0
0
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
BORN:
Name: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
DOB: 26 February 1954 (age 65)
Place: Kasımpaşa, Istanbul, Turkey
Political Party: Justice and Development Party (2001–2014; 2017–present)
Other Political Affiliations:
- National Salvation Party (before 1981);
- Welfare Party (1983–1998);
- Virtue Party (1998–2001);
Residence: Presidential Complex;
Alma Mater: Marmara University
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan (b. 1954) is a Turkish politician. Few prime ministers have had a greater impact on Turkish political life than Tayyip I/Erdoğan. Assuming office after a long and tortuous legal struggle and exclusion by the establishment, Erdoğan presided over the key legislative process of fulfillment of the Copenhagen criteria (required by the European Union for EU membership), the revolutionary legal changes that dramatically altered the balance of power between the military and civilian government, and the creation of a new economic structure with foreign investment that has been reshaping Turkeyʾs political landscape. He further deepened Turkeyʾs ties with the EU and sought to introduce a new political language.
Erdoğan grew up in one of the poorest neighborhoods of Istanbul and entered politics as an Islamist youth leader for the National Salvation Party of Necmettin Erbakan. He always retained a religious conviction that Islam is the source of personal identity and that the Turkish state is too ideological and needs to be transformed. He believed that the government should have a limited role in the economy and that the market is the cure for the countryʾs major problems. Erdoğan rose to political prominence by establishing close ties with Erbakan and with powerful conservative Islamic orders such as the Nakşibendis and Nurcus (followers of Said Nursi). A man of enormous energy, Erdoğan strikes many as aggressive, vain, and power-hungry.
Erdoğanʾs personality has been shaped by four character-building environments:
- The Kasımpaşa neighborhood of Istanbul;
- The religiously conservative imam-hatip school system (secondary education system to train preachers);
- The ethnoreligious Milli Türk Talebe Birliği (Nationalist Turkish Student Association) student union; and,
- The National Salvation Party of Erbakan.
Moreover, his experience as mayor and his period of imprisonment has shaped his policies as prime minister since 2003. He was born in Potamya (Güneysu) in Rize on the Black Sea coast, but his family moved to Kasımpaşa when he was thirteen years old. He is the youngest of five children. His father, the captain of a ferryboat, was a religious and harsh man, even abusive, and a strict disciplinarian. In his memoirs, Erdoğan relates that his father once punished him for swearing by hanging him by his arms from the ceiling. This harsh discipline shaped his early childhood.
The Kasımpaşa neighborhood has a strong conservative moral ethos with a deep sense of solidarity among its poor inhabitants. Erdoğan received his religious education in the neighborhood mosqueʾs summer school. He was active in sports and played professional soccer for sixteen years, juggling this with school and political activism. For years he kept his soccer career a secret from his father, who did not approve. The sport taught him the value of teamwork and of constant movement to take new positions. In politics as well, he stresses the role of teamwork — as long as he is the coach. In Kasımpaşa he attended an imam-hatip school, where he studied Islamic sciences along with the regular curriculum. His political identity, which is much influenced by his religious upbringing, is grounded in this school system. Erdoğan credits his religious education for all that he is today. In the imam-hatip school, he learned how to recite poetry, especially religious and nationalist verses.
Erdoğan was an average student in high school, but he was admitted to Marmara University in Istanbul to study economics and commerce, graduating with a BA in business management in 1981. He has never learned a foreign language. After graduation, Erdoğan started working for the Istanbul public transport authority. During this period, he was involved in politics and even named his son Necmettin after his political hero, Erbakan. When his director asked him to shave his beard, he refused out of religious conviction. After the September 1980 military coup, he gave up soccer and left to work in the private sector, before serving his mandatory military service in 1982 as a commissioned officer.
The fourth major formative influence on Erdoğan was his work in the National Salvation Party as the head of the party youth branch in Istanbul until the military coup of September 12, 1980, and then in Erbakanʾs Welfare (Ref âh) Party. He became the president of the Beyoğlu (Istanbul) branch of Ref âh in 1984 when he was thirty-one years old. In the 1989 local elections, he was the Ref âh mayoral candidate in the cosmopolitan Beyoğlu district. His campaign focused on all sectors of life. Indeed, he narrowly lost the election, and this contributed to his popularity both within Ref âh and Turkey.
