Turkey will hold a general election on 7 June. Sezin Öney and Emre Erdoğan take a final look at the campaign before the country heads to the polls. They write that politics in Turkey has taken a notable populist turn in recent years, with the 2015 election campaign becoming dominated by a personalised style of politics, particularly in relation to the current Turkish President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and the leader of the pro-Kurdish HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş

Erdoğan, Emre

Öney, Sezin

LSE Research Online

6/5/2015Turkey’s 2015 general election: a ﬁnal look at the parties and thecampaignblogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/06/05/turkeys-2015-general-election-a-ﬁnal-look-at-the-parties-and-the-campaign/Turkey will hold a general election on 7 June. Sezin Öney and Emre Erdoğan take a ﬁnal look atthe campaign before the country heads to the polls. They write that politics in Turkey has taken anotable populist turn in recent years, with the 2015 election campaign becoming dominated by apersonalised style of politics, particularly in relation to the current Turkish President, Recep TayyipErdoğan, and the leader of the pro-Kurdish HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş.During the campaign in 2014 for Turkey’s ﬁrst popularly elected President (or ‘Head of theRepublic’) we wrote a piece declaring that the real winner was not so much Recep Tayyip Erdoğanhimself, who secured victory with 52 per cent of the vote, but populism. Ahead of Turkey’sparliamentary elections on 7 June, it is worth taking stock of what has changed since last August.As it happens, if there has indeed been a ‘change’ it has been the further transformation of Turkeyinto a fully populist-based political system.Political rhetoric in Turkey: the rise of populist discoursesAlthough there is no consensus on the deﬁnition of populism, a widely accepted version is thatproposed by Cas Mudde, who views populism “as an ideology that considers society to be ultimately separated intotwo homogenous and antagonistic groups, ‘the pure people’ versus ‘the corrupt elite’, and which argues that politicsshould be an expression of the volonté general of the people”.Populism is something more than a simple ‘people oriented’ narrative, it is a chameleonic phenomenon; it tends totake the shape of the cup it is poured in, ranging from the far left to the far right of the political spectrum. Theacademic literature on the subject contends that popular frustration with the status quo is one of the underlyingfactors that allows populism to ﬂourish. We argue that particular domestic reasons in Turkey have contributed topopular disenchantment.On the one hand, Turkey’s leadership claims that a systemic change is required for further development of thecountry and they have mobilised all of the political power they possess toward strengthening the executive. On theother hand, erosion of the independence and strength of state institutions and a fusion of executive, legislative andjudicial powers in the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) hands has generated popular disenchantmentamong the opposition. Discontent with the current state of politics is a sentiment expressed by both the governmentand opposition. But in order to get rid of the ‘status quo’, whose vision of the future will triumph?If this is the key political issue in Turkey then it should come as no surprise that in the lead up to the parliamentaryelections the political scene has become engulfed by a polarised ‘us against them’ dynamic, which portrays eachside as attempting to represent the general will of the people against a ‘corrupt and evil’ rival. In this form ofpopulism, the highly charged language of charismatic leaders has become the only viable type of politics, withspeeches choreographed to heighten emotions among supporters to extreme levels, and demeaning prose levelledat rival politicians and parties – who are taken as barriers preventing the representation of the people’s will.This rhetoric frequently focuses on ‘non-issues’, such as the degree of religiosity of one leader as compared toanother, while personal insults such as ‘liar’, ‘thief’ and even ‘inﬁdel’ and ‘murderer’ are regularly ﬁred oﬀ from oneparty podium to another. The intense level of political polarisation now present in Turkey has been skilfullymanufactured by the country’s main political leaders, with a charismatic war of words constituting the medium1/4through which the election campaign has been fought.Erdoğan’s quest for a presidential systemFormally, the Head of the Republic, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has to be ‘independent’ and unaﬃliated with politicalparties. However, his desire to transform the political system of Turkey into a fully presidential one has driven himtoward playing an excessively active role in the campaigning for his ‘former’ party, the AKP. Erdoğan’s desire for apresidential system has been well-known since the 2000s and he also openly set it as a target during thepresidential elections.Turkey’s Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, has backed the system change in his own parallel campaign: the AKPhas made the creation of a presidential system its top priority, alongside a new constitution, in its 2015 ElectionDeclaration. The AKP and Erdoğan argue that the ‘people’s will’ would be best represented by a strong leader’spresidency, with the whims and manipulations of an elitist minority of oligarchic interests presented as the keyobstacle to a proper representation of the Turkish people’s views.However an unlikely beneﬁciary emerged from last summer’s elections, namely Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-leaderof the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP), who has adopted his own variant of the ‘us versus them’rhetoric. The HDP was previously