The results of the first presidential round as of the parliamentary election in Turkey deserve a deep reflection that includes various factors that influenced before, during and after the electoral process. With that goal in mind, we interviewed Pinar Tremblay, an academic at Cal Poly Pomona University and a columnist for the prestigious Al Monitor, who specializes in the Middle East in general and Turkey in particular, a country that she has covered and analyzed for several years. Pinar’s reflections allow us to delve into political and social dynamics and tensions that are expressed and influence the electoral decisions of broad sectors of the Turkish population.

Oriente Medio News.- Hello Pinar, thank you very much for speaking with us. We already know the results of the Turkish Grand Assembly elections and the first round of the presidential elections in Turkey. What would be her initial thoughts on this?

Pinar Tremblay.- The May 14 elections provide an excellent case study of how an authoritarian regime can fill “elected” institutions in the most convenient way to serve the executive branch, also known as the strongman presidential system. We must first remember that the powers of the Parliament are quite limited after the 2017 transition to the so-called “Turkish presidential system”. The newly elected parliament has the highest percentage of right-wing legislators. Some reasons for it. First, the electoral law was tailor-made for the 2023 elections from April 2022. The goal was to maximize the seats of the ruling AKP, and it did as expect.

Such a system worked to the disadvantage of the smaller parties, while it exponentially increased the number of seats for the larger parties. Although the AKP’s vote share dropped, its number of seats did not. The main opposition party, the CHP, then gave thirty-seven seats to its coalition partners, which are small but right-wing parties. Their vote share was less than 1%, and they won thirty-seven seats as a reward for joining the opposition coalition. These legislators are former AKP members. To make matters worse, the shares of the other left-wing parties dropped, mainly due to voter suppression and possible voter fraud. We have thousands of ballot boxes where left-wing parties have filed official complaints. In some of these polling places the phenomenon of opposition candidates voting with all their families occurred and the records do not reflect a single vote for them. Also, there is a significant number of votes for Turkish nationalists in the Kurdish areas, no one can understand how this happened.

OMN.- All elections in Turkey are carried out within a specific framework that includes the government’s dominance over the media, electoral institutions and the enormous social influence of the AKP. Tell us a bit about it to get a broader view of the political and social framework in which the elections took place.

PT.- Academics, journalists, experts in Turkey are divided into two main camps. One that argues that Turkey is moving away from democracy and is a competitive authoritarian system where electoral change is still possible. The other group, to which I belong, argues that Turkey is an authoritarian system, so political power cannot be transformed peacefully through elections. Authoritarian regimes differ in their ways of managing political power, but they are all resilient. In countries like Turkey, elections are ways for the strongman to reinforce his legitimacy, so that they can boldly claim that they are the «will of the people.» The three main candidates, opposition groups and parties are corrupt, which means they are co-opted by the regime or coerced through extortion, targeted attacks, and prison sentences. In Turkey, we have experienced all these methods. The media is silenced, anyone who dares to ask a valid question like: «how come the Home Secretary, who currently serves as the newly elected minister and legislator, was the only person to predict the election results?» with precision?» can be labeled a terrorist. There are several different terrorist organizations to choose from, such as the PKK or FETO, and if these don’t hold up, you can always be labeled a «foreign agent.»

OMN.- Let’s talk a little about the opposition and its performance in the elections. First tell us a bit about the parties that make it up, the alliances they forged with the HDP and then how they performed electorally in presidential and parliamentary elections.

PT.- The elections of May 14, 2023, took place in an atmosphere of alarmism, where Erdogan routinely referred to the opposition as traitors, LGBT supporters and terrorists. «Choose the opposition if you want your son to marry his boyfriend. Choose the opposition if you want Kandil/PKK to decide your future.» During his rallies, Erdogan played edited versions of opposition videos where PKK leaders were in the background. More than 90% of the free television channels are in the hands of the government and the opposition never reached those channels.

The opposition is now in two camps. One is the third candidate, Sinan Ogan, who was eliminated from the presidential race, after showing all aspects of the spoiler effect. Ogan represents a sector of ultranationalists and has managed to obtain 5% of the votes. So now, he assumes a bargaining position with the government and the opposition. He is expected to either support the highest bidder, or support neither. I’m not sure what kind of patriotism this kind of nationalism implies, but his main platform in the election has been anti-immigrant and anti-establishment.

The second, and the main opposition group, is led by Kemal Kilicdaroglu. An experienced bureaucrat and politician, whose nerves are made of steel. He is a wise, calm and patient leader whose main goal is to end the abusive powers of the presidential system. His motto has been a promise to bring justice, legality and righteousness. Erdogan and his men have been afraid to meet him face to face in any format of a presidential debate. Turkish intelligence has been digging deep to find any kind of dirt on him to link him to any kind of corruption accusation, but they have failed. He’s incredibly clean by AKP standards. He has allied himself with 5 smaller parties. One of them is the Iyi Party, led by Meral Aksener, the only visible female politician in the 6-party coalition. She is also an ultranationalist. Then there are four small parties, all right-wing, three Islamists, and two of them are former AKP bigwigs, a former prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and Finance Minister Ali Babacan.

The goal was for these secondary parties to bring in votes from Erdogan’s base. But CHP’s gains, as I explained before, have been minimal. These new small right-wing parties have not served as a link between the bureaucracy and the opposition either.

