Erdogan’s Motley Opponents Have United to Take Him Down

[Swordsmyth]

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the dominant figure of Turkish political life for the last 15 years, stunned his country last week by moving up crucial presidential and parliamentary elections from November 2019 to June 24. Erdogan hopes to complete his transformation of the government from a parliamentary to a presidential system, and he succeeded at catching the opposition off guard. But Erdogan’s opponents have quickly rallied, showing fresh energy and unanticipated strategic thinking. Erdogan now faces the very real possibility of being democratically unseated. “Bring it on,” a spokesman for the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) publicly announced about the early elections.

Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) are strong but not all powerful in a highly polarized Turkey. A poll by the leftist Sozcu newspaper showed Erdogan with 43.5 percent of the vote, falling short of a majority he would need to win the presidential vote in the first round, and less than the 51.8 percent he won in the 2014 election.

The timing of the elections, less than two weeks after the end of monthlong Ramadan holidays, gives organizers scant time to set up voting procedures abroad and in far-flung places. Candidates will find it equally challenging to mount campaigns. “You can’t even organize a wedding by June 24,” one journalist quipped on Twitter.

But Erdogan’s opponents have responded by forming an unlikely alliance against him centered on two potential candidates: Meral Aksener, the charismatic leader of the newly formed Iyi Party, and former President Abdullah Gul. It remains unclear which presidential candidate the combined opposition will rally around.

On Sunday, 15 of the 131 CHP members in parliament switched their allegiance to Iyi (which means “good” in Turkish), giving it a large enough block to overcome rules that could have prevented the party and Aksener — a former history professor and staunch nationalist who has been critical of Turkey’s crackdown on the press and dissent under Erdogan — from running for office.

Then, on Monday, CHP Chairman Kemal Kilicdaroglu met with his ideological opposite, the leader of the hard-line Islamist Felicity Party, to win his support for the motley cross-party alliance. On Tuesday, Kilicdaroglu started courting Gul, a onetime deputy of Erdogan.
“Democracy is for everyone,” CHP Deputy Chair Engin Altay said, according to local media. “For that reason, 15 deputies resigned from our party and joined the Iyi Party not with a political but with a democratic goal for democracy to win.”

Erdogan and his allies in politics and the press have mocked the opposition maneuvers. On Wednesday, Erdogan goaded Kilicdaroglu into running himself for the president, challenging his bravery. But Erdogan’s sudden call for a snap vote has his opponents smelling weakness. He has repeatedly over the years resisted calls for early elections and up until recently insisted the vote would take place in November 2019 as designated by the constitutional referendum last year.

His reversal comes amid rising economic troubles. The Turkish lira has been falling and inflation steadily increasing, rattling investor confidence and forcing Turkey to lift interest rates. On Wednesday, facing pressure, the Central Bank raised interest rates by 75 basis points. The move will boost the lira but hurt Turkey’s real estate sector, as well as the struggling, newly urbanized lower middle classes living off easy credit instruments. Both constituencies are pillars of Erdogan and AKP power.

“The main motivation for the early emergency elections is really related to the prospects of the economy,” says Sinan Ulgen, a Turkey specialist at the Carnegie Endowment, told Foreign Policy. “I think there is an acknowledgement within the government that the economy will enter a more turbulent period ahead. Obviously, a slowdown would affect the popularity of Erdogan.”

More at: http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/04/25/...take-him-down/

[Swordsmyth]

Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party on Wednesday said its charismatic former leader Selahattin Demirtas would be its candidate for president in polls next month, even though he is currently jailed and on trial in several legal cases.The Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) had agreed Demirtas as its candidate and his campaign would be launched in simultaneous rallies in Istanbul and the majority Kurdish city of Diyarbakir on Friday afternoon, the party said.

More at: https://www.yahoo.com/news/turkey-pr...153545698.html

[Swordsmyth]

A small Turkish Islamist party is targeting religious voters it says are disenchanted by the authoritarian rule of President Tayyip Erdogan, aiming to erode his support in what may turn into a closely-fought parliamentary vote.The Saadet (Felicity) Party has never won more than 2.5 percent of the vote in parliamentary elections, but its alliance with secularist and nationalist opposition groups has boosted its chances of winning seats for the first time on June 24.

