gorvett_50-51r.qxp_Talking Turkey 2/3/22 7:47 PM Page 50
Talking Turkey
PHOTO BY ADEM ALTAN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Two Decades in Office, Erdogan’s AKP Comes Full Circle By Jonathan Gorvett
People queue outside a currency exchange shop on Sakarya Street in Ankara on Dec. 20, 2021, as Turkey’s troubled lira nosedived after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan cited Muslim teachings to justify not raising interest rates to stabilize the currency. Erdogan pushed the central bank to sharply lower borrowing costs despite soaring inflation. AFTER MONTHS of financial turmoil and the collapse of the ruling coalition government—by then beset by allegations of corruption and cronyism—there was once a time when Turks voted for change, ousting their former rulers in a landslide election. Voting in that election took place against a background of rampant inflation—at just under 40 percent—while the currency, the Turkish lira, had lost a third of its value against the dollar in the financial chaos of the previous year. Austerity measures, introduced to combat that crisis, had cut incomes, curtailed job opportunities and left many struggling to make ends meet. The victors of that election, however, promised that they would deliver prosperity, be the “guarantor of secularism” and go full speed ahead for European Union membership. At least, that is what the victorious Recep Tayyip Erdogan, leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), said back then, after triumphing at the polls in November 2002.
Jonathan Gorvett is a free‐lance writer specializing on European and Middle Eastern affairs. 50
Now, 20 years later, there is a distinct feeling of déjà vu when considering Turkey’s current woes. Inflation is now once again officially just under 40 percent, while the Turkish lira lost 44 percent of its value against the dollar last year. The level of poverty has recently been increasing—at least for many, as income inequality has also grown. As for corruption, Transparency International’s Corruption Index for the country rose from 32 points in 2002 to 40 in 2020. In terms of the old government’s main challengers, the most popular candidate to run against Erdogan nowadays, is the secularist Ekrem Imamoglu, of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), who is also mayor of Istanbul—Erdogan’s old job in the early 1990s. The CHP also wants to revitalize the country’s moribund EU membership bid. “Both in terms of the economy and the political culture,” Erdem Aydin, from consultancy RDM Advisory, told the Washington Report, “we’ve come full circle.” Yet, how this will play out in the short term remains highly uncertain, with over a year to go before parliamentary and presidential elections.
WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS
MARCH/APRIL 2022
