Turkey carried out airstrikes against Kurdish militants in neighboring Syria and Iraq in response to another attack on Turkish military bases in Iraq.
Turkish jets destroyed 29 bunkers, shelters, caves and oil facilities across the Metina, Hakurk, Gara and Qandil regions in northern Iraq and northern Syria, according to Turkey’s defense ministry. The ministry said the sites belonged to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and the People’s Protection Units (YPG), a Syrian-Kurdish group at the forefront of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State (ISIS).
Turkey considers both the PKK and YPG to be terrorist organizations and regularly bombs their enclaves in Syria and Iraq. The latest attack came hours after PKK fighters assaulted a Turkish army base in northern Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region on Friday. The militant group killed nine Turkish soldiers and wounded another four, losing 15 of its men in the process, according to the defense ministry.
“We will fight to the end against the PKK terrorist organization within and outside our borders,” Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, said on Saturday, offering his condolences to the soldiers’ families.
The Turkish military has been present in northern Iraq since April 2022, as part of Operation Claw-Lock. The mission aims to dismantle the PKK’s foothold there and prevent it from launching cross-border guerrilla raids into Turkey. But Ankara has struggled to protect its bases, with deadly attacks now occurring every few weeks.
The Iraqi government in Baghdad has repeatedly called for Ankara’s withdrawal, but Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has vowed to stay until the mission is complete.
Ankara hasn’t seen sufficient progress from Sweden to support its application to join NATO, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan warned U.S. President Joe Biden in a phone call Sunday ahead of a summit of NATO leaders this week.
“Erdoğan stated that Sweden has taken some steps in the right direction by making changes in the anti-terrorism legislation,” Turkey’s communications directorate said in a statement following the bilateral call.
But the supporters of “terrorist organizations” — pro-Kurdish groups including the PKK and YPG, which are banned in Turkey — continue to hold demonstrations in Sweden, the statement said. “This nullifies the steps taken,” it said.
The call comes ahead of a two-day summit of NATO leaders in Lithuania that starts on Tuesday. Biden has thrown his support behind a push to get a deal done on Sweden at the meeting in Vilnius.
Erdoğan’s administration has been blocking Sweden’s hopes of joining the defense alliance, accusing Stockholm of backing Kurdish separatism. While it had initially accused Finland of doing the same, Erdoğan later gave the green light on Helsinki’s application and the country became a NATO member in April.
Biden and Erdoğan also discussed the sale of U.S. F-16 fighter jets to Turkey in the call, with the Turkish president “noting that it is not correct to associate” Ankara’s request for F-16 aircraft with Sweden’s NATO membership bid, according to the statement.
On the call, Erdoğan also brought up Turkey’s “desire to revive the EU membership process,” according to the statement. The Turkish president said he would like to see EU member states send a “clear and strong message” in support of its EU bid at the NATO summit in Lithuania.
While Turkey became a candidate for full membership of the EU in 1999, talks have effectively stalled over the past decade. The country has not committed to making the reforms required to meet the criteria set out by Brussels.
Erdoğan and Biden agreed to meet face-to-face in Vilnius and discuss Turkey-U.S. bilateral relations and regional issues in detail, according to the Turkish statement.
It’s now easy to forget that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was once hailed as the paragon of a “Muslim democrat,” who could serve as a model to the entire Islamic world.
In the early 2000s, hopes ran high about the charismatic, lanky, former football striker, who received only one red card in his playing career, unsurprisingly for giving an earful to a referee. The man from the working-class Istanbul neighborhood of Kasımpaşa promised something new: Finally, there was a master-juggler, who could balance Islamism, parliamentary democracy, progressive welfare, NATO membership and EU-oriented reforms.
That optimism feels a world away now, as Turkey heads into crunch elections on May 14 marked by debate over the centralization of powers under an increasingly authoritarian and divisive leader — dubbed the reis, or captain. Prominent opponents are in jail, the media and judiciary are largely under Erdoğan’s thrall and the kid from Kasımpaşa now rules 85 million people from a monumental 1,150-room presidential complex he built, commonly referred to as the Saray, meaning palace.
