Recep Tayyip Erdogan won Turkey’s presidential election on Sunday. And he did so in a relative landslide with 52.2%.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu was the unified opposition candidate. He led in all the polls. But he fell short with 47.8%.
Erdogan wins Turkish election
There was never any doubt about the outcome. Yes, polls and media reports portended the end of Erdogan’s 20-year rule. But how soon we forget.
After all, even I presaged this outcome six years ago in “Hail, Erdogan! Latter-Day Sultan of Turkey.” Erdogan had just orchestrated passage of a constitutional referendum. It institutionalized his dictatorial powers.
What that meant was so clear that The Washington Post warned
Turkey will never be the same after this vote.
Again, that was six years ago! And what that meant was so clear to me that, in the post cited above, I warned
This referendum has effectively put that struggle for democracy out of its misery. Ironically, only a (successful) military coup can save Turkish democracy now.
And my mention of a military coup was intentional. I was alluding to the bungled coup one year earlier. Because surviving it gave Erdogan cover to orchestrate that constitutional referendum. It also gave him an excuse to purge his political opponents. He has ruled like a dictator ever since.
Of course, no leader with dictatorial powers has ever lost an election. Strongmen like Fidel Castro and Vladimir Putin demonstrated this time and again. So only willful ignorance made anyone think Erdogan would be the first to do so.
What Erdogan’s win means
Suspense abounds over whether Erdogan will use this election the way he used that coup. That is, to double down on his policies and exact revenge against his opponents. And to turn Turkey into a Muslim autocracy.
The irony is that his only opponents these days are his Western allies. He has ongoing beefs over Turkey’s application to join the EU and Sweden’s application to join NATO.
But here too, most commentators seem willfully ignorant about Erdogan’s clear intent. Most notably, they allude to his “special relationship” with Putin. This, to insinuate that he’s going to undermine NATO’s support for Ukraine.
But here are six points to put this election and Erdogan’s rule into context:
- He has nothing but contempt for European leaders. That’s because they have blackballed Turkey’s application to join the EU for decades. And only anti-Muslim prejudice explains them doing so. This has caused long-simmering resentment even among secular Turks. I commented in “Thanks to EU, Turkey Ratifies Erdogan’s Dictatorial Rule.”
- Unlike EU leaders, Erdogan is not blocking Sweden’s application to join NATO out of prejudice. He signed off on Finland’s, after all. No, he’s just determined to extract the same kind of favor the US extracts from other countries. In this case, he had been asking Sweden for years to extradite a few Kurdish terrorists. Because he deems them as much a threat to Turkey as US presidents have deemed Muslim terrorists. Erdogan now has Sweden over the proverbial barrel. That’s thanks to his pal Putin invading Ukraine.
- He is embracing Putin for the same reason Castro embraced Khrushchev. He felt Western leaders dissed him.
- Unlike Castro, Erdogan is playing his Russian partner off against his Western frenemies. For example, he purchased fighter jets and air defense systems from Russia. That’s because the US was keeping Turkey at arm’s length. But Turkey is also providing drones to help Ukraine kill Russians. This, like the ones Iran is providing to help Russia kill Ukrainians.
- Many analysts are accusing him of stoking divisions in a polarized country. But you’d be forgiven for thinking they were referring not to Erdogan but to Donald Trump or one of his demon spawn. They are also saying this election was free but unfair. But, by any objective criteria, it was as free and arguably as fair as any US presidential election.
- He still resents that the US provided so little support when the military attempted that coup. After all, his was a democratically elected government. But that’s when the abiding contempt he has for European leaders extended to US presidents beginning with then-serving Barack Obama.
Turkey has the second-largest army in NATO. Erdogan’s re-election has made him the second-strongest leader.
This is why Biden rushed to tweet congratulations. It is also why Biden made a point of telling reporters that he followed up with a call yesterday. And all he said about that call was that he and Erdogan agreed to discuss the sale of those fighter jets next week.
Like I said: Hail, Erdogan!