Since the AKP came to power in 2002, Turkey’s political landscape has changed significantly. Despite the AKP’s resounding victory in the 2011 election, they fell short of the two-thirds majority that would have enabled the AKP to unilaterally adopt a draft constitution. This article analyses the 2011 Turkish elections and the implications of the results.
The results of Turkey’s parliamentary elections, held on Sunday 12 June 2011, reflect a more accurate picture of the Turkish political scene than might have been assumed from some pre-election predictions. Indeed, the parliamentary representation of the four political parties that won seats is an indication of their real and solid support among the Turkish people.
The importance of these Turkish parliamentary elections was indisputable. Within Turkey the question on many people’s minds was whether the election results would give the prime minister, and president of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), Recep Tayyip Erdogan, an adequate opportunity to stamp his mark on the content of a new draft constitution for Turkey. That a new constitution is necessary is agreed upon by most of Turkey’s political forces. Beyond Turkey’s borders, where the winds of Arab revolution rage, others were waiting to see whether the elections would result in the weakening or strengthening of Erdogan’s powers and his popular mandate.
The election result was a major victory for Erdogan and his party, but, for reasons that are easy to understand and had been predicted, the outcome cannot be viewed as an outright and conclusive AKP victory.
The elections
This was the third time that the AKP entered the Turkish electoral race since it was founded in 2001. The AKP participated in its first election a year after its founding, and then again in 2007. This 2011 election is the first to take place since the constitutional amendment that limited parliamentary terms to four years. About twenty parties participated in the election, with the most notable being the AKP, which has been in power since 2002; the Republican People’s Party (CHP), which is the main opposition party; the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) which is also an opposition radical nationalist party; and the Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), whose candidates ran as independents but are expected to announce themselves as a parliamentary bloc once parliament convenes. However, reports suggest that thirty of the thirty-six elected members who would make up the BDP’s parliamentary representation are threatening to boycott parliament if six jailed deputies representing the same bloc are not freed. As had been expected, none of the smaller parties obtained the ten percent minimum requirement for parliamentary representation
A notable aspect of this election was that, since electioneering began, the AKP targeted the MHP with the aim of preventing the latter from reaching the ten percent threshold, and thereby ensuring over 367 seats for the ruling party. In Turkish politics, 367 is the magic number, as it is the number of seats required for a two-thirds majority. Such a majority would have enabled the AKP to adopt a draft constitution without having to resort to a popular referendum.
In terms of the overall atmosphere and the electoral procedures followed, these elections were the freest and most democratic that Turkey has witnessed since the transition to democracy over sixty years ago. Citizens were able to register to vote with nothing more than their official identity cards, enabling about fifty million Turkish citizens to cast their ballots. More than 7 600 candidates competed for the 550 parliamentary seats in the Grand National Assembly.
Unlike during previous parliamentary elections which the AKP participated in, there was a marked absence of debate on the issue of ‘secularism’ or, as it was then raised, ‘fear for the future of the republic and its values’. It has become clear to opposition parties that they cannot defeat the AKP with such rhetorical positions. Instead, the political debate raged around economic and developmental issues, unemployment, equitable distribution of wealth, and – above all – the expected new constitution. The three leaders of the main parties: Erdogan (AKP), Kemal Kilicdaroglu (CHP), and Devlet Bahceli (MHP), also played significant electioneering roles. While the AKP made a tremendous push to achieve gains in the western coastal regions of Anatolia, an area that has always been considered a CHP stronghold, it is believed that traditional CHP voters voted tactically by casting their vote for the MHP in an effort to boost the latter’s chances of returning to parliament, and thereby denying the AKP its desired two-thirds majority
The results
While the election did not fundamentally alter the relative standing of the Turkish parties, it is important to examine what has changed since the 2007 election.
Compared to 2007, the ruling AKP’s share of the popular vote increased by four points, reaching fifty percent of the popular vote. This means that the party has not only won three consecutive elections, but has also succeeded in steadily increasing its voter base. Such a result is unprecedented; even Adnan Menderes – who won three successive elections in the 1950s – did not achieve anything similar. In terms of the total number of the AKP’s parliamentary seats, these fell from 336 (in 2007) to 326. The drop was a result of the electoral commission’s changes to the electoral district boundaries, changes that were carried out with the support of the AKP government. Despite the new boundaries being considered more representative of the country’s changing demographic distribution, the redrawing of boundaries harmed the party’s prospects. Independent candidates, mostly supporters of the banned Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), achieved much better results than they did in the 2007 elections, gaining ten seats to make a total of thirty-six. The AKP also made major inroads by penetrating traditional strongholds of the CHP in the coastal cities, winning in Antalya, and taking second place in Izmir.