Little wonder, then, that the opposition is focusing its campaign on undoing the “one-man regime.” The six-party opposition bloc is vowing to take a pick-ax to the all-powerful presidential system Erdoğan introduced in 2017 and to shift to a new type of pluralist parliamentary democracy. (POLITICO’s Poll of Polls puts the contest on a knife edge, meaning there will probably be a second round in the presidential vote on May 28.)
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the opposition leader challenging Erdoğan for the top job, describes the restoration of Turkish democracy as the “first pillar” of the election race. “In a manner that contradicts its own history … our veteran parliament’s legislative power has been consigned to the grip of the one-man regime,” Kılıçdaroğlu, an avuncular, soft-spoken former bureaucrat, said in a speech on April 23 commemorating the founding of parliament.
Know your onions
But is this talk of democratic restoration seizing the imagination in an election that is, quite literally, about the price of onions and cucumbers?
Turkey’s brutal cost of living crisis is the No. 1 electoral battleground. Kılıçdaroğlu hit a nerve when, onion in hand, he delivered a warning from his modest kitchen — no Saray for Mr. Kemal — that the cost of a kilo of onions would spike to 100 lira (€4.67) from 30 lira now, if the president stays in power.
Stung, Erdoğan insisted his government had solved Turkey’s food affordability problems, saying: “In this country, there is no onion problem, no potato problem, no cucumber problem.” But most Turks know Kılıçdaroğlu’s arithmetic is not outlandish; he is an accountant by training, after all. Annual inflation hit a record high of 85.5 percent last October, and ran at just over 50 percent in March. The Turkish lira has plunged to 19.4 to the dollar from about 6 to the dollar in early 2020.
In contrast to those bread-and-butter campaign issues, the main thrust of the opposition’s manifesto for switching power away from the presidency sounds legalistic. There are provisions to end the president’s effective veto power, ensure a non-partisan presidency and impose a one-term limit. Parliament will be strengthened by measures ranging from a lower threshold for a party to enter the assembly to greater use of independent experts in committees.
Important reforms, certainly, but will they strike a chord with voters? They could well do. İlke Toygür, professor at the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, observed that while constitutional reforms might not be the “daily conversation,” the big themes of one-man rule and Turkey’s historical attachment to parliament did resonate.
One-man rule, for example, is widely linked to mismanagement of the economy and skyrocketing prices, she noted. Erdoğan has been lambasted for pouring fuel onto the inflationary fire by advocating for slashing interest rates — a stance euphemistically described as “unorthodox.”
“If you link everything to each other and link the one-man rule to the cost of living crisis, to the democracy crisis, and to all the problems in foreign policy, then you are defining this system and you are providing an alternative,” she said.
Toygür also stressed parliament played a crucial role in creating Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s independent Turkish republic a century ago, and that still counted. “Parliament has a very strong symbolic value in Turkey,” she said, adding that voters appreciated teams in decision-making, something that Kılıçdaroğlu is playing up. “One of the biggest complaints now is that people lost their links to decision-making candidates.”
In stark contrast to the image of Erdoğan as the lone almighty reis, Kılıçdaroğlu portrays himself as building consensus, ready to draw on a broad pool of talent. In videos, he shows himself discussing earthquake-resistant construction, education and nutrition with high-profile mayors, Mansur Yavaș from Ankara and Ekrem İmamoğlu from Istanbul, his vice-presidents in the wings.
What’s more, Kılıçdaroğlu has pushed this vision of himself as an inclusive leader to a dramatic new level by publicly declaring himself to be an Alevi, a member of Turkey’s main religious minority that long suffered discrimination. His Twitter declaration on his identity, in which he called on young Turks to uproot the country’s “divisive system,” went viral. It’s a risky gambit against a populist president from the Sunni mainstream, but the message is clear: Kılıçdaroğlu is styling himself as the pluralist antidote to Erdoğan’s polarizing politics. The humble 74-year-old may be a bit dull after the caustic current leader, but the opposition’s gamble is that’s what Turkey needs.
