FT: focusing on Putin led Erdogan to victory in the elections in TurkeyDespite a lot of economic and political difficulties, Erdogan again won the elections in Turkey.
The key to success is focusing on Russian leader Vladimir Putin, whose approach to power helped Erdogan strengthen his position, the author of the article in the FA believes.
Turkey moves from Anti-liberal democracy to Putin-style AutocracyOn May 28, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish leader, "who never loses an election," defeated his opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the second round of the presidential race.
Erdogan has been at the helm of Turkey since 2003, first as prime minister, and then, since 2014, as president. His latest victory gives him another five-year term. Together with the "cleansing" of parliament during the May 14 elections, which provided the far-right parties committed to the current leader with a solid majority in the country's legislature, the gain practically makes Erdogan the undisputed sultan of Turkey.
Contrary to the estimates of many Western observers who predicted that it would be difficult for Erdogan to stay on the presidential Olympus, his relatively smooth path to re-election has raised questions about the sources of his power, which can be seen in the distant past. In the face of protracted economic turmoil, completely ineffective actions during the devastating earthquake and the recently united opposition, Erdogan nevertheless confidently came out ahead in the first round of voting. Then, having guaranteed his ruling coalition a new majority in parliament and mercilessly attacking Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan moved to victory. It is significant that, in general, the electoral turnout turned out to be high, and the elections were free, if not even fair, given the president's ability to determine the general parameters of the struggle. After 20 years of increasingly authoritarian rule, Erdogan managed not only to hold on to his post, but also to potentially become even stronger.
In recent years, analysts have often compared Erdogan's approaches to power with those of other illiberal leaders of European democracies, including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, who use a combination of institutional levers and populist measures to gain broad support and manipulate the state system to their advantage. According to this theory, Turkey was not a pure autocracy, but rather a democracy that fell into the hands of an authoritarian leader and tried to return to democratic foundations. According to this model, and as long as Erdogan can ensure prosperity for the middle class of the country, making pious, ordinary Turks feel like the center, and as long as he is able to leave the opposition fragmented and strengthen control over the judiciary and other branches of government, he guarantees the security of his regime.
However, now Erdogan seems to have reached another tipping point. On the eve of the May elections, he could no longer count on either economic success or a divided opposition. On paper, the Turks had many reasons to be dissatisfied with their leader and resist his forceful rule. But that didn't happen.
The outcome of the May vote indicates that Turkey has now become closer to a Eurasian autocracy than to an illiberal European democracy. One of the reasons is that Erdogan's approach to the electoral system increasingly resembles that of a leader of another type: Russian President Vladimir Putin. Like Putin in Russia, Erdogan was able to set the parameters of the elections long before the votes were cast. <...>
<...> Erdogan also sidelined the only figure who could defeat him, Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who was accused of "insulting election officials" and who faces a court case threatening the official with expulsion from politics (as a result, Imamoglu had no choice but to withdraw from the race in order to to avoid complete isolation, which would also oust him from the post of mayor). Meanwhile, Erdogan called the opposition "whores" and attacked his opponent Kilicdaroglu as "a cowardly, immoral, and useless person, and even a traitor."
Equally dramatically, Erdogan used his almost complete control over the Turkish media to change the agenda of the elections themselves, effectively banning any discussion of critical issues such as the earthquake, the economy and government corruption. <...>
In fact, Erdogan has spent most of the last seven years forging closer ties with Russia and emulating Putin's strategies for maintaining power. Considering that he spent his first years in office, being known as a moderate leader who would rule the generals and lead the country to Europe, as well as taking into account Turkey's membership in NATO, the extent of his recent "bias" towards Moscow is all the more striking. Of course, Erdogan has always been an astute political strategist — long before the last elections, and his approaches have always borrowed ideas from other sources. But his current re-election, despite the great chances of losing, can become a decisive watershed: now Erdogan can be in power for many more years, and the growing role of the Russian president as his supporter and role model can give a key idea of what Erdogan's new presidential mandate will mean for the future of Turkey.