the only opposition party the AKP engaged with, albeit reluctantly, as part of thepeace process to resolve the Kurdish question. But the HDP’s dissatisfaction with the stalemate in the peaceprocess, coupled with the leadership of Demirtaş, has allowed it to develop into a new force in Turkish politics.Pioneering a campaign aimed explicitly at Erdoğan, the AKP and the proposed presidential system, Demirtaş hasﬁrmly seized the moment to shine.Interestingly, the party’s female co-leader, Figen Yüksekdağ, has received barely a fraction of the media attentiondevoted to Demirtaş. The HDP has implemented a unique platform of co-leadership in all positions of the party dueto a variety of factors, including the ideology of jailed PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, which advocates the ‘liberationof women’; the prevalence of a human rights movement among politically repressed Kurds; and the eﬀect of theEU’s promotion of Europeanisation.In stark contrast to the previous achievements of the HDP and its much more staunchly pro-Kurdish precursorparties, which had to be closed down either due to court indictments or party decisions; the charismatic stanceadopted by Demirtaş has generated unprecedented media attention. He is widely praised by political commentatorsand even compared aﬀectionately to Turkey’s most popular comedian, Cem Yılmaz, while also being billed as the‘Kurdish pop star of politics’.Demirtaş and Erdoğan’s personalised politicsIn the public psyche, the ﬁgures of Demirtaş and Erdoğan now appear almost as superheroes. Both have beenadorned with aﬀectionate nicknames: in the case of Demirtaş he is lovingly referred to as ‘Selocan’ by hissupporters, while Erdoğan’s backers have the nickname ‘Tall Man’ and ‘The Master’. They are regularly described inglowing terms by fans using words rarely applied to politicians in other contexts, such as ‘handsome’, ‘charismatic’,‘humane’ and ‘just’.Erdoğan has long been known for his talent for public speaking, bewitching the masses with lofty, emotional anddomineering rhetoric. However he also frequently indicates that “without the will of Allah, no one can succeed”,alluding to the notion that his success as a political leader is based in part on the support of a higher power. In thelead up to the election, he has played the religion card far more overtly than in the past, at times raising up a Quranin his hands during speeches. Taking as emotive a line as possible, he has also publicised his will, while signallingthat ‘enemies’ are targeting him in a similar manner to the Muslim Brotherhood leader in Egypt, Mohamed Morsi.Demirtaş also emphasises his devoutness. According to him, an individual can both be a believer in Allah and a2/4leftist. But spiritualism aside, they both contain diﬀerences in style. Erdoğan’s signature approach is reciting poems;whereas Demirtaş excites crowds by singing. While Erdoğan argues that far from being a Sultan, he is simply ahumble servant of the people; Demirtaş takes his inspiration from Robin Hood, with the aim of taking from the rich togive to the poor. Both the AKP and the HDP oﬀer a clear demarcation of the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’: the AKP’scampaign slogan is “They talk, we act”; while the HDP’s slogan is simply “We!” By “we” both parties mean thepeople: vaguely deﬁned masses with one clear and shared identity of ‘ordinary citizens oppressed by the elite’.The leaders of Turkey’s other political parties have captured less media attention and have failed to dominate theagenda in the same manner as Erdoğan and Demirtaş. The major opposition force of the Republican People’s Party(CHP) launched its economic platform on the basis of a promise to increase the minimum wage, decrease the priceof fuel, and double the level of social aid given to poor families. The opposition Nationalist Action Party (MHP) alsoincluded a pledge to increase the minimum wage, alongside promises to eliminate taxes on fuel and fertilisers, andensure greater job security for public sector workers. Yet the leaders of both parties simply lack the charisma ofErdoğan and Demirtaş and while they will both receive signiﬁcant shares of the vote, they have found it diﬃcult toshape the agenda.The government itself also has its own ‘charisma problem’. Prime Minister Davutoğlu has been criticised by theopposition for his lower proﬁle vis-à-vis Erdoğan. In return, the Prime Minister has attacked other parties for their‘populist’ platforms. This is a criticism that has been taken up by Turkey’s Finance Minister, Mehmet Şimşek, whohas claimed that the “end result of populism is bankruptcy”. Demirtaş is not immune to these critiques either, withpro-government media ﬁgures accusing him of being a ‘neo-populist’; while Erdoğan himself has likened Demirtaş toa “nightclub star”.The irony of course is that populism has now become the name of the political game in Turkey, and that Erdoğan’slong quest to create a ‘people’s presidency’ has been one of the key underlying factors in this development. The endof this trend may occur when the people of Turkey grow weary of personalised politics, but that point is some way oﬀ– and certainly far beyond the upcoming elections.Please read our comments policy before commenting .Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, norof the London School of Economics. Featured image credit: Keren M. (CC-BY-SA-3.0)Shortened URL for this post: http://bit.ly/1Qv8ztY _________________________________About the authorsSezin Öney – Bilkent UniversitySezin Öney is based in the Political Science Department of Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey.–Emre Erdoğan – Bilgi UniversityEmre Erdoğan is based in the Political Science Department of Bilgi University, Istanbul, Turkey.3/44/4

Turkey’s 2015 general election: a final look at the parties and the campaign

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