Power to the president
Most observers looking back to identify a turning point where Erdoğan decided to centralize power around himself select the Gezi Park protests of 2013, when an unusually socially diverse band of demonstrators sought to stop a green space in Istanbul from being bulldozed for a shopping mall.
The protests — eventually smashed with tear gas and water cannon — swelled into a nationwide roar against Erdoğan’s cronyism and strongman style. Demir Murat Seyrek, adjunct professor at the Brussels School of Governance, said it was the first time Erdoğan felt “the threat was against him” rather than the ruling AK party.
Turkish President and People’s Alliance’s presidential candidate Recep Tayyip Erdoğan | Adem Atlan/AFP via Getty Images
The final straw was an attempted coup in 2016 — the facts of which remain opaque — that pushed Erdoğan to hold a referendum in April 2017 on shifting to a presidential system. He won by the narrowest of margins (51.4 percent) and the opposition still disputes the result, not least because the vote was held during a post-coup state of emergency.
Seyrek noted the irony that the presidential system also had downsides for Erdoğan, particularly as he requires 50 percent of votes (+1) to stay in office. Now deserted by bigwigs from his AK party’s early days — former President Abdullah Gül and former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu have turned against him — he has to find increasingly extreme partners for his coalition to make up the numbers. “Each time, he wins by losing political power to other parties. He is winning by sharing power with more and more people,” he remarked.
A hardened political brawler, Erdoğan is punching back hard against the accusations that he’s the man undermining Turkish democracy.
As he has done for years, Erdoğan is turning the tables and casts himself as the voice of the majority, underlining Islamic propriety and family values, while saying his adversaries are in hock to terrorists, the imperialist West, murky international high-finance and LGBTQ+ organizations. Mainstream rival parties are dismissed as fascists and perverts, and he predicts his voters will “burst” the ballot boxes with their tide of support on May 14.
In an episode typical of Erdoğan’s combative instincts, he scented blood when Kılıçdaroğlu was photographed stepping on a prayer rug in his shoes at the end of March. Although his rival apologized for this unwitting accident, the president whipped up a crowd to boo him, accusing Kılıçdaroğlu of taking his instructions from Fethullah Gülen, the U.S.-based preacher and former AK party ally, whom Erdoğan now accuses of inciting the failed coup in 2016.
Clutching a prayer rug himself, Erdoğan intoned through his microphone: “This prayer rug is not for standing on with shoes. God willing, we’ll be able to perform the prayer of thanks on this prayer rug on May 15.”
Opposition politicians know full well they can easily be typecast by Erdoğan as reactionary voices of an old elite. That’s why they are being careful not to describe their proposed constitutional overhaul of the presidency as turning back the clock to some fictional glory days, but rather as creating something new: What the opposition manifesto calls “a truly pluralistic democracy” that “has never been possible” before.
Free but not fair?
Given the fears about Erdoğan’s lurch toward authoritarianism, speculation is intense over how fair the elections will be, and whether Erdoğan can rig them. Indeed, Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu only fanned the concerns that the government could crack down on the democratic process by describing May 14 as an attempted “political coup” by the West — hardly words to be taken lightly given Turkey’s history of putsches.
With the full resources of the state and pliant media at his disposal, the president can certainly command disproportionate influence. In only the past few days, for example, Erdoğan has been able to offer free Black Sea gas as a pre-election perk.
But Seyrek at the Brussels School of Governance stressed that voting itself in Turkey should never be compared with Russia or Belarus. He argued the vote in each polling station would be closely monitored by all the political parties and other civilian observers. “I still feel in Turkey, what you can do against the result of elections is quite limited,” he said.
The consensus is that Erdoğan will be unable to fix the result in the case of a significant defeat. The greater danger, as noted by several analysts, is that he could attempt some high-risk stratagem in case of a tight result, demanding a recount or calling a state of emergency in case of some diversionary “incident.” That would, however, only inflame the country’s febrile politics just as Ankara needs stability to attract foreign investors and resuscitate the economy.
