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The West may have to learn how to live with
Erdoğan
The Turkish elections speak to the democratic
resilience of a society that deserves support, but it also tells us something
about the resilience of authoritarian populism.
BY NATHALIE
TOCCI
MAY 18,
2023 4:03 AM CET
Nathalie
Tocci is director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, Europe’s futures
fellow at IWM, Vienna and a part-time professor at the European University
Institute. Her latest book, “A Green and Global Europe,” is out with Polity.
An 89
percent voter turnout in a close to 90 million-strong country is an electoral
outcome that puts most liberal democracies to shame.
Turkey, of
course, is not a liberal democracy. Violations of human rights and fundamental
freedoms, an eroded rule of law and a destroyed separation of powers leave no
room for doubt.
Yet,
paradoxically, this is precisely what makes Turkey’s first electoral round so
remarkable: In a political system where rights and checks and balances have
been quashed, elections cannot be fair. Notwithstanding, no candidate got an
absolute majority, leading Turkey into a second round of voting on May 28.
But one can
hardly imagine a second round of elections in Vladimir Putin’s Russia, Xi
Jinping’s China or Abdel Fattah el-Sisi’s Egypt. The Turkish political system
isn’t democratic, but Turkish society has demonstrated a democratic resilience
to be admired across the world. And regardless of the second round’s outcome,
this warrants reflection.
Boasting a
49.5 percent share in the first round of Turkey’s presidential race, President
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan now has the wind in his sails. And if part, if not all, of
first-round nationalist candidate Sinan Oğan’s 5 percent share of the votes
ends up with the incumbent leader — depending on deals struck over the next two
weeks — it will be a clear win against opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
It’s true
these results fall well short of the opposition’s expectations. While pollsters
have underestimated Erdoğan’s staying power before, many thought this time
would be different. Runaway inflation, a stagnant economy and a spectacularly
mishandled earthquake that took the lives of 50,000 people were strong reasons
to expect a radical turn. Not so. Instead, Turkey’s first round points to an
ever more geographically split country, rising nationalism, a deep-seated
culture war and the enduring appeal of populist authoritarianism.
As POLITICO
shrewdly pointed out, however, Erdoğan’s reelection would be a convenient
outcome for Europe. The European Union will be able to talk the talk of values,
slamming Turkey’s authoritarianism — over which it has no influence — while
cynically walking the walk of a purely transactional relationship with an
unabashedly transactional leader.
Epitomizing
this is the continuation of the 2016 migration deal. And, to an extent,
Turkey’s fence-sitting over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought some
benefits as well — such as the grain deal. But while there’s no guarantee that
the former will continue, given Turkish society’s growing impatience with
refugees — which even Erdoğan will have to respond to — what is certain is that
Kılıçdaroğlu would veer away from such a transactional relationship. And as
he’d put Turkey’s democracy back on track on the one hand, on the other, he’d
eventually come knocking on the EU’s accession door.
The
opposition’s victory would, therefore, force the EU to look in the mirror,
exposing its many contradictions. And as far as Turkey is concerned, that
reflection is not pretty.
Does this
mean the EU can now sit back, relax and assume that all remains the same? No.
The Turkish
elections speak to the democratic resilience of a society that deserves
attention and support. Even if Erdoğan is to enter his third decade in power,
it proves that he and Turkey are not synonymous.
For Europe,
this means abstaining from doubling down on the finger-wagging critique of
Turkish democracy — which, amid an increasingly nationalistic society, has a
boomerang effect at most. Instead, it requires the search for alternative
quieter ways of engaging with Turkish society beyond its leader. Persisting in
an exclusively transactional relationship with Turkey through Erdoğan doesn’t
do justice to the country, its dynamism or its potential for change.
That said,
Turkey’s elections also tell us something about the resilience of authoritarian
populism, electoral autocracies, and democratic and authoritarian countries
that don’t see eye to eye with Europe and the West.
The EU
needs to learn to live with these countries, reflecting on what it can and
cannot do.
And what it
cannot do is hope to change this situation through declaratory diplomacy,
preaching and persuading. Nowhere is this clearer than in Western powers’
failed attempts to woo fence-sitting countries in Africa, East Asia and Latin
America over the Ukraine war, by talking up the rules-based order, democracy
and anti-colonialism.
This
doesn’t mean that Europe should drop these arguments, or turn its back on those
that don’t agree with it, enabling Russia to play the “West versus Rest” game.
Rather,
Europe needs to find ways of seeking partnerships in which it offers value to
its interlocutors, while expecting something equally tangible in return. And it
should do so pragmatically but not transactionally, as it has done so far with
Erdoğan’s Turkey.
It is one
thing to have an honest conversation where Europe sets out what it needs and
what it can offer, framing both within the contours of rights and law. But it’s
quite another to preach values while cynically pursuing transactions, hoping
deep down that political change within those countries will never expose the
West’s contradictions.
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