Turkey’s Democracy Is Down but Not Out — Kate Johnston & Gibbs McKinley / FOREIGN POLICY

An invigorated opposition is ready for a constitutional fight.

Foreign Policy, April 30, 2024, by Kate Johnston and Gibbs McKinley

Last month’s local election results in Turkey delivered a harsh blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Just under a year since the presidential election, in which Erdogan won another five years in power, Turkey’s opposition party—the Republican People’s Party (CHP)—won big victories in the majority of the country’s largest cities, including Istanbul, the economic powerhouse of Turkey. Thirty-five provincial capitals (out of a total of 81) now have a CHP mayor, while the AKP-led People’s Alliance has just 24. The CHP also scraped past Erdogan’s party in the country overall, garnering 37.8 percent of the votes compared to 35.5 percent for the AKP.

The CHP’s victory is a hopeful signal of the resilience of Turkish democracy and its electoral system. After the CHP’s disappointing results in last year’s presidential election, where it only managed a little over 47 percent of the vote, its share of the national vote came as a shock to many experts. It was a surprising achievement, not least because nearly 90 percent of Turkey’s media is in the hands of the government or its supporters, granting the ruling party a lopsided advantage when campaigning.

For years, analysts have argued that Turkey has slid away from democracy and given way to authoritarian politics—with Erdogan leading the way. A single election does not erase years of calculated efforts to centralize power and remove checks and balances on the president. And yet, despite an uneven playing field, the opposition largely prevailed. Even Erdogan himself acknowledged that “regardless of the results, the winner of this election is primarily democracy.”

There may or may not be any real feeling behind the president’s statement. But the fact that he gave these conciliatory remarks on the night of the election is, in itself, surprising. Erdogan is not in immediate political peril himself. The next presidential elections will not take place until 2028. But it turns out that he has less space in which to maneuver than some analysts previously assumed.

At present, Erdogan is constitutionally limited from running for election in 2028. There’s been speculation that a new constitution could lift that limit. But the uncertainty introduced by the recent opposition victories makes that much less likely, buying democratic forces in Turkey more time.

It’s not clear what would be in a new constitution, but it could include an end to current term limits on the president, a move away from Turkey’s long-enshrined status as a secular state, and the strengthening of the central government’s power over the judiciary. However, introducing the constitution—which the president has stated he intends to do—would require a public referendum. Moving forward with a new constitution after these election results could risk strong public rebuke, and Erdogan may now feel far less confident in a referendum victory.

The requirement to hold a referendum for amendments to the constitution (enshrined in the document since 1982) provides a level of protection for Turkish democracy. Compare this to Hungary, where the erosion of democracy has largely been carried out through legal means. Hungary’s original constitution tipped the balance in favor of large parties and, in 2010, when Fidesz (Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s right-wing populist party) won 53 percent of the vote, it was able to convert its small majority into 68 percent of the seats in parliament. Subsequently, though the bar for writing a new Hungarian constitution was set at a four-fifths majority, the rule itself could be overturned by a two-thirds majority—which Fidesz did and immediately began drafting a constitution that gave the government significant new powers.

In contrast, the Turkish constitution means that Erdogan is still beholden to the public. He has already made significant changes to the constitution, including amending it in 2017 to shift from a parliamentary system to a presidential one. Those amendments were accepted both by parliament and—narrowly—through a referendum. Further revisions, and the introduction of a new document, will require significant public support the president may not have.

Turkey’s democracy also benefits from its decentralized voting process, which makes manipulating results on election day more difficult—and voter turnout is consistently high, with turnout at around 76 percent in last month’s elections. Allegations of election fraud are not unheard of, but the diffuse, paper-based nature of the process makes systematic fraud harder to accomplish.

In another indication of the resilience of the Turkish electoral system, electoral authorities overturned a decision by the local election board in Van, which had handed the mayoralty to the AKP candidate, despite the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy (DEM) party candidate besting him by 28 percentage points. This may be a small victory for democracy but is an unusual outcome in the Kurdish-dominated southeast, given the central government is traditionally not disposed to side with Kurdish voters.

Critically, Turkey’s political opposition is still an effective force and has not been excised from the electoral system, as it has been in other countries. Closing political and civic spaces is a common tactic for authoritarian leaders—such as in Venezuela, where arbitrary arrests and the criminalization of opposition parties’ activities were reported during regional and municipal elections in 2021. The disproportionate resources at the AKP’s disposal have made campaigns increasingly unbalanced, and the government has taken advantage of the legal system to jail and disqualify opposition candidates. Still, the CHP’s victory in seven of the 10 most populous Turkish cities and its overall share of the vote show that real political opposition, key to a functioning democracy, can still operate.

A single, if surprising, election doesn’t mean Turkey’s democracy is thriving, or even on the mend. It may be difficult for the opposition to sustain its current approach for the next four years. Ekrem Imamoglu—Istanbul’s mayor, often touted as a potential CHP presidential candidate—faces multiple court cases that could be used to bar him from running for president. Erdogan may turn to more authoritarian tactics to hold onto power, and how he chooses to respond politically could impact the future of Turkish democracy. If he doubles down on restricting the political space, including by following up on the outstanding court cases against opposition candidates—it will be for the worse.

But first, Erdogan will have to start by addressing his country’s economic woes. Inflation climbed to nearly 70 percent in March, and interest rates hit 50 percent the same month. Though the crisis hardly touched Erdogan’s popularity in the presidential election last year, the same does not seem to be true for his party. To have any hope of recouping the AKP’s political losses, Erdogan will have to improve the outlook for millions of Turks hit hard by the economic crisis.

If he succeeds, it would be a win for the general population—though it may also mean he seizes the opportunity to capitalize on any upswing in public opinion to introduce his proposed new constitution. He may also seek the support he needs for a referendum by pursuing a closer relationship with right-wing nationalists and Islamists. By tempting traditionally conservative AKP voters back into the fold, he could regain those he lost to the Islamist New Welfare Party in last month’s election.

Turkey has a long way to go before it can be considered a liberal democratic country. Its democracy has declined precipitously in the past 15 years; but this election signals that there are pockets of resilience. That’s worth paying attention to. A more resilient Turkish democracy merits encouragement and hope—not least because, as a global swing state, the choices that Turkey makes may have an impact beyond its borders.