You might think it’s quite late to give a prediction, just two days before the elections. That might be the case, but that doesn’t make it easy or even more accurate on beforehand. Sure, the general trends are clear: AKP will lose some, CHP and MHP will gain some, and HDP will be close and probably over the 10% threshold. If I were to guess, I’d personally say AKP will lose more than a little and would score some 35-38%, CHP would stay just under the 30% mark, because they loan out voters to the HDP; MHP would score just below the 20% mark, and the HDP would easily surpass the threshold and probably be closer to 15% than to 10%. I say would, because I don’t expect the outcome to reflect what people really vote.
That is a serious accusation to make, I know. But it is based on past experience, such as with the local elections in 2014. For instance, the way CHP got robbed of the municipality of Ankara, can only be described as daylight robbery, in which no less than the Interior Minister and the intelligence service (MIT) very blatantly manipulated the counting of the votes in the favor of the incumbent AKP mayor. And you don’t have to take my word for it, economist Erik Meyersson did a fine job uncovering the massive rigging by means of statistical analysis (see: https://erikmeyersson.com/2014/04/06/trouble-in-turkeys-elections/). But wouldn’t manipulations of votes on a national level show, because they wouldn’t be consistent with what polls predicted, you say? Alas, one of the many things we learned from the leaked tapes during the 17-25 December corruption saga: opinion polls are being manipulated by the state.
Make no mistake, Turkey is a de facto party state.
And the AKP is the state. Make no mistake, Turkey is a de facto party state. There is no separation whatsoever between the legislative and the executive powers, and truth be told, there never really was even before the AKP era. But the judiciary, however unworldly and unjust it sometimes was, provided some balance to the powers of the legislative. As did the army. Not exactly in line with what we would consider desirable in a liberal democracy, but effective in a sense. The Turkish armed forces seized power on three occasions (in 1960, 1970 and in 1980) and forced a government to resign in 1997.
For some AKP followers, their party is still repairing, or rather retaliating that last coup d’état. And it was this reasoning that got them the support of self-announced liberals, while changing the constitution (which is in turn still the venomous inheritance of the 1980 coup), specifically to bring the judiciary under the control of the legislative powers in 2010. And that was the real end of the then admittedly still imperfect and developing Turkish democracy.
Meanwhile the army had been stripped of its powers by means of what turned out to be a conspiracy of incredible proportions. And when I say that it turned out to be, I mean that anyone who wanted to see the truth from day one, did see right away that the charges were false and a mere pretense to topple the army. Meaning that the ones who didn’t identify the obvious, and again we have to point at the self-announced liberals, may rightly be accused of looking away.
No one in their right mind would dare claim that there has been a fair election campaign or that there is a level playing field for the parties in it.
So, where does that leave us? Right here, right now, no one in their right mind would dare claim that there has been a fair election campaign or that there is a level playing field for the parties in it. The AKP has given new meaning to the notion of incumbency advantage, by using all of the state resources, from public transportation to state television for their own propaganda. Also, business conglomerates that are heavily linked to the AKP hegemony used their (media) power to their full extent, and those who are relatively neutral were strongarmed by the state into obedience.
Claiming that AKP has support of half of the electorate, based on the 49,8% percentage they won in the 2011 election, is merely a show of ignorance.
Exactly like happened in 2011, a cynic might say. Yes, claiming that AKP has support of half of the electorate, based on the 49,8% percentage they won in that election, is indeed a show of ignorance. But, this time it’s even worse. This time the sworn to be impartial president of the republic of Turkey fully engaged in his party’s election campaign. And when I say fully, I mean fully, no holds barred. Breaking the constitution every single day, president Erdogan asked, demanded, compelled, threatened the electorate to give him the parliamentary power he needs to change the constitution, so he can become an executive type president. Every day the president went places, mostly under the pretext of opening some place or thing, and gave speeches about the godless CHP and HDP, about the small remnants of press that aren’t leashed, and about the foreign conspiracy against him and his reborn empire. And every day he seemed to get a little more agitated, because it became clearer and clearer that the chances that the HDP would surpass the 10% hurdle were still rising, and he couldn’t stop the AKP from eroding.
The Gezi uprising has taught people that the state is not almighty and that mobilizing dissent does have an effect.
(C) CC – photo from https://bipartisanpolicy.org/
There is hope. The Gezi uprising has taught people that the state is not almighty and that mobilizing dissent does have an effect. This time around, again bottom-up, or should we say grassroots-up, an organization has arisen to secure the ballots and the vote counting process in general, called Oy ve Ötesi (the Vote and Further). Ten thousands of not-partisan volunteers will monitor the vote counting and administrating process, thus minimizing the opprtunities for those who would want to manipulate. And that might be why this is not the last election, but maybe the first. We’ll see…
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