The more surreal idea — but not an implausible one now — is that Erdoğan could tactically see the time is ripe to lead the opposition and attack Kılıçdaroğlu’s new government. The new president would be highly vulnerable to Erdoğan’s vitriolic rhetoric as he tries to hold together a fissiparous coalition in the teeth of an economic crisis. Paradoxically, though, Seyrek noted that the AK party members in opposition could even support reforms to shake up the presidency and ensure media freedoms, as that would be in their interest. That could prove important as constitutional change would need a hefty parliamentary majority.
Or would Erdoğan simply take umbrage in defeat and quit the country?
Seyrek found that inconceivable.
“In his mind, he is a second Atatürk, he would rather die than escape.”
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) are hoping to remain at the head of the table in what, according to recent polls, is expected to be the closest race in the country’s recent electoral history.
After two decades in power, a win for Erdoğan would consolidate his vision of the future of the country, as well as the presidential system he ushered in.
Meanwhile, the main opposition coalition is made up of an eclectic mix of six political parties. First and foremost, a win for them would mean a return to a parliamentary system of governance.
Looming concerns include how exactly voting will take place in the earthquake zone, how voting will be monitored, and whether Erdoğan would concede and step down if he loses.
Here’s what you need to know.
How does it all work?
Around 61 million voters from across Turkey’s 87 electoral districts will head to the polls on Sunday, May 14.
Meanwhile, some 3.4 million eligible overseas voters — 1.5 million of them in Germany alone — will likely have already cast their ballots.
Polling stations — which are set up in public schools — open at 8 a.m. on election day and close at 5 p.m. At 9 p.m. media can start reporting, and unofficial results are expected to start trickling in around midnight.
As a clearer picture emerges early Monday morning, there could be a victory announcement if one candidate has clearly won — although official results from the country’s Supreme Election Council (YSK) could take a few days.
If no presidential candidate receives over 50 percent of the votes, however, a second round will be held between the two top candidates on Sunday, May 28. If that happens, overseas voting will be held from May 20 to 24.
What’s on the ballot?
The country’s parliamentary and presidential elections take place at the same time, with voters receiving two separate ballots.
There are four candidates on the presidential ballot, who have either been nominated by a party that passed the 5 percent threshold in the previous parliamentary election or secured 100,000 signatures from voters. However, only three of them will actually be running, as one of them — Muharrem İnce — withdrew after ballots were printed, just three days before the election.
The selection for the country’s 600-seat Grand National Assembly is a more complicated affair. The YSK has allowed 26 political parties and 151 local independent candidates to run — though not all parties are running in every province. For parties to enter parliament, they have to pass a 7 percent electoral threshold — or be part of an alliance that does. There is no such limit for independent candidates.
What exactly does such a crowded ballot look like? An unwieldy meter-long sheet of paper!
Who’s running for parliament?
Of the 26 parties and five alliances on the ballot, here are the major players:
The People’s Alliance: Representing the current parliamentary majority, the alliance consists of the ruling conservative AKP, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), the Islamist and ultranationalist Great Unity Party, and the Islamist New Welfare Party — with all four parties appearing on the ballot.
However, many of the AKP’s other former partners have deserted it of late, leading the alliance to turn to smaller parties for help — including the Free Cause Party, which is associated with the Kurdish Hizbullah.
The Nation Alliance: Also known as the “Table of Six,” the main opposition alliance brings together a disparate array of ideologies, all focused on bringing back the country’s parliamentary system, as well as pledges to swiftly reduce inflation, increase per capita income, return Syrian and Afghan refugees back to their countries, and resume talks on EU membership.
The alliance features the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), the hard-right nationalist splinter Good Party (İYİ), the center-right Democracy and Progress Party, and the Future Party — both led by AKP defectors — as well as the Democrat Party and the Felicity Party. While the Good Party will be appearing on the ballot, all other coalition members will be running under the CHP banner.
The Labor and Freedom Alliance: This left-leaning alliance technically consists of the Green Left Party (YSP) and the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TIP). However, the YSP itself boasts candidates from four different parties, including the pro-Kurdish Democratic People’s Party (HDP) — the third-largest opposition party in the country. The HDP isn’t running candidates for parliament under its own name due to a pending court case that could see it shut down.