With polls showing Erdogan's ruling AK Party and its nationalist partner gaining around 50 percent support, marginal swings either way could prove crucial to his hopes of a majority in the legislative assembly.

Turkey's most successful modern politician, Erdogan remains strong favorite to win re-election the same day to a newly empowered executive presidency. But losing control of parliament could offset some of the sweeping powers he has fought to win.

A strong showing by the Felicity Party, which shares the same Islamist roots as the AK Party, could also help the opposition attract enough voters away to force the presidential vote into a second round, when the opposition alliance has agreed to unite around a single candidate.

Felicity Party leader Temel Karamollaoglu said Erdogan's party had strayed from its founding principles, and said his group was ready to capitalize on disillusioned AK Party supporters.

"We now think that around 15 percent of voters are unhappy with the government's actions and are in search (of another party). I believe the majority will lean towards us," he told Reuters in an interview.

During the 1990s Karamollaoglu and Erdogan were comrades in the Welfare Party, which formed Turkey's first Islamist government but was toppled in 1997 and later banned. Erdogan's political breakthrough came when he was in the Welfare Party ranks, as he won Istanbul mayor elections in 1994.

The softly spoken, 77-year-old Karamollaoglu, who is also running for president, criticized the rhetoric used by Erdogan and his main challengers, saying that in Erdogan's case it had lost its appeal.

"The rhetoric and speeches of the president don't have the same reaction in the public anymore, people are tired," he said.

More at: https://www.usnews.com/news/world/ar...urkey-election

[Swordsmyth]

The opposition parties have vowed to scrap Mr Erdogan’s new constitution, which passed by a sliver in a 2017 referendum marred by irregularities and allegations of fraud. The changes will kick in immediately after the elections, reducing parliamentary oversight, abolishing the office of prime minister and concentrating all executive power in the hands of the president. Mr Ince describes this as a recipe for a “one-man regime” and promises to change the constitution again to return to parliamentary rule “as soon as possible”. He and others also pledge to end the state of emergency, which began days after an abortive coup in July 2016, and which has served as cover for sweeping government repression. They may be able to do this, if they can win enough seats to wrest control of parliament from the AK.
For now, Mr Erdogan’s biggest headache is a currency crisis largely of his own making. The president has long insisted on holding lending rates down to keep the economy firing on all cylinders. The central bank has obliged. But the resulting credit binge has come at a cost. The value of the Turkish lira has fallen by half against the dollar since 2015. Following an interview in May in which Mr Erdogan repeated his odd view that high interest rates cause inflation and signalled he would take even greater control of monetary policy after the elections, the currency lost 10% of its value in a week. It strengthened only when Mr Erdogan ceded to orthodoxy and allowed the central bank to raise rates (see article). Turkish companies that racked up mountains of foreign debt may now be on the verge of default. Despite his authoritarian record and wacky economic theories, the markets have always preferred Mr Erdogan and his AK to the fragmented opposition. Over the past month they may have had a change of heart.

More at: https://www.economist.com/europe/201...fsrc=rss%7Ceur

[Swordsmyth]

Four people are dead and eight wounded in southern Turkey, after election campaigning descended into violence.
The incident has heightened tensions ahead of the 24 June vote, in which President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is aiming for a second term.
The clash broke out in the mainly Kurdish town of Suruc, when an MP from the ruling AKP, Ibrahim Halil Yildiz, was touring some shops.
Pro-government and pro-Kurdish accounts of the incident differ significantly.


The state-run Anadolu news agency reports that Kurdish militant shopkeepers attacked the MP's entourage, and says his brother is among the dead. It says supporters of the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) were involved in the bloodshed.
But opposition sources say the politician's bodyguards opened fire when he received a hostile reception.
Eight people were taken to hospital and police made 10 arrests, security sources say.


