Under the Erdogan government there has been made a series of institutional changes by his party and bureaucrats to concentrated the maximum amount of power in him, with the upcoming election in 2023 being crucial for Erdogan regime to become stronger an solidify its institutional and political reign.
In order to assure that this happens Erdogan must call all of his voting base and shut any chances to his rivals of any of them actually being able to take his power from him.
Consequently since 2017 with the failed coup d´état of the army against him and the subsequent change to a presidential system that made the Turkish republic´s parliamentary parties have no power or checks and balances on the executive power and later on even more from 2020 forward, Erdogan has cut all his opponents from positions of power through direct and often indirect ways of political persecution.
Erdogan´s state is de facto sacking bureaucrats and politicians from institutional and public management state positions that are inconvenient politically for his agenda and putting people that are members or are allied to his party in those same positions, using also a polarizing identarian Muslim nationalism narrative to effectively gather more support from the more non-progressive traditional Turkish citizens.
The latest persecution done by Erdogan’s government was the arrest of Istanbul´s Mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, a successful anti-organized crime progressive moderate politician on the basis of a corruption accusation and on the accusation of insulting government officials, sacking him from the position of Mayor in Istanbul, and using the law to impede him of entering politics in the future and thus solidify his political regime.
The national courts decision, taken on the 14th of December 2022 was to sentence Ekrem Imamoglu for 2 years and 7 months on the accounts of comments made by Mr. Imamoglu 3 years ago on a 2019 speech where he called public officials of the Turkish supreme election council “fools” hat were considered by the Turkish state offensive towards officials of the government and if the appeals court ends up upholding the given sentence
This also represents a response by the Erdogan regime from the side of the Turkish society that supports him, conservative from the interior cities, to the side of the Turkish society that opposes him, progressive and from the major cities of the coastline, with the divide being greater now with the anti-Erdogan Turkish side of the Turkish society seeing Imamoglu as a political victim of Erdogan, although President Erdogan has already claimed publicly in a press meeting that he had nothing to do with the arrest of his opponent, something that the majority of democratic Turkish citizens do not believe.
Mass protests against Imamoglu´s arrest have consequently taken place in Istanbul following his arrest. Whether politically motivated or not politically motivated, the court ruling might not end with the achieved result Erdogan´s regime seem to expect with Erdogan himself having already come to this conclusion, since it has made his opponent a de facto martyr of his regime, giving more strength to the moderate progressive liberal message of Imamoglu´s party.
In order to comprehend the current context of Erdogan’s political situation of near-absolute authoritarian illiberal domination of Turkey´s republic, one must look at his rise to power, with the Turkish president´s long road to political dominance beginning with his rise to the position of Mayor of Istanbul in the election of 1994, with the secularist and moderate democratic leadership of Turkey at the time fearing his rise due to Erdogan´s religious Islamic conservative speech.
The state at the time decided to ban Mr. Erdogan from entering politics through a similar court ruling over the incitation to religious extremism and hatred in a speech he gave. This sentence only made Erdogan a greater figure among the most conservative parts of Turkey, serving as a catapult for his political career, a situation that might also happen to Imamoglu.
In addition, President Erdogan has consistently in his last years pursued a more pragmatic approach to politics and decision making, having a dual strategy to tighten his the grip of his government and allies on the Turkish Republic by gaining political legitimacy through winning elections while also consolidating power by applying to his opponents a series of authoritarian methods, such as the jailing of journalists critical of him or his policies and the legal label by the Turkish state of opposition figures as “terrorists”.
In addition, Erdogan consistently sought to end the political career of his opponents, having in the past detained one of his biggest opponents, Selahattin Demirtas, a former co-leader of the party that in 2018 was the biggest opposition to Erdogan´s system, the People´s Democratic Party (HDP), a decision that was condemned by the European Court of Human rights which in accordance with its 2018 judgement made the demand of his release, something that has been denied since then.
In addition, he also detained eight other democratically elect parliament members of that same party, with this measure being the political start of an acceleration of its assault on political opponents and being part of a broader plan of persecutions and the imprisonment of enemies of Erdogan in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt (July 15TH of 2016), with other HDP deputies having also been detained, among them being the co-chair of the party, Figen Yüksekdağ.
In addition, the director for the European and Central Asia department of the Human Rights Watch, Hugh Williamson has added that “The Turkish government has misused detention and criminal proceedings in a campaign of persecution against Demirtaş in particular, including by flouting a European Court of Human Rights’ order to release him and concocting new baseless charges to keep him behind bars.”
Just as Imamoglu, Demirtas and the other politicians that were detained and had their careers destroyed by Erdogan’s authoritarian repressive measures were targeted because of their political positions and being at the cornerstone of what was at the time the main political opposition party to his government, with 6 HDP members of parliament being detained since November 4th, 2016, having been held initially either in pretrial detention or serving sentences and with the accusations for their persecutions being, similarly to Imamoglu´s persecution, based on political speeches they made in their careers.
On that same day, November 4th 2016, courts ordered the detention of nine members of the party that were also parliamentary members on the base of “terrorism charges” Demirtaş and Yüksekdağ, hours after police arrested them and three other party members serving in parliament in what efficiently was a state operated coordinated operation of open political repression in various cities throughout Turkey.
