By Halil Karaveli

Özgür Özel has so far succeeded in making the CHP an alternative to the AKP and the center-left party seems poised to unseat the AKP in the next general election. The “normalization” with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has broadened the CHP’s appeal among the electorate and has helped establish the party as a viable alternative. But dangers loom ahead and the CHP will need to be able to overcome the obstacles that reformers in Turkey normally run into.

BACKGROUND:  On May 2, Özgür Özel, the leader of the center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP) – the victor of the March 31 local elections – visited the leader of the Islamic conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the Ankara headquarters of the AKP. The initiative came from Özel who called up Erdoğan and expressed his desire to meet with him. The decision to get together was then taken when Özel and Erdoğan briefly exchanged courtesies during a reception on the April 23 celebration of the 104th anniversary of the Turkish Grand National Assembly. This was the first time that the leaders of Turkey’s two main parties met since 2016. On June 16, Özel hosted Erdoğan at the CHP headquarters, Erdoğan’s first visit there since 2006. “Not much has changed in here,” Erdoğan commented. While that may have been true concerning the furniture at the CHP headquarters, the dialogue that Özel initiated with Erdoğan following local elections that saw the CHP emerge as the leading party in Turkey for the first time in forty seven years represents a profound change and a clear break with CHP’s stance toward Erdoğan. Former CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, whom Özel unseated at a party congress last November, held Erdoğan to be an illegitimate leader and a “dictator.” Indeed, Kılıçdaroğlu angrily disapproved of Özel’s initiative to meet with Erdoğan, saying that “you don’t negotiate with dictators, you fight them.” That was a retort to Özel’s declaration that the CHP was henceforth going to “both fight against and negotiate with the government.”  Özel’s and Erdoğan’s meetings were reportedly held in a cordial atmosphere, with the two leaders exchanging gifts. That was in itself important, even though the meetings did not yield any concrete results. Trying to divine Erdoğan’s motivations for agreeing to meet with Özel, commentators speculated that the president hoped to enlist Özel’s support for his plans to amend the constitution which prevents him from being reelected for a third term. If that indeed was the case, Erdoğan was disappointed. Özel made clear that a new constitution was not on his party’s agenda, instead inviting Erdoğan to abide by the rules of the present one before calling for its replacement. Neither was Erdoğan responsive to Özel’s demands, the release of the human rights activists, including Osman Kavala (who remain imprisoned in violation of the rulings of the European Court of Human Rights) and a raise of the minimum wage. Regarding Kavala, Erdoğan reportedly told Özel “you don’t know what he’s guilty of” while he brushed off the proposal to raise the minimum wage. The success of the anti-inflationary measures was not going to be jeopardized with “populism,” Erdoğan said.

