Erdoğan plan for super-presidency puts Turkey's democracy at stake

Turkey’s strongman leader, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is facing unexpectedly spirited, across-the-board resistance to his plan to create a Putin-style super-presidency, a move that opposition parties warn could spell an end to parliamentary democracy and result in a virtual dictatorship.

Erdoğan, the founding leader of the neo-Islamist Justice and Development party (AKP), has ruled Turkey in increasingly authoritarian fashion since becoming prime minister in 2003. Barred under party rules from seeking a fourth term, he switched to the presidency last August and has been manoeuvring to increase his executive powers ever since.

The strategy looks similar to Vladimir Putin’s successive shifts from the Russian presidency to prime ministership and back again, which have kept him in overall charge in Moscow since 2000. The now deposed Pervez Musharraf pulled off a similar trick in Pakistan, bolstering his presidential authority at the expense of the prime minister and parliament.

Ever choleric, Erdoğan appears oblivious to these precedents, and to his growing reputation for harsh crackdowns on popular dissent, street protests and independent journalism. This week saw the jailing of two Penguen magazine cartoonists who dared to poke fun at him.

He is counting instead on his high profile and personal popularity among religious-minded working-class and rural voters to give the AKP a big majority in national elections due on 7 June. In theory, the necessary constitutional changes he wants could then be pushed through.

It was a surprise, therefore, when the sharpest recent criticism of Erdoğan’s attempted power-grab emanated from a senior colleague and fellow founding AKP member, the deputy prime minister Bülent Arinç. In an exceptionally blunt public outburst, he told Erdoğan, in effect, to stop sticking his nose into the government’s Kurdish policy and mind his own business.

 “His statements like ‘I did not like that’ or ‘I’m not happy about that’ are emotional and are his own views,” said Arinç, the official cabinet spokesman. “The [Kurdish] peace process is being carried out by the government and the government is responsible.”

Erdoğan hit back with trademark grandiosity. “I consult with my people on every issue. I am the president,” he said.

Arinç has since backed down under pressure from Ahmet Davutoğlu, whom Erdoğan appointed as his successor as prime minister, but the exchange revealed deep unease within the AKP and the political establishment over Erdoğan’s refusal to relinquish his role as Turkey’s leading man.

For Turkish voters and the country’s EU and US partners, anxious for Ankara’s cooperation on Syria and jihadi terrorism, there is an increasing question mark over who is in charge. “The exchange between Erdoğan and Arinç [concerns] the Kurdish issue only on the surface. Actually, it was about the powers of the president and the government,” said Murat Yetkin, a commentator for the Turkish daily Hürriyet .

“This seems to be a key issue for those watching political and economic developments in Turkey both inside and outside the country. Whose words should be taken into account to understand what Turkey says: the president or the government? If the president and the government were from different parties, this discrepancy could be understood, but they are of the same party,” Yetkin said.

Hopes that the Kurdish peace process would advance after a broadly positive statement on 21 March by the jailed Kurdish leader, Abdullah Öcalan, have been dented by the spat. The damage caused by the power struggle, however, is by no means confined to this issue.

There have been public rows with Erdoğan over government economic policy, the leadership of the National Intelligence Organisation and a draft anti-corruption law that Davutoğlu was forced to shelve after the president, who has faced corruption allegations, spoke out against it.

“Erdoğan’s priority is surely to get rid of any sort of discussion of corruption, which stands as a ‘red line’ issue for the head of the nation, who was alleged, along with his family, to have unethical financial relations with a number of wealthy businessmen,” the analyst Serkan Demirtas wrote in Hürriyet.

The authority and credibility of Davutoğlu, a former academic who owes his political career to Erdoğan, are increasingly challenged. He vowed to restore party discipline following the Arinç row, saying he had met Erdoğan and there was no disagreement on Kurdish policy or anything else. Those who anticipated “government chaos” would be disappointed. “We will overcome all troubled processes, as we have done in the past,” he said.

Opposition parties are having none of it. The government faces major internal divisions, according to Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu, the leader of the secular Republican People’s party. “They have started blaming each other. This is what we will see more of in the upcoming period,” he said. Davutoğlu, he claimed, was deaf to what was happening.

That may not be entirely true. While Erdoğan is doing what he does best – addressing large public rallies around the country, castigating his foes and critics, and building personal support ahead of the June polls – tensions with Davutoğlu look certain to worsen. They could reach crisis point over the expansion of presidential powers, which the prime minister has not explicitly endorsed. Davutoğlu has spoken instead of the need to ensure the new constitution is based on “democratic and pro-freedom” principles.

A big test of character and grit is looming for the soft-spoken, instinctively conciliatory Davutoğlu and for Turkish democracy as a whole. The outcome is far from certain.