BBC Turkey Correspondent Mark Lowen reports that the violence on Thursday came after a video leaked on social media purported to show President Erdogan advocating the intimidation of Kurds to win more votes.
The video shows the president telling party officials that they should focus on the HDP. He then tells them that they have the voter lists of each neighbourhood, and should do what is necessary.
He adds that if AKP officials arrive at polling stations before the other parties, in his words, "it can end before it even begins".


The president's supporters have argued that this is a legitimate campaign strategy to deal with the competition.
His critics say he's encouraging the intimidation - or worse - of Kurdish voters.
"Amidst what could be the closest election in many years, it's an increasingly dirty fight for every vote," our correspondent reports.

More at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-44486003

[timosman]

Can we find any relevance to Trump abusing the system?

[Swordsmyth]

As Turks prepare to head to the polls Sunday in a snap election called by incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Foreign Policy has published what is essentially a summary blueprint outlining the ways Erdogan could steal the election, noting "Sunday's vote is one he can't afford to lose."
As we previously commented, though the man who has dominated the nation's politics for almost two decades is not expected to lose, a consensus is emerging that the vote should be regarded as a referendum on his person and leadership.
And now, a visible surge in popularity for the rival secularist Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate has pundits declaring the opposition actually has a chance.

AKP President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Republican People's Party (CHP) challenger Muharrem Ince. Image via Hurriyet
Erdogan has often boasted that he has never lost an election and, as recent polls indicate, he is unlikely to lose this time either (but likely by a thin margin). Since 2002, he and his AKP (Justice and Development Party) have won five parliamentary elections, three local elections, three referendums and one presidential election.
The president moved elections that weren't supposed to be held until 2019 forward by more than a year in hopes of smashing an unprepared opposition, but there's yet a possibility this could backfire.
Ironically, the move could blow up in Erdogan's face as he called for the early elections at a moment when the economy appeared strong, but which in the interim began tanking — giving all but die-hard AKP supporters reason for serious pause as the opposition's message becomes louder.
His legacy has already been established as ushering in Turkey’s transformation from a parliamentary to a presidential system, giving a disproportionate share of power to the president, and should he win he'll assume even greater executive powers after last year's referendum which narrowly approved major constitutional changes related to the presidency.
But Erdogan's main opposition candidate, Muharrem Ince, is this week drawing immense crowds according to a variety of reports, and gaining support from a cross-section of Turks increasingly fed up with Erdogan's power-grabbing.

opposition candidate Muharrem Ince at Ankara rally pic.twitter.com/LDk4pNxgv6
— Ece Toksabay (@ecetoksabay) June 22, 2018

Ince, a former high school physics teacher widely seen has having much more charisma, has mirrored Erdogan's firebrand and combative rhetoric while taking direct aim at the Islamic conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) leader's enabling corruption and nepotism, and his further overseeing an economy in tailspin with the lira having lost nearly 20% of its value since the year began, inflation at 12%, and interest rates at 18%.
Muharrem Ince's simple yet pointed appeal goes something like this: "Erdogan is tired, he has no joy and he is arrogant," he told hundreds of thousands of supporters at an Izmir rally on Wednesday. CNN noted the rally presented "what looked like the largest crowd in the elections period yet."

Muharrem Ince's Wednesday rally in Izmir as shown on Turkish television. Crowd size estimates ranged from 250,000 up to millions, depending on who was commenting.

CHP presidential candidate İnce vows change at giant rally in main opposition stronghold İzmir https://t.co/bcABiuohMZ pic.twitter.com/28B6vCyHpj
— Hürriyet Daily News (@HDNER) June 22, 2018

Sunday's election is being widely described the most important in recent Turkish political history — a crossing the Rubicon moment for Erdogan as he stands to inherit an unprecedented and likely irreversible level of sweeping executive authority.
As Foreign Policy explains, he has carefully put the architecture in place for this moment, and the outlook remains bleak for the future of democracy in Turkey:

The current Council of Ministers, all members of parliament, will cease to exist and the president will appoint advisors and deputies to run the country. Parliament, especially if it remains in the hands of Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), will be nothing but a rubber stamp. Erdogan over the years has amassed an enormous amount of power by molding state institutions to his liking and by eliminating anyone from his entourage who can even minimally challenge him. Every single member of the party owes his or her position directly to Erdogan. This patronage system permeates all levels of the bureaucracy, which has lost its independence.

