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Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan waves as he addresses his supporters in Ankara following his victory in the second round of the presidential election.
Erdogan wins reelection — what's next for Turkey?
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan won Sunday's presidential runoff election, beating opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu by a not-too-shabby 4 percentage points in a deeply polarized country. It’s a big victory for Erdogan, who ahead of the first round many thought would finally lose — yet eventually defying the polls to advance, win another term, and enter his third decade in power.
For the next five years, Erdogan will be "politically unencumbered" as his party also won a majority in parliament, Eurasia Group senior analyst Emre Peker explains in this Twitter thread. That will likely mean the Turkish leader will double down on some of his most divisive policies to please his base, including what to do with Syrian refugees.
Things are not looking good for the economy. The lira crashed after Erdogan's runoff victory, as investors fear the president will try to get the country out of its economic crisis with more of his unorthodox policies known as Erdonomics. The same goes for the state of Turkish democracy, while on foreign policy expect Erdogan to continue his delicate balancing act between the West and, well, the enemies of the West.
In Peker's words: "Quite an explosive mix — politically for Erdogan, and personally for all Turkey."
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses his supporters in Istanbul.
Turkey: Erdogan to run off with the runoff
By most accounts, the only real question ahead of Turkey’s presidential runoff this weekend is: by how much?
It seems all but certain that incumbent president Recep Tayyip Erdogan will defeat challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a technocrat who has cast himself as a moderate alternative to Erdogan’s unique brand of Islamist-inspired populist nationalism.
In the first round, on May 14, Erdogan bucked polling expectations by taking 49% of the vote to Kilicdaroglu’s 45%, while his ruling AK Party also outperformed, winning a majority in parliament. Since then things have only gotten rosier: the third-place finisher, ultranationalist Sinan Ogan, has endorsed him, while Kilicdaroglu’s campaign has floundered.
A strong mandate will almost certainly embolden Erdogan to double down on policies that many critics thought would doom him: suppressing interest rates in order to combat inflation, cracking down on opponents and the media, driving hard bargains with the EU over migrants, and infuriating his NATO allies by keeping cozy with Vladimir Putin.
But as the election results show, Erdogan – for all his eccentric ideas, authoritarian inklings, and economic mismanagement – is genuinely popular even in a deeply divided society. Having overcome the most significant electoral challenge he has faced during his 20 years on the national stage, the wily Erdogan will be vindicated. He is unlikely to change his stripes now.Turkey’s sultan Erdogan is not going anywhere
Turkish strongman Recep Tayyip Erdogan is … strong.
Despite most opinion polls predicting a win for main-opposition candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a soft-spoken technocrat who leads the secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), President Erdogan received 49.5% of the votes in Sunday’s presidential election compared to Kilicdaroglu’s 44.9%. Erdogan’s Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its People’s Alliance coalition, meanwhile, defied expectations to retain majority control of Turkey’s 600-member parliament.
On paper, the election was the most serious challenge of Erdogan’s 20-year iron rule.
Turkey’s economy is in shambles, plagued by soaring inflation, a plummeting lira, and a cost-of-living crisis at least partly caused by Erdogan’s kooky economic policies. The government’s shambolic response to February’s deadly earthquake in southeastern Turkey (which killed 50,000 and displaced 1.5 million), added to the AKP’s many corruption and mismanagement scandals, created more headwinds for the president. And, for the first time in ages, Turkey’s notoriously fractious opposition managed to unite behind a joint candidate able to broaden the bloc’s appeal, giving voters a credible alternative to Erdogan.
All this explains why almost every part of the country shifted against Erdogan relative to the most recent presidential election in 2018, forcing the president to a run-off for the first time in two decades.
But while his dominance has slipped, Erdogan remains the most popular leader in Turkey. He has outlived economic downturns, refugee crises, corruption scandals, protest movements, and even a coup attempt. He is a skilled populist with ample experience leveraging the bully pulpit, stoking nationalist sentiment, and exploiting identity politics and security concerns in his favor.
Having dismantled most independent checks on his power (including the military, the judiciary, and the media) and expanded presidential powers, Erdogan’s electoral strength is further underpinned by his incumbency advantages, which allow him to dominate the airwaves and use state levers to woo voters and weaken opponents. Yes, Turkey's election was free ... but it certainly wasn’t fair.
