Turkey's political realities clash with Erdogan’s 2023 dreams
To win the next election, Erdogan must change the election laws but also find more popular political allies. His AKP party's current coalition with the ultra-nationalists is becoming a liability for his goal of re-election in 2023.
Since the last elections in 2019, two debates have dominated the Turkish political scene: the possibility of early elections and a new electoral system. Opposition parties have been calling for an early election while the government repeatedly initiates discussions about new election regulations.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, as he was departing for the UN General Assembly gathering in New York, told the press that his AKP party will send the new election proposal to the Parliament to upon his return. The new law needs to be confirmed at least a year prior to the election day, according to existing laws. Senior AKP officials have been telling the public the new electoral law needs to be finalized by June 2022. Although it has almost become a tradition that the government will revise the rules of the game each electoral cycle, this time the public has been kept in the dark as to what the new system will be like, as polls show a gradual decline of AKP's popularity.
The only change that Erdogan has publicly confirmed with his de-facto coalition partner, Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), is to lower the 10 percent electoral threshold. This national threshold, one of the highest in the world, was established after the 1980 military coup to keep the Islamists and the Kurds out of the parliament. Erdogan has promised multiple times to change this archaic rule. This time, he has announced it will be set at 7 percent, and some networks have even claimed it will be lowered to 5 percent. It is plausible, because MHP’s vote share in several polls is below 10 percent. Details of the new proposals are not clear yet, but the government is concerned that the MHP’s decreasing popularity is now becoming a burden for AKP.
MHP is an ultra-nationalist far-right party dating back to the 1960s with a youth branch known as the Gray Wolves (GW), with offices all around Turkey and Europe. Recently, the GW organization has come under scrutiny in Europe for their attacks against Armenians, and Kurds among others. France and Austria have banned the movement and other European countries may follow. Now the question whether to designate GW as a terrorist organization has also reached the US Congress.
