Turkey : A Crisis of Legitimacy and Massive Social Mobilization in a Regional Power

In the morning of March 19, the day after the university diploma he received in 1994 was revoked for alleged irregularities by a committee of Istanbul University, security forces barged into the residence of Istanbul’s mayor and arrested him on charges of corruption and being the member of a terrorist organization. On the first charge the mayor and some of his associates were incarcerated. On the second charge the decision is pending for the moment. The arrest triggered nationwide protests irrespective of the political coloring of the provinces as, according to the polls, the judicial process failed to convince upwards of 60% of the public that it was not politically motivated or that the charges were credible. The mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu, the strongest contender for the Presidency against the current president Tayyip Erdoğan according to nearly all polls, is now in prison although an indictment has not even been prepared yet. The contracting company his family owned was placed under a trustee as were the companies of some of his associates. The mayor has been vocal both under custody and in prison about his views and vowed to continue the good fight for a democratic, just and equitable country. 

This crisis came at a time when the Turkish economy was finally getting its financial act together, the inflation rate was seemingly coming down and the Turkish market looked attractive for investors. Internationally, Turkey’s stock was high since the fall of the Assad regime in Syria and because of the close relations Ankara had with the new rulers in Damascus. Developments in Ukraine, the uncertainty about American commitment to Europe’s security also helped beef up Turkey’s strategic importance and paved the way for a warming of relations for security cooperation with the EU and with some of its members, notably France, that kept their distance from Ankara in the past.

The International Context

During the Oval Office photo-op on the 8th of April with the Israeli Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu by his side President Trump praised his Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdoğan. It was not the first time that Trump did so but his praise of the Turkish leader in the presence of the Israeli PM at a time of rising tensions between their two countries over Syria drew a lot of attention. At a different point in time such high level support might have gotten Erdoğan a boost in the polls. Yet given the current political climate and high social mobilization in Turkey due to his missteps, miscalculations and mismanagement, it is even likely that this show of affection and solidarity on the part of President Trump, could backfire. It would give the recently revitalized opposition party and its leader plenty of ammunition, such as claiming that Erdoğan gets orders from Washington, to attack the President. The opposition is energetically challenging the authoritarian rule of Erdoğan, protesting the brutality of the security forces he has unleashed against people who were peacefully demonstrating and the politically motivated judicial process that ended up putting the nationally popular mayor of Istanbul in prison.

The fall of the Beshar al-Assad regime in Syria and its replacement by HTS, an Islamist/Jihadist organization that benefited from Turkish protection and patronage for nearly a decade, produced the exaggerated impression around the world that Turkey now nearly owned Syria’s future. That Ankara is an important actor cannot be contested but developments since the taking of power by HTS also suggest that there are serious limits to Turkey’s influence in the domestic affairs of the newly installed regime particularly when it comes to the political future of Kurdish groups within that country. 

President Trump’s return to power also helped raise Turkey’s strategic importance for two related reasons. The President’s radical redirection of American policy towards Russia, i.e. a more friendly posture towards Moscow (even keeping Russia with which it has limited trade out of the list of the countries subjected to the initial tariff bombardment ostensibly because of sanctions imposed on that country) suggested an imminent deal to be imposed on Ukraine whose President was ambushed in the Oval Office. As a country that still had good relations with both belligerents and as their neighbor in the Black Sea Turkey could play a role in mediation as it did at the beginning stages of the war. For European geopolitics and strategic realities, a deal favorable to Russia would make Europe more vulnerable to Russian intimidation or aggression. Moreover, Europe could no longer count on the blanket security protection of the USA under a President and vice-President whose dislike for the EU and liberal Europe was all too evident. All these factors make a closer cooperation with Turkey expedient. 

As the long complacency of the European members of NATO in terms of their defense spending and Europe’s overall military capabilities had to end, the potential contribution of non-EU members of NATO to European security became a hot topic. Changing EU member state approaches to and treatment of Ankara indicated that a new framework and set of references in EU-TR relations were in the making. Strategically, Turkey saw itself in a very favorable position. The ruling elite believed that between a Trump administration that did not care for democracy, rule of law or human rights and an EU that out of expediency would not bring these up in its relations with Ankara, Turkey would be enabled to act with impunity and do whatever it wanted to in domestic politics. There would be no systemic pressure on it. The implicit security cooperation would continue even if the hopes of political rapprochement and the lifting of visa restrictions on Turkish citizens would once more be shelved.

