By Eleni Vasiliki Bampaliouta
The longest-lived leader who will ultimately remain in the History of Turkey. Masterfully “playing” the “card” of nationalism and anti-Western rhetoric, and allied with the solid conservative and religious electoral base that he brought out from the fringes and nurtured in two decades of his hegemony, Recep Tayyip Erdogan asserts and prolongs his absolute rule, having already held the fortunes of Turkey longer than Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, but even many Ottoman sultan.
Against opinion polls, but also assessments and analyzes that “saw” Erdogan in the west of his political path, the Turkish president “made” a new appointment with History in the presidential ballot on Sunday, ensuring a third presidential term, with which he comes to to seal Turkey’s passage into the “new century” he envisions, and to consolidate the “Islamic revolution” he opposed against Kemalism.
Identity, and not the economy, was the essential stake of the Turkish ballot box, as clearly reflected in the victory brought by Erdogan in a country that, after 21 years of his rule, is now divided into two “worlds”. The Turkish president prevailed with a percentage of 52.16% over Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who received 47.84%, with 99.85% of the votes counted. Turnout in the second round of the presidential election was 84.6%, up from nearly 88% on May 14.
It is a win-triumph in the sense that Erdogan may have had to wait for the second Sunday for his election for the first time, but he also for the first time faced a united opposition, from nationalists to Kurds, at a time when it was preliminarily favorable to him since citizens do suffer under the weight of punctuality, and just three months earlier the country had mourned tens of thousands of dead in devastating earthquakes.
But again, his percentage approached the 52.59% he had received in the 2018 presidential elections, when he prevailed in the first round against the then candidate of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Muharrem Inje who had received 30.64%. with the other candidates, jailed leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtas and Meral Aksener of the nationalist Good Party (IYI) garnering 8.40% and 7.29%, respectively.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, having served three times as prime minister since 2003 and winning a third consecutive presidential term on May 28, has come to confirm that this is a “political phenomenon”, with unique abilities to rally and recruit his voters, but also to cultivate the necessary conditions of division and polarization – as he did during the election campaign – in which he “triumphs”.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu has been powerless to counter Erdogan’s sense of power, and neither has the extreme nationalist rhetoric he slipped into in the run-off to woo the nationalist vote.
Instilling a sense of national pride and stimulating nationalist reflexes is Erdogan’s prerogative—along with the “papers” of religion and national security. On the latter, he took full advantage of the support that offered the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) to Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to continuously advance the well-known “argument” that the HDP is identified with the PKK, thereby identifying the Alevi himself in Kılıçdaroğlu’s doctrine not only with terrorism, but also with the Gulenists and the “conspirators” of the West who want his overthrow.
“In which direction will Turkey be led?
…is a question that will reverberate as Erdogan consolidates his omnipotence for a quarter of a century. “If this [the re-election] reassures those who might have seen change as an element of uncertainty, we should remember that continuity does not always go hand in hand with stability” Erdogan’s victory is anything but auspicious for the already crippled Rule of Law in Turkey, as another five years will allow the further consolidation of authoritarianism and the control of regime mechanisms.
In the field of foreign policy, analysts suggest that Erdoğan will stick to, and maybe up the ante, the constant “transactional logic” vis-a-vis the West. The faltering economy, however, is an area that he will now have to deal with post-election, and there he may show greater pragmatism as he will need the West. However, no one believes that the Turkish president will move away from the “gray zone” between East and West or change his attitude towards Russia and Vladimir Putin, who hastened to congratulate him on the election and the “independent foreign policy’.
First major crash test
The first important “crash test” for Erdoğan’s relations with the West and the US – through which the nexus of Greek-Turkish relations also passes – will be the NATO Summit in July in Vilnius, ahead of which he will come to negotiate, and with the air of his new victory, the lifting of the hostage regime in which he is holding Sweden.