Because of Erdoğanʾs openness, his diverse election strategies, and unquestioned loyalty to Erbakan, he became the Ref âh nominee for Istanbul mayor in 1994. As a result of these municipal elections, Ref âh became the voice of the periphery and paid close attention to the needs of average Turks. Due to his socialization and life style, ordinary Turks were able to identify with Erdoğan. As mayor of Istanbul, he sought to consolidate Islamic identity by resurrecting the Ottoman memory through several initiatives. He not only refurbished ruined Ottoman architectural sites but also turned the anniversary of the 1453 conquest of Istanbul into a major cultural event. His model was not Republican taste and practice but rather Ottoman rituals. For him, the Ottomans were an alternative memory and worldview to the Republic.
By stressing his piety and using religious language in public debate, Erdoğan became the “liberator” and a “banner” of the rising Islamic movement. Beneath the public display of religiosity and commitment to democracy runs an undercurrent of hunger for ownership and authoritarianism to “rule” rather than “govern” the party and the country. For Erdoğan, Islam is a source of identity, a network of social mobility, and a form of spiritual capital that could be invested in the political domain. Despite the widely held view that Erdoğan is religious, he has implemented few policies shaped by an Islamic conception of justice. The major weakness of his administration is the widespread corruption around him and in his government. He has never managed to achieve a reconciliation with the Atatürkists or the leftists, let alone to heal the secular-vs.-Islamic division. He does not have the passion for the serious deliberation required to build consensus.
Erdogan Could Lose More Than Istanbul In High-Stakes Electoral Gamble
Ekrem Imamoglu of the opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), who was elected mayor in the March 31 elections, addresses his supporters after the election board decided to redo the mayoral election, Istanbul, Turkey, May 6, 2019
After the Turkish election board’s decision to nullify the results of Istanbul’s municipal elections, Turkey is stepping into new territory. We can expect further oppression of dissent and even violence to set a climate that will ensure victory for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling party in a do-over vote.
While not unexpected, the ruling of the Supreme Election Council (YSK) for a rerun election in Istanbul touched nerves. It is unsettling for not only the Istanbul electorate but all Turks as well as the international community, which has been watching Turkey closely.
The March 31 elections that ended of the Justice and Development Party’s more than two decades in control of country’s main commercial hub will be repeated on June 23, thanks to the YSK’s seven members who voted in favor of a rerun. Four who opposed it as a violation of the rule of law.
The ruling came more than a month after Erdogan and his ultranationalist ally, Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli, asked for rerun.
Turkey’s opposition saw two silver linings in the decision: First, the YSK’s decision was the latest nail in the coffin of Turkish democracy and the AKP can no longer claim democratic legitimacy. Second, if there is a man who can navigate these choppy waters, it is Ekrem Imamoglu, Istanbul’s elected mayor who run on the ticket of an alliance led by the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP).
The general sentiment among the opposition voters is that Imamoglu will win again by an even bigger margin, with voters outraged that the country’s judiciary yielded to the increasingly autocratic president.
Although many opponents called for a boycott of the redo, the CHP ruled out the idea after a meeting convened immediately after the announcement of the electoral nullification. The main opposition party’s decision is clear: There will be no boycott and it will participate in the rerun despite its anger at the YSK’s decision. CHP head Kemal Kilicdaroglu asked for the resignation of the council members, describing the decision as “black stain” on the country’s democratic history.
The YSK has inadvertently enhanced the standing of a political figure who can defeat and replace Erdogan. Imamoglu displayed a very calm, self-controlled and optimistic outlook in his address to the media immediately after the announcement. He is no more the mayor of Istanbul, but his charm offensive is exceeding the city’s limits. He is the most formidable candidate yet to take on Erdogan, who was once presumed invincible. Now that image has been shattered.
Yet the YSK’s decision revealed another fact: Erdogan will not leave his office peacefully and elections may not suffice for a change of guard in Turkey.
Never before has a losing candidate in Istanbul refused to recognize the outcome of an election. But Erdogan’s ascent to the power began in Istanbul and he cannot afford to lose it. For that reason, the public worries he will do everything in his power to win even if it means foul play. Many believe cheating would be easier than ever, considering the YSK’s disgraceful lack of independence.
The five months between the June 6 general elections and the Nov. 1 general elections in 2015 showed what he is capable of. In the June 6 vote, Erdogan’s AKP lost its parliamentary majority. Yet instead of conceding, Erdogan insisted on a rerun. The country was pushed into a political crisis with severe violence, including terror attacks. On Nov. 1, Erdogan power was restored.
