The March 30, 2014 local elections were one of the most important polls in Turkish history due to a huge defamation campaign conducted internally and externally against President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was the prime minister then. It was turned into a referendum about Erdoğan after intolerable weeks of nonstop turmoil, which started with the anti-Erdoğan media suddenly depicting him as a "dictator" inside and outside Turkey since the Gezi incident in the summer of 2013.
A bombardment of endless corruption allegations against Erdoğan's Justice and Development Party (AK Party), doctored wiretaps, some of which were audio recordings of private phone calls or, even worse, sensitive national security meetings, serial leaks on social media like a soap opera scandal, outrageous lies, twists with no bounds and vicious labels such as "authoritarian" and "dictator" followed each other. But finally the Turkish people had the last word.
The ruling AK Party received 43.4 percent of the votes, while the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) received 25.8 percent, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) 17.6 percent and the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) 6.6 percent together. All BDP deputies joined the HDP the next month, and the HDP is now widely considered as pro-PKK since they fully supported the outlawed PKK, which is a listed terrorist organization by Turkey, the U.S. and the EU. The HDP has not kept its promise to transform from an ethnic to a progressive Turkish party. During the previous local elections in 2009 the distribution of the votes was 40.1, 28.2, 14.7 and 5.7 percent, respectively. In 81 Turkish provinces, the AK Party secured 49 central cities, while the CHP took 13, the MHP 8, the DTP, which can be referred to as the then-HDP, got 5 percent. While the AK Party increased its votes, all the other parties lost some of their voters in 2014 compared to the local elections in 2009.
Gülenist intervention
Voter turnout for a local election was amazing in 2014, 89.1 percent, but it was expected to draw record voters to the polls as people had carefully watched what was happening in Turkish politics then. The local elections race, which normally attracts less interest, became a symbolic large-scale referendum about Erdoğan, as I said. In fact, it was a war between Erdoğan and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) led by self-exiled and self-proclaimed preacher Fetullah Gülen, who later commanded and planned the attempted coup on July 15, 2016. The campaign against Erdoğan with all the false allegations I mentioned above was conducted mostly by Gülenists, even though they were not a political party; they were just infiltrators in the Turkish state apparatus in many ways, such as stealing answers of official civil servant and military exams. However, they enjoyed huge support from opposition parties, especially the CHP.
Some might have forgotten those days, but I remember that Gülen instructed his disciples to double the number of tweets to influence Turkish voters; however, he was able to affect only the tweets of the Gülenists, not voters. After 10 months of internal and external slandering, Erdoğan was still the choice of the people.
The result was based on Erdoğan's abilities, but the lack of leadership in the opposition was also a significant factor. In particular, the leader of the CHP, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, built his campaign on the anti-Erdoğan discourse of Gülenists rather than offering alternative municipal services, irritating voters.
In that period, anti-Erdoğan media and tycoons, as well as Gülenists, tried to incite then-President Abdullah Gül to take the lead and roll out anti-democratic measures against Erdoğan. As the Gül scenario did not work, Gülen took the wheel and orchestrated the whole operation. Despite being the opposition's de facto leader, Gülen came up short, as he was not a politician. What's more, his illegitimate activities, which began to pop up before the elections, became crystal clear. The election results showed that people still wanted Erdoğan's AK Party to lead the country, no matter what the national or international media said, or what Turkey "experts" dictated, or what Gülen and the Gülenists wanted.
In 2014, the international and domestic campaign against Erdoğan during the local elections was actually about Turkish foreign politics, mostly Syria and the Middle East policy. Since Turkey didn't reverse its Syria policy, didn't turn a deaf ear to the military coup in Egypt and hasn't turned its back on civilians in the region when Barack Obama said to do so, Erdoğan has become a target for the U.S.-led Western world.
A lot of water has flowed beneath the bridge now. But Turkey has been through a lot. In 2015, the outlawed PKK broke the cease-fire, took up arms again, resumed its terror attacks and aimed to carry the Syrian fight to Turkey because it became bolder with the support of the U.S.-led anti-Daesh coalition.
