Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan’s political career has been full of glory since he has taken the stage as the mayor of Istanbul in 1994. In 2002, shortly after founding the AKP, he came to power with the ambitious idea of changing the character of the nation and the direction of the economy. The following factors played a significant role in his victory:
– The fact that the Turkish people were fed up with high inflation rates throughout the years and ultimately, a major economic crisis hit the country’s economy in 2001
– Reforms began to be implemented with greater commitment during the European Union harmonization process in 2002 – 2006 and the foreign investments revived the domestic demand
– The amount of capital inflow to Turkey had increased thanks to the monetary expansion in the US economy during 2008 crisis and with the falling exchange rates, imports became cheaper and this created a brief false spring in the Turkish economy
However, 2013 was a major turning point in the roadmap of the AK Party with the emerging ‘Gezi Park Protests’ that began in May in Istanbul and continued throughout the summer, spanning almost every one of Turkey’s 81 provinces. At the time, the interest rate hike signalled by the FED President Bernanke was at the same time signalling the days of foreign capital’s exit from the developing countries.
Erdogan’s main mistake was to miss the major economic transformation in 2013. Until then, the main locomotives of the Turkish economy were the construction, tourism, textile, and the foreign demand dependent manufacturing industry. However, once a driving force of economic growth, Turkey’s construction sector had reached the limits of catch-up growth and foreign inputs, which have become more expensive due to increased exchange rates, paved the way for a recession by 2017.
It is also necessary to mention the role of foreign and domestic policy mistakes in the emerging crisis: In domestic politics, the ‘Resolution Process’ initiated to compromise with the Kurdish separatist movement PKK, has been a complete failure. Neither Turks nor Kurds were happy with the result. After then, former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu’s policy of zero problems with neighbouring countries failed to yield successive results. Turkey acting beyond all the political equations simultaneously ran contrary to both Russia and the United States. Relations with the EU have also been deeply shaken.
While Erdogan’s popularity had decreased due to the economic outlook, he further toughened the tone of his language. He used extremely heavy rhetoric against the opposition. This situation polarized the country and separated the society as supporters and opponents by half.
However, the strategy he chose to consolidate his voters backfired because the weak recovery packages that did not contain basic solutions against the economic crisis and could not succeed to win the support of a large segment of the society. Even AK Party supporters blamed Erdogan for burning billions of dollars in Syria and allowing millions of immigrants rushing into every city of Turkey. As a result, a great majority of Istanbulites voted for the main opposition party CHP in the 2019 local elections, as if responding to a historic statement of Erdogan that said, “If you want to be strong in politics, you have to be strong in Istanbul.”
Today it seems the voters are determined to push Erdogan out of the stage, because the Turkish economy, which has signalled for a recession in 2017 and went through a major crisis in 2018, was caught completely unprepared for the Covid-19 while trying to recuperate with temporary solutions such as the massive, cheap credit support the public banks.
Before the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, 16 million people were living under the ‘hunger limit’ (2.438 TL / 358 USD per month) in Turkey with 82 million population. The imbalance in income distribution has become worse in the AK Party government. People believe that the pro-government circles have taken the lion’s share from the $ 770 billion national income by 2019.
While a privileged few enjoy very good conditions, the rest of the society lives under mounting financial difficulties. The long queues seen during the distribution of the 1000 TL (approximately 147 USD) aid given to the 5.5 million people by the state to compensate the damages of the outbreak is an appropriate and up-to-date example to describe the difficulties that the people face. We should also remember that the financial aid given to the people by the state is far below the hunger limit.
It has been told that the number of unemployed people, who were about 4.2 million before the Covid-19 pandemic, reached 10 million with unrecorded unemployed workers mostly in the metropolitan cities.
Although the pro-government media holds Covid-19 responsible for all that trouble, Turkish people suffering from an economic crisis stronger than the one in 2001, are firmly aware of whom is the main responsible for all that fiasco.
The absence of reforms required in economy, education and law as well as the loss of confidence in Turkey in the global sphere because of the tough political line pursued by Erdogan in both domestic and external policy stand out as the primary reasons for the worn economic and political image of Turkey.
Turkey will go to elections in 2023. Economic devastation can take this date forward in time, but the result is already clear. Erdogan and his party, who think that they will stay in power forever by using Islamic rhetoric as a cover to hide the economic collapse, will encounter a big surprise.
By Evren Devrim Zelyut, strategist and YouTube commentator
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