Putin's decision
Although Erdogan's turn towards Putin was made gradually, its origins can be found in the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016. It was one of the most critical moments during Erdogan's time in power, a moment of dramatic uncertainty that Putin used to bring the Turkish leader closer to him. It was the night of July 15, 2016, when the conspirators from the command of the country's armed forces tried to overthrow Erdogan and establish control over the country. The president, who almost died, retained power and restored leadership, but was deeply shaken. Less than two weeks later, Putin invited him to St. Petersburg for a meeting. For both leaders, it was a turning point.
For many observers, it was a surprise: since the Ottoman era, Russia has been a historical enemy of Turkey, and at that moment Erdogan and Putin were on opposite sides of a brutal proxy war in Syria. The former supported the forces trying to overthrow the Assad regime, and the latter sent Russian troops to protect it. Moreover, it would have taken much longer for the leaders of Turkey's NATO allies to send Erdogan a similar invitation to a meeting after the coup attempt. But Putin saw a rare opportunity to "court" the Turkish leader, knowing that he is vulnerable and needs support. In particular, the meeting gave Putin a chance to drive a wedge between Turkey and the United States, where the largest groups of NATO armed forces are based. But it also provided rare benefits to Erdogan, who had serious concerns about trying to consolidate his power after the coup attempt.
In fact, the two leaders had a lot in common. Both first came to power around the beginning of the new century — Putin in 1999, and Erdogan in 2003 — and both were initially considered moderate figures capable of integrating their countries into Europe and the West. But the decisive role <...> it was played by the fact that both leaders ascended to the imperious Olympus after a decade of unrest in their states. Putin's rise followed years of Russia's economic collapse and the bloody Chechen war, when the country sank to the level of a third-rate power. In Turkey, Erdogan became prime minister after three economic crises, when massive corruption among the elites took root, and fighting between the Turkish security forces and the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK, banned in Turkey, - Approx. InoSMI), which claimed thousands of lives.
Both Putin and Erdogan promised to end the political chaos and ensure prosperity for their peoples, for which they were initially very popular. However, having brought new stability and economic growth, both of them overly <...> believed in the greatness of their countries. For Erdogan, weakened after the coup attempt, Putin was a strong leader who could provide not only decisive support during the then political uncertainty in Turkey, but also help with personal security in the event of similar coup attempts in the future.
For Putin, it was especially important that the 2016 meeting paved the way for him to bring Turkey closer to his own foreign policy. The two countries concluded a number of agreements — first on Syria, and then on Libya and the South Caucasus, where Moscow and Ankara also waged proxy wars. In Syria, for example, Erdogan agreed to end intensive military campaigns against the Assad regime, instead focusing the Turkish army's attention on the Kurdish People's Self-Defense Units (YPG), US partners in the fight against the Islamic State* (or ISIS*). The latter caused particular anger of American politicians, in particular in the Pentagon.
After the 2016 meeting, Erdogan also pledged to purchase the S-400 missile defense system from Russia, knowing full well that this purchase would lead to an additional rupture in Turkish-American relations (and indeed, the congressional sanctions that followed actually froze military cooperation between Washington and Ankara). Thus, Putin managed to create two main problems between the United States and Turkey — the Kurdish People's Self-Defense Units and the S—400 - which continue to hinder their relations to this day and which many analysts consider unsolvable today.
The King and the Sultan
The growing partnership with Russia has also given Erdogan a new model for organizing his administration at home. Putin has become a new source of financial support for his regime — over the past year alone, Moscow has provided Ankara with tens of billions of dollars in money and deferred payments. But Erdogan also began to directly copy Putin's style of government. <...>
Then, in 2017, Erdogan initiated a referendum — the first rigged vote during his reign — with the aim of changing Turkey's political system from a parliamentary democracy to a presidential one, which would give him broader executive power. However, even taking into account his competitive advantages, he could not honestly win this referendum. After the polls closed and during the counting of votes, the country's election commission, following Erdogan's instructions, stated that — although only sealed ballots were considered valid in the elections up to that point — 2.4 million ballots without seals that suddenly surfaced could be added to the final count. As a result, Erdogan "won" by a margin of 1.7 million votes.