The Unexpected Move of the Ultranationalist Leader

It was in this atmosphere of seeming invulnerability internationally that Erdogan and his coalition partner the ultranationalist leader Devlet Bahçeli made their surprising moves. Bahçeli was first on an important domestic matter with regional repercussions even before the Syrian regime fell. He surprised everyone by asking the jailed leader of the separatist PKK to come to the Parliament and announce the dismissal of the organization. PKK is recognized as a terrorist organization by the US and the EU and had fought a 40+ year insurrection against Turkey. Its Syrian branch PYD/YPG -trained and supplied by the US military- controlled a third of Syrian territory, under the umbrella title of Syrian Democratic Forces along with Arab groups and minorities that jointly fought ISIS. This American aid to a group that Turkey considered terrorist had been a major bone of contention between Ankara and Washington. In a way, with this opening Ankara was responding to the changing geopolitical realities of the Middle East. 

Since October 7, 2023, Israel’s military actions in response to the heinous attack on that day by Hamas succeeded in seriously weakening Iran’s so-called axis of resistance. Hamas and Hezbollah were militarily broken but not totally crashed, members of their leadership were killed by Israel. Iran was unable to effectively respond to Israeli attacks on its own soil either and its responses were ineffective and carefully choreographed so as not to attract the wrath of Israel and the United States in tandem. Ultimately all these developments would facilitate the collapse of the bloody Assad regime. Israel thus transformed the geopolitical balances of the Mashreq. It was clear already in October, before the HTS attack was launched that in the new geopolitical configuration Iran and its allies would be severely curtailed and the Kurds were likely to have a more robust presence in the politics of the region.

If the Bahçeli opening was in part in anticipation of regional developments, domestically too there was a logic to this opening. The cooperation of the pro-Kurdish political party DEM and the main opposition CHP during the 2024 municipal elections produced a great victory for them and a major defeat for the AKP-MHP coalition which lost the mayoralties even in the most conservative provinces of the country. Mr. İmamoğlu was arguably the main architect of that potent and successful joining of forces that also secured for the Kurdish political movement seats in city councils and mayoralties of important municipalities.

The "process" initiated by Bahçeli was meant to offer the Kurdish political party the carrot of joining the ruling coalition and freeing the leader of the PKK, Abdullah Öcalan, who has been in jail for 25 years. Simultaneously the stick of arrests and appointing trustees to replace elected mayors in order to break the CHP-urban Kurdish alliance was put in play as well. Ultimately, the PKK leader delivered his end of the deal and asked for the organization to annul itself and implicitly asked the Syrian branch, PYD/YPG, to do the same. Yet, the leader of the Kurdish organization in Syria refused to do so and went on to sign an agreement with the acting president of Syria, Ahmad al-Sharaa that was reportedly brokered by CENTCOM.

The Other Side of the Coin: Arresting and Jailing Mayors

While this was going on, an attack on CHP mayors as well as mayors from the pro-Kurdish DEM party with which the government was negotiating for its "opening" was instigated. Several of them were arrested either on charges of abetting terrorism or on charges of corruption. A series of court cases, all of them nonsensical, were also opened against the mayor of Istanbul Ekrem İmamoğlu whose intention to run for President in the elections scheduled for 2028 was already announced and who was campaigning passionately throughout the country addressing sizeable crowds. The campaign was also geared to mobilize the party cadres for a "primary" organized for the first time ever in republican history. To raise the profile of İmamoğlu and to stave off the judiciary’s attack against him and others the CHP decided to hold this primary, open it to all its members to vote on their preferred presidential candidate. 5 days before the primary, under intense pressure Mr. İmamoğlu’s college diploma of 30 years, a requisite to qualify for being elected President, was annulled by an unauthorized committee of Istanbul University. The next day he and his brain trust of closest collaborators were taken under custody and later arrested and sent to prison.

