Has Turkey's Long-Suffering Opposition Finally Found Its Winner?

 

After the landslide victory of Ekrem Imamoǧlu in Istanbul’s mayoral election and the general resurgence of the long-suffering Republican People’s Party (CHP) throughout the country the question of the hour is what all this means for President Tayyip Erdoǧan and his AKP party. Is the iron grip that Erdoǧan has maintained on the AKP and the country at large for more than 20 years, a grip that was reinforced only 10 months ago in the presidential election, starting to slip?

Huge crowds greeted Imamoglu's victory

While it’s too early to write Erdoǧan’s political obituary, one can draw a few conclusions from Sunday’s elections. The individual candidate is extremely important. When Erdoǧan himself is on the ballot he has almost been assured of victory. He is one of the most effective, charismatic campaigners I have ever seen and has an intuitive sense of what the crowds want. It is a different story when he is merely campaigning for someone else.

Voters didn't want Erdogan's chosen candidate

 Murat Kurum, Erdoǧan’s hand-picked candidate for mayor of Istanbul seems like a nice, decent person. But he couldn’t compete with the flair and almost pop star personality of Imamoǧlu. Erdoǧan campaigned hard for his man and even sent 17 cabinet ministers to help rally the faithful in Istanbul. But it was all to no avail. Voters could tell the difference between the real item and his chosen puppet. When Erdoǧan himself was on the ballot he could make voters temporarily suspend their anger at the ruinous state of the economy and the shoddy construction that led to so many deaths in last year’s earthquake. When Erdoǧan is not on the ballot, voters are less willing to forgive and forget. Although these were local elections they were a sharp reminder to Erdoǧan that people are really struggling and so far he has not provided any solutions.

One also got a glimpse of post-Erdoǧan Turkish politics. With two consecutive victories in the country’s largest and most important city Imamoǧlu has certainly boosted his claim to challenge for the presidency in 2028. Like Erdoǧan, he is an effective and charismatic campaigner and would be a serious candidate. Unlike Erdoǧan he does not enjoy an iron grip on his own party, the CHP. After so many years in the wilderness there are sure to be many in the party who will claim the right to run for president. Imamoǧlu’s task of convincing his fellow party members that he is the strongest candidate will not be easy or straightforward.

Can he ride his landslide in Istanbul to the presidency?

 And what should one expect if CHP actually won the presidency? Perhaps there would be a slight easing of the overtly Islamic trends of Erdoǧan’s government, but I doubt very much there would a return to the very strict secularism of earlier CHP governments. The CHP has also shown no signs of reducing Turkey’s strong nationalistic tendencies. It is, after all, the party that Atatürk founded. People anticipating something like a Scandinavian social democracy will probably be disappointed. There may well be a return to a more parliamentary government in place of Erdoǧan’s dominant role. But it’s also possible that once a person gets his hands on that kind of power, he - or she - would be reluctant to give it up.

The Kurds showed once again that they dominate elections in the southeastern part of the country. The Kurdish party won all those provinces and a couple of others. And the very large block of Kurdish voters in Istanbul clearly helped Imamoǧlu. What will the Kurds demand in return for any future support of a possible CHP government? Tricky question, given the historical animosity between the two groups.

 And what of Erdoǧan himself? How will he react to this defeat? He faces not only the challenge of a revived CHP but a renewed challenge from the resurrection of an openly Islamic party that took key votes away from AKP and won two provinces. The renewed Islamist Welfare Party is a serious challenge to Erdogan. It has a much stronger anti-Israel and anti-semitic stance than Erdogan and took 6% of the votes away from AKP. Will this make Erdoǧan double down on his nationalist and Islamic rhetoric or will be continue the slightly – very slightly -- more moderate path we have seen recently?

What now for Turkey's dominant leader?

 He has said he will not stand for election in 2028. He will be 74 in 2028 and has run the country almost single-handedly for more than 20 years and is beginning to look tired. He controls every decision, big or small, for the entire government. Nothing happens without his signature or approval. Even his opponents concede that few people work harder than he does. That takes a toll after a while, and maybe he means it when he says he won’t run again. But it’s much too early to take bets on that.

 There is already talk of succession, but if he interprets the recent election rout as a sign of what may happen when he leaves, he could decide to stay for another term.  One name frequently mentioned as a possible successor is one of Erdoǧan’s sons-in-law – 44-year-old Selcuk Bayraktar. Educated at the Istanbul Technical University, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT he returned to Turkey to work in the family defence company Baykar where he developed the very successful series of Turkish UAVs, drones. He is the company’s chief technology officer while his older brother Haluk – a graduate of the Middle East Technical University and Columbia – is the CEO. The Wall Street Journal recently had a long feature on Selcuk that mentioned the possibility of a future political role for him.

Will the son-in-law ultimately take over?

 He seems well liked and respected across a wide spectrum of domestic and international opinion but, so far, he has deflected all mention as a possible successor to his father-in-law. He is wise to do so. Turkish politics is a blood sport. Once it becomes apparent that Erdoǧan is serious about leaving, the competing factions within AKP, each with its own powerful baron and prince, could easily pull the party apart. Until now Erdoǧan has been able to control the centrifugal forces within AKP. But if he is out of the picture the very future of AKP is in some question. One of the major challenges any possible successor faces is controlling those forces with their ambitious, hungry personalities.