IMPLICATIONS: Inconclusive as the meetings were destined to be, Erdoğan likely deemed that he had nothing to lose, and more to gain from agreeing to meet with Özel. The resounding defeat of his party at the local elections – at which AKP lost 1.4 million voters to the CHP – revealed that Erdoğan’s standard confrontational tactics, vilifying the CHP as a party supposedly “in cahoots” with alleged “terrorists” (a euphemism for the Kurdish political movement) no longer pays the electoral dividends it used to do. Erdoğan, ever the pragmatist, has never had any compunction in shifting course when circumstances so dictate and he seems to have concluded that he stood to gain from adopting a more conciliatory attitude. It has also been suggested by some political commentators that Erdoğan possibly contemplated forging an alliance with CHP, ditching the far right Nationalist Action Party (MHP), the AKP’s ally since 2018. It is no secret that some in the AKP are unhappy with the party’s reliance on the MHP. These dissenters tend to have a background in the Islamist National Outlook Movement from which the AKP sprang and are in many cases ethnic Kurds, and believe that the AKP’s electoral decline – especially its loss of its traditional, Kurdish base – is attributable to its adoption of MHP’s hard line Turkish nationalism. They also tend to favor more liberal policies in general and argue that a liberal turn, with a restoration of the rule of law, is necessary in order to attract Western capital and investments to save the economy, and ultimately to prevent the looming electoral defeat of the AKP in the next general election. Yet such economic-political considerations notwithstanding, breaking with the MHP is still not an option. Erdoğan owes his election – and reelection – to MHP support, and the far right party keeps the AKP in government. Besides, he has no one else to turn to. “If I were to offer myself as coalition partner, Erdoğan would come running to me, but I have no intention of sharing the responsibility for 22 years of mismanagement,” said Özel. “I am looking to take over the government after the next election,” he confidently asserted. Indeed, what Erdoğan has named the “thaw” in Turkish politics – Özel prefers to call it “normalization” – has so far clearly benefited its initiator, Özel. Even though Özel’s initiative initially caused consternation among those CHP supporters – including, notably, his embittered predecessor – whose visceral hatred of Erdoğan substitute for a political identity, he was in fact pursuing the strategy of opening to conservatives that his predecessor had initiated. This strategy aimed at changing the widespread perception of the CHP as a party for the secularist, well-to-do class that disparages lower class religious conservatives. While the governing AKP has been on electoral decline since the general elections in 2018, Erdoğan remains popular, and Özel shrewdly wooed conservative voters by stressing that he will not fail in showing due respect for the presidency and for its holder.  Özel pointed out that the meetings with Erdoğan offered CHP the “opportunity to present ourselves to pro-government voters.” “We are trying to make the CHP visible to the voters who don’t see us,” he said. Özel reminded that pro-AKP media had until recently portrayed CHP as an “accomplice of terrorists” and as a party that is “unable to solve problems and to govern.” Making the CHP an interlocutor of the president and of the government inevitably turns this perception on its head: a CHP with which Erdoğan explores possible political solutions by definition becomes respectable and is bestowed legitimacy. “I want to convey the message that we can govern this country,” Özel said. The opinion surveys confirm that that message has indeed been well received. While his critics held that Özel wasted the victory in the local elections and that he was only helping Erdoğan refurbish his tarnished standing, the surveys since the March 31 local elections consistently show that the CHP has established itself as the leading party, with 35 percent expressing support. The AKP trails the CHP with 32 percent. Moreover, 63 percent of voters state that they do not feel that there is a great distance between themselves and the CHP, with only 37 percent expressing that they feel that there is such a distance. This suggests that the CHP has become at least a potential alternative for a vast majority. It is also telling that over 45 percent trust that the CHP would manage the economy better, against 33 percent that have more trust in the AKP’s economic competence. 46 percent trust the CHP in the field of justice, with a mere 31 expressing trust in the AKP. However, the AKP is more trusted than the CHP as a manager of national security and foreign policy: 43 percent trust the AKP as the guarantor of national security against 38 percent that trust the CHP. 44 percent expresses trust in the AKP’s management of foreign policy, with 37 percent believing that the CHP would perform better. One obvious explanation is that Erdoğan enjoys widespread respect for his handling of international affairs and is seen as a world leader. And it could also well be that the CHP’s unabashedly pro-Western foreign policy orientation collides with the nationalist sensibilities of the electorate. While the AKP and the CHP are both similarly committed to Turkey’s adherence to the Western alliance, the AKP is seen as promoting a more independent Turkish stance on the world stage, with Turkey engaging with the Shanghai Cooperation Council and recently expressing a desire to join the BRICS. The CHP, in contrast, slams such overtures to the East and toward the Global South. “The only option is the EU,” Özel has stated. And in a statement that spoke of a curious lack of insight into global economic trends, Özel claimed that “People in the East are poor, and if they had a chance all would move to the West.”

CONCLUSIONS: Özgür Özel has so far succeeded in making the CHP an alternative to the AKP and the center-left party seems poised to unseat the AKP in the next general election. The CHP no longer repels religious conservatives, and it draws on the support of both Turkish nationalists and of Kurds. The CHP is now the second Kurdish party, after the pro-Kurdish DEM Party. But ensuring that the CHP remains a catch-all-party requires reconciling reformism and nationalism, attending to the democratic aspirations of the Kurds as well as to the nationalist concerns of the Turks. Squaring that circle may ultimately prove impossible. Indeed, reformers in the Turkish realm have ever since the ill-fated Ottoman attempts in the 19th century consistently failed to reconcile democratic and nationalist imperatives. Meanwhile, Özel will need to explore ways to neutralize the opposition to reform within the state. The Turkish state is by no means uniform in its approach to reforms. While the minister of finance Mehmet Şimşek seeks to reassure Western investors in his desperate hunt for capital, pledging allegiance to Turkey’s long-standing European aspirations, Erdoğan’s chief advisor Mehmet Uçum slams the “neoliberal West.” Uçum accused “global imperialism” of having orchestrated what he claimed was an attempt to lure Erdoğan away from the MHP and into forming an alliance with the CHP. “Global imperialism is seeking to bring to power a pro-Western government,” Uçum contended.  Özel recognizes the threat to “normalization”: “If the politicians don’t talk to each other, other plans will be hatched in certain secret venues,” he warned. While the “normalization” with Erdoğan has broadened the CHP’s appeal among the electorate and has helped established the party as a viable alternative, the CHP will still have to overcome the obstacles that reformers in Turkey normally run into.

Halil Karaveli is a Senior Fellow with the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program Joint Center and the Editor of the Turkey Analyst. He is the author of Why Turkey is Authoritarian: From Atatürk to Erdoğan (Pluto Press).

