This is an audio transcript of the Rachman Review podcast episode: ‘Is Turkey about to see the end of the Erdoğan era?’ with Soner Cagaptay, from Washington Institute of Near East Policy, on April 27, 2023. To read in Financial Times.
Gideon Rachman :Hello and welcome to the Rachman Review. I’m Gideon Rachman, chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times. This week’s podcast is about Turkey. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has now been in power for 20 years and he has every intention of carrying on. But the Turkish leader faces a presidential election next month, and it’s looking close. My guest this week is Soner Cagaptay of The Washington Institute of Near East Policy and author of a recent book about Turkey’s president called A Sultan in Autumn. So could the Erdoğan era be coming to a close?
Gideon Rachman :President Erdoğan’s always been famous for his oratory. That was him addressing a crowd recently and assuring them that the whole Islamic world will be watching the country’s presidential and parliamentary elections on May the 14th. But the election takes place against a background of rampant inflation and of a recent natural disaster. News clip . . . devastating earthquake in Turkey and Syria. It struck before dawn and collapsed buildings while people were asleep in their beds. And just moments ago, we just got word of a powerful 7.5-magnitude aftershock. There you can see people digging through the rubble.
Gideon Rachman :Opinion polls suggest that this election could be very close. But after so many years in office, many experts on Turkey find it hard to believe that Erdoğan would ever accept defeat. So when I met Soner Cagaptay in Washington last week, I started by asking him to explain why he believes these elections represent a historic turning point for Turkey.
Soner Cagaptay :They are historic because in the context of Turkish politics, either Erdoğan will lose and two decades of rule by President Erdoğan will come to an end, or he’ll win and stay in power so long as it’s alive. He has consolidated so much power in the last decade and a half. So many institutions have fallen under his rule and many others are about to fall under his rule that I think if Erdoğan won, to be fair to say that he will completely consolidate power, whatever institutions are remaining independent will fall under him, and this will be Turkey’s last free and fair elections while he’s on the scene. He has term limits, but he has previously shown to us that he can rebrand his job. He’ll probably rebrand his job once again, allow himself indefinite number of terms — so be Turkey’s sultan forever. If he loses, that’s very significant also, two decades of Erdoğan rule will come to an end. Turkey will revert back to democracy. The new government will release political prisoners, including jailed politicians and philanthropists. It will re-establish the new government, that is, freedoms of assembly; access to these freedoms such as assembly, expression and media; Turkey will reset ties with Europe and US; investment environment will improve. Markets will rally. The lira will stabilise. So Turkey will go in two very different directions if Erdoğan loses or he wins. Globally, the significance of the elections is that Erdoğan is among the inventors of nativist populist politics in the 21st century, together with Hungarian Prime Minister Orbán. Since effective leaders elsewhere have copied this model, you know, from Trump and Modi to Bolsonaro. But what makes Erdoğan and also Orbán unique is that these two leaders have never been voted out. So if Erdoğan lost, I think the whole world can take a deep breath that this is the bookend of nativist populist politics globally. Gideon Rachman Wow. So the stakes are very high. But you said, you know, this could be the last free and fair election. Some sceptics or pessimists would say, well, you sure this, even this one will be free and fair? I mean, because Erdoğan has done quite a lot to erode democracy. Do you think the elections will be straight? And if they are and he loses, do you think he’ll even respect them?
Soner Cagaptay : So, first of all, I don’t think the elections are going to be fair. Elections have not been fair in Turkey for a long time, perhaps since the 2018 switch by Erdoğan to an executive-style presidential system. But the race is still free. The vote will be free. And I’ve seen people saying that the results will be rigged. I don’t think that you can really rig elections in Turkey. Turkey has a really high turnout rate, 85 to 90 per cent.
Gideon Rachman :Wow, that’s high.
Soner Cagaptay :And Turks love to vote. There’s also a tradition of people showing up at the ballot stations after the voting is done to observe the counting. People take pictures of it.
Gideon Rachman :So they’re not gonna turn up with a whole bunch of ballots, stuff that they filled in earlier and add them to the pile or . . .?
