Understanding Erdogan’s Recent Policy Shifts: Paragon of Veranda Politics
With every day, and from both sides of my intelligence, the moral and the intellectual, I thus drew steadily nearer to that truth, by whose partial discovery I have been doomed to such a dreadful shipwreck: that man is not truly one, but truly two.”
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, p.76
Three months ago, I remember creating a new document to write on Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s new reform agenda and reflect my optimism about a possible rapprochement with the West. Joe Biden’s election signalled that the new US foreign policy would promote good relations with liberal leaders and be pro-EU. Thus, Erdogan took numerous steps to appease the Biden administration: he worked to ease tensions in Eastern Mediterranean, removed his son-in-law from his office and appointed a market-friendly governor to the Central Bank. These measures were celebrated by the international observers, who believed that Erdogan internalized this new discourse. Alas, they were wrong.
Starting with appointing a controversial president to Bogazici University, Erdogan steadily undid his reform. Soon it was followed by a lawsuit to disband the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention on violence against women, and replacing a mainstream governor of a Central Bank with a neo-Fisherian figure. This unanticipated reversal puzzled many, including Erdogan’s own voter base. For example, Abdurrahman Dilipak, a prominent Islamist figure, raised his concerns. He suggested that people lost their trust in economic indicators and refused to overlook corruption allegations. He also claimed that rector appointment to Bogazici University incited an unrest within the party and revealed that conservatives were going through an identity crisis.
In order to grasp the recent motivation of Erdogan, I followed many pundits from diverse political spectrums closely, but I was not able to come across a definitive explanation.
It has been widely accepted that Erdogan reversed his agenda to consolidate his voter base and encourage credit-based growth for the upcoming presidential elections in 2023. Yet, many of his policy initiatives lack widespread support. For example, according to a survey by Metropoll, 64% of the public opposed withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention, while only 17% approved it. Even among the AK Parti supporters, 49.7% opposed the withdrawal, while 25.7% approved it.
This dissatisfaction is more evident in surveys on the new Bogazici rector, where 73% supported the election of university presidents by the faculty members (55% among AK Party voters) and 17.9% preferred direct appointment by the president.
Thus, this new set of policies diverged from the previous populist decisions, such as Hagia Sophia’s conversion into a mosque, because previous actions had wide public appeal. According to Optimar, 60% of the public celebrated the conversion, while 27% wanted it to continue to function as a museum.
Also, policies of low-interest rate are unlikely to be welcomed by the majority of the citizens. Many of the households have fallen prey to the fierce food inflation and the recent depreciation of the Turkish Lira is likely to exacerbate the problem due to the significant exchange rate pass-through. In the light of this, I personally had a hard time believing that Erdogan took these steps solely for the voter consolidation in the 2023 elections.
Rather, I wish to draw parallels between Erdogan’s recent actions and Donald Trump’s nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court. As one might recall, Trump selected conservative Judge Barrett for a vacant Supreme Court seat in his final days as the POTUS. It was widely argued that this decision should have been left to the next president and several polls indicated that most Americans disapproved Mr. Trump’s appointment. It might have been politically beneficial for Trump to pass this opportunity since he might have used it to appease democrats, rebrand it as an election promise to mobilise his base, and project his confidence in his re-election. Yet, he proceeded, because he was given a chance to pack an institution and attain its lasting influence. By definition, the impact of institutions transcends the incumbency, which makes them desirable in the eyes of a politician who faces the possibility of his departure. Given recent polls, which signals an unprecedented erosion in AK Party and its coalition partner MHP’s voter base, the government might be feeling that their office time might come to an end. This implicit belief may encourage the government to undertake unpopular policies, in order to gain a foothold in the institutions or make a persistent alteration in the political environment. In the case of Trump, the former was exemplified by the nomination of Judge Barrett and the latter was seen in the fresh sanctions on Iran implemented on January 12. AK Party government may be giving an akin reaction, since we know that they are following national polls quite carefully.
Leaving all the speculation aside, one worrying observation should strike us all: Turkish political landscape is starting to be dominated by “veranda politics”. Formulated by Emmanuel Terray, “Veranda politics” is used to define a mode of governance where formal rational bureaucratic institutions serve merely as a façade for international observers (investors). Critical policy decisions, however, are made outside of the formal offices, out on the veranda and they are mostly based upon patronage networks and tribal politics. The shiny modern transparent bureaucratic apparatuses are used to opaque the decision making. I sincerely believe that the perplexity of the recent Turkish politics stems from this opaqueness and the certainty of uncertainty will be the norm until the upcoming presidential election.