This is why I expected him to clinch reelection, despite polling data showing as much as a five-percentage-point lead for Kilicdaroglu ahead of the first-round vote.
What’s next
While Erdogan came half a point short of the 50% he needed to avoid a runoff, he is the overwhelming favorite to secure the presidency in the second round on May 28.
The math is simple. Erdogan was within just 275,000 votes of winning the presidency outright on Sunday, whereas Kilicdaroglu’s shortfall was 2.8 million. The president will carry that 2.5 million advantage into the runoff, where Kilicdaroglu would need to not only increase or at least maintain his turnout – a huge hurdle given the demoralizing impact of his Sunday losses – but also win virtually all the voters who backed the far-right nationalist Sinan Ogan (5.2%) and the populist Muharrem Ince (0.4%) in order to unseat Erdogan. That’s not going to happen.
Ince had surprisingly withdrawn from the race three days before the vote but remained on the ballot. Most of his supporters are protest or anti-establishment voters who won’t head to the polls for the runoff. Even if they did, at less than 250,000 votes they wouldn’t move the needle for Kilicdaroglu.
Ogan, on the other hand, drew his 2.8 million votes roughly evenly from both Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu. Among them, nationalist voters who typically vote for the Erdogan-allied Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) or the ruling AKP will be highly motivated to cast their ballots for the incumbent to prevent a Kilicdaroglu presidency. But backers of the opposition-aligned, Turkish nationalist Good Party (IYI) are less likely to turn out to support Kilicdaroglu.
Ogan himself has said he’d only endorse the opposition leader if he distances himself from his Kurdish supporters, playing into Erdogan’s baseless accusations that Kilicdaroglu is “backed by terrorists.” But Kilicdaroglu can’t risk alienating the Kurdish vote, which makes up around 10% of Turkey’s electorate.
These numbers alone give Erdogan a nigh insurmountable edge. And that’s before you even get to the campaign trail, where the president will use his incumbency powers and scare tactics to energize his base, depress opposition turnout, and tilt the balance further in his favor.
Why it matters
A victorious Erdogan will be emboldened to double down on the playbook that has hollowed out Turkey’s democracy, turned its economy into a basket case, and distanced it from its traditional Western allies.
The president’s insistence on unorthodox economic policies will prove unsustainable sooner rather than later, pushing the country toward a full-blown economic crisis it’ll have a hard time recovering from.
Little by little, one-man rule will replace the rule of law as Erdogan makes himself sultan for life, pushing Turkey ever closer to autocracy and away from representative democracy.
Abroad, Erdogan will continue his delicate balancing act as he seeks to expand Turkey’s global clout, deepening ties with Russia and China to the chagrin of its longstanding allies, the United States and Europe.
Despite growing mistrust and tension, Turkey’s economic and security dependence on the West means relations will continue to be ruled by pragmatism. Erdogan will continue to both expand trade with Russia and support Ukraine and avoid Western sanctions. He will ratify Sweden’s membership in NATO but only once the US finally agrees to sell him F-16 fighter jets. He will keep Turkey in NATO but increasingly act as a spoiler.
This approach to foreign policy will help cement Turkey’s role as a geopolitical swing state (see today’s Moose treat), but it will also make Ankara a more unreliable ally and increase the risk of miscalculation. As we’ve seen in Russia and China, extreme consolidation of power, centralization of decision-making, and suppression of dissent are a recipe for bad policies. Unchallenged power means unchallenged ability to make mistakes.
A third Erdogan term will bring about a more unstable, authoritarian, and unpredictable Turkey. Short of a miracle on May 28, the future of Turkey looks bleak.
Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan addresses his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 election in Istanbul.
Is the Erdoğan era in Turkey coming to an end?
After dominating Turkish politics for two decades, opinion polls suggest that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan could face his toughest elections ever on May 14. The charismatic, tough-talking politician became prime minister in 2003 after his moderate Islamist party swept to power, breaking with a long tradition of secular government. In 2014, he won the country’s first-ever direct presidential election and then expanded the powers of the office with a new constitution passed in 2017.
A deepening economic crisis – with inflation just under 50% – and a bungled initial response to devastating earthquakes in February have created an opening for an opposition candidate to prevent Erdoğan’s rule from extending into a third decade. That could have implications far beyond Turkey. Though a NATO member, Turkey under Erdoğan has pursued closer relations with Russia and various other policies that have created tensions with its Western partners.
