If voting booths are any indication, Turks are largely unfazed by their leader’s growing authoritarian streak. Despite months of anti-government protest, a graft scandal implicating Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and an uprising within a faction of the government itself, Turkish citizens voted Erdogan’s party, the AKP, into power in 48 of Turkey’s 81 provinces during elections for local and municipal officials on March 30. And not only did the AKP win a plurality of votes nationally, it did so with a larger percentage than it has ever won in local elections — about 45 percent — while simultaneously stealing eight provinces from opposition parties. In the face of international consternation, insurrection on the streets, dissent in the ranks and a police investigation, the AKP’s victory seems shocking. And while these elections won’t change the makeup of the Turkish parliament, they were an important acid test for both Erdogan, who has actively campaigned in support of AKP candidates across the country, and the party as a whole.
International observers differ when it comes to explaining why Turkish voters turned out so overwhelmingly for Erdogan’s party. Most agree that a combination of a decade of strong economic growth, voters’ identification with moderate Islamist values and outreach to Turkey’s minorities secured, and will continue to secure, the AKP’s dominance over Turkish politics. But these elections point to something else: In a country scarred by legacies of coups, violent infighting and crippling economic crises, many voters seem to have lost faith in the democratic ideals of transparency, rule of law and freedom of speech.
The AKP victory comes mere weeks after over 100,000 citizens protested in Istanbul over the death of 15-year-old Berkin Elvan, the victim of a tear gas canister fired by Turkish police. A graft scandal, evidence of which was leaked in December, escalated in early March after a tape of telephone conversations allegedly between Erdogan and his son, Bilal, was posted online. The conversations indicated that Erdogan had instructed his son to hide roughly $1 billion in cash on the day after the graft scandal first went to press. And in the past month, the government has flouted citizens’ freedoms, briefly blocking Twitter and YouTube in an attempt to halt the spread of negative publicity. Opposition to the Erdogan regime, coming mainly from the educated middle class and the traditional left, was at its peak during the Gezi Park protests last May but has died down only marginally since then.
More recently, though, domestic political unity, a key component to the AKP’s rise, is starting to show significant wear and tear. The uneasy political alliance between the AKP and the Hizmet movement, a grassroots social network with an emphasis on Islam and neoliberal economics, has begun to crack. In 2012, a Hizmet-affiliated state prosecutor brashly targeted the head of Turkey’s intelligence service — one of Erdogan’s most trusted confidantes. The AKP intimidated Hizmet judges into clearing the intelligence chief. Until this point, the infighting had remained relatively contained, leaving the day-to-day workings of government untouched. But this past November, Hizmet-linked police and special prosecutors charged a group of businessmen with handing out bribes, which reached the highest levels of the government. Almost 50 businessmen, bankers and heads of media conglomerates have been implicated in the ring, which sought to win government contracts valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. In a country already roiling over admissions that the AKP flouted zoning laws and suppressed opposition voices in the media, this well-organized Hizmet offensive turned up the volume on public expressions of opposition to Erdogan and his party.In the context of current events in Turkey, some observers struggle to account for the AKP’s runaway victory. Allegations of voting fraud have been levelled, though the evidence seems inconclusive — furthermore, it’s doubtful it would have made much of a difference to the overall AKP sweep. More likely, it’s the AKP’s strong economic record that has ensured the party’s continued success. Elected in the midst of a financial crisis, the AKP promised to lift Turkey into a new tier of economic progress — and excepting a recent currency scare that was sparked as much by American financial policy as domestic unrest, the AKP has made good. Over the past decade, the Turkish economy has expanded by over 64 percent — a rate unparalleled in Turkish history. Millions of Turks have been lifted out of poverty. Even in cosmopolitan Istanbul, where heavy-handed development initiatives spearheaded by the central government have angered residents, the AKP won a plurality of votes, likely boosted by the jobs and capital influx those projects have generated.
But economics are only part of the answer. The AKP’s main challengers are the secular nationalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) and secular uber-nationalist Constitutional People’s Party (MHP), both of which have, in the past decades, alienated key swathes of minority and religious voters. The AKP’s moderate Islamism and outreach to marginalized Kurdish voters in conjunction with Turkey’s economic success have so far ensured it remains in power. The AKP is boosted in the polls by the voting bloc power of a silent plurality, mainly lower-middle-class wage laborers, moderate Islamists and the uber-rich who form the core of AKP support. It is these groups who have the most to lose should another party — less economically liberal and religiously conservative — ascend to power.
A massive construction boom has driven economic growth in Turkey over the past decade, directly benefiting the two key constituencies that form the backbone of the AKP. Wealthy investors with international ties have raked in a fortune helping to develop malls, apartment complexes and infrastructure projects across the country while construction-driven growth and falling unemployment have been a boon to the lower-middle class. The AKP, in fact, rose to power on promises to resurrect Turkey’s economy after a severe dip in the late 1990s. Their success means that both constituencies perceive their material well-being as tied to continued AKP victories in the polls. Opposition groups have been highly critical of Erdogan’s liberal economics and have vowed to advocate redistributive policies and curtail foreign direct investment if elected to office, effectively giving Erdogan a monopoly on support from these two demographics. However, even some AKP supporters have felt the sting of Erdogan’s ceaseless drive for growth. A pro-AKP fisherman told New Yorker reporter Dexter Filkins that even though he supports construction of a traffic-alleviating third bridge across the Bosporus, “When the construction started, they started digging underneath the sea. All the fish went out to deeper water … I support the bridge. But, at the same time, I am very angry about it.”
For the present, at least, it seems that the plurality of Turkish voters have privileged their place in the new economy over these short-term consequences or even democratic ideals. Part of this may be due to the fact that Turks have been students at the school of hard knocks for the better part of the past century, forced to endure violent civil unrest — including a nationalist movement among Kurds in the southeast that claimed over 40,000 lives in the 1980s and ’90s — and wrenching economic shocks, both of which could have been mitigated, some believe, if governments at the time had been less hamstrung by democracy, more authoritarian. Erdogan, too, has been remarkably successful in denying the corruption allegations, launching a public relations blitzkrieg over the past several months aided by the AKP’s firm control over most mainstream Turkish media outlets.
Ironically, even as Erdogan’s stock is falling in the West, his position both regionally and domestically could grow stronger in the aftermath of the current crisis. Senator John McCain suggested with dismay that Erdogan is “becoming more like a dictator than a prime minister.” In mid-February, President Obama called Erdogan to chide him for his crowd control tactics. Though the United States’ response may seem trivial, it’s actually the loudest American outcry over Ankara’s domestic politics in years: Barely a peep was heard from Washington when six Turkish protesters were killed by state forces last summer. Yet Erdogan’s near-complete disregard for muted American consternation may hint that he plans to take on a larger role regionally. In the fall, top Turkish officials made unprecedented visits to Iraq and Iran, two nations skeptical of close involvement with the United States. By brushing off Western criticism, the AKP may be able to earn political kudos with potential allies closer to home.
If Erdogan is able to weather the current storm, there’s a strong chance that the AKP will again make a strong showing in the general elections next June. Indeed, the AKP’s position could be strengthened in the long term. The party has certainly proved it has the organizational capacity, popular support and sheer chops to quell expressions of dissent. If, in the next year, the AKP continues to marginalize opposition voices as successfully as it has thus far, the future of Erdogan’s party looks bright.