Soner Cagaptay :Not unless if the margin is really narrow, 1 per cent or less, or a couple of seats for the parliament, in which case I can see Erdoğan pulling a Trump. His advisers, in fact, have convinced him to do this once before when his candidate lost the race for Istanbul’s mayor in 2019, the margin was really narrow, 13,000 votes. His advisers convinced him, said, hey, boss, you know, we control the institutions and the media; electoral body, which is supposed to be independent, is all under our thumb. And Erdoğan repeated the elections. But what happened was, I think, is what I call democratic resilience. In the first round, his candidate lost the race for Istanbul’s mayor by a narrow margin of 13,000 votes. The second round, the same candidate lost it by a nearly 1mn vote margin. That’s basically people who are, who have voted for Erdoğan saying, I don’t like this. If Erdoğan has drawn any lessons from Istanbul 2019, he should not pull a Trump. But if he’s tempted to do so, he will believe that because of his control of institutions, he can get to a finishing point. So I think elections in Turkey have not been fair for about half a decade, but they’re still free. And I think that what will happen in Turkey in May is gonna be another free vote. Whether or not Erdoğan accepts the outcome, of course, that’s opening a can of worms that have never been opened up in Turkey before.
Gideon Rachman :Yeah, but as you say, there are now all these precedents. Trump attempted to overturn the election. Bolsonaro’s followers certainly, you know, stormed Congress in Brazil. And if anything, it seems to me democratic erosion has gone further in Turkey than it had in the United States or in Brazil. So and Erdoğan certainly doesn’t seem a more moderate character than Trump. So you so sure that if he loses by 5 per cent, clearly that he won’t try and do something, anything? I mean, he called a state of emergency, didn’t he, after the attempted coup in 2016.
Soner Cagaptay :I am pretty certain that if the margin of victory for the opposition for the presidency, let’s say, is around five points, Erdoğan will have to accept the outcome or that the opposition is taking over the parliament in a landslide, he will. I think that at that stage the opposition has probably done some thinking that in order to avoid a scenario for Erdoğan pulling a Trump, a position is probably going to go to amnesty to Erdoğan with an offer to provide him, his family members and people in his administration with an amnesty offered that they won’t be prosecuted against. So it’s kinda like the transition in Chile after Pinochet, not that Erdoğan is Pinochet, but basically going to him and saying, you know, don’t worry about it, leave power. Let’s have transition.
Gideon Rachman :The army, where would they start?
Soner Cagaptay .The army in Turkey is democratic with a lower case. It’s conscript-based. There’s no way it’s gonna shoot its own people. So I think the army will stay out of it. The police is politicised because it’s under the interior minister, which reports to Erdoğan. The police is a national force. But I think that the police will also stay out of this if the margin is really a big and wide one.
Gideon Rachman :But that’s a big if. So what’s it looking like right now?
Soner Cagaptay :Right now, the race looks very competitive for the presidency. Kılıçdaroğlu is leading Erdoğan by only a few points, that could narrow down. There are so many white swans or black swans going forward, one of which is Putin — he wants Erdoğan to win. Putin doesn’t want to see a pro-transatlantic government in Ankara in place. He’s already helped Erdoğan last year by transferring large sums of money to Turkey. Those funds that came in helped stabilise the economy and Erdoğan has picked up favourability since. Putin could also engage in information operations to create fake news, to undermine the opposition or to boost third-pole candidates. So one of two ways we can tell that democracy in Turkey is eroded more than any other country that has fallen under a similarly populist leader is that there are fewer checks and balances that remain in Turkey and there are few independent institutions. For example, a national electoral board, supposed to be an independent monitoring body, listens to Erdoğan, takes cues from him. In 2019, when Erdoğan’s candidate lost the elections for Istanbul’s mayor, the board stayed mum for five weeks until Erdoğan claimed there was rigging. The next day the board said, ah yes, we found some rigging. So clearly institutions are aligned in his favour. He controls 90 per cent of the media. That’s very significant in a country where 80 per cent of citizens cannot read a foreign language. So it means Erdoğan can create a post-truth narrative. And that narrative is already doing it. He’s basically running a campaign on the platform that, you know, he’s found big amounts of natural gas in the Black Sea, he’s built Turkey’s first aircraft carrier and that he’s gonna make Turkey a nuclear power. On April 27th Putin is gonna join Erdoğan in a virtual ceremony where they’re gonna bring online this power station called Akkuyu in southern Turkey, built by Russia’s Rosatom. So I think Erdoğan’s messaging is that he’s making Turkey great again. That’s why the electorate should vote for him. And the media that he controls is editing out any kind of stories of hyperinflation, democratic crackdowns, dissidents in jail. So if he wins, this will be the first win globally by a leader who has won on a post-truth platform.
