Not a day passes by without another headline indicating the imminent “fall” of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. And not a day passes by without Erdogan and Justice and Development Party (AKP) officials answering every allegation by referring to the “the ballot box.” Erdogan has turned the upcoming municipal elections into a "vote of confidence” for himself. Daring to ask unpleasant questions to any AKP pundit immediately returns references to the “ballot box” and “national will.”
One fact purported is that Erdogan still has public support — verified by the crowds attending his rallies and election predictions. Why and how can the AKP still hold on to its core? Who still supports the AKP is a question I hear frequently from friends all around the world. The answer is simple, with a few intriguing twists.
Let’s first look at the numbers, as they are what matters the most in contemporary Turkey. The most prominent polling agencies concur that the AKP remains the top party in the upcoming municipal elections. Yet, they disagree significantly on what AKP’s vote share will be. The MetroPOLL Strategic and Social Research Center has found that after the Gezi Park protests in July and August 2013, Erdogan’s rallies indeed contributed to an increase in AKP’s popularity. However, since the corruption scandal of Dec. 17, 2013, the AKP has not been able to “increase” the number of its supporters, but rather relies on its core electorate of about 37% — the percentage of actual voters estimated by the polls. The most challenging is the interpretation of the "undecided" votes. When pollsters distribute these “undecided” votes according to the percentage of votes received, the AKP’s vote share ranges between 43-50% among the most respected Turkish polling agencies.
Hakan Bayrakci, the director of the SONAR Research Center, estimates the latest corruption scandal could cost the AKP a loss in votes of about 4%. Why is it so minuscule? Critics dismayed by these figures complain that “in any other democratic system such rumors would easily cause the government to collapse, and all it would take from the AKP is a mere 4%.” How can this be plausible?
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