It should also be taken into account, that although members of the Turkish Republic parliament tend to possess a strong level of institutional immunity to persecution for their political activities, if their presence is seen as a threat politically to the stability of Erdogan´s, Erdogan will immediately create measures in the shorth to medium term to persecute them.
In addition, the arrests and detention of these deputies being based on the authoritarian antidemocratic and illiberal temporary constitutional amendment and parliamentary vote that was carried by Erdogan´s party in a parliamentary vote on May, 2016 that lifted the political immunity that parliament members enjoyed until then.
Even before parliament adopted under Erdogan´s guidance this constitutional amendment that facilitates the deliberate and direct repression and political silencing of opponents to Erdogan, in 2015 and 2016, President Erdogan had already made several speeches pushing for them to be prosecuted and openly declared that the party should not be in parliament for the reason of it being indistinguishable from the armed Kurdistan Worker´s Party (PKK), using the term “terrorism” to brand all the movements that it sees as a political threat to his plans.
International organizations such as the Council of Europe´s Venice Commission, which is specialized in giving comments and advises on constitutional matters has strongly criticized the way the deputy’s parliamentary immunity was lifted since the members were charged of membership of a terrorist organization and of “spreading terrorist propaganda”.
The NGO Human Rights Watch has effectively analysed the evidence in 11 of the indictments, including the main case against Demirtas, in which if fully condemned can lead to a consequent sentence of 142 years. It came to the conclusion that the bulk of the persecution evidence consists of public speeches and political activities, further proving the political nature of the persecution, with President Erdogan having made several speeches in the past demanding that all of detained members of parliament remain in jail.
Although as of now Erdogan still holds the full power over the Turkish Republic, as the 2023 election gets closer, with Turkey being more isolated diplomatically on the world stage today as a result of Erdogan´s foreign policy revanchist decisions in the Middle East and with Turkeys economy increasingly getting weaker and with high levels of inflation and unemployment, Erdogan’s position is increasingly more fragile and his government has lost some confidence, with polls statistically suggesting that Erdogan could potentially lose to one of a few potential challengers.
The current political situation starts thus with the paradigm shift event of the political election for Istanbul of Imamoglu, the candidate of his main opposition party that has gained more followers and is the only one strong enough to form a “big tent” coalition against Erdogan, the Republican´s People Party, which one with Imamoglu the municipal election of Turkey’s most important city.
Erdogan´s party did not accept such a defeat and openly supported the cancellation of the election through a decision taken by the supreme election council, which prompted Imamoglu´s “fools” comment, and ultimately resulted in Imamoglu´s repeated win with a even bigger margin in the subsequent rerun of the election.
In addition, Erdogan’s popularity has been also declining even further since the corona pandemic started, being now less popular according to national polls taken by private and public surveys than both Imamoglu and Ankara´s mayor, Mansur Yavas, a member of the same opposition party, with the rise of poverty being the main reason since in a survey taken in 2021 it was proven that up to 50% of population was saying poverty was leading many to skip meals.
It should also be added that the economic crisis is at its centre a product of Erdogan´s policies and his rule, which has resulted in Turkey receiving since the Trump administration and the acquisition of the S-400 military system from Russia massive financial sanctions and also Erdogan’s disastrous financial policies, especially the insistence on part of Erdogan on lowering interest rates to reduce inflation.
Through his foreign policy, Erdogan has also strengthened his ties with Vladimir Putin´s regime and Russia and fully normalized its relations with Saudi Arabia´s Crown Prince and the UAE strategically planning for these regimes to financially support his regime and his party run-up to the June 2023 election.
However, the dire situation that the country is in has also alienated a large quantity of the young voters from Erdogan, with many not seeing a bright future for them in Erdogan’s authoritarian Turkish society, which has resulted in a massive exodus of Turkeys brightest students, with a consequent brain drain in the country.
Consequently, the opposition pursues a moderate and politically reasonable strategy without being too negative or positive it can very well win against Erdogan in the June 2023 election, should the ballot be free and happened in a safe and open manner.
But most political analyst fears the highly likely scenario that Erdogan might actually try if things get politically worse for his party to game the system and change institutionally the laws to his benefit politically in order to win the election and keep himself with his super presidential powers for five more years, with the next election being then even easier since by the time it would happen in five years, Erdogan´s position would be completely solidified.
Erdogan´s party has already made a series of policies to successfully control most of the media in Turkish society through policies of confiscations, favouring journals and journalist that are compliant with his narrative of reality and the open and direct use of censorship and repression with the law being changed to their favour and the arrest and imprisonment of journalists, with Erdogan´s government having created a new “censorship law” that further criminalizes journalist and controls more tightly the influx of information through social media in Turkish.
In conclusion, although victory in a way seems almost guaranteed politically for Erdogan, with the excessive use of repression measures and this latest case of the arrest of the imprisonment of Istanbul Ex-Mayor Ekrem, he has only catapulted him politically, gained more opposition form the masses and alienated Turkey internationally.
Additionally, international pressure is currently of too much weak strength to actually play a decisive role in saving Turkey´s endangered republic, with the EU and EU states being more focused in establishing a deal with Turkey to manage the migrant crisis and Erdogan playing this in his favour.
By The European Institute for International Law and International Relations.