Gideon Rachman :Because what you’re suggesting is that the reality should kind of do for most elected presidents because the economy is in very bad shape. The earthquake was badly mishandled and so on. But let’s talk about the economy first, because I guess that is probably his Achilles heel.
Soner Cagaptay :Absolutely.
Gideon Rachman :How bad is it?
Soner Cagaptay :It is his Achilles heel and it’s really bad. Erdoğan has never won national elections while not delivering growth. And I believe that as a leader, he’s Janus-faced. You know, he’s got a bright side, you have to give it to him. He delivered really phenomenal growth in the context of Turkish history, an unbroken era of 15 years of growth. That’s the record in Turkey’s modern history. It also took place at a time when Turkey’s neighbours were collapsing economically — eurozone crisis, Greece and other countries next door — and that helped him build a base of adoring supporters, many of whom he has lifted out of poverty. The base likes him also, however, because he’s also a nativist populist leader. And that’s Erdoğan’s other side as a Janus-faced politician, his darker, liberal side. He demonises, brutalises and cracks down on demographics unlikely to vote for him. Those demographics include groups targeted by Erdoğan — leftists, Kurdish nationalists, all of these who are liberal Muslims. They are to Islam what the Unitarian Church is to Christianity. They are about 15-20 per cent of Turkey, perhaps. Social Democrats, liberals and various other groups. All these groups are targeted by Erdoğan, make up about a half of Turkey’s population and his base constituted by mostly conservatives, made up the other half. And Erdoğan won elections because the opposition was divided and he had a base that’s solidified around him. Now he’s got twin problems. One, the economy is not doing well. Turkey suffered through hyperinflation until recently, maybe at triple digits. Inflation has come down a little bit. The lira lost 450 per cent of its value in the last five years alone.
Gideon Rachman :So people must be suffering.
Soner Cagaptay :. . . and post-earthquake relief was lacklustre. It looks like there was a lot of corruption that resulted in at least some of these casualties. Look at buildings of Antakya in southern Turkey, there’s a building standing, there’s a building next to it that is pancaked. That’s not the earthquake, that’s corruption. There was either corruption at local level or even more massive scale allowed and permitted by the government. That was never discussed after the earthquake nor was there any discussion of how lacklustre the government agencies were in the sense that they failed to deliver aid. The earthquake is probably one of the biggest disasters to hit Turkey. Perhaps no government could have completely handled a well co-ordinated relief effort afterwards. The area impacted is the size of the US state of Ohio. Thousands of people died, but also many died, I think, while they were waiting under the rubble in freezing temperatures for aid that never came, because Erdoğan, as a typical nativist populist leader does, has gutted out Turkey’s institutions. Instead of these institutions being run by able bureaucrats, they’re run by Erdoğan loyalists whose only credibility is that they’re loyal to the president. So the relief agency that’s supposed to bring earthquake relief to the victims, the equivalent of Turkey’s Fema, for example, is run by a theologian who is not an engineer. He’s not a relief or rescue engineer. And sadly, therefore, these agencies were nowhere to be seen after the earthquake. Instead, the government decided to go for a narrative of this earthquake of the century — this was force majeure, nobody could have done anything. Every government network ran footage of how the faultline cut through railways, shifted them three feet to the right, 10 feet to the left or by metres. And so I think the conclusion that was drawn for the electorate was Erdoğan did his best, but this was God interfering. We’ll see in the election once the vote is completed, whether this post-truth narrative of I’m a successful leader — I did my best after the earthquake, I did not fail, I’m also a good leader because I’m gonna make Turkey great again. Never mind hyperinflation, lira tumbling, dissidents in jail, lack of democratic freedoms. We’ll see if that succeeds or if there is gonna be a blue wave. You know, citizens who are sick and tired of the media telling them a virtual reality based on lies, not reflecting what’s actually happening in the country. I think that the biggest pushback regarding a blue wave could come from younger voters, those who are under 30. They’re Turkey’s Gen-Z voters. Economy is hitting them especially hard because they have only seen prosperity in Turkey, unlike their parents or older people. You have nearly 12mn voters between the ages of 18 and 30 who are experiencing their first economic crisis. So economy is Erdoğan’s Achilles heel.
