Turkish century: History looms large on election
day
One hundred years after the founding of the republic,
Erdoğan and his rival have dueling visions for Turkey’s ‘second century.’
BY
CHRISTIAN OLIVER AND ELÇIN POYRAZLAR
MAY 14,
2023 2:36 AM CET
ISTANBUL —
From the Aegean coast to the mountainous frontier with Iran, millions of Turks
are voting at the country’s 191,884 ballot boxes on Sunday — with both
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his main rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu warning
the country is at a historical turning point.
In the last
sprints of the nail-bitingly close election race, the dueling candidates have
both placed heavy emphasis on the historical resonance of the vote falling exactly
100 years after the foundation of the secular Turkish republic by Mustafa Kemal
Atatürk in 1923.
In the
Istanbul district of Ümraniye on the final day of campaigning, Erdoğan told
voters the country was on “the threshold of a Turkish century” that will be the
“century of our children, our youth, our women.”
Erdoğan’s
talk of a Turkish century is partly a pledge to make the country stronger and
more technologically independent, particularly in the defense sector. Over the
past months, the president has been quick to associate himself with the
domestically-manufactured Togg electric car, the “Kaan” fighter jet and
Anadolu, the country’s first aircraft carrier.
But
Erdoğan’s Turkish century is about more than home-grown planes and ships. Few
people doubt the president sees 2023 as a key threshold to accelerate his push
away from Atatürk’s secular legacy and toward a more religiously conservative
nation. Indeed, his campaign has been characterized by a heavy emphasis on
family values and bitter rhetoric against the LGBTQ+ community. Unsurprisingly,
he wrapped up his campaign on Saturday night in Hagia Sophia — once
Constantinople’s greatest church — which he contentiously reconverted from a
museum back into a mosque, as it had been in Ottoman times.
The state
that Atatürk forged from the ashes of the Ottoman empire in 1923 was secular
and modernizing, often along Western models, with the introduction of Latin
letters and even the banning of the fez in favor of Western-style hats. In this
regard, the Islamist populist Erdoğan is a world away from the
ballroom-dancing, rakı-quaffing field marshal Atatürk.
The 2023
election is widely being cast as a decisive referendum on which vision for
Turkey will win through, and Erdoğan has been keen to portray the opposition as
sell-outs to the West and global financial institutions such as the
International Monetary Fund. “Are you ready to bury at the ballot box those who
promised to give over the country’s values to foreigners and loan sharks?” he
called out to the crowd in Ümraniye.
This is not
a man who is casting himself as the West’s ally. Resisting pressure that Ankara
should not cozy up so much to the Kremlin, Erdoğan snapped on Friday that he
would “not accept” the opposition’s attacks on Russian President Vladimir Putin
— after Kılıçdaroğlu complained of Russian meddling in the election.
All about Atatürk
By
contrast, Erdogan’s main rival Kılıçdaroğlu is trying to assume the full mantle
of Atatürk, and is stressing the need to put the country back on the path
toward European democratic norms after Erdoğan’s lurch toward authoritarianism.
While Erdoğan ended his campaign in the great mosque of Hagia Sophia,
Kılıçdaroğlu did so by laying flowers at Atatürk’s mausoleum.
Speaking
from a rain-swept stage in Ankara on Friday night, the 74-year-old bureaucrat
declared: “We will make all of Turkey Mustafa Kemal’s [Atatürk’s] Turkey!”
In his
speech, he slammed Erdoğan for giving Turkey over to drug runners and crony
networks of oligarch construction bosses, saying the country had no place for
“robbers.” Symbolically, he chided the president for ruling from his 1,150-room
presidential complex — dubbed the Saray or palace — and said that he would rule
from the more modest Çankaya mansion that Atatürk used for his presidency.
Warming to
his theme of Turkey’s “second century,” Kılıçdaroğlu posted a video in the
early hours of Saturday morning, urging young people to fully embrace the
founding father’s vision. After all, he hails from the CHP party that Atatürk
founded.
“We are
entering the second century, young ones. And now we have a new generation, we
have you. We have to decide altogether: Will we be among those who only
commemorate Atatürk — like in the first century — or those who understand him
in this century? This generation will be of those who understand,” he said,
speaking in his trademark grandfatherly tone from his book-lined study.
At least in
the upscale neighborhood of Beşiktaş, on Saturday night, all the talk of
Atatürk was no dry history lesson. Over their final beers — before an alcohol
sale ban comes in force over election day — young Turks punched the air and
chanted along with a stirring anthem: “Long Live Mustafa Kemal Pasha, long may
he live.”
In
diametric opposition to Erdoğan, who has detained opponents and exerts heavy
influence over the judiciary and the media, Kılıçdaroğlu is insisting that he
will push Turkey to adopt the kind of reforms needed to move toward EU membership.
When asked
by POLITICO whether that could backfire because some hostile EU countries would
always block Turkish membership, he said the reforms themselves were the most
important element for Turkey’s future.
“It does
not matter whether the EU takes us in or not. What matters is bringing all the
democratic standards that the EU foresees to our country,” he said in an
exclusive interview on the sidelines of a rally in the central city of Sivas.
“We are part of Western civilization. So the EU may accept us or not, but we
will bring those democratic standards. The EU needs Turkey.”
Off to the polls
Polling
stations — which are set up in schools — open at 8 a.m. on election day and
close at 5 p.m. At 9 p.m. media can start reporting, and unofficial results are
expected to start trickling in around midnight.
The mood is
cautious, with rumors swirling that internet use could be restricted or there
could be trouble on the streets if there are disputes over the result.
The fears
of some kind of trouble have only grown after reports of potential military or
governmental involvement in the voting process.
Two days
before the election, the CHP accused Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu of
preparing election manipulation. The main opposition party said Soylu had
called on governors to seek army support on election night. Soylu made no
public response.
Turkey’s
Supreme Election Council (YSK) has rejected the interior ministry’s request to
collect and store election results on its own database. The YSK also banned the
police and gendarmerie from collecting election results.
Erdoğan
himself sought to downplay any fears of a stolen election. In front of a studio
audience of young people on Friday, he dismissed as “ridiculous” the suggestion
that he might not leave office if he lost. “We came to power in Turkey by
democratic means and by the courtesy of people. If they make a different
decision whatever the democracy requires we will do it,” said the president,
looking unusually gaunt, perhaps still knocked back by what his party said was
a bout of gastroenteritis during the campaign.
The
opposition is vowing to keep close tabs on all of the polling stations to try
to prevent any fraud.
In Esenyurt
Cumhuriyet Square, in the European part of Istanbul, a group of high-school
students gathered on Saturday morning to greet Ekrem İmamoğlu, the popular
mayor of Istanbul, who would be one of Kılıçdaroğlu’s vice presidents if he
were to win.
Ilayda, 18,
said she would vote for the opposition because of its position on democracy,
justice and women’s rights.
When asked
what would happen if Erdoğan won, she replied: “We plan to start a deep
mourning. Our country as we know it will not be there anymore.”
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