We spoke with Turkey experts at Eurasia Group to get a better sense of what to expect from the upcoming elections.
The polls point to an unusually tight presidential contest – is Erdoğan’s dominance slipping?
Erdoğan’s public support has been steadily weakening since he became president in 2014. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) briefly lost its parliamentary majority in the June 2015 general elections but quickly recovered it a few months later in November snap polls. Ever since, Erdogan and the AKP have had to rely on alliances — primarily with the Nationalist Movement Party, but also some fringe Islamist parties — to maintain his legislative majority and secure reelection as president. Meanwhile, unorthodox policies such as keeping interest rates low despite high inflation have magnified economic challenges, causing fatigue with the AKP’s long rule. First-time voters who have known no leader but Erdoğan are eager for change. While Erdoğan, 69, remains the most prominent Turkish politician, he has largely lost his magic touch for communicating with voters. For example, his reference to the recent earthquakes as “an act of fate” in an effort to downplay their impact stoked more outrage with the government response. All these factors suggest that the Erdogan era is nearing its end — at least in the public psyche.
Who is the leading challenger and what does he need to do to win?
Six opposition parties have joined forces in the Nation Alliance and chosen Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu as their joint candidate. The 74-year-old will be Erdoğan main challenger. To be successful, he needs to maintain the cohesion of a fractious coalition of social democrats, secularists, Islamists, and nationalists. Moreover, he needs to secure the support of Kurdish and left-wing voters. More importantly, Kılıçdaroğlu needs to convince voters that he can effectively preside over a six-party coalition and work with a diverse legislature to fix Turkey’s economic problems. On a practical level, the opposition will have to ensure the security and integrity of the ballot and the vote count.
What does Erdoğan need to do?
The president needs to energize his conservative, Islamist, nationalist base. To that end, Erdoğan will use scare tactics. He will try to associate Kılıçdaroğlu with terrorism, citing his support among pro-Kurdish parties. (Turkey has suffered from a long-running battle with militant Kurdish separatists that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.) Erdoğan will also play on pious voters’ fears of a return to the hardline secularism of pre-AKP governments, insinuating that Kılıçdaroğlu will not respect their religious beliefs. Meanwhile, Erdogan will use the advantages of incumbency — electoral handouts, control of the bureaucracy, influence over the media, etc.— to undermine the opposition campaign.
Is fraud likely?
There have been disputes and allegations of wrongdoing in every Turkish election since 2014. Those involved arbitrary pauses to vote-count updates, allegations of multiple voting, acceptance of irregular ballots, blocking of poll observers, and a forced re-run of the Istanbul mayoral election in 2019. Similar risks exist for the upcoming polls.
How likely do you think it is that Erdoğan would try force a re-run of this election?
If Erdoğan loses the presidential election by a very narrow margin (by less than 1% of the total vote), he could lean on the Supreme Election Council to force a repeat of the election, as he did when his party’s candidate lost the Istanbul mayoral election by less than 14,000 votes to the CHP candidate. (The CHP went on to win the re-run with 800,000 more votes than the AKP.) If Erdoğan manages to cling onto his parliamentary majority with a surprise win in the legislative elections being held at the same time as the presidential vote, he will likely be more inclined to seek a re-run. Should Kılıçdaroğlu win the presidency with a wide margin (more than 2% of the total vote) and the opposition secure a comfortable majority in parliament, Erdogan would be less likely to disrupt the electoral process.
Is violence expected around the elections?
The offices of the AKP and opposition parties in various provinces — including Istanbul — have been attacked by gunmen and vandals. Kılıçdaroğlu has also faced some aggressive heckling and threats around his public gatherings, which caused him to cancel some rallies. Some opposition politicians have also voiced concern over an assassination attempt against Kılıçdaroğlu. While major unrest is unlikely, spontaneous outbreaks of violence are possible in the lead-up to the elections. If there were blatant election disruptions or a very close race, that could trigger demonstrations and street violence, too — albeit likely limited.
Edited by Jonathan House, Senior Editor, Eurasia Group.
Supporters of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu demonstrate as a Turkish court reaches a verdict in his trial.
