Nathalie Tocci is director of the Istituto Affari Internazionali, Europe’s futures fellow at IWM, Vienna, and a board member of ENI. Her new e-book, “A Green and Global Europe,” is now out with Polity.
Turkey and Syria have been struck by two horrific earthquakes, the aftershocks of that are ongoing. Hundreds are reported lifeless or injured; many extra stay beneath the rubble, and the size of the tragedy will solely turn into clearer because the hours go by.
All that is occurring as Turkey prepares for elections this spring — and the way the federal government, the opposition and the worldwide group reply to the earthquakes’ devastating penalties will probably weigh closely on its end result. This raises the query of how Europe ought to handle relations with Ankara within the rocky months forward and put together to reengage it afterward.
This spring, most probably on Could 14, 2023, Turkish voters will head to the polls to elect their new president and parliament. Given Turkey’s strategic significance, enhanced by the warfare in Ukraine, the result of those elections is massively necessary. Coinciding with the one hundredth anniversary of the republic, it’s additionally one which Erdoğan, who has been in energy for twenty years, is decided to win — and the symbolism is big.
Along with the centennial, the election date of Could 14 additionally coincides with the anniversary of Turkey’s first aggressive election held in 1950, which (paradoxically) introduced an finish to Turkey’s one-party rule, with Adnan Menderes prevailing over the ruling Republican Folks’s Occasion on the time — which is now the nation’s largest opposition occasion.
The result of an election, nonetheless, has by no means been so unsure. And in contrast to all others for the reason that Justice and Growth Occasion (AKP) rose to energy in 2002, this one is for Erdoğan and the AKP to lose.
A 12 months in the past, Erdoğan was polling beneath 40 p.c — and it was hardly a shock. With the financial system stagnating, double-digit unemployment and skyrocketing inflation, fueled by Erdoğan’s weird interest-rate obsession, the Turkish chief’s recognition plummeted.
He’s now bending over backward to reverse this pattern and is, to an extent, succeeding via each honest and foul strikes.
To this point, the Turkish chief has leveraged the nation’s geostrategic benefits remarkably properly. Somewhat than being squeezed between the West and Russia, Ankara has pragmatically — and at occasions ruthlessly — exploited its fence-sitting to extract advantages from each side.
It sells drones to Ukraine whereas tripling commerce with Russia; it portrays itself as the one mediator between Kyiv and Moscow, boasting its mediation of grain and prisoner change offers; and it leverages its NATO membership to obtain F16s from the USA, whereas carving out concessions from Sweden and Finland as they wait on the Alliance’s door. It’s doing the identical with Russia as properly, utilizing Moscow’s strategic belittlement to influence it to green-light its actions in Syria.
A few of these strikes are aimed toward demoralizing Kurdish voters in Turkey and making a hyper-nationalistic atmosphere to undermine the opposition. Domestically, Erdoğan has stabilized the financial system for now via money flows from Russia and the Gulf. And these have, in flip, been used to fund populist strikes, resembling a large housing program, minimum wage rises and early retirement for tens of millions of residents.
However past strategic deftness and financial populism, Erdoğan has additionally been taking part in foul.
Bringing the election ahead to Could from the initially scheduled date in June offers the opposition, which hasn’t chosen its presidential candidate but, much less time to prepare its marketing campaign.
Far worse, an evermore subservient judiciary has moved to ban Erdoğan’s important political opponents. In December, a Turkish court docket sentenced Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu to nearly three years in jail. Pending his attraction, Imamoğlu stays in workplace and might nonetheless run had been he to turn into the opposition’s candidate — however the transfer is not any coincidence. Istanbul’s mayor is the one politician who has a formidable monitor document in terms of beating the AKP, having finished so when he prevailed in 2019, regardless of a politically motivated rerun of the Istanbul election.
A number of weeks later, the judiciary additionally dominated in favor of freezing the pro-Kurdish Folks’s Democratic Occasion’s financial institution accounts. This, alongside the shrinking area for media freedom and civil society, implies that Turkey’s election will happen in an more and more undemocratic atmosphere — one which will turn into extra so if Erdoğan misuses the three-month emergency declaration he has announced in 10 areas most impacted by the tremors.
Certainly, the earthquake solely complicates the image much more.
A pure catastrophe ought to be handled as such, however Turkey lies in a extremely seismic space, and geologists have warned of the dangers of a brand new main quake for a very long time. After the nation’s final devastating earthquake in 1999, it was clear Turkey was in sore want of a significant shakeup of its constructing norms and requirements. However it took till 2018 for that earthquake legislation to be handed, and a query that can inevitably be raised when the rubble settles is how most of the over 6,000 buildings that had been destroyed and the lives misplaced might have been saved, had authorities handled this as a better coverage precedence?
Equally related is how the earthquake will affect worldwide relations. We are actually seeing an outpouring of worldwide solidarity, together with from nations which have complicated, if not conflictual, relations with Ankara. Greece and Cyprus are essential on this respect, as again in 1999, the dual earthquakes in Greece and Turkey had spurred a historic reconciliation between the 2 nations, paving the best way for probably the most promising section of the Cyprus peace course of that culminated within the 2004 Annan Plan.
After all, we’re unlikely to see a right away turning of the web page within the East Med or between the European Union and Turkey. Nevertheless, the earthquake and the upcoming elections elevate the query of how Europe and the West ought to now react — and, because it all the time is with Turkey, it would require a fragile balancing act.
On the one hand, there ought to be full and unconditional assist for Turkey and Syria within the wake of the earthquake — politics and geopolitics ought to be put aside. On the similar time, because the nation’s political taking part in subject turns into more and more uneven, with democratic rules and the rule of legislation being damaged, European leaders and establishments ought to communicate out. That mentioned, not solely is their affect earlier than the election virtually nil, however the threat is that lambasting Turkey might have a boomerang impact, with European criticism getting used and abused to foment nationalist fervor.
After the election, nonetheless, it’s a completely totally different story, particularly if the opposition had been to prevail — most probably within the parliamentary election, which is much extra unsure than the presidential race.
Had been that to occur, the EU ought to be prepared to right away reengage, dusting off concepts which were repeatedly mentioned however by no means applied as a result of souring political local weather between the perimeters. Points like modernizing the customs union, visa liberalization, power transition, migration and international coverage cooperation — there’s no must reinvent the wheel.
What this is able to require, nonetheless, is the conviction throughout the Continent’s capitals that if change had been to occur, Europe would leap to embrace it.
Even on this rosy situation, although, Turkey will stay a strategic problem.
Whereas the opposition’s victory would halt and reverse Turkey’s democratic decline, it wouldn’t essentially transform its international coverage towards Syria, the Japanese Med, Russia or China. Turkey’s international coverage would, nonetheless, turn into much less customized and extra institutionalized, making it extra predictable and amenable to alter.
However for this to occur, the EU would wish to take a leap of religion and switch the web page in its engagement with Turkey.
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