A similar trajectory can be expected before June 23. Erdogan’s machinations could include an escalation of violence regarding the Kurdish issue to break the electoral alliance between the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, the CHP and the Good Party. With Erdogan in overwhelming control of the media, such provocations and violence could feed an urge for stability among the Istanbul electorate and he could ride these fears again to victory.
The divide-and-conquer tactics could pay off even as they destroy the social fabric of Turkish society.
Turkey will remain caught in a cycle of violence, oppression and violation of fundamental freedoms in the foreseeable future. Nonetheless, given the impact of the economic crisis and the Istanbul public’s outrage over the electoral injustice done to it, there is a chance that Erdogan will be again and much more strongly defeated in the rerun. If so, his credibility and power as the president will suffer damage much worse than it took after March third.
Turkey’s Opposition Protests, Plans As Date set For Istanbul Re-Vote
The night the Supreme Electoral Council announced it had voided the election for Istanbul’s mayor, a legion of residents in the city banged pots and pans.
It was a throwback to the Gezi Park protests of 2013, when thousands of housewives who could not take to the streets took to their windows to vent their feelings about then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. A video taken from a high building Monday night recorded a cacophony of cookware from Istanbul’s streets.
The next day, people realized that the day the electoral council had chosen for the re-run election, June 23, would fall one week into the summer holidays. Thousands of middle-class residents, most probably opposition voters, would be far away from Istanbul’s polling stations.
The Aegean island of Bozcaada posted a warning on social media that Istanbulites should not swim in its turquoise waters June 23 because “shark attacks are expected.” Another Aegean resort went one better: “Bodrum will be experiencing heavy snow June 23. We advise you to enjoy the sunshine in Istanbul that day.”
There were serious messages as well. People were asked to contribute to a fund so that temporary workers in the resort of Mugla could take the long-distance bus to Istanbul for June 23. “We’re going in order to take Istanbul back,” the tweet said.
The reactions showed just how much the cancellation of Istanbul’s election has energized the opposition to President Erdogan, who pushed heavily for the decision to overturn the March 31 election results. But energy alone will not be enough. To win the repeat election, the opposition needs a strong case for casting out Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP). And analysts say there is one.
“The economy (on June 23) will be much worse than it was (in the first election),” Ozgur Unluhisarcikli of the German Marshall Fund think tank told Al-Monitor.
“When we went to the polls on March 31, the Turkish lira was fluctuating between 5 and 5.5 liras to the dollar. This time it will be fluctuating between 6 and 7 liras to the dollar,” he added. Today the lira was hovering around 6.14 to the dollar.
Unluhisarcikli said another advantage for the opposition is that “a significant number of voters” of the AKP are not convinced by the electoral council’s reason for voiding the election, namely that a large number of electoral officers were unqualified. These voters “will question why they have to go to the ballot boxes a second time, and why the country has to suffer the economic consequences of a new election.”
A third advantage is that the small left-wing parties, such as the Turkish Communist Party, have said they will not run June 23 and will urge their supporters to vote for Ekrem Imamoglu, the opposition candidate who won March 31, ending 25 years of rule by the AKP and its ideological predecessors. The leftists amount to tens of thousands of voters, but Imamoglu won by only 13,000 votes, so even a small boost could be significant.
More important, however, is the question of whether the third-place candidate on March 31, Necdet Gokcinar, will run again. Gokcinar polled 103,000 votes for the Islamic fundamentalist Saadet Party.
Saadet is a strong critic of Erdogan’s rule, but it is widely thought that if it were to withdraw from the race, its supporters would vote for the mildly Islamic AKP rather than vote for Imamoglu, who is the joint candidate of the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Good Party (Iyi). Today, Gokcinar tweeted that Saadet’s leadership was “leaning toward” his running again, which would improve Imamoglu’s chances.
A fourth factor in Imamoglu’s favor is that he would benefit from a sympathy vote. Everybody knows the election was canceled because the AKP lost. And the loss of the biggest and richest city in the country could mean that the AKP may no longer be able to expect the “donations” it received from corporations it awarded huge municipal contracts year after year.
