Turkey’s Election Scenarios: The Good, the Bad, and the Scary

O n Sunday, more than 60 million voters throughout Turkey will cast their votes in what may be the most fateful election for the nation since its founding a century ago. Depending on the results, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been ruling the country in an increasingly authoritarian and erratic fashion since 2002, will either further consolidate his grip on power or finally lose it.

For many in the West, it may seem unrealistic, if not naïve, to think that Erdogan could lose. They see that under his rule, Turkey has become an authoritarian regime in which freedom of speech and the rule of law have largely vanished, and many critics of the president have ended up in jail. They also recall the famous quote attributed to Joseph Stalin: “It’s not the people who vote that count. It’s the people who count the votes.”

Yet Turkey’s drift into authoritarianism has not reached a Stalinesque level quite yet. Erdogan is not the typical 20^th century dictator who rules unquestionably in the name of the proletariat or the Aryan race. He is rather a 21^st century populist, who rules in the name of “the people” — meaning, in this case, the bare-minimum majority of the electorate, made up of mostly religious conservatives, which he pits against the rest of society.

Moreover, Turkey is not a Russia, China, or Turkmenistan, where free elections have never been held; Turks have lived under a decently competitive, free electoral system since 1950. All votes are counted openly in the presence of opposition-party representatives and independent observers, so it is not easy to cheat. That is why Erdogan’s ruling AK Party grudgingly lost the country’s two biggest cities, Istanbul and Ankara, to opposition mayors in 2019.

It is also why the opposition bloc, which is now more united than ever, is hopeful that this time they can defeat Erdogan and his “People’s Alliance” by winning both the presidency and the parliament majority. Its presidential candidate, 74-year-old Kemal Kilicdaroglu, is a former civil servant with the support of a remarkably diverse crowd — from secularists to “never Erdogan” conservatives, from Turkish nationalists to the pro-Kurdish left. He is not too charismatic, but he is still popular simply by virtue of not being Erdogan.

Erdogan still has a cultishly devoted base of religious voters who see him as the much-awaited savior who is finally making Turkey great and Muslim again. Even the economic despair caused by Erdogan’s delusional mismanagement is, for them, the result of a Western conspiracy which only proves their leader’s greatness. Even if they get constantly poorer, they find delight in Erdogan’s newly built warships.

So the race on May 14 will be a tight one, if the polls are to be believed. It is quite possible that no presidential candidate may win outright in the first round, with two other minor candidates expected to siphon votes away from Kilicdaroglu. And in that case, there will be a decisive second round two weeks later.

At this point, nobody really knows what is going to happen. But there are three possible scenarios: the good, the bad, and the scary.

The good scenario is that Kilicdaroglu wins decisively, and Erdogan has no choice but to concede. That would be a joyous moment for tens of millions of people in Turkey, who have been suffocated by a regime that sees them as the enemy within. It would be great news for the world, too, proving that a draconian populism that has gone this far can be overturned. The new government would still face huge challenges — from a battered economy to cities ruined by earthquake to its own internal divisions — but it would bring a fresh start. Turkey’s frayed relations with the European Union and the United States could also be repaired.

The bad scenario is that Erdogan wins decisively, as he has won every other presidential election in the past two decades. That would devastate the opposition, leaving it little hope for the future. Erdogan has proven to deepen his authoritarianism steadily and relentlessly, and another five years of him could damage the country in ways it wouldn’t be able to recover from. His party-state might continue its “blessed march,” further conquering whatever is left of the independent judiciary, free media, and academia, making Turkey a Muslim version of Putin’s Russia.

The scary scenario is a dispute over the results, which could escalate unpredictably in a country that is already extremely tense. This is possible especially if Kilicdaroglu wins with a very small margin, and Erdogan responds by taking a page from Donald Trump’s 2020 playbook. His hawkish interior minister has already prepared the way for this by calling the election “the West’s political coup attempt.” If he loses and chooses not to admit defeat, things may get really ugly.

Friends of Turkey — and of freedom, universally — should hope and pray for the good scenario. But that the bad and scary scenarios are even possible serves as a sobering reminder that democracy cannot be reduced to mere ballots. Without liberty and justice for all, majority rule can all too easily turn into a tyranny mastered by a strongman as democracy devours itself.