Gideon Rachman :He is, as I understand it, I mean, to some extent to blame, because he has very weird economic theories — for example, that raising interest rates increases inflation.
Soner Cagaptay :So basically, if you studied Econ 101 in college, you would just agree with Erdoğan’s suggestions that, you know, if you keep interest rates low, inflation will come down. He believes that interest rates drive inflation, not the other way around. And I also think that economy has been in troubles, not surprisingly, since Erdoğan’s switch to the executive-style presidential system in 2018. That switch was supposed to make him more powerful. It did. Now he’s simultaneously head of state, head of government, head of ruling party, head of the police — which is a national force — head of the military as commander-in-chief, so he’s Turkey’s new sultan. He’s become really powerful. But I think the shift has also warped decision-making. You know, Turkey has — from the high school I went to to its General Accounting Office institutions, all of which are 200 years old — it does have this myth of virgin birth that Atatürk invented and created modern Turkey out of nothing, ether, 100 years ago. That’s not true. All of Turkey’s institutions are 200 years old. It’s why the country works. Erdoğan has done away with these institutions. He has either eliminated them or turned them into zombie institutions when they did not fall under him. That applies to relief agencies that did not deliver aid after the earthquake. But that also applies to other institutions of government, from the Treasury to central bank that were supposed to make sound decisions. They don’t anymore. That’s because they’re all driven by Erdoğan’s unorthodox views of how to run an economy. I think this is his biggest mistake domestically, to switch the presidential system, because it not only warped decision-making, but also unified his opposition. Prior to the switch, Turkey had a parliamentary democratic system, so it was a multi-party race for the parliament. Erdoğan’s party never had a majority of votes, but it always had a plurality of the votes. And because it was a six-way race, as it had happened in most European democracies with multi-party race, Germany being an example, the largest party gets to form the government. In this race Erdoğan always won, because the gap between opposition groups, including Turkish and Kurdish nationalists, seculars and conservatives and liberals centre-right and centre-left was always wider than the gap between them and Erdoğan. But it was a cardinal error for Erdoğan to switch to the executive-style presidential system because this system requires a two-way race. So the opposition parties realised in 2018 that they have to unite. Otherwise, they’ll never win. They put aside their differences. They fielded a joint candidate. It almost worked. I say almost because at the time the economy was still doing OK. Turkey’s economy was still prospering. Since, the economy has entered a recession, experienced hyperinflation, and the opposition stays unified. And he’s gonna try to win the elections now, first time nationally while not delivering growth. So that means Erdoğan’s dark side will surface.
Gideon Rachman :And is that already happening? Can you see it in the campaign?
Soner Cagaptay :Well, you see signs of that. He started to label opposition leaders and those who worked for the opposition as terrorists, perverts, usurers. And I think we’re gonna see more of this coming up, going down. He is the master of this kind of politics, both in Turkey but also globally. And I think there’s nothing Erdoğan won’t do to not win elections. He’s used foreign policy, his recent ties with Gulf monarchies, and they have invested money in Turkey, both UAE and Saudi Arabia. Putin has also transferred funds to Turkey that helped the economy kind of stabilise.