Meanwhile, Daesh began carrying out terror attacks in Turkey. Turkey was not just fighting one or two terror groups, a third was nested inside the state: FETÖ, the clandestine terror organization behind the failed coup in 2016.
At the same time, Turkey was threatened by the U.S. administration and its NATO allies many times as it cared about its national security. Threats by Western allies and their support of the PKK's Syrian branch, the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and its armed wing the People's Protection Units (YPG) under the pretext of fighting Daesh on the ground and their protection of FETÖ has become an existential problem for our country. It has become a matter of survival. Yet, Turkey has managed to get through two presidential elections, two general elections and one referendum, a sign that democracy has always come first for Ankara and the Turkish people. In addition, Turkey has been a safe and secure shelter for around 4 million people who had to flee civil war zones, while 1 million refugees "have brought the EU on the brink of collapse," which is the European leaders' definition, not mine.
Any country in the world would be harshly affected in terms of the economy when all this has happened in just six years, in addition to sanction threats by a superpower like the U.S. Ankara has resisted such pressures in an enormous way. Of course, the global economic crisis has affected Turkey, which is a part of the global economic system as well as the rest of the world. But in particular, the last financial assaults by the U.S. on the Turkish economy have taken a toll.
A replay of 2014 elections
And now Turkey is going to the polls again. The 2019 local elections on March 31, once again look like another general election or some kind of referendum as many of us predicted. According to some anti-Erdoğan circles, the March 31 local elections have become a vote for Erdoğan once again, an absurd claim as it doesn't have any impact on the government's position. But the atmosphere is clearly different from what is expected in a local election period.
A clash over Turkish foreign policy and the economy replaced party promises for local services in the campaign period. Since the parties will participate in the elections as two different alliances, a war of words between the two sides is at the heart of March 31. While the People's Alliance formed by the AK Party and the MHP defends the nation's survival and Turkey's role of bringing peace to the region, the Nation Alliance formed by the CHP and Good Party (İP), a far-right party founded in 2017, with the support of the HDP from outside, is against Turkey's efforts in the Middle East and rejects existential threats.
The HDP is not an open partner of the Nation Alliance, as it has not chosen to cut ties with the PKK; thus, it is a toxic political party in the eyes of society. Even though the leftist CHP and the rightist İP never officially accept nor reject the de-facto alliance with the HDP, pro-Nation Alliance commentators and several party figures insist that there is no relation between the HDP and the Nation Alliance. However, there have been several resignations in both parties because of this secret alliance. On the other hand, the HDP Chairman Sezai Temelli does not hide it. He recently said that the Nation Alliance would win in big cities such as Ankara and Istanbul with the support of the HDP. He also said that they prepared the candidate lists together.
Attacking Erdoğan on his foreign policy, all members of the Nation Alliance have been against Turkey's cross-border operations to fight Daesh and the PKK. Denying that there is a national threat against Turkey, CHP Chairman Kılıçdaroğlu's recent claim that the YPG would "never attack us" has faced harsh criticism, as there is no difference between the PKK and the YPG for Turkish people. The Nation Alliance also wants the Syrian refugees to go back to Syria even though it is not safe for civilians. While the far-right İP's secret alliance with the pro-PKK HDP surprises people, the stance of the Nation Alliance also increases xenophobia in Turkey and hatred against refugees. Moreover, since one of the leading Gülenists, Ekrem Dumanlı, released a video supporting the Nation Alliance, it is now not a secret that FETÖ is also a part of this partnership.
In addition, the Nation Alliance criticizes the government for the current situation of the Turkish economy, excluding attacks Turkey has suffered in the last six years. However, what the Turkish economy has been through is not about bad policies, and I am not denying there are some; it is the result of a global economic crisis and the assaults against the stability of the country. In other words, alleviating economic hardship is also part of national survival for the AK Party and its supporters.
To sum up, briefly, arguments over Turkey's foreign policy agenda and economic hardships are the backbone of the local elections race, which is at the door. The political parties and the alliances should have been talking about municipal services and promises about their aims and goals in the cities if they win. However, as election day approaches, the anti-Erdoğan alliance has been trying to turn the race into a referendum; and it feels like 2014 again.