By Barçın Yinanç

September 5, 2024

Consecutive summits of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and NATO this summer underscored Turkey’s current, peculiar global positioning. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his advisors appear to be seeking to leverage the relations with Russia and China against Turkey’s Western allies. But playing one against the other risks alienating everyone. Ultimately, Turkey may end up having forfeited the confidence of all interlocutors, and ending up alone out in the cold in an increasingly insecure world should not be the desired option for Turkey.

BACKGROUND: In July, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan attended the NATO summit in Washington and joined member countries to call Russia the most significant and direct threat to the Allies’ security. The decisions taken at the organization’s 75th anniversary included increasing military support to Ukraine and bolstering the Alliance’s defense measures against the Russian threat. However, the summit declaration’s anti-Russian wording contrasted with the statements that Erdoğan made during his meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin only a week earlier. Calling him “my dear friend,” Erdoğan met the Russian leader at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, a security and defense grouping founded by Beijing and Moscow. While condemning Russian aggression against Ukraine ever since its annexation of Crimea in 2014 and being a steady supplier of weapons to Kyiv, Ankara continues to maintain open communications with Moscow.

Before meeting Putin on July 3, Erdoğan attended the G20 summit in Italy in mid-June, where he used the occasion to hold bilateral talks with several leaders from the Western alliance but also from the so-called Global south. In addition to Erdoğan’s summit diplomacy, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan’s high-profile visits to China and Russia during the same period are emblematic of what Turkey calls a “multidimensional foreign policy.”

Parallel to the intensive diplomatic traffic, Turkey has openly displayed renewed interest in the SCO as well as in BRICS, a club of nations comprising Russia, China, Brazil, India, South Africa, Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. While Erdoğan reiterated his wish for Turkey to be a member of SCO of which the country remains a dialogue partner, Foreign Minister Fidan has added to the confusion and reignited the debate about Turkey’s foreign policy orientation and its commitments to the Western alliance with his statements on a possible membership in BRICS.

Turkish decision makers are fully aware of the importance of Turkey’s membership in NATO and are at pains underlining that SCO or BRICS are not alternatives to its alliance with the West. “We do not see SCO as an alternative to NATO”, said Erdoğan. “Similarly, we do not consider BRICS to be an alternative to any other structure,” he added in an interview with Newsweek. “We are an unwavering NATO ally. However, we do not believe that this impedes our ability to establish positive relationships with nations such as China and Russia,” Erdoğan opined. Accordingly, the Turkish president sees no contradiction in adhering to NATO’s hardening stance towards China and Russia while Turkey simultaneously intensifies its cooperation with both powers.

Past NATO language on China was sharpened at the Washington summit, with the final declaration naming Beijing a "decisive enabler" of Russia's war in Ukraine and claiming that Beijing continues to pose systemic challenges to Euro-Atlantic security. Yet only a few hours before leaving for the Washington summit, Erdoğan attended the signing ceremony of a 1 billion USD landmark investment agreement with China’s BYD, the world’s largest electric vehicle manufacturer. The Chinese car maker will build an electric and plug-in hybrid car production facility with the capacity to manufacture 150,000 units annually. Other Chinese carmakers are expected to follow suit.

IMPLICATIONS: Turkey’s deep economic crisis has made it desperate to attract foreign investment, and with Western investors showing little interest, Ankara has no alternative but to turn east. Ankara sees SCO as well as BRICS as a platform to engage with Russia and China, and as a lever to increase its economic relations with emerging markets. Yet Turkey’s deviation from most NATO allies on Russia is rooted in more than economic imperatives and energy dependency. Turkey also wants to avoid a military escalation of the conflict between NATO and Russia.

Although the Washington summit focused on bolstering military support for Ukraine, Erdoğan warned against direct conflict between NATO and Russia. “NATO should never be allowed to be a party to the war in Ukraine,” Erdoğan told a news conference, calling on the allies to keep the door open for diplomacy. “Negotiations do not necessarily mean surrendering,” he said.

A rare NATO member not to join sanctions on Russia, Turkey’s call for negotiations could on the face of it appear to translate a pro-Russian stance. Yet a Russian victory is not in the interest of Turkey as it would inevitably strengthen the hands of Moscow in the highly competitive relationship with Ankara.