 Given the critical role of Bayrak in Turkey’s burgeoning defence industry it seems to be a fair question whether the younger Bayraktar really wants or needs to follow his father-in-law. But given Erdoǧan’s legendary powers of persuasion nothing should be ruled out. There will be a great deal of very sharp-elbowed jockeying within both major parties during the next couple of years and only a very brave – or foolish – person would predict an outcome now.

March -- The Worst Of Months And The Best Of Months

For many people, March is the absolute worst month of the year. The endless dreary winter with its dark chill seems to drag on and on. Spring is on the distant, ever-receding horizon as foolhardy crocuses and daffodils are beaten back into submission by yet another heavy downpour of cold rain and wind. 

 But if you’re a young lad growing up in northern New England near Canada the month of March is not all bad. For one thing the skiing can be glorious with corn snow acting like thousands of tiny ball bearings on the bottom of your skies. You fly down the hill. Teachers in classrooms may be warning about the horrors of dangling participles, but your eyes are fixed on the near-by mountain as you wonder just how quickly you can get on the hill once he stops blathering.

Our local mountain

Late February and early March – with cold nights and warmer days -- is also the time when the sugar maple trees release the sap that is turned into maple syrup. Groups of us would help the farmers by trudging through the snow to trees with metal buckets hanging from spouts hammered into the trees. We would dump the sap into large containers that were then taken to the sugar house where the sap was slowly reduced into syrup. It takes about 30 gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Now, most of that manual labour has been replaced with plastic tubing that runs directly from the trees into the collection vats. 

Maple sap buckets and sugaring house

 One day I had the bright idea of trying this at home. I duly tapped a huge sugar maple in our yard and collected about half a bucket of sap over a couple of days. Carefully timing my experiment with the absence of my mother I emptied the sap into a large pot on the stove and turned the heat up high. Slowly, very slowly the sap began to reduce. But the vapour with its cloying, sweet odour swept through much of the house and clung to walls like glue. At the end, I was very proud of my tiny glass of syrup. My mother, however, did not share my joy as fully as I had hoped, and I spent the next several days cleaning grime off the walls. And my next several allowances went toward a new pot.

 Most of the roads around our house were – and still are – unpaved. Again, a paradise for reckless young boys. Most of the winter the roads were frozen solid and covered with ice and a few inches of snow. Perfect for long sleds with heavy metal runners. At the top of the hill above our house, right by the old cemetery with its tilting headstones carved with barely legible names dating back to the early 19th century, we would choose teams and four or five of us would pile onto each sled. These sleds were almost impossible to steer, and as we sped down the icy track we prayed that this was not the time the farmer next door decided to take his tractor up the hill. 

 By mid-March the roads had begun to thaw, and the hard dirt turned to deep, oozing mud that went up to the axles of cars. That was good news and bad news. Bad news that the sledding was done for the year. Good news that the roads would soon be impassable. That meant the school bus couldn’t make it down the narrow valleys or up the steep hills. No school bus, no school. The unofficial, indeterminate Mud Season holiday had begun. 

Tough for a school bus to manage

 Rather than sit home cooped up with hyper-active, under-exercised children my mother and some friends came up with a great plan. They packed us and our skies into a couple of cars and headed off for a Canadian ski area about 100 miles north of Montreal. We had no idea how long we would stay. No one could tell when the mud would dry out. In the early 1950s the Canadian border was notional at best, and we soon found ourselves in a place with different road signs, some even in French. We weren’t entirely sure how to get to Mt. Tremblant. But there weren’t that many roads to start with and surely one of them would lead where we wanted to go – or so we thought. 

There was another complicating factor. We were not going to the chic side of the mountain with proper hotels and restaurants. No, no. We were headed around the mountain to a small lodge that had a bunkhouse nearby. Long after sunset and after many false starts and vain attempts to communicate in the Canadian version of French we discovered the road to our side of the mountain. Actually, road is a euphemism. It was little more than an old, narrow, pot-holed slippery logging track that wound around the mountain under a canopy of snow-laden spruce trees and perilously close to a rushing stream filled with huge chunks of ice. 

Finally, we saw the welcoming lights of the lodge where my mother and sister were staying. The boys, however, were treated to the bunkhouse that resembled something out of a German POW camp. Two-tier bunks with metal springs and thin mattresses lined the walls, a single weak bulb hanging from a long cord provided the sole light, and whatever heat there was came from a seldom-lit coal burning stove. I now saw the purpose of my sleeping bag. At $1/night my mother pronounced it fine as she and my smirking sister headed off for the warmth of the lodge. Bunkhouse inmates got their food in the nearby Bear Den where meals cost 25 cents. 

Morning on the top of Mt. Tremblant

 The next few days proved that the hardships of the bunkhouse were meaningless compared with the thrill of exploring this mountain. Canadian winters are not for the faint-hearted and sometimes made ours seem like a weekend in Miami. The air had a freezing January dry crispness to it and the snow was light and fluffy. Perfect. While my sister and her friends investigated the Austrian ski instructors my brother and I explored every trail on the mountain. Once we even made down to the chic side of the mountain and its village with Tyrolean look-alike buildings. No bunkhouses there. We scoffed at the relative poshness and considered them wimps for needing things like heat and hot running water. 

 Eventually, all good things come to an end. About a week later we learned that the roads at home had dried out and school would soon start again. And I could turn my mind to more important things – like were the Boston Red Sox ever going to climb out of last place in the upcoming baseball season that began in April.