What We're Watching: Turkish political verdict, Nagorno-Karabakh flareup, Sunak's immigration plan, Lula's military
Bombshell ruling in Turkey
On Wednesday, a Turkish court sentenced Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu to 2.5 years in prison for the obviously heinous crime of calling election officials "fools" after they annulled the result of the May 2019 race he won. Context: Imamoglu's slim victory then was questioned by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s ruling Law & Justice party, which forced a rerun only to see Imamoglu win again by a wider margin. The double loss was a slap in the face for Erdoğan, who is running for re-election just six months from now — with Imamoglu favored to be his main rival. On the one hand, Erdogan is trying to pull the oldest authoritarian trick in the book by getting loyalist judges to throw his enemy in jail. On the other, since Imamoglu will surely appeal, the snail-pace legal system won’t confirm his conviction ahead of the presidential vote. Will Erdogan’s move further boost the mayor in the polls, convincing an alliance of six opposition parties to pick Imamoglu as their candidate? Throwback: in 1997, when Erdoğan himself was mayor of Istanbul, he did time in jail and was banned from political office for … reciting a controversial poem. Five years later he was elected as Turkey’s first Islamist PM.
Nagorno-Karabakh tensions rising again
For three days now, protesters tied to the Azerbaijani government have blocked the road connecting neighboring Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh, a disputed ethnic-Armenian exclave that Azerbaijan claims as part of its territory. The blockade of Nagorno-Karabakh’s only tie to the outside world has raised fears of a humanitarian crisis among the mountainous region’s 150,000 people, especially after Azerbaijan reportedly cut gas supplies on Tuesday. For background, Karabakh was part of Soviet Azerbaijan, but since a brutal war in the early 1990s, the region has enjoyed a fragile de facto independence, backed by Armenia. After fresh fighting in 2020, Azerbaijan fully encircled Karabakh and has demanded that Armenia recognize Karabakh as Azerbaijan’s territory. Nothing doing, says Yerevan, which warns of an Azeri “genocide” against the Karabakh Armenians. A Russian peacekeeping mission has mostly kept a lid on things since 2020, but was reportedly unable to dislodge the current road blockade. The EU, meanwhile, has shown its usual “serious concern,” but the two main outside players are really Russia, which is Armenia’s closest ally, and Azerbaijan’s main backer: Turkey.
What’s Sunak’s immigration plan?
After first placing a tourniquet around the British economy, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is now tackling another thorny policy: immigration. Sunak, Britain’s fourth PM since 2019, outlined on Wednesday a new plan to stop migrants from traveling in rickety boats across the English Channel. (Just today, four bodies were found in the channel after a small boat capsized.) As part of his effort to clear the UK’s asylum backlog of nearly 100,000 people, Sunak’s government will resume “hostile environment” checks, meaning that asylum seekers from countries not deemed dangerous enough will be returned without having their claims processed. This is thought to be aimed at deterring Albanian nationals; 11,240 Albanians crossed the English Channel in the first nine months of this year, up from 800 in 2021. Though Sunak supports many of the hardline immigration policies floated by his former boss Boris Johnson – including the controversial Rwanda resettlement plan – the milder-mannered Sunak has taken a more pragmatic approach to the immigration issue. Unlike Boris, he’s sought to work with French President Emmanuel Macron on the issue rather than antagonize him.
Brazil’s president & its military
Brazil’s incoming president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva has named a civilian to lead the military as Defense Minister. After several years of military men running the armed forces under outgoing President Jair Bolsonaro, it’s a move meant to send a message: the military should remain out of politics. During this year’s bitterly contested presidential campaign, many Bolsonaro critics feared that the former army captain, who admires Brazil’s past as a military dictatorship, might ask his old pals to save him from defeat. In the end, he resisted the temptation, but his supporters are still protesting the election result, particularly outside army barracks, where Bolsonaro is popular among rank-and-file soldiers. The leftist Lula’s choice, José Múcio Monteiro, is actually a member of a right-wing party – a nod to the need for someone who can appeal across the political spectrum. Monteiro has already named new commanders for the armed forces. As Lula’s January 1 inauguration approaches, we’re watching to see how Brazil’s military, and Bolsonaro himself, respond to Lula’s attempt to ease soldiers away from Brazil’s political stage.