Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, newly elected as the country’s president, has “dominated every aspect of Turkish life more than anyone since the founder of modern Turkey, Kemal Ataturk,” Benny Avni wrote yesterday in Newsweek:
He has achieved this by breaking all the rules. According to the bylaws of his own party, the Justice and Development Party, he could not serve a fourth term as prime minister. Having been elected three times, he was term-limited, but, like Vladimir Putin in Russia, this did not bar him from running for president. And by doing so he has completely changed the nature of the presidency. Until Erdogan, under the constitution the presidency in Turkey’s parliamentary-based democracy was designated as a nonpolitical role and was meant to represent all Turks and unify the different factions in the country.
Erdogan is about to change all that. His victory in the presidential election is just the start, and he has made clear he plans to change the constitution so that he can more easily dominate every aspect of the country.
Avni notes that Erdogan’s victory came in a campaign that “was marked by insults against religious minorities, disparaging remarks on Turks with foreign ancestry and comments degrading women.” Erdogan’s increasingly hostile rhetoric towards anyone who opposes him—including the judiciary, the media and the police—increase fears that in his new post, the former prime minister will act with greater authoritarianism.
After yesterday’s first round, in which he won more than 50 per cent of the vote, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the all-powerful Prime Minister since 2002, is almost certainly heading for several more years in power under a new label, giving him time to complete the construction of what he calls the “new Turkey”. The polls put him well ahead of his two rivals, a septuagenarian ex-diplomat and a young ethnic Kurd, which is not surprising, as the public has not learnt much about either candidate. Figures for last month showed that while Mr Erdogan received 533 minutes of airtime on state television to make his pitch, his two rivals got three minutes and 45 seconds respectively.
That farcically lopsided allocation of media coverage is only one of many indications that Turkey is morphing into a Russian-style “shell” democracy, in which managed plebiscites mask the essentially autocratic character of a system containing few or no checks and balances.
Much of Erdogan’s popularity stems from Turkey’s economic success during his time as Prime Minister, but as Bloomberg reports, that success has been waning in recent years.
During the second half of Erdogan’s 11-year run as prime minister, growth was less than half the 6.8 percent average of the first half. Demand-driven expansion also saw imports outpace exports, contributing to a current account gap that is forecast to reach 6 percent of economic output by the end of this year.
Turkey’s two-year lira notes are the worst-performing debt among 20 emerging markets tracked by Bloomberg since former Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke hinted at future tapering of the U.S.’s stimulus program in May 2013
Morgan Stanley (MS) has listed Turkey among the so-called “Fragile Five” economies most vulnerable to a withdrawal of the foreign investment needed to finance their deficits. South Africa, Indonesia, India and Brazil are the other four.
Erdogan’s combative rhetoric helped him get elected president, but if alienating trading partners further impacts Turkey’s economy, it could also be his undoing.
Erdogan’s victory came despite ongoing scandals implicating his political allies and family in charges of corruption.
In the July 2013 issue of The Tower Magazine, the magazine’s assistant editor, Aiden Pink, wrote in Erdogan’s Olympic Sized Folly about the new president’s massive ambitions for the country he rules. Erdogan’s unquestioned grip on rule will allow him to fully enact the “‘2023 Vision’—an official government plan for achieving global superpower status by the 100th anniversary of the Turkish republic. The plan is, needless to say, massively ambitious. It calls for Turkey to have one of the top ten economies in the world by 2023, with a GDP of $2 trillion (it is currently 17th with $794 billion) and a GDP per capita of $25,000 (currently $11,000). In addition, Turkey is to be the world’s fifth-largest tourist destination, with 50 million visitors per year (it is currently in sixth place with 31 million per year). It is to build 15,000 kilometers of new highways and 11,000 kilometers of new railways, reduce unemployment to 5 percent, and achieve membership in the European Union.”
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