Turkey heads to the polls on Sunday for one of the most important elections in the country’s recent history. The stakes are high – for the average Turk, and for the elite who have governed for more than two decades.
Despite what has felt like an iron grip on national politics, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) are vulnerable. Amid staggering inflation, record low wages, and a tightening of personal freedoms, the party that came to power in 2002 could finally be on its way out.
Either way, security and transparency will be essential if the results are to be respected.
For all of Turkey’s economic and political woes, Turks believe in the democratic process and take elections seriously.
Since the 1990s, Turkey’s voter turnout has averaged 78.5% and exceeded 86% in 2018. Both are higher than many Western democracies, including the United States (turnout for the 2020 presidential election was 66.8%, the highest of the 21st century) and France, where 72% of the electorate voted in last year’s presidential race. Thousands of Turks have already queued outside their embassies around the world to vote early.
But while Turks may exercise their voting rights, they don’t always accept the results. It’s a downward spiral of trust that the AKP has presided over. In 2007, roughly 75% of the country believed elections were fair. By 2015, that had shrunk to around half, and today, electoral trust is as low as it has ever been.
Several factors have contributed to this crisis. For starters, an election cannot be considered “free” and “fair” if it’s held under the restrictions of a state of emergency (which is how the 2018 general elections were conducted). And yet areas hit hardest by February’s earthquakes have been under a state of emergency for months.
Compliant media
Second, the media landscape heavily favors the incumbent party, which hurts the opposition’s campaigning.
A 2018 post-election analysis by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) found that opposition candidates couldn’t get airtime, in part because the news media are “dominated by outlets whose owners are considered affiliated with the government or depend on public contracts.” Five years ago, opposition candidates received a fraction of the news coverage afforded to Erdogan and his party, the OSCE found.
These dynamics remain in place. In the run-up to this election, public broadcaster TRT gave Erdogan nearly 33 hours of airtime between April 1 and May 1, while opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu received just 32 minutes.
Third, election results have a way of being manipulated by those in power. In June 2015, after suffering parliamentary losses that made it impossible to form a government, Erdogan called for “repeat” elections five months later. This time, the AKP came out on top.
Then, in March 2019, after losing the mayoral race in Istanbul, the AKP cried foul and demanded a do-over. Turkey’s electoral board agreed.
The AKP’s candidate lost the second election, too, but that didn’t stop supporters from playing dirty. After Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu declared that “those calling off the first round of elections were foolish,” defamation charges were brought. He has since been sentenced to more than two years in jail for “publicly insulting” the elections committee.
Given past transgressions by the ruling party, election monitors are planning a heavy presence this weekend. For instance, Oy ve Otesi (Vote and Beyond), a domestic monitoring organization founded after the Gezi Park protests of 2013, has trained more than 220,000 citizens to ensure that elections are transparent, independent, and fair.
International monitors are also scheduled to observe the voting, though Ankara has taken steps in recent days to restrict access to European monitors. Media clampdowns have also been reported ahead of the vote.
Elections observers hope that by raising concerns when issues arise, systemic corruption can be avoided. This will be easier in large cities like Ankara, Izmir and Istanbul. Harder will be tracking discrepancies in areas hit by the earthquakes, where nearly 2 million eligible voters – out of 9 million – have been displaced.
One local initiative, TULOV, has begun a campaign to bring earthquake victims to the polls, but so far, only a few thousand have been helped so far.
Against the odds, this has become one of Turkey’s most competitive races in years. Opposition candidates are testing Erdogan and the AKP, empowered by an angry, frustrated electorate.
The election could go very wrong. Or, with thousands of trained volunteers committed to spending hours guarding ballot boxes throughout the country, Sunday could be a much-needed reminder that Turkey’s democratic spirit is alive and well.
This article was provided by Syndication Bureau, which holds copyright.