ASSESSMENTS

As Opposition Builds, Turkey's Erdogan Grasps at Straws

Jul 26, 2019 | 09:00 GMT

Protesters rally in front of Caglayan courthouse in Istanbul on July 18, 2019, in support of Canan Kaftancioglu, a local opposition party leader who faces up to 17 years in prison for allegedly insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Protesters rally in front of Caglayan courthouse in Istanbul on July 18, 2019, in support of Canan Kaftancioglu, a local opposition party leader who faces up to 17 years in prison for allegedly insulting Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in tweets posted between 2012 and 2017.

(OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images)

Highlights

  • The threat of defections by prominent, former members of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) will present a real threat to the viability of the party's national governance, possibly leading to elections much earlier than the next scheduled polls in June 2023.
  • To combat this threat and buy time until conditions are more favorable, the AKP will use its ideological, economic and institutional resources to maintain power and stymie defections from its ranks.
  • But because the AKP has lost strength, it might not be able to prevent a rebellion within its ranks from seriously challenging the long rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP loyalists.

Even for the wiles of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the task of governing Turkey is becoming increasingly daunting. The economy is languishing in recession as the United States and Europe mull sanctions against Ankara, while a volatile southern border with Syria and Iraq is posing problems for Turkey's relations with Russia, Syria, Iran and, once more, the United States. Worse for Erdogan and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) he leads, the once seemingly unassailable political machine he's built since the turn of the century seems to have run out of gas after shock defeats in Ankara and Istanbul's mayoral contests this year. Although it forced a rerun of the Istanbul vote, the AKP's political machine failed to beat the resurgent candidate of the Republican People's Party; in fact, its loss the second time around was close to 60 times worse than its initial reverse on March 31. And now,...

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