“There is no question that people in Istanbul today believe that Imamoglu has been made a victim by the AKP’s initiative,” said Ersin Kalaycioglu, a professor of politics at the city’s Sabanci University. He was referring to the AKP’s petitioning the electoral council for the election to be invalidated.
Kalaycioglu said he believes Imamoglu would win June 23 if the election is free and fair, but he is convinced it will not be. He told Al-Monitor that AKP officials are talking about expanding the voter rolls to include the estimated 200,000 to 400,000 voters who live in Istanbul but who are registered voters in the towns and villages of the countryside where their families come from.
“(The officials) are saying these people should be integrated into the voter lists in Istanbul because they actually reside in Istanbul,” Kalaycioglu said. He said this would be highly unethical because the new election is supposed to be “a replay of March 31 (and) no different than voting on March 31.”
Unluhisarcikli agreed, saying that to enlarge the voter rolls would be “clearly against the law.”
So far, no step has been taken to expand the rolls. It is only a proposal expressed verbally and on social media. But Erdogan’s powers are such that he could make it happen.
Were the rolls to be enlarged by hundreds of thousands of voters, “Who is going to do what?” Kalaycioglu asked rhetorically.
“It will be challenged in court, but the court will simply throw it out,” he said. “There is no judicial independence.”
The government’s ability to manipulate the election process was demonstrated by the electoral council’s decision to invalidate only the mayoral election.
Those who voted March 31 cast four ballots — for mayor of the city, for mayor of the district in which one lives, for the district council, and for the neighbourhood head-person or “mukhtar.” But the electoral council did not mandate a re-run on the other levels of local government.
“It’s ridiculous,” Kalaycioglu said. “All the ballots were stuck in one envelope. If there is something wrong with one ballot in that envelope, there must be something wrong with any other ballot in that envelope.”
The most likely reason for this inconsistency is that in 25 of the 39 districts in Istanbul, the AKP triumphed.
Hours after Kalaycioglu spoke to Al-Monitor, senior officials of the CHP and Iyi parties filed separate petitions with the electoral council, calling for a re-run of not only the district and mukhtar elections in Istanbul but also for the presidential and parliamentary elections of 2018.
The deputy chairman of the CHP, Muharrem Erkek, told the media afterward that the Supreme Electoral Council had based its Istanbul decision on the inadequate qualifications of the polling officials.
“A good majority of the heads of the polling stations were in charge of the presidential and parliamentary elections that took place in June 2018. If the [Supreme Electoral Council] stands behind its decision on Istanbul, then it should cancel the 2018 elections as well,” Erkek said.
Erkek has logic on his side, but nobody expects his petition to succeed. The Supreme Electoral Council has Erdogan’s power behind it. The most the opposition can hope for is to hold the new election with the same voter rolls and to contain the risks of fraud as successfully as it did in March.
If those hopes are realized, then the opposition could win. Its biggest advantage is Imamoglu himself. Observers say that in the five weeks since the election, he has demonstrated a charisma and leadership ability far exceeding that of the defeated AKP candidate, former Prime Minister Binali Yildirim.
Kalaycioglu praised Imamoglu for avoiding the “kulturkampf” (culture struggle) that Erdogan has made fashionable in Turkish politics. “He’s not stigmatizing the ‘others.’ He’s not following a polarizing language.”
After winning the election, Imamoglu recognized that most of the city council members were AKP members, and he reached out to them.
During his less than three weeks in the mayor’s office (having obtained his certificate of victory April 17), he decreased the costs of public transport for university students and mothers with young children. And he posted the city council decisions on social media.
After his certificate was canceled Monday, Imamoglu addressed a crowd of hundreds outside his house, encouraging them with the words “everything will be very nice.” The sentence became a hashtag on social media.
“He’s a conservative person with a social democratic agenda,” Kalaycioglu said, adding that this confuses his opponents.
Istanbul Election Rerun Brings Turkey Fresh Economic Turmoil
A fresh bout of turbulence hit the ailing Turkish economy May 6, when the Higher Election Board quashed the opposition victory in the March 31 mayoral race in Istanbul, fueling fears that Turkey’s rulers are no longer committed to ceding power through elections. The turbulence is likely to continue until, and perhaps beyond, the election rerun, scheduled for June 23.
A series of elections in recent years have increased the fragility of Turkey’s faltering economy, which badly needs structural reform. The presidential and parliamentary balloting in June 2018 and the local elections on March 31, however, have led Ankara to pursue populist measures instead of focusing on reform.
