The 2014 presidential election came to a quick conclusion as Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won 52 percent of the vote to clinch a first-round victory. Considering the AK Party government's achievements — including Turkey's rapid democratization — during Erdoğan's 12-year tenure, another outcome would have been surprising. The expectation that the presidential race could take a different course among certain groups in Turkey, and a significant chunk of foreign media corps reflected wishful thinking rather than rational analysis. As such, the same circles declared a political war on the government as soon as the outcome became clear.
It is also important however, to recall the historic background of the presidential election. When opposition parties — in particular the Republican People's Party (CHP) that designed Turkey's constitutional regime — blocked the political process in 2007, the AK Party amended the Constitution to let the people elect their president without intermediaries. Had the main opposition party allowed the political process to continue, the country would probably not have gone to the polls on Sunday.
The main purpose of opposition efforts to block the political process reflected their eagerness to prevent the AK Party from electing the country's next president. Meanwhile, let us recall that the CHP did not even bother to nominate a presidential candidate in 2007. To a large extent, the CHP leadership was guided by the same principles in the 2014 election, as their entire strategy revolved around the goal of stopping the AK Party's presidential bid. For this purpose, they joined forces with the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Gülen Movement, among others, to nominate Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu as their presidential candidate instead of one of the party's own figures. Nonetheless, the campaign of the man with no ties to the party's socio-cultural background ended in utter disappointment.
The opposition's losing streak is symptomatic of their flawed relationship with reality. This problem will continue to haunt the Western media as long as they insist on identifying with Kemalism, a methodologically Francoist and ideologically Baathist intellectual movement which is presented as liberal and democratic. They believe the alliance between the CHP, MHP and the Gülen Movement is a form of liberal opposition but the truth, however, is quite different.
Political parties such as the CHP and MHP, which created and adapted to Turkey's century-old anti-democratic political system, have lost their relevance regarding key issues in the country. This process of regression remains difficult to stop. In Sunday's election, the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) made a correct and useful move to appeal to the entire country. The party's rise to prominence represents a useful development in the sense that the HDP, despite its various shortcomings, is a product of Kemalist destruction and the only political party, in addition to the AK Party, that seeks to undermine the Kemalist ideology. Keeping a safe distance from the radical left, abandoning identity politics and, most importantly, the disarmament of the PKK remain key challenges for the HDP, which identifies itself as a party of the New Turkey. The party's ability to overcome these obstacles will effectively facilitate their transformation into a democratic opposition party and a viable alternative to the AK Party government. The CHP and MHP, of course, are opposition parties, but it would take a lot of creativity to call them democratic.
Having received almost 10 percent of the vote, which marks the threshold in parliamentary elections, the Kurdish political movement might opt to participate in the 2015 race as a political party, for the first time since 2003, instead of running independent campaigns. The big picture suggests that the CHP-MHP alliance (read old Turkey) lost a sizeable chunk of their base while the AK Party and HDP, which received 52 percent and 10 percent respectively, collectively represent two-thirds of the nation and thereby indicate that Turkey has reached a point of no return.
About the author
Osman Can is a Law Professor and Reporting Judge at the Turkish Constitutional Court. He holds a PhD from the University of Cologne, Germany.
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