Turkish voters head to polls Sunday amid turmoil

A rally of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, is held in Ankara, Turkey, on Saturday, a day ahead of the nation's parliamentary election.

By Glen Johnson

Oct. 31, 2015 11:51 AM PT

reporting from Istanbul, Turkey — Less than five months after Turkish voters delivered a stinging rebuke to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, they head back to the polls Sunday to determine whether his Islamist-rooted party should regain the parliamentary majority it lost in June for the first time in 13 years.

The re-run vote comes after months of Turkey’s having been convulsed by lethal suicide blasts, sharpening ethnic violence and seemingly intractable polarization.

Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, have sought to cast the vote, which follows failed coalition talks, as a choice between stability and chaos, arguing that only single-party rule can steady Turkey — a North Atlantic Treaty Organization ally and influential player amid the turmoil in neighboring Syria. In June, a pro-Kurdish party garnered enough votes to enter parliament for the first time, and the AKP failed to reach the 276-seat benchmark for a majority.

In seeking to reclaim the majority, the AKP has narrowed its focus to around 40 hotly contested provinces, reports indicate, hoping to garner 18 more seats needed for a majority.

But many voters, while longing for an end to growing instability, also appear frustrated by the political turmoil wracking the nation.

We are tired of elections and all these attacks on people. We need a government, not more elections.

— Caner Erdogan

“We are tired of elections and all these attacks on people,” said Caner Erdogan, who works at a thrift shop in Istanbul’s cosmopolitan Beyoglu district. “We need a government, not more elections.”

As the vote draws near, Erdogan, who formerly served as prime minister, has somewhat dialed back the frequent calls he made for more personal power in the lead-up to June’s poll. That demand proved deeply unpopular with even many of his supporters opting not to vote.

“If Erdogan took a different (conciliatory) approach, maybe he would have a single-party government,” said a former Erdogan supporter, Mahmut Demir, who hopes for a coalition between the ruling party and the main opposition Republican Peoples’ Party, or CHP, to rein in Erdogan. “But he just wants more and more power.”

The AKP’s campaign strategy, several analysts said, has focused on attacking the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, or HDP, by associating it with Kurdish terrorism. That party comfortably crossed the 10% election threshold in June, entering parliament with 80 deputies. The ruling party since has largely abandoned any hopes of winning back the Kurds, who constitute around 15% to 20% of the population, instead seeking to lure nationalist-minded voters while seeking to politically delegitimize the Kurds.

High-profile nationalist figures have been brought into the AKP’s ranks, notably Tugrul Turkes, the son of a prominent ultra-nationalist group’s founder.

An accompanying security crackdown in the predominantly Kurdish southeast has further bolstered the AKP’s nationalist credentials and turned terrorism into a core campaign issue.

Numerous polls, however, suggest little change from June, with the AKP poised to increase its vote share only marginally and the Kurds once again likely to cross the parliamentary threshold.

“There do not appear to be any swing voters left,” said Aaron Stein, a Turkey expert and associate fellow with the Royal United Services Institute. “So, while the AKP may be trying to woo some far-right nationalist voters with its rhetoric, it is unlikely to result in any major changes to the current status quo.”

If Sunday’s results mirror the June vote, most analysts expect that the ruling party will be forced to form a coalition, probably with the far-right Nationalist Action Party, or MHP — Turkey’s third largest political force, whose supporters often are conservative Sunni Muslims and staunch nationalists.

Regardless, many people here believe that Erdogan will remain the most powerful man in the country, exerting enormous influence over the bureaucracy, intelligence agencies and big business.

A visceral crackdown on opposition media — and continuing arrests of people for “insulting” the president — has done little to slake such fears as the vote nears.

On Wednesday, police raided Koza-Ipek Holding’s offices in Istanbul, acting on a controversial Ankara court order. The company owns several television stations and newspapers — notably, Millet and Bugun — seen as critical of the government and linked to Fethullah Gulen, whom Ankara now considers the leader of a global terrorist organization seeking to topple the government.

Both newspapers since have adopted a pro-Erdogan line, publishing favorable pictures and headlines of the president.

“The AKP’s use of its political power to subjugate what it casts as ‘its enemies’ has deepened Turkey’s social cleavages and eroded the political center,” said Sezin Oney of Bilkent University’s political science department. “Basically, anyone even mildly critical to AKP can be deemed an enemy.”

Johnson is a special correspondent

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