So again, on June 24 losing is not an option for Erdogan.
* * *
Here are ways Erdogan can steal the election, according to Foreign Policy:
1) He's already engineered electoral law for less oversight of ballots:

He has engineered several changes to the electoral law, two of which could be game-changers. The first is the elimination of the requirement that all ballots be stamped by officials. This practice will open up the system to abuse in obvious ways — it was precisely such a last-minute change that allowed the government to claim victory in 2017 during the constitutional referendum.

2) Erdogan's own party cronies will manage and appoint officials for Sunday's election process:

Erdogan’s second change to the electoral law concerns the ballot box overseers: Whereas in the past political parties nominated candidates who were chosen by a draw, under the new rules overseers are to be chosen among local officials whose jobs are ultimately determined by the government and the state.

3) Switching ballot locations especially in Kurdish areas:

Suppressing the Kurdish vote is critical for the government... one can expect more shenanigans in Kurdish-majority areas, because Erdogan needs to push the Peoples’ Democratic Party below the 10 percent threshold to ensure that his party wins a majority of seats in parliament.

4) Erdogan now essentially owns the judicial system, the military, and media - all of which will be leveraged:

The Supreme Electoral Council, the judicial system, and the military — until recently Erdogan’s most dedicated nemesis — are all now under Erdogan’s control. The military was completely denuded of its higher ranks following the July 2016 failed coup attempt...
...The national press, meanwhile, is completely dominated by Erdogan’s acolytes. The results are unsurprising: In the last two weeks of May, a study demonstrated that the president and his party received far more coverage on three government-owned television stations, including a Kurdish-language one.

5) No detail has been left untouched, but last minute "shenanigans" will ensure victory if it's close:

Erdogan, the consummate politician, is not leaving anything about this election to chance; no detail has been too small to escape his attention.
...Still, it is quite doubtful that he will allow anything but a total victory for himself — one should expect a great deal of shenanigans on the part of the ruling party in the final run-up to the June 24 vote.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...ndays-election

[Firestarter]

4) Erdogan now essentially owns the judicial system, the military, and media - all of which will be leveraged:

In my opinion in our wonderful political system that we call "democracy" it's the media (including the internet "search" engines) that decide who wins.

I found the following reasonably good story on the corruption surrounding the media outlets in Turkey (in 2014): https://freedomhouse.org/sites/defau...%2C%202014.pdf


Sadly overlooked are the "alternative" media...

[Swordsmyth]

In the presidential election, opinion polls suggest that President Erdogan is likely to fall just short of the 50% required to win in the first round (implying a second round run-off on July 8). In the parliamentary elections, opinion polls also point to a close result, with a high probability that the incumbent AKP-led Cumhur Alliance could lose its majority. While victory is likely for Erdogan (as we detailed here), as Live Oak Capital's Brad Hoff notes below, Erdogan is utilizing all his state powers to ensure his own success...


Bloomberg reports "State TV TRT gives no air time to opposition's Istanbul rally" while multiple sources confirm a television blackout for the Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate Muharrem Ince as Erdogan's rival continues to reportedly draw immense crowds.

