Erdoğan could only lose Sunday’s elections from a Western perspective

The presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey on Sunday are being described in advance as the most important in the last few decades. Or at least the most important in the last two decades, since the spring of 2003 when the relatively young, 49-year-old mayor of Istanbul, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, burst onto the national political scene and achieved his first major electoral victory by becoming the president of the Turkish government.

In the following two decades, Atatürk’s Turkey disappeared, a secular state founded by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk after Turkey’s defeat in World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire, whose never-achieved model were European secular republics with democratic state structures, as much as the internal Turkish context allows.

Unannounced Islamic Sultanate

Political Islamist Erdoğan initially despised democracy and perceived Atatürk’s Turkey as a Western humiliation of the once-glorious Ottoman Empire. Seizing power in the conditions of the then-ruined Turkish economy and on the wings of the global movement of ‘new Islamic awakening’, he began to realize his strategic goal – the restoration of the influence of the former Ottoman Empire.

He started with the conquest of institutions: primarily the military as a stronghold of Atatürk’s followers, then the police and judiciary; of course, also the media. The result was the Islamization of the state and the establishment of complete control over society. He then began exporting neo-Ottomanism, doctrinally elaborated in the book ‘Strategic Depth’ by his then-collaborator and partner Ahmet Davutoğlu. First to countries that were once part of the neo-Ottoman empire or targets of his military campaigns. His base in the Balkans became Bosnia and Herzegovina (which, after all, Alija Izetbegović left to him in an Islamist manner), and Croatia is one of the countries targeted for influence expansion.

The neo-Ottoman project was successfully packaged in the right to diversity, so Europe initially looked with sympathy as Mrs. Erdoğan came to the Council of Europe with her head covered. For the business world, neo-Ottomanism was packaged in investments (for example, also on the Adriatic). In the segment of cultural and political marketing, it was packaged in the form of Turkish television soap operas… The EU only began to take Erdoğan’s conquering intentions seriously during the first migrant crisis when he showed that he actually holds the keys to migrant waves, and thus the security of Europe. And the USA was not bothered until a few years ago when he began to defy NATO.

The question now is whether and will the presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday end the political era of Turkish President R. T. Erdoğan, who has turned Turkey into an unannounced Islamic sultanate over the past twenty years, and himself into an unannounced sultan? The answer depends on several variables. First, has Erdoğan’s dictatorship exhausted itself sufficiently from within, economically, politically, socially, that despite repression, the people want political change? The answer at first glance is – yes.

The West is not overly interested

Turkey is undergoing a deep economic and social crisis, and the catastrophic earthquake in February of this year further exposed the dysfunctionality and corruption of Erdoğan’s administration, so many Western analysts predicted that this would be his end. But that calculation does not take into account that in Turkey, Erdoğan is the one who creates and interprets reality. The second question is whether the opposition alliance of six parties gathered around Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (the left center in the Turkish way) is the alternative that can defeat Erdoğan. From a Western perspective, the answer is – yes. Because Kılıçdaroğlu is not a conflictual politician, he wants to return Turkey among European secular states, he is inclusive towards the Kurds, he offers freedom in a state where one goes to prison indefinitely for insulting the unannounced sultan…

But the reality in Turkey is interpreted by – Erdoğan. To such an extent that he can even imprison Kılıçdaroğlu before the elections, or immediately after, if necessary, under the accusation of connection with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which he has declared a terrorist organization. The third question is who even wants the predictable neo-sultan Erdoğan to leave at this geopolitically uncertain moment and make way for an uncertain pro-democratic coalition.

In the West, I do not see excessive interest. In the East even less. Considering that Erdoğan’s institutions count the votes, that they can eliminate opponents through criminal prosecution, it seems to me that this is not Erdoğan’s end. Even if, according to Western counts, he loses the elections. But it is the beginning of the end. Because even if he wins in such staged elections, the challenge of the waning neo-sultanate will not disappear.