There were instances before when Erdogan was challenged in the streets most notably in 2013, when Gezi Park protests that started in Istanbul became a nationwide movement. That was short lived, fizzled out in most of Anatolia pretty rapidly and its brutal suppression after three weeks in Istanbul laid to rest street politics for over a decade. Undoubtedly the pusillanimity and lack of political imagination that the then leader of the main opposition party displayed contributed to the criminalization of street protests and aided the deepening authoritarianism of Erdogan’s regime. The short of the story is that Erdoğan always prevailed, and all challenges ended with heartbreak, including the mobilization for the Presidential elections of 2023. But this time things appear to be very different for 5 fundamental reasons - also identified by Evren Balta: 

• The Turkish electorate is very jealous of the ballot box and the right to vote. Making its choices count is perhaps the only sacrosanct value that it collectively holds. This was how the AKP and Erdoğan drew their legitimacy from. Now, to put in jail the most potent opponent Erdoğan has had in 23 years is an assault on the ballot box and is deemed illegitimate by the public. The imprisonment of a powerful political opponent based on risible accusations and pretenses cost Erdoğan, who arguably did not anticipate such a strong reaction both by the public and perhaps more ominously by financial markets domestic and international, a high degree of his own legitimacy
• Erdoğan never faced formidable political leaders such as Imamoğlu and the mayor of Ankara Mansur Yavaş before who could convince the general electorate by their record in office that they are indeed competent and well equipped to run the country. In fact, the young leader of the CHP, Özgür Özel too, surprisingly rose to the occasion during this crisis and shed his image of mediocrity by displaying the mettle of leadership after İmamoğlu was jailed. 
• For the first time in a long time and even though he controls 90% of the media and all means of communication, not to mention the courts, Erdoğan is unable to control and manipulate the narrative. The story is too obvious for everyone to see and very difficult if not impossible to spin.
• Unlike previous times, the economy is in bad shape and Erdoğan’s own constituents are also suffering the consequences of high inflation, income inequality, housing and kitchen costs, and a sense of a darkening horizon for the youth for whom economic opportunities for building a better life are ever more elusive. In fact, as soon as the diploma was cancelled the markets reacted fiercely and within ten days prior to a religious holiday when the country was closed the Central Bank had to dig into its reserves and use by now $40 billion to prop up the currency.
• Finally, the injustice of what had been done to the mayor and the shameful judicial maneuvers led to an unprecedented national social mobilization. The best indication of that was the turnout for the CHP primary vote. The party decided to put an extra ballot box dubbed the "solidarity box" next to the box prepared for party members and asked the general public to vote as well. In just 12000 ballot boxes (out of 200 thousand that national elections use) reportedly 15 million people voted and registered their objection to the trivialization of electoral politics and objected to the arbitrariness and repression of the ruling parties.

It was also reported that originally Erdoğan wanted to appoint a trustee to the metropolitan municipality of Istanbul and to the CHP based on alleged irregularities in the party’s convention of 2023. He was persuaded by political allies not to take that drastic step. He backed down, which is also unusual.

Crisis of the Regime?

The President’s ability to generate consent appears to have been exhausted. Hence the repression. Physical as well as judicial repression are all that remain as tools to prolong a long-exhausted power structure. So long as there is no serious defection in the ruling bloc it would be nigh impossible to bring down the government until the ballot box is put in front of the electorate. Not holding elections does not seem to be an option in a country that sanctifies it; the Russian model of having elections that don’t mean anything especially when the current leader is less and less popular and there are formidable nationally recognized and supported opposition politicians to contest him is unlikely; the Venezuelan model of holding elections losing them but then claiming that you won may be tried but with little chance to succeed.

Given the fact that the EU, nearly desperate to have Turkey by its side on security cooperation and was at best lukewarm in its reaction to the arrest and incarceration of the mayor is giving a relatively cold shoulder to Ankara is significant. To be fair the mayors of major European cities have been very vocal and strongly supportive of the mayor and of democracy in Turkey in all their statements. Perhaps the geostrategic ascent of Turkey will not fully shield the Erdoğan regime from domestic weakening.

As for Trump and the USA’s strong and unembarrassed support for the regime, it just may not suffice to recharge the battery of legitimacy when a big chunk of the nation says as loudly as it can that enough is enough. Turning back to the European Union though with which Turkey’s destiny is intricately linked in more ways than one, a word of caution may be warranted.

One hopes that at least this once, the EU will prefer to devise an attentive and imaginative approach towards the Turkish public rather than either complacency or sleepwalking.

Copyright image: KEMAL ASLAN / AFP

Dilek Kaya Imamoglu, Ekrem Imamoglu’s wife, Istanbul, 29th of March.