Gideon Rachman :We’ll talk about the opposition in a second, but just describe to me where you think Erdoğan is himself in his conception of himself, his conception of Turkey — he’s, what, almost 70 now, 69, is that right?
Soner Cagaptay :Yup. Born in 1954.
Gideon Rachman :It’s also the 100th anniversary of the foundation of the Turkish republic.
Soner Cagaptay :Right.
Gideon Rachman :And he seems to have this rivalry in his head with Atatürk, the great founder of the republic. Does he want to kind of refound the Turkish republic around his own vision?
Soner Cagaptay :Oftentimes, I think that Erdoğan is very similar to modern Turkey’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Atatürk was a Jacobin leader who believed in top-down social engineering. Erdoğan is very similar. He also believes in top-down social engineering. But Erdoğan is an anti-Atatürk Atatürk because Erdoğan does not share Atatürk’s values. Atatürk’s values were that he wanted Turkey to be European, secular and pro-western. Erdoğan wants Turkey’s citizens to be socially conservative, embracing Islam and also politically rooted in the Middle East. I would say maybe Erdoğan has had some success to this end. Maybe that has a lot to do with Turkey’s identity. Maybe both Atatürk and Erdoğan are extremists in the sense that they wanted to assign Turkey exclusive identities. I think Turkey is both European and Middle Eastern. Perhaps it’s neither European nor Middle Eastern, somewhere in the middle. But I think he does see himself as a man on a mission. And unlike populist politicians elsewhere who come from privileged backgrounds, Erdoğan does come from the other side of the tracks. You know, he was born and raised in a poor working-class neighbourhood of Istanbul. When he grew up, he not only felt othered because he came from the poor working-class masses of Turkey; he also felt othered because he lived in a formerly secular society that treated people like Erdoğan and his parents who wanted to wear religion on their sleeve as second-class citizens. So I think when he makes the case to connect with the common voter, part of it is genuine. But that’s Erdoğan 30 years ago. He’s also the most powerful leader Turkey has probably seen since Atatürk. You know, he’s simultaneously head of state, head of government, head of ruling party. People are afraid of him. But here’s I think how he stays in power: the base loves him. Still does. It’s a shrinking base, but does love him and his opponents hate him or fear him. So I think he stays in power through a mix, a cocktail of respect and fear. And perhaps no other leader in Turkey is able to provide that. And I think that’s what makes Erdoğan’s brand so fascinating.
Gideon Rachman :Is he do you think a politician who’s becoming increasingly paranoid the longer he’s in power? I mean, one of the things about — you’ve compared these other strongman leaders, Putin, Orbán, et cetera, they all see conspiracies everywhere, you know, at home, overseas. Erdoğan was one of the people who kind of pioneered the idea of the deep state and so on, which Trump has later picked up. And the question I think often with these guys is you watch them and they all do seem to be guys at the moment, is do they believe all this stuff or are they just kind of using it to excite the base? It’s difficult to know, but what’s your assessment of Erdoğan’s psychology?
Soner Cagaptay :In the case of Erdoğan I think it’s a bit of both. So he really does come from the other side of the tracks. He represents a demographic in Turkey that didn’t have access to the pie economically and politically for a long time. Never mind that since he has crossed to this side of the tracks that he’s wealthy, perhaps a billionaire, the most powerful elected leader. But he still carries a chip on his shoulder, perhaps. You know, he has a grudge against the elites who treated them as second-class. And yes, he has, you know, defeated those elites. And perhaps he feels like if he’s ever let, if he ever lets loose, they will come back. And he fears that losing power would, of course, come with retributions.
Gideon Rachman :So tell me about the opposition. I mean, you said they’ve all come together. That can be both a strength and a weakness, because they must represent very, very different viewpoints. And also about the candidate running against Erdoğan for the presidency who seems to be rather a quiet sort of character and not another strongman, certainly.
