This article appeared in the Leaders section of the print edition under the headline « The most important election this year »
After 20 years of increasingly autocratic rule, Recep Tayyip Erdogan risks eviction by voters. By The Economist, May 4, 2023.
Beneath the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, home to the Ottoman sultans, a monument to another imperious leader has been on display. The Anadolu, Turkey’s first domestically built aircraft-carrier, was ordered into the Bosporus last month, as the country prepared to vote in an election on May 14th that is the most important anywhere in the world this year. By showing off the warship, which is making a campaign tour of the coast, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan hopes to fire up patriotic voters. But his charisma, grand gestures and giveaways may not be enough. The man who has ruled Turkey since 2003, in an increasingly autocratic style, could face defeat.
As we report, the election is on a knife-edge. Most polls show Mr Erdogan trailing by a small margin. Were he to lose, it would be a stunning political reversal with global consequences. The Turkish people would be more free, less fearful and—in time—more prosperous. A new government would repair battered relations with the West. (Turkey is a member of nato, but under Mr Erdogan has been a disruptive actor in the Middle East and pursued closer ties with Russia.) Most important, in an era when strongman rule is on the rise, from Hungary to India, the peaceful ejection of Mr Erdogan would show democrats everywhere that strongmen can be beaten.
Start with Turkey itself, a middle-income country of 85m people at the crossroads between Asia, Europe and the Middle East. Like autocrats the world over, Mr Erdogan has cemented himself in power by systematically weakening the institutions which limit and correct bad policy—and which his opponents, a six-party alliance with a detailed plan for government, promise to restore.
Of the many bad consequences of barely constrained power, Mr Erdogan’s economic policies hurt ordinary Turks most. He sacked three governors of the notionally independent central bank in two years, made his incompetent son-in-law finance minister, and has since obliged the bank to run an absurdly loose sugar-rush monetary policy. This has kept growth fairly solid, but led to inflation that peaked at 86% last year and is still well over 40% (according to official figures, which may not be reliable). Voters grumble that the price of onions has risen ten-fold in two years.
If the opposition’s candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, wins the presidency, he has pledged to restore the bank’s independence and bring inflation down to single figures; that, with luck, would also reverse the collapse in foreign investment. But it is not just the economy that will need fixing.
Democracy has been on life support, too. Like so many other strongmen, Mr Erdogan has neutered the judiciary, via a tame legal-appointments board. He has muzzled the media, partly through intimidation, and partly through the orchestrated sale of outlets to cronies, another common ploy. He has sidelined parliament, via constitutional changes in 2017 that gave him discretion to rule by decree; Mr Kilicdaroglu promises to reverse this. Mr Erdogan’s prosecutors have intimidated activists and politicians with trumped-up “terrorism” charges. Turkey’s political prisoners include the leader of the main Kurdish party—the country’s third-largest, which is threatened with a ban. The (opposition) mayor of Istanbul faces prison and a prohibition from politics. Former government heavyweights are scared to criticise the president, demanding anonymity before discussing him in whispers. All this will get worse if Mr Erdogan is re-elected, but rapidly improve if he loses.
An opposition victory would also be good for Turkey’s neighbours, and of huge geopolitical value to the West. Turkey these days is almost completely estranged from the rest of Europe, though it is still, nominally, a candidate to join the eu. That may never happen—but a President Kilicdaroglu pledges to honour the judgments of the European Court of Human Rights, and to start to release Mr Erdogan’s political detainees. Europe should respond by reviving a long-stalled visa programme for Turks, improving Turkey’s access to the eu’s single market, and co-operating more closely on foreign policy.
With the strongman gone, Turkey’s rift with nato should start to mend. Its block on Sweden’s accession to the alliance would be lifted. Relations with America, poisoned by Mr Erdogan’s cosying up to Vladimir Putin and attacks on Kurdish forces in Syria, would improve. However, a new Turkey would maintain Mr Erdogan’s policy of walking a tightrope over Ukraine. It would keep supplying Ukraine with drones, but not join sanctions against Russia; it relies too much on it for tourists and gas.
More important than any of this is the signal an opposition victory would send to democrats everywhere. Globally, more and more would-be autocrats are subverting democracy without quite abolishing it, by chipping away at rules and institutions that curb their power. Fifty-six countries now qualify as “electoral autocracies”, reckons v-Dem, a research outfit, up from 40 near the end of the cold war. The list could grow: Mexico’s president, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, has been trying to undermine the country’s judiciary and electoral authority.
A beacon to the oppressed
If Mr Erdogan loses, it will show that the erosion of democracy can be reversed—and suggest how. Democratic opposition parties need to recognise the danger and unite before it is too late. In India a fragmented opposition has allowed Narendra Modi, a strongman prime minister, to become dominant with 37% of the vote. Now the main opposition leader faces jail. The situation in Poland is less grim, but its opposition, too, has thrown away election after election against the populist ruling party.
The Turkish opposition Nation Alliance has already done much better than this. Mr Kilicdaroglu may be a little dull, but he is a dogged creator of consensus and charmingly humble; the opposite of his adversary. If he were to win, it would be a huge moment for Turkey, Europe and the global struggle for genuine democracy. Mr Erdogan did some good things in his early years in office, but the steady accumulation of excessive power clouded his judgment and his moral sense, as it tends to. We warmly endorse Kemal Kilicdaroglu as the next president of Turkey.