Russia is winning the war because it is not losing, according to Turkish officials. In this respect, Ankara believes that time is not in favor of Kyiv and that Russia stands to consolidate its territorial gains in Ukraine in the event of Donald Trump’s now more likely return to the White House. Meanwhile, and as Ankara sees it, Turkey needs to engage with Russia and avoid confrontation independent of the war in Ukraine. Moscow is a crucial actor in Syria, which remains one of Turkey’s most difficult foreign policy challenges. Neither does Turkey’s interest in the SCO speak of any desire to align with Russia in an organization that is seen as anti-Western. In fact, Turkey wants to join forces with the Central Asian member countries of the SCO to present a counterbalance against Russian and Chinese influence. The war in Ukraine has revived alternative trade routes to bypass Russia, increasing Central Asia’s geopolitical importance and Turkey seeks to develop the cooperation among the Turkic states of the region.

More than anything, it is the strains in Turkey’s relations with the West that are pushing the country to look for diversifying its partners. Ankara is frustrated with the veiled arms embargo applied by key allies like the U.S. and Germany and with the glaring lack of political will in European capitals to even modestly improve relations. Ankara has been calling for the updating of the Customs Union that was established with the European Union in 1995 for more than a decade, but the consensus among leading EU member countries is that this would amount to awarding an authoritarian regime. Together with the longstanding Cyprus problem Turkey’s democratic deficit provides Germany and France with the alibi not to move forward on the Customs Union.

When asked about Turkey’s potential membership in BRICS, foreign minister Fidan said that Turkey was following the evolution of these organizations, adding, “If the EU had the will to take a step forward, our perspective on certain issues could have changed more.” Fidan’s statement is a clear message that Turkey is looking for alternative partners mainly because it is cold-shouldered by the EU. Yet Ankara is nonetheless also aware that the West remains its core partner. Speaking at the London Conference 2024 organized by Chatham House, Turkish Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimsek emphasized the importance of Turkey’s trade with the West. “We have 213 billion USD of trade volume, not services, just goods trade with the EU. And it thus remains our core partner in terms of trade, investments, tourism flows, so we cannot afford to decouple,” Şimsek remarked.

CONCLUSIONS: The consecutive summits of SCO and NATO underscored Turkey’s current, peculiar global positioning. This positioning represents a break with historical continuity. Even though Turkey has balanced uneasily politically between East and West ever since Ottoman times, it has nonetheless aspired to be part of the West for the last century if not more. The Cold War certainly left no alternative for a Turkey that feared the Soviet Union. But today Turkey’s decision-makers hold that the current global drift toward multipolarity dictates a multidimensional foreign policy. Critics of the Turkish regime point out that the democratic backsliding in the country has opened the door to enhanced rapprochement with authoritarian regimes. Clearly, as leading Western countries turn a cold shoulder to Turkey, the EU has become a push factor rather than a pull factor, providing a convenient alibi to the Turkish ruling elite to distance the country from the democratic West. 

This elite increasingly tends to subscribe to the view that the West is losing power and influence -- while at the same time denouncing its supposed schemes against Turkey -- arguing that Turkey accordingly ought to pivot to Asia. While Islamist optics predispose Erdoğan to take this view, a new, more assertive nationalism is also at play. This is especially the case since the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) became dependent on the support of far-right Nationalist Action Party (MHP). But many independent international relations experts in Turkey disagree; they question the conclusion that the West has lost its global primacy and make the case – which obviously does not impress the regime -- that drifting further away from the West will further deepen Turkey’s democratic deficit.

Yet there is nonetheless a consensus that no matter which political party governs Turkey, current international trends do require some form of strategic autonomy. Arguably though, the quest for strategic autonomy will have to be based on the recognition that there is a fundamental difference between being allies and partners and that Turkey is in an alliance with democratic countries, while its relations with the rest of the world will and must remain a network of partnerships.

Even though Ankara claims that its relations with competing blocs are meant to complement each other, Erdoğan and his advisors appear to be seeking to leverage the relations with Russia and China against Turkey’s Western allies. But playing one against the other risks alienating everyone. Ultimately, Turkey may end up having forfeited the confidence of all interlocutors, and ending up alone out in the cold in an increasingly insecure world should not be the desired option for Turkey.

Barçın Yinanç is a foreign policy commentator at the Turkish news site t24

By Barçın Yinanç

June 18, 2024

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan missed the opportunity to play a constructive role in the Gaza conflict. Unabashedly siding with Hamas, Erdoğan has repeated the mistake that his government committed when the Arab revolts broke out in 2011. Promoting the cause of the Muslim Brotherhood across the Middle East proved to be a diplomatic disaster from which Turkey still struggles to recover. Yet ideological optics has once again blinded Turkey’s ruling party, with AKP officials failing to see that neither Western countries nor the Arab countries are prepared to concede a role for the Islamist Hamas in any future settlement. The relentless insistence on siding with Hamas while displaying open hostility to Israel diminishes Turkey’s chances to be an active player in any negotiations. Being sidelined makes Turkey more aggressive and thus consolidates its image as an untrustworthy actor.