The HDP is the third way. The HDP has formed an alliance with TIP, the Turkish workers’ party, which curiously gets votes from the more educated elites rather than the workers in Turkey. But both parties lean to the left. They have not worked as well as expected. There are two main reasons. Most of the senior cadres, experienced politicians of the Kurdish and socialist movement are in jail. Arrests and prosecutions of legal harassment against the left and the Kurds are routine in Turkey. Kurds vote, then their elected officials are removed from their seats and a government appointee is installed. Although they are legally allowed to vote, they are de facto disenfranchised. Second, voter fraud in Kurdish areas is more intense due to increased state surveillance. Both the HDP and the TIP, and their Green Left Alliance have called on their constituents to support Kilicdaroglu. In fact, his campaigns have been more successful than those of the 5 small parties in the opposition coalition.

OMN.- If you had to describe and define a general demographic and socioeconomic profile of voters in favor of both the ruling coalition and the opposition coalition, what would be the main characteristics of Turkish electorate?

PT.- The central question here is who supports Erdogan? There is around 30-35% of a genuine electoral base for Erdogan. This is not necessarily for the political party, AKP, but for Erdogan and the movement that he had established. There is a group for which «whatever happens, it is Erdogan or nobody for me» which would be 10% of the voters. The rest is the group that directly benefits from government sponsorship. These people and their families have acquired wealth, social status and political power that depends on the survival of the Erdogan government. Their identity marks are diverse, there are Kurds, Turks, staunch Islamists, people who belong to different religious orders, there are those whose children are educated in the West, many of them still live in the West. There are also those who belong to low and middle income groups. They have secured government jobs and government assistance on a variety of criteria. Poverty does not work as n against Erdogan because people expect handouts from the government. AKP officials take a cut from this “poor assistance” but also act as if Erdogan is giving them a tip. On this election campaign, we even saw Erdogan handing out rolls of cash to well-vetted groups who were there to cheer him on.

Voting regional map. In yellow, in favor of Erdogan. In Red, by Kilicdaroglu Voting regional map. In yellow, in favor of Erdogan. In Red, by Kilicdaroglu 

The opposition then includes everyone who cannot reach one of Erdogan’s circles. Within the age groups, we see that older voters are more likely to support Erdogan and younger voters who are more likely to receive scholarships or grants from the government. Women, especially older housewives with limited exposure to public life, are also more likely to vote for Erdogan.

OMN.- There is much talk of an unequal electoral contest. On the one hand, a government coalition that enjoys all the institutional, media, and economic advantages, and on the other hand, an opposition coalition with little access to national media, without a national structure that deals with the vote, and without institutional allies. What would be your reflection on it?

PT.- Although the electoral playing field is very unequal in every sense, this time more than 50% of the voters sought a change and expressed it with their vote. The country’s economy is in bad shape, Erdogan is now seen as incompetent to provide solutions and only able to work with loyal people but not with serious and professional credentials. There is also a significant level of arrogance among the AKP elites who look down on the increasingly poor masses. The more isolated they are in their palaces, elegant residences, the less they understand what the people are suffering. So, despite limited resources, the opposition has been successful in generating the «will to change.»

OMN.- What was wrong with the opposition? Some analysts point to the figure of Kilicdaroglu, others to his inability to deploy nationally, and others simply say that they did everything possible against the AKP electoral machine. I am struck by the difference in voting between the big cities and the rest of the country.

PT.- The opposition has made several mistakes. 1- Not everyone in the opposition is working for the opposition itself. That is, the CHP leadership has spent a lot of time, effort and financial resources to support AKP splinter groups, but these political figures have been a loss. They did not work to win the elections, but to keep their names relevant. 2- The opposition has not managed to organize a base of volunteers to obtain the vote. 3- The opposition has not organized a volunteer base dedicated to protecting the ballot boxes 4- They have not reviewed the electoral lists to eliminate «false» voters. 5- They have not managed to create a reliable and independent means of communication to reach the public. 6- They have wasted too much time focusing on what the AKP wants them to focus on, instead of keeping pressure on Erdogan on the economy. It’s the game they should have been playing, but didn’t or couldn’t.

OMN.- All analysts point to a significant level of fraud before, during and after the elections. What is your opinion on this issue and how do you see this in the presidential runoff?

PT.- Erdogan, like any other dictator, has worked very hard to divide the opposition and create a leaderless grassroots social movement that can be easily controlled. It has been successful? In a lot of ways yes, but the voices of the unaccounted masses, especially on social media, have been quite powerful and critical. They have been quite good at using the «weapons of the weak» to quote James Scott. For example, hashtags, memes on Turkish Twitter, excellent pranking skills on Instagram and Tik-Tok are quite impressive. The government plays a game of whack-a-mole with dissidents, but the impact of this dissent process is like wildfire. For every person prosecuted, there are hundreds to spread the word. Turkish society has shown that it is tired and that, in the long term, no electoral fraud can hide it.

OMN.- If you had to give a forecast, a prediction for the second round on May 28, what would it be? Is there hope for the opposition or will it be a comfortable victory for the ruling party?

PT.– I really can’t predict the results of the replay on May 28, but if I had to bet on money, I would wait until the Minister of the Interior, Suleyman Soylu, tells us his prediction, because his has been infallible for the first round. If the opposition aligns its base in the next 8 days and manages to stay together and maintain Standing firm against the AKP, speaking up and convincing police officers not to gas or pervert the vote counting process and not to side with the government but to serve the state, Kilicdaroglu is bound to win. However, keeping all these ducks in order could be a miracle. My experience with political scientists tells me that Erdogan will win because Turkey is actually a dictatorship, but my analytical skills being close to society and speaking Turkish tell me that the discontent of the people is too high to cover up this time.