Who’s running for president?
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: The joint candidate of the People’s Alliance, Erdoğan’s campaign has emphasized his vision for the “Century of Turkey,” showcasing projects realized throughout his years in power, as well as plans to rebuild areas affected by the earthquakes. If he wins, this would be Erdoğan’s third term, which technically goes against Turkey’s constitution. However, a YSK ruling stated that his first term could be counted as starting in 2018 (when the new presidential system came in) rather than when he actually took office in 2014. That means he can run again.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu: The joint candidate of the Nation Alliance, the head of the CHP is Erdoğan’s main rival. Kılıçdaroğlu has received open backing from the HDP — as well as the rest of the Labor and Freedom Alliance — and is running on a platform of justice and accountability, promising to reverse many of Erdoğan’s policies, his consolidation of power under the presidency, and bring “spring” to the country. Though often characterized as mild-mannered, the former bureaucrat has also been known to dial up the rhetoric when criticizing Erdoğan’s “one-man rule.”
Sinan Oğan: A former MHP member, the final candidate is a nationalist nominee from the right-wing Ancestral Alliance. Though he is unlikely to win, Oğan can divert some of the nationalist vote, particularly from those who find the Good Party to have shifted too close to the center and the MHP too far to the right. Oğan is also in support of returning the country to a parliamentary system.
How are the votes counted?
According to the YSK, once polls close, the counting of votes in every single ballot box is supervised by a four-to-seven-person committee. Registered volunteers and citizens are also allowed to observe.
Each individual ballot is then opened, shown to the committee and then read aloud. As you can imagine, this takes a long time. Once everyone is happy, it’s off to the local district’s electoral council accompanied by security forces.
The votes are then entered into the YSK’s online system in front of party representatives. And the official count is later verified by political parties and volunteer organizations.
Will voters show up?
Turkey usually boasts high voter turnout, and this year is projected to be one of its highest yet, with a recent poll suggesting it could be around 84 percent. There will also be close to 5 million first-time voters, and overseas voting has seen higher participation than in recent years.
Of course, one of the biggest concerns is how the elections will be held in the earthquake zone — formerly home to 14 percent of the country’s registered voters and once an AKP stronghold. Of the millions that have left the region since the disaster, only a fraction were able to move their voter registrations in time, according to the YSK.
Those who missed the tight deadline will now have to return to the region to vote, and special polling centers will be set up where public buildings are no longer standing. In order to help aid those in need and boost turnout, campaigns will be running buses to the region, and civil society organizations have started Askıda Bilet — ticket on the hook — a campaign collecting donations to buy bus tickets to the region. However, most votes in the region likely won’t be cast.
In the run-up to Sunday’s too-close-to-call election, he has ramped up his poisonous invective against homosexuality, as he seeks to shore up his conservative Islamist base. Almost every other speech from the campaign trail accuses the opposition of undermining family values and of being in the thrall of improbably powerful LGBTQ+ networks — sometimes with hints they are run by paymasters abroad.
“The AK Party has never been an LGBT supporter,” Erdoğan roared at a recent Istanbul rally, referring to his governing party. “We believe in the sanctity of the family. Family is sacred.”
Adding a menacing note, he followed up with: “So are we ready to bury these LGBT supporters in the ballot box?”
To some extent, the homophobic focus of the campaign is easily explicable. Increasingly deserted by his early supporters, Erdoğan is having to form coalition partnerships with more extreme Islamists in this year’s elections.
But even so, his language smacks of a fixation, and an attempt to divert attention from the country’s most pressing ailments — including a snowballing cost of living crisis and scorching inflation.
Diversionary tactics
Fulden Ergen, editor of Velvele.Net, an online debate platform for LGBTQ+ rights, said she was taken aback by the ubiquity of Erdoğan’s propaganda against the LGBTQ+ community in this year’s campaign.
She reckoned the attacks were an attempt to mask how few answers to Turkey’s profound problems the AK Party now has.
