Erdogan's allure is fading

Politics was always theatre for Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The president took his first steps in politics as an actor and to this day, he is only wholly in his element on the campaign stage. In today's Turkey, Erdogan's role in the play "Maskomya" (short for Freemason, Communist, Jew) has been largely forgotten. But when 22-year-old Erdogan and his fellow students performed the play in 1976 in Istanbul, it was watched by more than 2,000 spectators.

In the play, young Islamists warn of the threat of a conspiracy by Jewish capitalists, Communist agitators and freemasons. After more than 20 performances on the Bosporus, the young Erdogan and his friends took the play on tour for several weeks, travelling through Turkey by bus. One of the highlights was a performance in the presence of Milli Gorus leader Necmettin Erbakan, a man who had a profound influence on the young Erdogan before their political paths eventually diverged.

To this day, Erdogan has retained his love for a big show as well as for the idea that in the wings of the global stage, a clandestine puppeteer is pulling the strings. It was evident in the run-up to the local elections just how much energy he still brings to the stage. Although not standing for election himself, he held more than a hundred rallies at which he prowled, yelled and sang across the stage, microphone in hand, muttering about unspecified enemies.

Orchestrated threat scenario

During his precisely choreographed appearances, a screen intermittently showed commercials featuring the roads, clinics and universities built by his party since 2002. In addition, he also showed excerpts from speeches by his rivals, before insulting them as enemies of the nation and traitors of Islam. His campaign show even used footage of the Christchurch mosque attack as a way of stoking the sense of threat.

Just as in the play of 1976, his campaign was suffused with the suggestion that Turkey faces a threat from enemies both within and without. Erdogan repeatedly invoked a danger posed by secret powers pulling the strings in politics and the economy and seeking to divide the nation. Whether he was referring to the rising cost of food, the currency decline, or the Gezi Park protests of 2013 – Erdogan blamed it all on a conspiracy against Turkey.

Many observers agreed that Turkey has never experienced such a hard-fought, polarising election campaign. That Erdogan and his party had to accept several significant losses on election night offers a glimmer of hope. The AKP – in its alliance with the right wing extremist MHP – may have once more secured a slim majority nationwide. But the two largest cities Istanbul and Ankara fell to the opposition, made up of the Kemalist CHP and the right wing IYI party.

Electoral debacle in Ankara and Istanbul

While CHP candidate Mansur Yavas looked set to clinch the capital, in Istanbul the vote count was as tense as a crime thriller. Just a few thousand votes separated the two candidates and around midnight, the AKP candidate Binali Yildirim claimed victory. But on the following morning, the electoral commission announced that the CHP politician Ekrem Imamoglu had a lead of 28,000 votes.The loss of these two metropolises is a significant symbolic defeat for Erdogan and his party. As the capital, Ankara is the political centre of Turkey while Istanbul, a city with population of 15 million, is its cultural and economic heart. This is where Erdogan grew up and where he clocked up his first successes with his election to the post of mayor in 1994. The AKP election campaign slogan "Istanbul is a love story for us" was not just an empty phrase.

At the same time, the defeat in Istanbul and Ankara means that the AKP loses control of key posts and resources. The cities are the very bedrock of the party's power. Control of city halls gives it important electioneering advantages and allows it to provide its supporters with official positions and contracts. A whole slew of building contractors has made a fortune thanks to lucrative contracts connected to AKP infrastructure projects.

The loss of Istanbul and Ankara shows that in the midst of an economic crisis, many Turks are no longer allowing themselves to be blinded by Erdogan's bluster about the fight for "national survival". The AKP can also no longer capitalise on its former glory. At a time when Turkey has slipped into recession, the lira is in turmoil, and even tomato and onion prices are going through the roof, voters want solid solutions.

No longer invincible

Although these performances may have shown that Erdogan remains the undisputed master of the election campaign, his allure is fading. Watching his appearances, the first spectators can regularly be seen leaving after just a few minutes. His speeches are very similar in terms of content and presentation, but they are all broadcast on television in their entirety – up to eight times a day. This can trigger a sense of fatigue.

Also, his strategy of ignoring the economy has not paid off. Polls showed that rising unemployment, the high cost of living and the decline of the lira are number one concerns among the Turkish electorate. But when the opposition addressed these questions, Erdogan retorted that economic policy was beyond the remit of local government. The results have now shown that at local elections too, voters expect solutions for the economy.

On election night, Erdogan then pledged to utilise the four years until the next elections in 2023 for economic reforms himself. But it is doubtful whether he will now genuinely focus on specific key policy areas and return to the reform path of previous years. He thrives too much on polarisation and the sense of threat to keep the ranks closed – and quite possibly, he loves the thrill of the election campaign and the stage appearance just a bit too much.

Ulrich von Schwerin

© Qantara.de 2019

Translated from the German by Nina Coon