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.

Turkish Companies Are Expanding Rapidly -- Outside Turkey

 

The good news is that many of Turkey’s leading companies are making major investments and creating thousands of jobs. The bad news is that a great many of these investments are outside Turkey. At a time when Turkey desperately needs major industrial investment and increased employment these companies have found greener pastures elsewhere.

             They represent a wide cross section of Turkey’s large industrial base – textiles, glass, white goods, automotive, pipe manufacturing, and many others. This export of investments and jobs is explained in part by the simple fact that many of these companies are no longer just good local operators. They have outgrown the confines of Turkey as their skilled managers have grabbed growth opportunities spanning the globe. Turkish construction companies have long been active outside Turkey but now they have been joined by mainstream, large job-creating industries.

             The additional bad news for Turkey is that a number of global companies have taken a look at investment opportunities in Turkey and have decided to go elsewhere. This list includes Tesla, Volkswagen, and LG. There can be many reasons ranging from size of the market, labour quality and costs, distribution, etc. for deciding not to invest somewhere. I don’t know the specific reasons for these companies deciding to pass on Turkey, but in my experience of cross-border investments two of the major factors are rule of law and freedom from arbitrary regulations limiting movement of capital. In both cases Turkey comes up short. Exporters, for example, are required to sell their hard-earned foreign exchange revenues to the cash-strapped Central Bank.

             According to a report in the German news service Deutsche Welle, Egypt has been one of the major beneficiaries of the expansion of Turkish companies. One factor is, of course, the lower wage costs in Egypt. In Turkey the average monthly labour costs – for industries in the regulated part of the economy – are about $500 per worker. Monthly labour costs in Egypt are just $150. In addition, fuel costs are much lower in Egypt. This might explain in large part why Turkish companies like Arçelik, Şișecam, Temsa and Yıldız Holding have moved production there.

Beko has become a leading European brand

             Temsa makes buses and vans in Egypt and exports them to the rest of the world. Yeșim Textil operates factories in Cairo, Alexandria and Ismailia and supplies goods to world-famous sports brands. The giant white goods company Arçelik, known in Europe for its brands like Grundig and Beko recently invested $100 million in a new Egyptian factory. Many other companies like Iskefe Holding, LC Waikiki and the Eroǧlu Group have also announced additional investments in Egypt.

             At last count about 70,000 people in Egypt already work for Turkish companies. About one-third of all textiles and clothes in Egypt are now produced in Turkish-owned factories. By the end of 2023 investments by Turkish companies in Egypt could total $3 billion.

             This wave of outward investment by Turkish companies is by no means limited to low-wage countries like Egypt. Borusan, the country’s major pipe producer, recently purchased a pipe company in the United States for $160 million and now has four plants in the US that generate annual revenues of about $1 billion. Arçelik alone has 30 production facilities in nine countries.

Borusan pipe plant in Texas

            The huge, very successful Koç Group –  parent company of Arçelik and many others – has been in a partnership with Ford for decades. In 2001 the Ford/Otosan JV invested more than $2 billion in Turkey to build a greenfield plant to manufacture light commercial vehicles for the European market. Interestingly, in 2022 Ford Otosan acquired Ford’s plant in Romania for €700 million. The Romanian plant has now become the global manufacturing hub for Ford’s to light commercial models.    

Ford/Otosan added a Romanian manufacturing plant

            Şișecam has long outgrown Turkey and is now one of the top five glass manufacturers in the world. It is planning to invest more than $5 billion to develop two soda ash mines in the United States – not exactly a low-wage country.

             While Turkey can take pride that many of its companies have graduated to the major leagues of global industry, the country is hard pressed to find similar high value-added, job creating inward investment to equal the outward flows. Turkey’s official unemployment rate is just over 10%. However, few things are as misleading as official unemployment figures. Leading economists adjust this number sharply upward for huge marginal employment – several people at a petrol station doing nothing and getting paid less, significant seasonal employment, and the large unregistered segment in the so-called grey economy where wages are low and infrequent and benefits non-existent.

             Turkey’s new financial management team has made an impressive start in turning around the disastrous economic policies that led to spiralling inflation and a disappearing currency. But in order to attract significant inward investment and stop Turkey from becoming the Rust Belt of Southeastern Europe much more has to be done in areas like the rule of law to convince global companies that Turkey is a safe place to invest.

