Turkey’s neo-Islamist Justice and Development Party won a remarkable victory in Sunday’s parliamentary elections, securing its third successive majority with an increased share of the vote. But, Ragan Updegraff writes, strong gains by the social democratic and Kurdish opposition parties denied the AKP the 330-seat threshold required to amend the constitution, requiring Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to do what doesn’t come easily to any Turkish politician – negotiate and compromise with his political rivals.
The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) returned to power following Turkey’s parliamentary elections, but the party lost seats and failed to secure the 3/5 majority needed to amend the constitution without gaining support from other parties. In a bizarre twist, the AKP increased its share of the popular vote while losing seats—the result of a high 10% threshold required to enter parliament and a skewed system of closed-list proportional representation. (For a full accounting of the results, click here.)
The elections yielded a few other surprises. The Kurdish nationalist Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which is closely affiliated with the terrorist Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), captured 36 seats, a 70% increase. In the months leading up to the election, the AKP ratcheted up the Turkish nationalist rhetoric in an effort to keep the rightist National Action Party (MHP) from meeting the 10% threshold and thus assuring itself a 3/5 majority. In the Kurdish stronghold of Diyarbakir, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan not only denied the Kurdish problem, but accused the BDP of converting Kurds to Zoroastrianism and subverting Muslim identity. In the end, the MHP met the threshold while AKP succeeded in further alienating Kurds, especially the BDP. Given the current bad feeling between the two parties, it will be difficult for the prime minister to build the consensus needed to solve the Kurdish problem.
Meanwhile, the chief opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), gained 38 seats after securing 26% of the popular vote. Though the party performed below the high expectations it set for itself, it proved itself a formidable challenger while offering something new to Turkey’s rather stagnant party politics. The CHP has undergone serious changes since the ouster of its former nationalist leader last year, adopting a liberal, pro-European platform while taking a progressive stand on the Kurdish problem.
Though the AKP lost seats, Erdogan has emerged as the most popular leader in the history of Turkish electoral politics. The party has increased its share of the vote in each parliamentary election since it came to power in 2002. It is unclear whether this confirmation of popular support will further embolden Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies or if he will, as promised, seek compromise and consensus on the party’s plans to pass a new constitution.
Erdogan’s ultimate ambition is to introduce a presidential system (and run for the office himself), which given the leader’s increasingly illiberal attitude and policies, has raised serious concerns. According to the OSCE, Turkey now has more journalists in prison than any other country in the world, including China. And, like China, a new Internet regulation that goes into effect Aug. 22 will set up an online filtering and surveillance system under which every Turkish citizen may be monitored by the government using an online profile. The AKP is also governing according to its conservative values, as demonstrated by a gradual increase in taxes and restrictions on alcohol sales as well as the closure of LGBT associations for violating standards of public morality.
These developments are all the more disturbing given the ongoing Ergenekon investigation, supposedly directed against the infamous “deep state,” but demonstrably targeting AKP’s political rivals. Since September’s constitutional referendum, close friends of AKP deputy prime minister Bulent Arinc have been appointed to head two of Turkey’s top three courts. Meanwhile, little progress has been made in addressing the continued use of torture, prolonged periods of detention, impunity for police and other security officials, prison conditions, and myriad draconian restrictions on freedom of expression.
Most important of all is the stalled European Union accession process, the primary fuel behind the rapid-pace reforms that constitute Turkey’s democratic successes at the turn of the millennium. However, more than four years have passed since accession negotiations began, wherein the country has made little progress in fully meeting the EU’s Copenhagen criteria for democracy and human rights.
The main problem is a ruling party that has distanced itself from the liberal democracy it once embraced to instead champion a majoritarian conception of rule by the people whereby minorities, opposition figures, and political dissenters are becoming less secure in their rights.
Increasingly, Turkey is polarized between those who support the AKP and those who do not. The AKP’s critics include not only the secular elite, but also liberals, Kurds and other minority groups, and others who fear the intolerance with which the party deals with difference and dissent.
However, the new parliament presents fresh opportunities for compromise and reconciliation. All parties agree that Turkey should adopt a new constitution, and given the CHP’s progressive turn, the country now has a genuine opportunity to pass a liberal democratic constitution that will respect and affirm the rights of all citizens.
Nevertheless, and despite Prime Minister Erdogan’s acceptance speech yesterday in which he vowed to seek compromise on a new constitution, it is possible, even likely, that the AKP will promote its agenda with minimal compromise and consultation (as it has in the past). Such a unilateral approach increases the likelihood of the new constitution entrenching the illiberal practices evident in the AKP’s current exercise of power, including the targeting of journalists, libel suits, increased reliance on executive and administrative orders, enhanced cabinet powers at the expense of parliament, limited minority rights, and restrictions on freedom of association and civil society.
Turkish civil society is crucial to ensuring that Erdogan seeks compromise with the other three political parties that have entered parliament. In this context, civil society will prove just as key to saving Turkish democracy as it did during the optimistic years after the EU accepted Turkey’s application for membership in 1999 and major reforms started coming down the pipe. Support for strengthening political parties and institution building has been enormously successful, but further progress is unlikely without funding and empowering civil society to hold the government and political parties in check and goad them to respond to democratic demands.
A democratic regression in Turkey will not only mark the end of a regional success story but also set back Islamist/conservative democrats in other Muslim states who view the AKP as an exemplar. As recent survey research attests, 66% of Arabs view Turkey as a democratic model.
Turkish democracy is neither a mission accomplished nor a lost cause. Authoritarian trends can be reversed and the AKP government may yet return to the more liberal politics of its inception. However, this will take serious work and dedication from the government, opposition political parties, and civil society. These elections and upcoming plans to draft a new constitution provide at once a strong impetus for reform and a new starting point.
Ragan Updegraff is a Research Associate in the International Forum for Democratic Studies at the National Endowment for Democracy and writes on the Turkish Politics in Action blog.