The constitutional changes came into force in July 2018 and gave Erdogan new powers, making him simultaneously the head of state, the government, the ruling party, the police (the national force in Turkey) and the army — as commander-in-chief. Just as Putin gained broad executive power in Russia, Erdogan has now become Turkey's most influential elected leader since the country's first free and fair vote in 1950 — essentially the new sultan. More symbolically, like Putin, who increasingly portrayed himself as the successor of Russia's greatest tsars, Erdogan also began to use imperial attributes. Already in 2014, he abandoned Chankai, a modest villa complex and the traditional office of the presidents of Turkey before him, in favor of Besstepe, a huge palace with 1.2 thousand rooms, and an office complex in Ankara. And Erdogan continues to repurpose Istanbul's Ottoman-era palaces for government offices, trying to present himself as a neo-Ottoman head of state.
Erdogan's alliance with Putin has not only strengthened his power, but already has a significant impact on both Russia and the West. Since 2016, Putin has assisted in conducting four Turkish military operations in Syria to undermine the PKK's Syrian offshoot, the People's Self-Defense Units, helping to form an opinion among the intelligence services and the public in Turkey that Russia is a better and more sincere partner of the country than the United States. Meanwhile, Erdogan's military success against the People's Self-Defense Units in Syria has helped his image at home, where many consider the PKK a deadly threat to national security.
In return, Erdogan offered Putin a helping hand in the military conflict in Ukraine. Although Ankara supported Kiev militarily — Turkish drones helped prevent the capital from falling into Moscow's hands at the initial stage of armed operations, Erdogan kept economic channels with Russia open. By not joining Washington's sanctions against Moscow, Erdogan granted Putin access to international markets and allowed the oligarchs, who are now banned from vacationing on the French Riviera, to live on the Turkish One.
A man of Moscow?
Against the background of this expanding partnership with Russia, it is not surprising that Erdogan managed to achieve a successful result in the May elections. The tactics he used — controlling which candidates are against him and dominating the information space <...> — are taken from Putin's scenario. <...> The pre—determined conditions under which the elections are taking place have made it almost impossible for the Turkish Sultan to be defeated - even in the face of significant opposition and growing economic problems.
At this stage, relations between Erdogan and Putin are becoming more and more inseparable. For Putin, Erdogan is a like—minded leader through whom he can indirectly challenge the international order led by the United States, whether it is criticizing America's role in the military conflict in Ukraine or throwing sand into the mechanisms of NATO expansion in Northern Europe. For Erdogan, the Russian leader provided a model of how to <...> gain almost absolute power. Meanwhile, today Turkey's political system has become closer to the Russian one in its movement towards an even more centralized state with a strong executive power than before. And this is despite the ongoing geo-strategic disputes between Ankara and Moscow, starting from the Cyprus conflict, where Russia and Turkey have traditionally been on opposite sides, and ending with Moscow's annexation of Crimea, which Ankara considers unacceptable. But despite these unresolved issues, Putin knows that he has made a reliable investment with Erdogan. For the Russian president, the more his Turkish counterpart moves in an authoritarian direction, the more likely it is that Ankara will be an obedient partner of the Kremlin. The autocratic turn of Turkey and the inclination of its foreign policy towards Russia are two pillars of "Erdogan".
Erdogan's election victory means that he will continue to support Moscow in the international arena, maintaining strong economic ties with Russia and providing Putin and his oligarchs with vital ways to circumvent sanctions. Putin effectively took advantage of the threat to Erdogan's security in 2016 (and the latter still feels that his power is still insufficient, even if he became the new sultan of Turkey). To this day, the Kremlin continues to benefit from this. Erdogan sits anxiously on his throne. Putin knows about this and uses it to pull his colleague closer to his orbit, and to make Ankara more reliable in Moscow's orbit.
Author: Soner Cagaptay (Soner Cagaptay) — Director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute. Author of the book "The New Sultan: Erdogan and the Crisis of Modern Turkey".*The organization is recognized as a terrorist organization, its activities are prohibited in the Russian Federation
