Erdogan's Presidential Victory: Implications for Turkey's Future

On Sunday, May 28th, 2023 it was announced that Recep Tayyip Erdogan had won his third consecutive term as the President of Turkey. While some, perhaps wishfully, believed that his opponent, Kemal Kilicdaroglu would win, those expectations turned out to be false. Therefore, we are about to witness at least fourteen years of Erdogan’s presidency and, overall, more than twenty years of his rule. While elections involving incumbents are often seen as referendums of their hitherto record, their results nevertheless matter, and it also matters how such an incumbent has won. Therefore, although we are unlikely to see any significant reversals or modifications of previous policies of the Erdogan government, there are some important implications of the May 2023 elections.

Firstly, despite the massive economic and refugee crises in Turkey, Erdogan won around 52% of the vote in the run-off round, with the turnout being close to 85%. Therefore, we are likely to see continuation of the previous policies of this government regarding tackling the above issues. The case of inflation is particularly complex and important. There exists a strong consensus among economists that Erdogan’s policies, aimed at reducing one of the worst inflation rates in the world, are ‘unconventional’,  ‘unorthodox’, or less diplomatically, counterproductive. However, despite years of rising inflation and government’s inability to properly address the problem, Erdogan has openly stated that if he were to win, he would not alter these policies, and Turkey would continue its current course. There is thus strong concern about the future of Turkey’s economy, as it is generally accepted that the current policies are unsustainable in the long term. This concern has been best reflected by the fact that the news of Erdogan’s victory has been followed by the Turkish Lira dropping to a record low against the US dollar just hours after the results were announced. Similarly, several economists have also been alarmed, with Wells Fargo’s Emerging Markets Economist and Foreign Exchange Strategist Brendan McKenna calling the situation ’very bleak’. It is therefore almost certain that the previous economic policies of Erdogan’s government will continue, as he himself stated, likely with equally degrading effects.

An issue politically tied to the acute state of the Turkish economy is the presence of 3.6 million Syrian refugees in the country, who have often served as a convenient scapegoat for the government’s economic mishaps. Along with inflation, it was one of the main issues of the elections, with Erdogan adopting a surprisingly “humanitarian” position, proclaiming that many returns would be ‘voluntary’ and not all would be deported. Simultaneously, in an attempt to gain greater support in more conservative electorates, Kilicdaroglu promised that they would all be expelled. While Erdogan’s talk of voluntary and more limited returns might seem like a positive turn from his previous stance, which was much closer to Kilicdaroglu’s, the refugees are nevertheless likely to be deported from Turkey for two reasons. Firstly, in a typically discriminatory manner, they are often blamed for the economic crisis, and despite the utter fallacy of such a position, there will be, and already is, social and political pressure to expel them. Secondly, although Syrian-Turkish relations are, to put it mildly, tense, with Turkey occupying Syrian territories, we have recently witnessed a general improvement of regional relations with Syria. This, along with the fact that the conflict there is now essentially frozen, creates an easy opportunity for the Turkish government to claim that since the war has ceased, the Syrians in Turkey are not refugees but rather illegal immigrants and should therefore be deported.  that the Turkish occupation of Northern Syria is explicitly designed and employed for the purpose of “returning” Syrian refugees to these territories, furtherly facilitating their deportation. A dynamic described as ‘a refugee dumping ground’ by the Human Rights Watch.

Lastly, from a more general perspective, apart from the fact that we are almost certain to witness the continuation of past policies, it is possible that their intensification might occur. The fact that Erdogan won without any major irregularities, with such a high turnout, while retaining parliamentary majority, and during such a grave economic crisis, gives him a clear and legitimate mandate from the people. If such a big proportion of the Turkish population voted in support of Erdogan’s rule and, by extension, his previous policies, he may feel emboldened not only to continue them, but also intensify them, as Ilke Toygur, a professor of European Geopolitics at the University Carlos III of Madrid, claims. It is hence highly probable that incremental expulsion of Syrian refugees will occur, along with the continuation of risky economic policies and aggressive foreign policy behavior, with a considerable possibility of intensification of these or any other previous policies of the Erdogan government.