Quite notable recent foreign-policy activity of Turkey (especially in the Middle East) has certain domestic reasons. Voters should behold the ruling party, restoring former greatness of Turkey and making it an heir of the Ottoman Empire.
Turkish political scene on the eve of elections: Erdoğan is boasting of lecturing Obama
Quite notable recent foreign-policy activity of Turkey (especially in the Middle East) has certain domestic reasons. Voters should behold the ruling party, restoring former greatness of Turkey and making it an heir of the Ottoman Empire. Pro-Islamic Party of Justice and Development (JDP) headed by Prime Minister Erdoğan is an unchallenged leader of the election race. Public opinion polls register 48.9% of electoral support for the empowered party. Main oppositional power is the Republican People’s Party (RPP) chaired by Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who adheres to the ideas of Kemal Atatürk, placed second with a result of 25.8%. The second oppositional party is the ultra-nationalistic National Action Party (NAP) is threatening to reach the 10% electoral threshold (and even reaching it, according to certain polls). If electorate confirms this layout with its votes, the situation in parliament (Turkey is a parliamentarian republic, after all) will change dramatically. If NAP fails to enter parliament, JDP and RPP will redistribute 70 MP mandates amongst themselves. At that JDP would have gained 40 additional mandates, while RPP would have gained 30 extra ones. Independent deputies would have also gained certain extra seats. Members of pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (PDP) that replaced the delegitimized Democratic Society Party in 2009, usually tend to disguise themselves with the masks of independent MPs. The party itself lacks electoral support to enter the parliament, getting from 3 to 6% of the votes.
Radical decline of NAP popularity is almost likely connected to the sex-tape scandal, which (alas!) take place even in the Muslim countries. One of the party leaders was filmed with a hidden camera, mounted in a ceiling of the hotel suite, where he spent his time in a company of a pretty student girl. Another NAP functionary happened to lack control of his own language, having allowed himself to make less than flattering statements regarding his own party, paying no attention to the microphones. Published video- and audio-materials have significantly narrowed the electoral ground support of the party.
Nationalistic leader Devlet Bahçeli has quite straightforwardly attacked the ruling JDP party, reacting to the scheming of competitors. Having a speech in front of Tuzla (Istanbul outskirt), he claimed that Justice and Development Party is a worn-out card and it cannot be elected for the third term. He accused it of corruption and absence of distinctive program.
In the beginning of May post-Kemalist RPP also suffered severe losses of credibility. 34 employees of local administration were arrested for bribery in the third largest Turkish city of Izmir that traditionally supports RPP. Kılıçdaroğlu claimed that this action was political and is intended to defame the party he leads 6 days prior to the election. Bülent Arinç (State Minister of Erdoğan’s government) has naturally stated that proof of corruptness of the arrested bureaucrats are unquestionable and even ashamed the opposition leader for protecting bribe-takers.
With an approach of Election Day criticism towards Erdoğan is building up as well. Sometimes it even exceeds the framework of civilized discussion. Several armed assassination attempts against Prime Minister — fraught with death of few people and quite naturally ascribed for the account of Kurds — have indicated that the situation in pre-election Turkey is anything but stable. Holding a pre-election meeting in the town of Kilis (in the south-east of the country and in direct proximity to Syrian border) Erdoğan himself called for the voters not to give their votes to independent MPs, who are hidden members of pro-Kurdish PDP, in fact. According to him, it were them, who backed the assassination attempts.
Without doubt there’s a hint of pre-election fight in the recent Turkish foreign-policy moves as well. Hyper-activity of Erdoğan’s government in the Middle Eastern region, including an unprecedented statement of Turkish Prime Minister regarding the possible entry of Turkish troops into Syria under a dubious pretext of creating the “security zone” in order to prevent the unauthorized invasion of Kurdish refugees. The very possibility that Kurds will flee Syria after President Bashar al-Assad signing a decree that grants citizenship to 300.000 Kurds, living in Syria seems to be quite ghostly. Even assuming that this may come true, Turkey will be the last country the Kurdish refugees might have applied to, asking for political asylum. Seeking a refuge in the anti-Kurdish Turkey, while having a common border with Iraqi Kurdistan, would be at least weird for them.
Turkish prestige at the global arena became one of the election cards that Prime Minister Erdoğan is trying to play. Even the relation with a close ally of the United States became hostages in this game. Here are the banners that appeared in Turkey on the eve of the elections.
Photo on the left depicts ex-Prime Minister Bülent Ecevit with the former U.S. President Bill Clinton. Ecevit stands, while Clinton is leaning at the armchair. Right photo shows current Turkish Prime Minister R.T. Erdoğan and Barack Obama, whom he lectures.
Eternal Kurdish issue
Kurds have become Turkish pain in the neck long time ago. Pre-election public opinion poll of the south-eastern territories, inhabited by Kurds, revealed that 83.5% of responders believe unemployment to be the main problem of the region, for 30.1% it is inflation, for 24% — lack of equal access to the education. 17.5% of the region citizens have named corruption and high level of social and proprietary inequity the most urgent problems.
Numerous Kurds, deprived of its own partisan representative, voted for the JDP, hoping for its ethnic neutrality — being an Islamist party, it paid greater attention to the religions its voters profess, rather than their ethnicity. These Kurdish hopes were destined to fail. Plan to boycott the forthcoming elections is ripening among the, all the more, legendary Kurdish leader Abdullah Öcalan, who serves his life term in the most guarded Turkish prison, claimed that if government doesn’t make its mind to resume the armistice agreement with Kurdistan Worker’s Party within three days after elections, quite unpleasant events will await it. Erdoğan seek for support in the capital of “Turkish Kurdistan” — town of Diyarbakir, situated in the east of the country. After all, ruling party has never won the elections in this region. Yet he failed to offer Kurds something substantial, which gives the ground to predict scarce chances for his party to win in the Kurdish capital.
Relieving Bosporus: Will Istanbul become an island?
Erdoğan has even come up with a national project for elections. This is a costly, yet quite impressive affair. Turkish Prime Minister offers to build a canal to the west from Istanbul, which is to connect two seas — Marble and the Black ones. Length of Canal is to 56 kilometers, width — 150 meters, depth — 25 meters. These parameters would allow ships with displacement below 200 tons use it and, thus, relieve Bosporus, traffic of which will soon resemble the one at Moscow roads. Project has a symbolical meaning as well — western part of Istanbul, which is situated in Europe, will be turned into an island, separating Turkey from Europe once and for all. As long as Turks haven’t succeeded with entering the EU, that may symbolize the “farewell to Europe” and alienation of the Ottoman Empire heirs from the European geopolitical center. This gesture will cost Turkey $30 billion (according to optimistic estimates). JDP opponents claim with envy that the ruling power will only use it as a mean of filling its pockets, but such skeptics are plenty everywhere and Erdoğan seemingly doesn’t take these shouts seriously. As the saying goes, science is unable to predict, whether the canal will be built or not, but this project definitely became a gem of this election campaign.
Erdoğan has his own Strategy-2023. By that moment Turkish GDP is to reach $2 trillion. Turkish Prime Minister claims that a decade ago this number was merely $230 billion and by 2010 it reached $730 billion. Thus, the task of trebling Turkish GDP was achieved and there are all the grounds to venture for trebling it one more time during the next 12 years.
Now we only have to wait until the 12th of June, when Turkish voters will grant Erdoğan with the mandate of trust for the next five years, in order for us to see his grandioso plans coming to life.
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