Turkey's Elections Are Not Just Turkey's
by Burak Bekdil • January 26, 2023 at 5:00 am
To maximize the opportunity for the Turkish public to come to the polls... President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan brought forward the election date from an originally scheduled June 18 to May 14.
Erdoğan's treatment -- through a judiciary totally under his control -- of one of his potential rivals, Istanbul's Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who defeated Erdogan's party in 2019, is revealing. A court sentenced the popular İmamoğlu to a two-year prison sentence and a ban from politics for calling election officials who had annulled his first election "idiots." (Imamoğlu won twice.) If his conviction is not annulled or overturned, that verdict may take the Imamoğlu out of the presidential race.
Erdoğan has made it a habit to use the courts in the way he thinks would best suit his political agenda. As of 2020, the number of Kurdish mayors in prison was 21. The Erdoğan administration had appointed its own administrators to 45 of a total of 65 municipalities won by the pro-Kurdish party, Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), in 2019.
Turkey's Constitutional Court is currently being asked to order the closure of the party, which has 56 deputies in Turkey's parliament. An indictment against the party seeks to ban 451 politicians and party members from organized political activity or membership of political parties for a period of five years and forfeiture of the party's assets.... Even the mere freezing of assets [as has occurred] will deprive the HDP of the means to finance its election campaign.
Turkey's 2023 elections will not only be a race between those Turks who want freedom and despise Islamist rule and those who prefer to starve while dreaming of Ottoman times. It also promises to be maker of Turkey's global journey for at least the next five years.
Everyone in Turkey, in its region and in countries with interests or concerns about Turkey's political future, probably agree that presidential and parliamentary elections this spring will be the most important for every nation involved. To maximize the opportunity for the Turkish public to come to the polls, after calculating external factors such as Muslim Hajj pilgrimage, a religious holiday and university entrance exams, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan brought forward the election date from an originally scheduled June 18 to May 14.
