Turkey's Elections: Nationalist Identity Politics Wins Out Over Misery
by Burak Bekdil • May 23, 2023 at 5:00 am
There will be a second round for the presidential vote on May 28, but an opposition victory seems unlikely.
Turkey is a country where average schooling is 6.5 years. In other words, the average person is a 7th grade drop-out. Ninety-five percent of Turkish citizens have never travelled abroad.
Many Turks are captivated by identity politics: Ideology over everything else. Erdoğan's Islamism and nationalism still matter to tens of millions of starving Turks. This is their make-believe world: that Erdoğan will one day rebuild the glorious days of our Ottoman ancestors.
Under pressure from the Erdoğan government, which apparently feared opposition propaganda on social media, Twitter announced on May 12, two days before the elections, "In response to legal process and to ensure that Twitter remains available to the people of Turkey, we have taken action to restrict access to some content in Turkey today."
"This [a likely Erdoğan victory] is not only bad news for Turkey but also for other democracies around the world ... I don't know how Turkey will cope with a total economic collapse." — Daron Acemoglu, a Turkish-American economist who has taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology since 1993. – Cumhuriyet, May 16, 2023.
A Turkish collapse is likely -- but the Turks will probably blame it on the Crusaders while worshipping the man who caused it.
On May 14, 64 million citizens of Turkey went to polling stations in the wake of a punishing economic crisis, widening democratic deficit and a government revealed as totally helpless in relief efforts after February 6 earthquakes killed more than 50,000 people. The opposition bloc had never been stronger against an autocratic regime that is giving serious signs of metal fatigue.
Turkey is a poor country where per capita income is barely $9,000. Budget and current account deficits have been ballooning, annual inflation is running at 43% (official) to 105% (unofficial) and unemployment is soaring.
In response, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's campaign, after a rule of 21 years, highlighted "our country's survivability against major Western powers, the Crusaders, enemies within, traitors, terrorists, atheists and homosexuals." Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said that if the opposition won, they would legalize humans marrying animals.