So what will happen tomorrow?

via Goldman Sachs,
Turkey’s elections: Opinion polls point to a close result
Turkey will hold presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday, June 24. Voting will close at 5:00pm local time (3:00pm London time) and preliminary results will be announced on Monday. However, unofficial results are likely to be available on Sunday evening on media outlets. In the event that no presidential candidate achieves more than 50% of the vote in the first round, the two candidates with the largest number of votes will face a run-off on Sunday, July 8.
The election will complete the transition to the new presidential system, with extensive new powers vested in the executive. Unlike previous Turkish elections, this time parties have been able to form alliances, with the 10% threshold for parliamentary representation applying to the alliance as a whole rather than to individual parties. In Exhibit 1, we summarise the policy positions of the government (Cumhur) and opposition (Millet) alliances on key issues.
Exhibit 1: A summary of the government (Cumhur) and opposition (Millet) key policy positions
Note: Not all parties in each alliance subscribe to all of these policies, but they represent our best summary of the alliances' overall views

Source: Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research
The latest polling data point to a close outcome in both the parliamentary and – potentially – the presidential elections. In the presidential elections, President Erdogan has a clear lead over his rivals but most polls indicate that he will fall short of the 50% required to win in the first round.
If the presidential election goes to a second round, polling data point to a close run-off, but a likely Erdogan victory against Muharrem Ince, of the centre-left/secular CHP (Republican People’s Party).
In the parliamentary elections, polling data suggest that the incumbent AKP-led Cumhur Alliance stands a significant chance of losing its parliamentary majority and the key to the outcome appears to be whether the pro-Kurdish HDP party – the only major party not running as part of an alliance – passes the 10% threshold required for parliamentary representation.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...xpect-tomorrow

[Swordsmyth]

The election, at least according to the state-run media, is over.

• *TURKEY'S STATE-RUN TRT WORLD SAYS ERDOGAN HAS BEEN RE-ELECTED: BBG

According to another state-run news agency, Anadolu, with 92% of ballot boxes opened reporting, Erdogan leads with 53%; hi competitor, CHP’s Muharrem Ince follows with 30.6%. Anadolu also has Erdogan’s AKP-MHP alliance winning 54% in the parliamentary race.

And while we expect the opposition to complain and claim the election was rigged, we doubt it will have much success in obtaining a swaying the final result or obtaining a revote.
* * *

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...sition-refutes

[Zippyjuan]

Dictator for Life.

[Swordsmyth]

POLICE in Turkey have arrested three people after sacks overflowing with sealed ballot papers were found in a car they were driving adding fuel to speculation today’s election was rigged.

Officers resorted to firing their guns into the air to stop the threesome in the country’s southeastern province of Urfa from delivering four sacks stuffed with fake voting cards to the Bilge Primary School, which was being used as a polling station.
When police tried to pull the car over, the driver put his foot on the gas while the remaining two others hurled the sacks and papers out of the window, prompting officers to use force to stop and detain them while the vehicle was searched.
Meanwhile, Turkey’s official news agency reports that authorities have launched an investigation after three French, three German and four Italian citizens have been arrested for interfering with votes.
The ten claimed to be ballot box monitors to unsuspecting voters but did not have the proper accreditation to do this and have been brought into a nearby police station to be interviewed.


Officers have also been doing the rounds up and down the country monitoring election boxes after several videos showed citizens voting in bulk, triggering mass brawls at polling station checkpoints.
Anadolu Agency today reported that in Suruc, the country’s south-eastern Sanliurfa district, a major police probe has been launched when locals called out voters for ‘box-stuffing’ at one particular polling station, though there are no further details on the fight or whether anybody was seriously injured.
Sanliurfa governor Abdullah Erin said on Twitter: “The necessary interventions were made concerning the short-lived fighting between the sides.”
This comes after news four people were killed fighting which was sparked by an election campaign by a party candidate.

More at: https://www.express.co.uk/news/world...em-Ince-result

[Swordsmyth]

Despite Erdoğan's clear victory, his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) performed worse than expected: It won 42.4% of the vote in parliamentary elections, down eight percentage points from the 49.5% it won in the previous parliamentary race in November 2015.
That decline deprived the AKP of winning parliamentary majority, with 295 seats in Turkey's 300-member house. Instead, AKP's right-wing partners, the National Movement Party (MHP) unexpectedly won 49 seats, bringing the total number of seats controlled by the governing bloc up to 344, a comfortable majority.
The AKP-MHP alliance marks the official birth of Turkey's new ruling ideology: A bloc of Islamists and nationalists that traditionally represent Turkey's lowest educated rural population. Erdoğan may not be too happy having to share power with a party that was last in a coalition alliance in 2002 but with his AKP lacking a parliamentary majority he will have to keep the nationalists in partnership. He may also have to give them high-profile seats like vice-president and/or ministerial positions.

