How Nationalistic is Turkey Really?
Opposition alignments ahead of the elections
This is a blog about Turkish political culture, but as we are approaching election season, I think I can be forgiven to write about politics from time to time.
The main tension of Turkish politics, as I’ve said before, is in the polarization within the opposition. There is the right-wing opposition, represented by the İYİ Party, and the left-wing opposition, represented by the HDP. The CHP is more or less split down the middle. Saadet (Karamollaoğlu), Gelecek (Davutoğlu), DEVA (Babacan) and Demokrat Parti (you don’t need to know) kind of float around Kılıçdaroğlu.
With the notable exception of the HDP, all of these parties are members of “the table of 6,” the main opposition coalition. The HDP, despite its king-making 10-15% of the vote, isn’t welcome to even sit in at the table because İYİ refuses to meet with anyone who doesn’t condemn the PKK as a “terrorist organization.” (Asking the HDP to do that is a bit like asking Sinn Féin to call the IRA a terrorist organization, or asking Donald Trump to denounce reality TV. It’s a non-starter.)
There, that’s the basics.
The HDP-İYİ barrier is key to the selection of a presidential candidate. Up until a week ago or so, some people still thought that the HDP would refrain from fielding a presidential candidate. If they did, the thinking went, it would split the opposition vote in the first round, Erdoğan would be guaranteed to emerge with a plurality of votes, and ride high into the second round. That would bring with it all kinds of risks. Ideally, you want to come together as an opposition block, sort out your differences and win in the first round with over 50% of the vote. So people thought the HDP would sort of accept its de-facto status as traitors to the nation and support whoever the table of 6 put forward.
HDP group vice-chair Saruhan Oruç puts its best here:
There’s a wedding, we are invited, but we are told “don’t come to the wedding, send us gold coins [the typical gift at weddings in Turkey] in an envelope, but don’t write your name on the envelope please.” That’s the situation. Is this acceptable? You tell me.
The HDP wasn’t about to roll over in this way. They announced that they will field a candidate of their own. This means that Erdoğan is almost guaranteed a plurality in the first round. This is making people anxious.
Let’s look at İYİ’s position now. Below is an interview last week, in which Ümit Özlale, a widely respected economist and vice chair of economic development policy at İYİ (and former colleague at TEPAV, the think tank where I work) sums up their policy about the HDP:
Kübra Par, the moderator here, is famous enough to be able to push her guests on key points. She paraphrases Mithat Sancar, the co-chair of the HDP, blaming the right-wing opposition for not meeting with them, accusing them of political cowardice.
Özlale says that they recognize the HDP as a legitimate party and that they compete for the support of the same Kurdish base. They are not perpetuating the Erdoğan government’s “poisonous language” against the HDP. The problem is, he says, that the HDP “doesn’t distance itself from terror.” İYİ’s red line is that they won’t sit with the HDP at all, which means that they can’t discuss presidential candidates with them.
Kübra Par is visibly vexed by all this. “What if the CHP or some other opposition party [member of the table of 6] would talk to the HDP about the presidential candidate? Would İYİ Party leave the table?”
“İYİ Party would leave the table” says Özlale, without skipping a beat.
Par turns to the camera, saying “dear viewers, what we see here is a very clear separation within the opposition wing. Everyone is acting very consistent with their perspective.” The HDP feels that it is being taken for granted and İYİ categorically refuses to meet with it, she says, and “the CHP is stuck between the two.”
“If the CHP is stuck between the two of us, I think that’s one of the important problems here” says Özlale.
“Oh is that also a problem for you?” says Par, in a sort of hand-on-hip voice.
“Well of course… let’s unburden ourselves [içimizi dökelim] here on this program” says Özlale.
“Oh yes it’s late, we can unburden ourselves, it’s just us here,” says Par. (She’s being facetious of course, but these programs actually can take place at unreasonably late hours.)
Özlale says that DEVA, one of the small parties at the table of 6, led by former AK Party economy czar Ali Babacan, made statements saying that they were in favor of revising the constitution in a way that took out Turkishness from the definition of citizenship and allowing for public education in first languages, including Kurdish. This, he said, was not “behavior we find to be sincere.”
Keep in mind that Özlale doesn’t have a background as a pan-Turkish nationalist the way other members of his party do - he’s one of the more centrist figures in his party. I think Par is actually thinking that she can get a softer approach towards the HDP from him, but Özlale goes in the opposite direction. I think that’s why she’s a bit surprised. Even the centrists in İYİ are into the effort of pulling the collective opposition rightwards.
It didn’t have to be this way. I remember every step of İYİ party’s formation. I remember how after the 2015 elections, when the MHP allied itself with the government, Akşener was one of several rebels who wanted to take over the party. They were all fought off in the courts, until eventually, they decided on founding a new center-right party. İYİ was not founded as an Ülkücü (pan-Turkic nationalist) party, but as a big tent party. I was there in its early months and talked to many of its senior figures. Akşener actually made some moderate statements in 2018 about Selahattin Demirtaş, the popular HDP co-chair the government is keeping in prison.
Only during the pandemic, when the AK Party started bleeding votes, and when the “table of 6” was formed, did İYİ take on a more nationalistic stand. They started to think that adhering to the taboo against Kurdish-left politics, as represented by the PKK and HDP, could allow them to grow. But the most powerful enforcer of that taboo is the Erdoğan government, and in deciding to along with it, İYİ channels his power into the heart of the opposition block.
That’s also why Erdoğan and his people have stretched out a hand to Akşener. As I’ve written in my 2023 predictions, this could be the basis for a fail-safe the government is setting up for itself. If they win the presidency but lose their parliamentary majority, Erdoğan could always reach out to İYİ. He could even do that if they don’t lose their parliamentary majority (if they win, their major concern will be to quell public unrest.)
More broadly though, I’m not so sure that the taboo against the HDP is doing well. The HDP argues that society is moving past it, that something important has changed in the last 10 years or so. They certainly broke a barrier in 2015, with 13% of the vote, and HDP co-chair Mithat Sancar now argues that their floor is going to be 15% in these elections. Most polls would suggest that that’s very optimistic, but hey, that’s what they would have said in 2015 as well. With the amount of pressure the HDP is under, any improvement in their votes is indication that their base is growing.
By putting forward a candidate, the HDP wants to campaign not necessarily against the government, but against the taboo. The presidential election especially is structured in a way that the candidate of the main opposition would have to appeal to the HDP and its voters in a non-ambiguous way, which in turn, would crack the barrier running through the opposition. If that marginally increase the risk of another Erdoğan victory, the HDP is willing to pay that price.
I think this kind of focus on the population, rather than political bargaining, is one of the chief lessons the HDP took away from the peace process. Sırrı Süreyya Önder, who was one of the people piloting the process on the HDP’s side, said in an interview last year that he considers the major mistake to have been a lack of public readiness. They were too focused on the elite level, he said, and did not take enough care to explain themselves to the public. The Kurdish movement, it seems, has to think beyond the elections. They have to make sure that they’re leveraging this election to break taboos against their participation in the political process. Only that way can the country become more livable for them, and ultimately, they’d argue, for everyone else.