan appointed as Secretary-General of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

We cannot consider Ihsanoglu as being affiliated with the Republican People’s Party, but at the same time, we cannot consider him to be an Islamist; on the contrary, his position on the coup in Egypt was the reason for the deterioration of his relationship with Erdogan. When Ihsanoglu backed the US strategy, he did not describe what happened in Egypt as a coup, he was strongly criticised by the Turkish government. The motivation behind naming Ihsanoglu a presidential candidate by the main opposition parties (even though he is not affiliated with the Republican People’s Party or the Nationalist Movement Party) is to evade elections. To a great extent, this was their strategy to prevent themselves from losing, for the ninth time, to Erdogan. It is clear that this will not excuse the opposition from responsibility, as when a candidate they agreed on loses the election, it is really the Republican People’s Party and the Nationalist Movement Party who have lost.

The other opposition party, the New People’s Democratic Party (PDP), announced the nomination of Salahuddin Dimirtash, a Kurdish nationalist and chairman of the Peace and Democracy Party. Dimirtash is a young candidate and has been accepted in the eastern regions of southern and eastern Turkey, where there is a large Kurdish population. In any case, Erdogan’s party is still apparently the most popular party, even in those areas, and the main reason for this popularity is the peace process that began in 2013, making Erdogan the first leader to make any progress towards resolving the Kurdish issue.

Therefore, the Kurdish citizens who would usually vote for Dimirtash will vote for Erdogan in the elections. The truth is that the Kurds,who believe they have achieved much more under the rule of Erdogan than what they achieved over the past 80 years under the republic, are most likely to vote in favour of the Justice and Development Party.

Erdogan as a presidential candidate

Erdogan is the AKP’s candidate. It was Erdogan who surprised his political opponents in 2007 when he chose not to run for president, even when he could have easily been approved by parliament. Today, he is seeking to be elected by the people, and the two presidential candidates competing with him are Ihsanoglu and Dimirtash.

In Erdogan’s case, he will not change his strategy for elections because his opponents are weak, but on the contrary, he is likely to take advantage of his political skills to win the elections in the first round. There is a consensus that the other candidates do not stand a chance at beating Erdogan. What is interesting in the matter is that he will become a prime minister, but there is another question regarding the nature of President Erdogan, who needs to win by a number of votes higher than what his party usually wins. When Erdogan announced he would be “the president who sweats”, he meant that he would not be a symbolic president or figurehead. This year, the summer in Turkey will be long and hot and the people will spend it discussing the presidential elections and the characteristics of the next prime minister.

Translated from Arabi21, 3 July, 2014

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.