Turkish opposition’s ideological mobilization ahead of elections

The 2023 presidential election in Türkiye, which will pit the presidential candidates of two major alliances against each other, created a state of great intellectual and ideological mobilization. With the distinction between “us” and “them” forming the backbone of politics, polarization becomes inevitable. Indeed, polarization becomes more intense and widespread due to the presidential system giving rise to alliances and the Nation Alliance uniting around “anti-Erdoğanism” after two decades.

Today, Republican People’s Party (CHP) Chair Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu and Good Party (IP) Chair Meral Akşener almost view the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government as “pure evil.” It is no secret that the former broke his own record in blaming all disasters on the country’s political leadership. Following in his footsteps, the IP chair suddenly declared that “we are nearing the end of this evil” during her remarks on the floods in Şanlıurfa.

The discourse of “making history” is understandable, but this radical conceptualization of “evil” highlights how marginal the opposition’s emotions and political rhetoric have become. Most recently, Ahmet Davutoğlu claimed that “Türkiye could turn into North Korea” if the People’s Alliance were to win the upcoming elections – taking the charge of “one-man rule” to the extreme.

Pro-opposition academics and media personalities, who have been doing everything in their power to help defeat President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, are making a last-ditch attempt to “sharpen” their arguments.

They already applied anything that political scientists have written on “populism” and “authoritarianism” to Türkiye. Some dared to argue that the AK Party government was worse than the single-party era. Others identified Kılıçdaroğlu as a “positive political power” and the People’s Alliance, including Erdoğan, as a “negative” political power. Yet others attempted to intimidate voters by saying that Türkiye will be the “backwater” of Europe and the world if the government were to win the upcoming elections.

This attitude transforms people, who are supposed to develop ideas and analyze developments, into militants. Some pro-opposition figures thus make the upcoming elections a question of life and death. Having criticized the government for talking about “survival” for so long, they now claim that Türkiye has one last opportunity to choose between perishing and liberation.

‘Good’ and ‘evil’

Everyone agrees that Türkiye will hold the most significant election in its recent history on May 14. It is understandable for politicians to make certain points to keep voters in the grey area between fear and hope. It is perfectly natural for the opposition to accuse the government of mismanagement and for the government to argue that the fragmented opposition could not possibly govern.

That intellectuals mobilize ideologically out of rage, however, creates a makeshift duality between “good” and “evil” to impoverish the country. It goes without saying that two different visions for the future will clash in the upcoming elections. Accordingly, voters have every right to ask what each alliance intends to do to address pressing problems. The state of the Turkish economy, disaster and risk management, and key foreign policy issues obviously attract the most attention.

People who work with ideas could make recommendations to politicians as well. Yet this radical duality of “good” and “evil” – commonly found in academia and the media – threatens to detach the country from reality. Specifically, one cannot account for many people voting for Erdoğan by associating the opposition with “good” (e.g. democracy, hope) and the current government with “evil” (e.g. one-man rule). In that case, one would be prone to thinking that the government gains people’s support through fear or that the opposition does not offer sufficient hope.

That might cause observers to miss the point that Erdoğan offers the most hope to the electorate, building on two decades in power and through his actions in many areas – including foreign policy and earthquake relief.

[Daily Sabah, March 21 2023]