Erdoǧan Proves - Again - That The Medium Really Is The Message

 

    Once again Turkish President Tayyip Erdoǧan has proved the accuracy of Canadian communications theorist Marshall McLuhan’s statement that ‘the medium is the message.’

     In the recent Turkish presidential election, the medium was Erdoǧan himself who succeeded in obscuring the real message that he is the one responsible for driving the country near economic collapse and creating wide social/political divisions. The winning margin was not huge, less than 5%, but demonstrated clearly that his dominating presence on the campaign trail, generous use of economic handouts, and domination of the media made all the difference. He succeeded in identifying himself with just enough of the struggling sectors of society and painting the opposition as gray men in gray suits who want to solve Turkey’s economic problems on the backs of the poor. ‘I’m one of you. My social/cultural values are the same as yours. I’m not some distant westernized elitist who treats you like merely like wooden, unfeeling pieces on a chess board.’

Winner and still champion

    Erdoǧan was clever in acknowledging the economic problems of the average citizen but then strained all credulity by adding he alone could solve them. It’s a bit like an arsonist saying he is the best person to put out a fire. He backed up these statements by supplying things like free natural gas, discounted electricity bills, and increased free internet usage for students. ‘Forget the actual situation. Look at me. I’m helping you. The other bunch just wants to take away everything you enjoy in the name of economic orthodoxy.’ The fact that such steps make a bad situation worse is conveniently ignored.

 The government’s abject failure on the deadly earthquake – from amnesties for substandard construction to slow emergency response – was obscured by promises of rapid re-construction. Whether such rapid re-construction actually happens is another question.

 Will Erdoǧan’s personal popularity withstand a further drop in the economy? There is already speculation that he will try to recall the former deputy prime minister Mehmet Şimșek to help run the economy. Şimșek used to work as a financial analyst in London and at least understands the rudiments of conventional economic management.  For his sake I hope he turns down the offer to return. It would be a no-win situation. If, by some miracle, the economy improves Erdoǧan would take all the credit. If Şimșek is forced to continue Erdoǧan’s unorthodox policies and the economy crashes he would take all the blame and quickly be forced out.

 Much of the western media is moaning about the ‘end of democracy’ in Turkey and the return to dictatorship. It’s not that simple. By most accounts the result of the election really does reflect the will of 52% of the people. We might not like the result, but it does no good to blame the voters or the alleged failure of democracy in Turkey. Erdoǧan may have bent most democratic norms almost out of shape with his patronage and bombast, but the superficial norms of democratic elections were maintained. Rigging the outcome began years before the actual election as the institutions of the state were moulded – legally -- in Erdoǧan’s favor. He recognized that the simple truth that the person who controls the process controls the outcome. The only surprising thing for me is that his victory margin was not larger.

 Therein lies hope for the future. The fact that nearly 48% of the voters saw through Erdoǧan’s charade is encouraging. Tayyip Erdoǧan deserves a victory lap because this victory was his and his alone. The message was nowhere near as popular as the medium. I doubt that anyone else in his party could have pulled this off. Just look at the municipal elections when Erdoǧan was not on the ballot. Almost all his surrogates in major cities lost. Even in this election the opposition won majorities in all the major cities except Bursa.

 It will be interesting to watch the political manoeuvring within the ruling AKP party as well as the opposition coalition. There is already speculation on post-Erdoǧan leadership of the AKP. Will Erdoǧan try to insert one of his sons-on-law or will the very ambitious minister of the interior Suleyman Soylu make a run for the top spot? I doubt very much that any of these replacements can equal the sheer political magnetism of Tayyip Erdoǧan.

Is Ekrem Imamoǧlu a credible challenger?

 What about the opposition? Will the coalition hold together or will the charismatic mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoǧlu, make a run for leadership? He clearly outshone the opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroǧlu during the campaign, but he was a good soldier and worked hard for Kılıçdaroǧlu. Turkish politics is a very rough sport and I hesitate to make any predictions. Nothing creates enemies faster than an early claim to leadership. There is very little that Erdoǧan would not do if he sees Imamoǧlu as a serious threat to his own plans.

 There will be many candidates claiming to be the only ones able to repair Turkey’s economy and torn social fabric. For outsiders it will be fascinating spectator sport. For frustrated, disheartened people inside Turkey it will be far more serious.

Turks Got Their Strong Leader. But Where Will He Lead Them?

    A good friend from Istanbul succinctly summed up his feelings about the recent election results. ‘Welcome to Venezuela without the oil.’

