Get ready for at least a year of unbridled Erdogan

By Bobby Ghosh

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recently announced the start of the pre-election period in his country, confirming that the presidential and parliamentary elections will be held in June 2023 and that he will seek to extend his political sovereignty to a third decade. the two in which he already rules.

“Now, I declare that I will be the candidate for the presidency of the Republic with the anointing of the People’s Alliance,” he told his supporters in the port of Izmir, in the Aegean Sea, last week. He was referring to the ruling coalition of the Islamist-conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP), which he leads, and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) of Devlet Bahceli.

12 months of turmoil

Turkey’s allies and opponents, along with the Turks themselves, may need to fasten their seatbelts in the face of 12 months of unrest. The United States and Europe must prepare for even more rolling in the mud and contradiction from Erdogan, at a time when they would need more cooperation to curb Russian adventurism.

A difficult interlocutor even in the best of times, Erdogan has become even more quarrelsome with the West as he becomes increasingly politically vulnerable inside Turkey. His political capital is now at its lowest ebb since he first took the reins in Ankara (then prime minister) in 2003. He and his party have been steadily declining in opinion polls for the past two years as the Turkish economy has been hit by a combination of the coronavirus pandemic and Erdogan’s economic policies.

Although the Turkish pound has collapsed and inflation has skyrocketed, Erdogan is stubbornly resisting calls for interest rates to rise. “Turkey is once again in a vicious circle. High inflation is causing the pound to weaken, which is leading to even higher inflation,” said Ziad Daoud, chief emerging market economist at Bloomberg Economics. “An increase in interest rates would break this cycle, but that is unlikely to happen.”

The “boobs” have decreased

With little prospect of economic recovery that could affect the 2023 elections, the Turkish president must find other ways to support his re-election. All the early signs indicate that he will dive passionately into the textbook of the good old populist, appealing to nationalist chauvinism at home and warning voters of the existence of foreign enemies – real and imaginary.

Some of his favorite “boobies” can no longer be used: Turkey’s financial problems have forced Erdogan to drop tones with the Gulf Arab states, which he used to slap rhetorically, causing delirium among his followers. He can no longer portray the dominant royal families of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates as fraudulent reactionaries, while pleading with them for investment and trade deals.

Erdogan has also softened his anti-Israel rhetoric, thanks in large part to the friendship he has forged with his Israeli counterpart, Isaac Herzog.

The above developments leave him with only one scapegoat available: the West. He has already begun to intensify his rhetoric against the United States and Europe. In a carefully “choreographed” meeting with young Turks last week, he denounced the West as a liar and unreliable. He has attacked another old “scarecrow”, demanding from her Hellas to demilitarize the islands in the Aegean Sea, adding that he “is not joking”.

Conspiracy theories

In the coming months, expect Erdogan to play a major role in the “duplicity” of the West and to reinforce his conspiracy theory that Turkey’s troubles are the result of a campaign designed by “global political and money barons”. Turks, who groan under the double burden of inflation and currency devaluation, will be encouraged to blame the US and Europe, not their president.

In addition to using gradually harsher rhetoric, the Turkish president will be less cooperative in his dealings with the West. We already see this in his refusal to back down from NATO enlargement: framing his objections to Sweden and Finland as a matter of national security (accusing them of hosting Kurdish terrorists), Erdogan magnifies the threat and presents his to intimidate his country by outside forces.

It does not make sense to expect a rational stance from any politician who is politically behind the wall – and certainly not from someone who has decided that intransigence is in his best interest. As frustrating as it is for US President Joe Biden and European leaders, they need to recognize where Erdogan is coming from and where he is going and act accordingly. Threats against the Turkish president will not work, as they will only succeed in reinforcing his narrative of “heroic contempt for foreign pressure”.

The best tactic on their part is probably to point out to him that if Turkey does not become part of the general Western consensus, they will devise other solutions. This may require NATO forces to build a separate security architecture for Sweden and Finland outside the alliance – at least until next summer, when they will either have to deal with a new president in Turkey or a victorious Erdogan who he will no longer need them as boobies for his inner audience.