Many had hoped that the aftermath of the local elections would bring a transition to an overhaul program, including a tightening of monetary and fiscal policies. Instead, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its Nationalist Movement Party allies objected to the Istanbul victory of Ekrem Imamoglu of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), leading to 35 days of wait-and-see for the economy. Eventually, under pressure from President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the election board made the unprecedented decision of voiding the result — a move that many consider a “massacre of law” — and scheduled another vote for June 23, setting the stage for full-fledged turbulence.
The Turkish lira nosedived as soon as the decision was announced. It has continued to lose value ever since, despite interventions to curb its fall. The lira, which traded for less than 6 per dollar ahead of the decision, hit 6.24 against the greenback at noon on May 9, its weakest level in eight months.
Market actors believe that Ankara pushed public banks to sell foreign currency to save the lira from an even more dramatic slump. According to traders speaking to Bloomberg, state-run lenders sold more than $400 million of foreign currency after the lira breached the 6-per-dollar mark on May 6. The sum was later said to have reached $1 billion.
Yet, this effort to control exchange rates via public banks is hardly sustainable, especially at a time when the decline in central bank reserves is making headlines in the international media. To control exchange rates, the central bank has to hike interest rates on the lira, or the rates will spiral out of control and go through the ceiling. The bank, however, remains under harsh pressure against hiking rates, as Erdogan and the domestic market-reliant business groups behind him strongly oppose such moves.
The lira’s slump, however, is not solely fueled by domestic political jitters and electoral uncertainty. There are also headwinds from the global political climate.
Tensions between Ankara and Washington are running high over the looming delivery of Russian S-400 air defense systems to Turkey amid increased contacts to avert a crisis. As a reminder, it was political spats with Washington, resulting in US sanctions on Ankara last summer, that fueled the currency crisis in Turkey. The economic contraction triggered by the currency shock is still ongoing.
There is also the additional factor of Washington fanning global jitters. On May 5, President Donald Trump threatened to raise tariffs on Chinese goods, reigniting global concerns over the trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. According to some estimates, a new escalation in the war would hit both sides, with China losing $1.2 trillion, or 1 percentage point of its gross domestic product (GDP), and the United States losing $870 billion, or 0.45 percentage points of its own GDP.
The impact of such global woes is usually bigger on emerging economies such as Turkey because when the global economy contracts, it also shrinks the room for emerging economies to export their goods, secure external borrowing and roll over their debts.
US sanctions designed to curb Iran’s oil sales are also negatively affecting Turkey, Iran’s western neighbor. Turkey is now supposed to go looking for alternative oil suppliers with higher prices. This, in turn, threatens to widen Turkey’s current account deficit and raise the cost and prices of energy at home.
In sum, the AKP government faces an adverse global climate as it struggles to manage politics and the economy at home. The Turkish economy, which contracted 3 percent in the last quarter of 2018, shrank another 4 percent in the first quarter of this year, according to an estimate by a research center at Istanbul’s Bahcesehir University. The official figure is scheduled to be released in late May.
Year-on year consumer inflation hit 19.5 percent in April, with no sign of slowing. Food inflation is even higher, reaching 32 percent and standing out as a crucial factor swaying voter behavior.
The unemployment rate is even more alarming. The new official rate, scheduled for release May 15, is expected to be a record one, exceeding 15%. The rate currently stands at 14.5 percent. In terms of numbers, more than 5 million are looking for jobs. A broader definition of unemployment that includes people who have given up on chasing jobs puts the number at 8 million.
The gloomy economic indicators, coupled with uncertainty over the mayoral election in Istanbul, have also stoked Turkey’s risk premium, which is reflected in credit default swaps (CDS) and constitutes the most important indicator for international investors. Since the cancellation of the opposition’s Istanbul victory, the country’s CDSs have surged to more than 480 basis points, severely decoupling from those of its emerging economy peers. This means that external borrowing is becoming all the more difficult for Turkey, with the money paid on interest rates reaching exorbitant levels.
In sum, the cancellation of the mayoral election in Istanbul has plunged Turkey into another highly fragile period. The economic turbulence is expected to exacerbate the daily financial woes of Istanbulites and lead them to respond accordingly when they vote in the June 23 rerun election.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
904 – 009
Home
Last Updated: 05/2022
See COPYRIGHT information below.