  Turkish President Tayyip Erdoǧan is on track to defeat his opponent Kemal Kılıçdaroǧlu fairly easily in the second round of the Turkish elections If he does indeed win there will be much gnashing of teeth in the large urban areas of Istanbul and in the Western media. How could this happen? How could this nightmare come again and again? There must have been massive fraud.

     Unfortunately, not. He didn’t need to resort to much fraud for several reasons. When you control all the security services, the judiciary and almost all the media you make sure yours is the only narrative that gets heard by people every day and night. The message that all of Turkey’s well-documented problems can be blamed on others, particularly foreigners, is pounded home again and again. Instead of being the problem you become the only solution.

    

What will he do with his latest victory?

        Turks abroad, especially in Germany with its 1.5 million Turkish voters, were fed a daily diet rich in resentment and alienation where many Turkish workers were portrayed as second-class citizens.  The sub-text was simple. Only AKP can restore your sense of pride and welfare in this place where most people regard you merely as something they scrape off their shoes. The reality that the vast majority of Turks and other immigrants in Germany are usually treated well is glossed over.

             Underneath these messages lies another reality. Over the years AKP has built a formidable political organization capable of turning out the vote. AKP apparatchiks are very good at the nuts and bolts of successful politics. Voters can shrug off the deafening rants filled with lies and distortions if the local AKP official can help them slog through the bureaucratic quagmire that plagues everyone’s life. None of this work is glamorous but it is the glue that binds voters to leaders.

While it’s obvious that overall economic conditions have deteriorated, much of the blame has been shifted to vague, impersonal – often described malignant foreign – forces beyond any reasonable person’s control. Abstract issues like independent judiciary and human rights that resonate so loudly in European and American media count for very little against the quality of local services.

Nice guy, but still in second place

             It also helped that Erdoǧan is a much more seasoned, charismatic campaigner than any of his opponents to date. He is very skilful at doling out patronage while blaring a simplistic, distorted message to voters. Essentially, he is telling them that he is their only hope against the forces of atheism, foreign intrigue, pernicious liberal influences and others who would deny Turkey its justified place at the High Table of powerful nations. The reality that his policies have driven the country into bankruptcy is conveniently swept under the rhetorical onslaught of populism and nationalism. The fact that he has turned an old saying, a Turk has no friends but a Turk, into a reality is presented as a matter of pride, a badge of honour. Us vs. Them!! Turkey vs. the World!! Against this tsunami of conspiracy theories, pride, and lavish handouts the country can’t afford it would take someone much more charismatic than the mild-mannered Kemal Kılıçdaroǧlu to survive.

     One knowledgeable friend said the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoǧlu, would have been a much stronger candidate. But then, she added, ‘Erdoǧan would have cut him off at the knees once he became a real threat.’

             So what happens now? Given the victory of populism and intense nationalism the country will undoubtedly slide further from the West whose liberal ideals are not welcome in Erdoǧan’s Turkey. But it is not clear where it will slide to. The country has no natural allies (Azerbaijan, maybe) and its relationship with Putin’s Russia is purely transactional. The Arabs? How much are they really willing to help Turkey besides buying up valuable assets?  The security services will be strengthened and any sign of dissent will be ruthlessly stamped out. Unfortunates like Selahattin Demirtaş (leader of the Kurdish HDP party)  and Osman Kavala (a philanthropist  thrown in jail on some vague charge related to the Gezi Park protests in 2013) will probably remain behind bars. The country’s economy will continue to sink with yawning budget deficits and a rapidly depreciating currency. The Central Bank is beyond broke. I would not be at all surprised to see some sort of currency controls, however disguised, to slow the depreciation of the Turkish Lira. Such controls will be sold to the people as an act of economic nationalism. ‘Let’s free Turkey from the evils of foreign influence.’  

     Erdoǧan may occasionally sound bellicose on the international front, but in reality there’s not much he can do. Foreign military adventures cost a great deal of money, which he doesn’t have. Media barons will breathe a sigh of relief at their continued financial well-being and continue to fill the airways and papers with pro-Erdoǧan propaganda. Why bother with anything resembling real news when that pays so well?

       I am reminded of what British Prime Minister William Pitt the younger said when he learned of Napoleon’s crushing victory against the Russians and Austrians at Austerlitz in 1805. ‘Roll up that map of Europe. It will not be needed these 10 years.’ The same sense of sadness and weary resignation permeates people who had hoped for a change in Turkey. It will take time, but sooner or later a strong alternative to Erdoǧan will emerge.