Behind Turkey’s unsurprising election

There were no surprises in Turkey on Sunday. As expected, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) won another major victory, with 326 seats in parliament out of 550. Since the start of multi-party politics in Turkey in 1946, the AKP is the first to get a third consecutive term and increasing share of the vote, now reaching 50%.

The results have not given Erdogan the “super majority” he wanted, which would have allowed him to draft a new constitution without consulting parliament, and institute a presidential system. He has reassured Turks that his party “will be humble” and seek a broad consensus with opposition parties and NGOs on constitutional reform.

The failure to gain a super majority, requiring 330 seats, was partly due to an inability to prevent the far-right National Movement Party (MHP) from passing the 10% barrier, despite well-publicised sex scandals targeting many of its leaders; the party secured 54 seats, 13% of the vote. The 36 independent candidates, supported by the Kurdish bloc, were all voted in.

The party that may be feeling most disappointed is the secular Republican People’s Party (CHP), the party of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, out of power for decades. It has been made over under Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who replaced its discredited former leader Deniz Baykal, and has attempted to fill the vacuum in Turkish politics that left secular upper-middle-class Turks without any credible representation.

The CHP came second in the election, with 135 seats – a gain of 23 – and 26% of the vote, having campaigned on a platform of greater individual freedoms and democracy, supported and publicised by Turkish secularists, and by others abroad. The Economist’s editorial on 2 June said that "The best way for Turks to promote democracy would be to vote against the ruling party.” There has been much emphasis on 60 journalists currently in prison, with other critics and opponents of the government, many on suspicion of security-related offences. (Turkey’s inadequate judicial system is mired in the Ergenekon trials, meant to uncover a conspiracy to overthrow the government.)

Kilicdaroglu, nicknamed Gandhi for his ascetic ways, is a modest civil servant who can understand the concerns of ordinary Turks. His overhaul of the CHP aimed to present it as a true social democratic party that was moving away from its Kemalist roots and close association with the generals towards greater individual freedoms and rights for underprivileged minorities, such as the Kurds and the Alevis. Kilicdaroglu is an Alevi and led his party in campaigning in the southeast.

Yet the CHP, divided as a result of its recent history, is a broad coalition that cannot attract new supporters. Kilicdaroglu, despite some good and innovative policies, found it difficult to broaden its appeal and still satisfy his party base. On major issues, the CHP now seems to be roughly in the same place as the AKP: adhesion to the EU, progress on the Kurdish issue (the AKP government initiated a significant Kurdish “opening” in 2009), the return of the military to their barracks (the AKP’s major achievement), constitutional reform.

Kilicdaroglu says: “Europe is the very top of our agenda” – a turnaround from previous CHP policy. “Today the process is in almost total deadlock, but whether or not we are accepted, we are determined to achieve EU norms.” In other foreign policy, Professor Sencer Ayata, CHP deputy chairman and chief strategist, says that he shares “the neo-Ottoman outlook” attributed to the AKP – a reference to Turkey’s expanding relations in the Middle East and North Africa – and seeks “to rebuild relations in Turkey’s old areas of influence, but not on the basis of faith or ethnicity”, as he believes the AKP has done. The AKP has rejected the neo-Ottoman label, arguing correctly that it has made much wider relations with the Caucasus, Russia and Africa.

The CHP is critical of the economy, concerned at Turkey’s mounting current account deficit, modest by Mediterranean standards. Ayata calls the AKP government’s rescue of the economy in 2002 “no miracle, just the good luck of an expected bounce back.” Yet the economy under the AKP has proved remarkably resilient to global financial crisis. Last year it grew faster than any other big economy except China and India, and is now the world’s 17th-biggest. A leading member of the G20, it has widened its business and trade reach, becoming not just a regional but a global player.

The AKP and CHP agree that constitutional reform is a necessity, not just for greater democracy and modernity, but to find a peaceful solution to the Kurdish situation. Kurds would prefer a greater degree of autonomy within Turkey to a unified transnational Kurdistan. But they demand, as the basis for progress to a resolution of the conflict, that the constitution be comprehensively changed, dropping references to Turkish identity and replacing them with inclusive values such as democracy and citizenship. Only then, Kurds argue, can moves towards demilitarisation of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) advance.

That the AKP failed to win its super majority is all to the good. Turkey is already centralised enough and does not need a presidential system. (Even within the AKP, many were opposed to such a radical shift, in which Erdogan would presumably have displaced President Abdullah Gul.) But will Erdogan, accused of highhandness, want to work with opposition MPs for a lesser constitutional reform which falls short of his original ambition? This reform is a priority for the next government: the existing constitution, amended several times, was drafted after the military coup in 1980. And a consensual approach would be good for the nation.