After 20 years in power, Recep Tayyip Erdogan must return to the voters on May 14, 2023, at the heart of an unprecedented storm: Turkey is going through a deep economic crisis, is in conflict with most of its neighbors and counts its tens thousands of deaths after the February 6 earthquake. Part of the country is on the ground, anger is brewing and repression is stronger than ever.
Lawyer at the Paris bar and specialist in the geopolitics of the Middle East at the School of Economic Warfare, Ardavan Amir-Aslani has just published, on February 23, Turkey, a new caliphate? published by the Archipelago. It recounts Erdogan’s authoritarian drift, his Islamo-conservative agenda and his “civilizational project” with regard to the rich history of this country and its ancestor, the Ottoman Empire. Essential to understand this “Turkey on the verge of explosion”, according to the author, a century after its foundation by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
L’Express: 2023 marks a pivotal year for Turkey, with the presidential election and the centenary of the Republic. How disruptive is the February 6 earthquake to an already busy year?
Ardavan Amir-Aslani: This earthquake does not reverse everything from A to Z, but it will have a negative impact on Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Here is a man in power for twenty years, who used the earthquake of 1999 to expose the incompetence of the government of the time and win the elections. Twenty-four years later, he himself is faced with an earthquake and we see that not only has nothing been done under his presidency, but the situation is even worse than before, plagued by problems of corruption. The most affected region is managed by the presidential party, the AKP, and this corruption mainly affects Erdogan.
The president, for fear of the army, delayed before authorizing the soldiers to intervene and provide assistance. The president, in his desire to control the media, had Twitter blocked for hours, which would have been invaluable to the rescuers in locating the victims. And this president, in a strategy that characterizes him, falls into fatalism, assuring that everything is the doing of God… These elements will definitively anchor the opinion of those who did not like him, but also bring elements of doubt to those who might support his policies.
What flaws in Turkish power did this earthquake highlight?
This case reflects the connivance and collusion of power with certain centers of interest, particularly in construction. In the first years of Erdogan’s reign, Turkey saw constructions everywhere: large hotels, bridges, infrastructures, etc. This real estate boom corresponded to its desire to dictate the economy with public spending in all directions. In 1999, an “earthquake” tax on construction groups was decided, but it was never used. Building permits for buildings were issued and validated a posteriori. All of this reflects the corruption, collusion, dictatorial will, control of the press, rejection of criticism and the fatalism that characterizes Erdogan’s personality. It’s always someone else’s fault, never his.
Some within the presidential party are asking to postpone the elections, scheduled for May 14, for several months or even a year. Does Turkey risk falling into an undemocratic regime?
Today, Turkish democracy cannot be called democracy in the Western sense of the term, with a power that constantly limits the freedom of the press. Nothing could justify postponing the elections for a year. The earthquake is a great tragedy, but it only affected a limited part of Turkey. If the power decides to postpone the elections, it would only be because it considers that it will suffer more than negative repercussions and that it thinks it will be in a better position in a year.
I am not sure that the government decides on such a postponement and, in any case, the opposition would not approve of it. Erdogan risks being accused of mismanaging this crisis and trying to buy time, to stay in power for another year when he was about to lose the elections. He has no argument against it.
Antakya in southern Turkey, February 20, 2023
© / afp.com/Sameer Al-DOUMY
In your book, you tell how Erdogan and his party seized all the powers. You compare modern Turkey to a caliphate. Do you think he will leave power if he loses the elections?
Yes I think so. If he remains in power after losing the elections, he would lose all form of credibility within the Turkish nation and would be banished from the international community. Turkey would become a dictatorship. The problem is that I’m not sure he’s going to lose: today, I consider it 50/50. On the other hand, if Erdogan wins, madness risks taking hold of Turkey: he could leave NATO, relaunch the conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, complicate the way out of the crisis in Syria…
I don’t think he will go as far as a coup d’etat, even if he would be able to do so since he decapitated the army after the attempted insurrection against him in July 2016. To achieve this scenario, it would require contested elections and not an outright defeat of Erdogan. At that point, he would embark on his usual strategy of pointing the finger at the Americans, the opposition, all those who are personally against him, and he would accuse them of stealing the elections… It would be a Trump bis, but in Anatolia .
Is it possible to know to what extent Erdogan masters all the levers of the state, including within the army?
How many officers were fired from the army after the failed coup in 2016? More than 5000, replaced by people loyal to Erdogan, second rank officers focused on Islam. The senior civil service was beheaded. We are still in a country where, three months before the elections, the main opposition candidate [NDLR : Ekrem Imamoglu, le maire d’Istanbul] takes judicial blow after blow, aiming to prohibit him from running for president. Erdogan’s natural tendency is to want full powers, for eternity. He considers democracy as a game he must play to maintain international credibility, but his vocation would be to become an Ottoman Emperor.
Before the February 6 earthquake, Erdogan was rising in the polls. On what springs can he still play, in the midst of an economic crisis and after this earthquake?
Erdogan built his reputation on religion and his desire to restore Turkey to greatness. A greatness that does not go back to Mustafa Kemal, but to the Ottoman Empire at the height of its glory. Its electoral base, all this peasantry of Anatolia which grew rich during the first ten glorious years under Erdogan, remains important. These people identify with him, their wives wear headscarves like the president’s wife, they are religious, conservative in their choice. According to them, Erdogan brings glory to Turkey, he refuses humiliation at the hand of the West, he stands up to the Russians, sends drones to Ukraine, occupies part of Syria, etc. There is a long way to go before you realize that all of this is just smoke and mirrors!
His grassroots base could actually push him to commit ill-considered acts. But he would prefer to lose elections and play the victim in the shadows, even if it means coming back later and being a blocking factor during the term of the new president.