More at: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-...rome-its-worst

[Swordsmyth]

A three-way electoral alliance among Turkey’s opposition parties is no longer needed now that the parliamentary and presidential elections are over, the two smaller parties within the alliance said on Wednesday. Turkey held snap parliamentary and presidential elections on June 24, granting President Tayyip Erdogan a new mandate with sweeping new powers under a powerful executive presidency narrowly approved in a referendum last year.
Ahead of the elections, Turkey’s main opposition CHP formed the People’s Alliance with the smaller Iyi Party and Saadet Party, intended to rival an alliance between the ruling AK Party and its nationalist MHP allies, who together secured a parliamentary majority.
“Our alliance was not a coalition, it was an electoral cooperation,” Iyi Party spokesman Aytun Ciray said at a news conference ahead of a two-day party meeting.
“We had formed an alliance to prevent election fraud and votes going to waste. With the elections coming to an end, there is no longer need for this election cooperation and alliance.”
Temel Karamollaoglu, the leader of the Saadet Party, also said on Wednesday that the People’s Alliance had “lived its course”.
The CHP was not immediately available for comment.
By forming alliances, parties were able to bypass a 10 percent threshold required to enter parliament.
The AK Party, which lost its sole majority in the assembly after nearly 16 years, now has to rely on the support of its nationalist MHP allies, who outstripped expectations to win more than 11 percent of the vote.
The main opposition CHP won some 23 percent of the vote, while the Iyi Party, led by former interior minister and MHP deputy Meral Aksener, won around 10 percent, according to unofficial results.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP), which was not part of an alliance, earned 11.7 percent of votes to become the assembly’s second largest opposition party, unofficial results showed.

More at: https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-tu...-idUKKBN1JU1WL

[Zippyjuan]

Arresting more opposition. He is the opposite of Libertarian.

https://turkey.theglobepost.com/turk...ilitary-purge/

Turkey Seeks to Arrest 271 Officers in Post-Election Crackdown

Turkey’s prosecutors issued arrest warrants for 271 military officers, including 122 on-duty officers, over alleged ties to Gulen Movement, state-run Anadolu news agency reported on Friday.

It also added prosecutors seek arrests of 346 people in total on links to U.S.-based cleric Fethullah Gulen’s group.

The crackdown on government critics and perceived sympathizers of Gulen Movement have shown no signs of receding in the aftermath of presidential and parliamentary elections.

Eren Erdem, a lawmaker from main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), was arrested last week as part of a previous arrest warrant.

Next week, both President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and new cabinet are set to begin their new terms after Turkey made a transition to the executive presidential system. Today, the Turkish government issued latest decree, dwelling on powers emanating from the state of emergency.

Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, whose post will be consigned to the dustbin of history with the new system, said the state of emergency will be lifted on July 18 when its extension expires.

But critics harbor well-founded concerns that the new cabinet would still possess immense powers even if the emergency rules comes to an end. Both President Erdogan and Yildirim hinted that the latest decree, which was scheduled to be released late on Friday night, entrusts the government with broad powers to combat terrorism more effectively after the end of the emergency regime.

Yildirim noted that there will be many new dismissals from the public service with the latest decree, but the majority of them would be from the Turkish military and police, signaling a new wave of purge. Already, more than 160,000 public workers, including generals and police officers, have been dismissed.

According to a report appeared on the Cumhuriyet daily, the government envisages turning some of the emergency decrees into permanent laws. While the government justifies its design of the new decree as fighting terrorism, the opposition and critics believe that the government will dwell upon wide-ranging powers to stifle dissent and crack down on political opponents.