“I was not expecting them to be this devoid of policies and just talking about LGBTI,” she said. “The alliance does not have much to give people anymore,” she added, referring to the conservative coalition backing the president. “They don’t know how to deal with the economic crisis. They have no policies left, I see this campaign as a defeat.”
Though he may be running out of ideas, Erdoğan could still win. And that is now a serious concern to LGBTQ+ people.
Life is already tough, and could get significantly worse. LGBTQ+ flags are banned, gatherings are arbitrarily blocked by the government and participants in pride parades are regularly attacked or detained by police. The fear is that their organizations could now be made illegal, and — in the worst case scenario — that laws to protect families could be extended to outlaw homosexuality itself.
Activists say that if Erdoğan stays in power, violence could follow his hate speech.
An anti-LGBTQ+ rally in Istanbul in 2022 | Chris McGrath/Getty Images
One of the dangers is that his government could use security laws to crack down on homosexual relations — casting them as part of a foreign conspiracy. The government is playing on perceptions that “people don’t believe LGBTI can be from Turkey,” Ergen said.
One of the biggest setbacks for women and LGBTQ+ people has been Turkey’s 2021 withdrawal from the — ironically named — Istanbul Convention, which is intended to prevent, prosecute and eliminate violence against women and promote gender equality.
Domestic violence is a severe problem that kills at least one woman every day in Turkey. According to data from the Monument Counter, a website that commemorates women who lost their lives to domestic violence, 824 women have been killed in just the past two years.
Gender parity is another failing across the country’s political spectrum. According to the country’s Women’s Platform for Equality, a rights group that has been tracing the candidates on the various parties’ electoral lists, a mere 117 female deputies are set to be elected to Turkey’s 600-seat parliament.
‘I have seen many Erdoğans in my life’
Zeynep Esmeray Özadikti, who has been an activist for trans rights for 30 years, looks set to be an exception to that trend. She is a candidate for the Workers’ Party of Turkey and the first openly trans woman with a good chance of making it to parliament.
In a café in Kurtuluş, a neighborhood in Istanbul where there are significant numbers of trans voters, Esmeray told POLITICO that, if elected, she would fight for the rights of LGBTQ+ people against discrimination, hate crimes and violence. “I am getting very positive feedback from the streets,” she said. “If we can judge it by looking at the streets then I’ll definitely be getting into the parliament.”
If Erdoğan stays in power, Esmeray believes he will take the country in a more religiously conservative direction, even aiming for Sharia law.
Ergen, the Velvele.net editor, echoed Esmeray’s line of thought. She feared that Article 10 in Turkey’s constitution — a part of the national charter that gives some vague protection to gender equality — might be doctored, paving the way to the possible criminalization of homosexuality.
“This is my biggest fear,” she says. “If they win, they are going to do it.”
Still, the fear of Erdoğan does not mean the LGBTQ+ community feels completely protected by the opposition, whose candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is leading in the polls ahead of Sunday’s first round vote.
Ergen thinks the right-wing parties within the wide-ranging opposition alliance could also lobby to make life harder for LGBTQ+ groups.
Kılıçdaroğlu himself is fairly guarded in his LGBTQ+ remarks, knowing that the government could easily turn the subject against him.
To Erdoğan, Turkey’s LGBTQ+ community represents “deviant structures” | Burak Kara/Getty Images
He is, however, committed to a trajectory toward EU norms. When asked for his stance by POLITICO, he said: “We defend all human rights. It is our common duty to defend human rights. Democracy demands it. You cannot alienate people based on their beliefs, identities and lifestyles, you have to respect everyone.”
Both Esmeray and Ergen believed the priority should be for Turkey to return the Istanbul Convention to reinforce some basic freedoms.
And both reckoned Turkey’s population was ahead of its politicians.
“I am more optimistic about people, not political parties,” said Ergen, who based her hopes on the breadth of civil society activities in Turkey.
Esmeray added: “I have seen many Erdoğans in my life. If he wins, we will continue fighting. If it comes to that, I will face him and tell him to kill me.”