Soner Cagaptay :Yeah. So some people will consider Kılıçdaroğlu a Biden in the Turkish context. You know, Biden was kind of the leader who was seen as the safest bet to defeat Trump in the United States. I actually think that there are a few things going for Kılıçdaroğlu. One is that he is refusing to engage Erdoğan in populist and demonising rhetoric. He’s actually done the opposite. He has reached out to constituencies treated not so well by Turkey’s republic in the 20th century, including conservative Muslims and Kurds. He’s offered this concept called helalleşme. It’s sort of like asking for someone’s karmic forgiveness in Islam. He’s saying, you know, I’m sorry for everything my party, Republican People’s party, the party of Atatürk, has done to you. Let’s open a blank page and I ask for your forgiveness. But the big challenge for the opposition is going to be to stay united. You know, it is really constituted by disparate groups. The biggest challenge is that opposition has a Turkish nationalist faction called İyi Party. It’s run by Meral Akşener. Her party is the second-largest party in the opposition bloc. But the opposition bloc is supported also informally by a pro-Kurdish party called Peoples’ Democratic party, HDP. So far, these two parties have remained in this kind of difficult marriage. I think that especially if the race goes for a runoff . . .
Gideon Rachman: To win outright in the first round, they have to get over 50 per cent.
Soner Cagaptay :Yeah. And I think Erdoğan’s game plan is to deny the opposition a victory in the first round. To this end, he’s boosting the presence of third-poll candidates such as Muharrem İnce who’s a CHP defector. His social media presence far outsizes the financial holdings of his party. So it looks like somebody is opening him social media space. If it’s not Putin, I think it’s Erdoğan; perhaps both. And that’s helping. I think Erdoğan’s game plan is to deny opposition an outright victory on May 14 and force the race into a runoff. Then we’ll see Erdoğan the demoniser and the brutaliser. You know, he’s gonna come in out in full force, even by the standards of how autocratic he has become. I think events that transpire from May 14-28 might shock us. Erdoğan might come out with new allegations of deep state that’s about to conspire against him. It used to be so difficult for me to explain the concept of deep state to American audiences. People would say, what do you mean? Erdoğan is democratically elected; he’s a Democrat, respected, even though he goes after his opponents, saying that they are a deep state about to undermine him. Now, of course, following the rise of Trump, I think we’re seeing that Turkey invented this kind of jargon and the rest of the world borrowed it.
Gideon Rachman :And finally, give us a sense of — you touched upon this earlier, but why this election matters to the outside world? Because I guess Turkey’s always been important in the EU or its relationship with the EU. It’s, as you say, also got a foot in the Middle East; there’s the migration issue. But again, the Ukraine war has again raised Erdoğan’s profile and perhaps given him added leverage on the world stage.
Soner Cagaptay : It did, and you know, Sweden’s Nato accession, Turkey holds the golden vote to that. Doesn’t matter how you look at it. Turkey’s neighbourhood is, I think, what makes Turkey important to the United States and to Nato allies. Turkey borders Iran, Iraq, Syria; Russia across the Black Sea and formerly Isis-controlled territory. So whatever your policies are regarding these four countries and one entity, it’s easier with Turkey on board. So I think everybody here in Washington and in all European and Nato member capitals are looking at the elections and holding their breath. But also globally, it’s an important election because Turkey is the oldest democracy and simultaneously the biggest economy between Germany and India. And what happens in Turkey will resonate beyond the country’s borders, at least immediately in this geography, from Germany to India and even further, because I think the world will be watching and it will be significant because the race is competitive. This is the most important challenge Erdoğan faces in his 20-year career. He faces both a unified opposition and a bad state of the economy, both of which are undermining his popularity, eating into his base. Turkey’s citizens have been voting in free and fair elections since 1950, so Turkey has had free and fair elections longer than Spain has. And on top of it, even for Erdoğan’s base, elections are a source of legitimacy. The campaign is not fair. It will become less fair as we go forward. The vote is going to be free and I have ultimately a huge amount of confidence in Turkey’s voters for a free vote. I think that we might be surprised whether it’s a blue wave or Gen Z voters deciding that they’re done with Erdoğan and they won’t put up with him. So it will be definitely historic polls to watch for us globally.
Gideon Rachman : That was Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute of Near Eastern Studies ending this edition of the Rachman Review. Thanks for listening and please join me again next week.