The CHP also increased its share of the popular vote by four points: from twenty-two to twenty-six percent. This is a modest increase considering that the party’s new leadership has almost entirely abandoned its traditional Kemalist discourse. The party also benefited from the change in the electoral district boundaries, raising the number of its parliamentary seats from 112 to 135. The CHP’s inability to challenge its AKP rivals, and the unprecedented decline in its performance in coastal cities have led to calls for an emergency party congress to replace party leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.
Since the last election, the MHP’s support has declined by only one percent of the popular vote (from fourteen to thirteen percent). However, the MHP was the major loser in terms of parliamentary seats, dropping from seventy-one seats in 2007 to fifty-three seats. Despite the AKP’s targeted campaign against the MHP, the MHP remains in parliament. The MHP has also managed to survive a series of scandals that affected a number of its candidates. Arguably, the party’s maintaining its parliamentary presence is a success in itself and has been a factor in promoting some popular sympathy for the party, as well as bringing in some tactical votes from CHP supporters.
These results have enabled each of these three parties to claim victory: the AKP can celebrate passing the fifty percent mark, a major achievement in a political arena known for its fragmentation; the CHP can point to its modest increases in the percentage of the popular vote as well as parliamentary seats gained; and the MHP can claim success in withstanding the AKP’s targeted campaign against it, and of remaining in parliament. The incontrovertible success, however, is that of the Kurdish bloc, whose independent candidates won a significant number of parliamentary seats, confirming that they are a force to be reckoned with in Turkish politics. This is also an indication that the ‘Kurdish question’ will continue to trouble the Turkish state for some time.
Implications of the elections
The first implication of these results is that the AKP’s position in Turkish politics is still strong, and its rival parties remain too weak to pose a real challenge to its popularity, its control over parliament, and its ability to lead and govern the country. Instead of falling prey, as is often the case with democracies, to an accumulation of errors that comes with being in power for nearly a decade, the AKP has remained largely unscathed. Indeed, it seems that the party has steadily managed to attract and increase the support and confidence of the Turkish electorate.
The results, however, also contain another message for the AKP and its leader Erdogan, whose growing confidence has been clearly manifest, of late. Despite the party’s stated goal of taking control of two-thirds of the parliamentary seats, the Turkish people decided not to cede this mandate to the party and its leader. Moreover, the party needed four more legislative votes to achieve the sixty percent that is necessary to bring the draft constitution to a popular referendum. Given these results, it is perhaps necessary for the party and Erdogan to express some humility.
These results also suggest that the drafting of the new constitution will not be an easy process. Erdogan will have to either broker a consensus on the matter, thereby sacrificing part of his ambition for fundamental change in the Turkish political system, or to win over four parliamentarians from outside of his party. In the latter scenario, the draft constitution would then go to a popular referendum, in which case Erdogan would also have to rely on popular support to endorse a constitution that subscribes to his and his party’s vision – regardless of the support or opposition of the other parliamentary blocs. Over the next year or two, the AKP leader will have to decide which of the two paths is better for his political career, and what he will want to do by the end of this parliamentary session, which is his last as head of government.
Another result of these elections is that the AKP has attained greater freedom in dealing with external affairs, and a greater sense of public support for its foreign policy. Undoubtedly, the coming months will see events in Syria occupying the highest priority; this amidst concerns of the Turkish government, as well as that of Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu, who has a parliamentary seat for the first time in his political career.
From another perspective, the election results offer a far more accurate picture of the Turkish political scene than what some had predicted. Changed electoral constituency boundaries and hotly debated election issues aside, the four political forces that won seats in the parliament reflect the real and solid presence of these currents within Turkish popular sentiment: the Kurdish bloc reflects a real popular political bloc, and its success confirms the importance and intractability of the Kurdish issue; the MHP represents the bloc of radical Turkish nationalist voters who subscribe neither to the position of the AKP – with its conservative neo-Ottoman discourse – nor to that of the CHP with its Kemalist pretensions. If the AKP represents the most coherent expression of Turkey’s reconciliation with its history, the different veins of its identity, and the world that surrounds them, then the CHP is the clearest expression of the continuity, whether real or perceived, of a Kemalist political consciousness that the AKP has been unable to absorb. It is likely that the picture of the Turkish political arena that is reflected in these election results will will not subjected to significant changes in the foreseeable future.