What will emerge from March 30?

Mümtazer Türköne

It is well known that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a leader who believes strongly in the importance of public research polls. For years now, he has had three different companies carry out research on voter trends as well as on topics occupying the national agenda.

As a general rule, the results from these polls can be reflected in the prime minister's facial expressions. Fiery and polarizing rhetoric from him means that things are not going well, which means, by extension, that the public research polls presented to him had results that were not to his liking. As far as the upcoming March 30 regional elections go, though, there are additional factors emerging. The prime minister's rhetoric is toughening, but that is not all. Within this toughened rhetoric, attacks on the Gülen movement have become more nuanced. In fact, the prime minister has begun to distinguish between the body and the top ranks of the Gülen movement. The sole conclusion that can be inferred from this: The political horizon looks bad.

Seeing how the prime minister declared some time ago his election goal to be seeing the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) be the “leading party,” the results from public research polls being put before him must truly be disappointing. It is already seen as a certainty that the AK Party will in fact lose Ankara. Even diehard AK Party supporters accept the fact that the Republican People's Party (CHP) candidate for Ankara, Mansur Yavaş, is clearly ahead of his competitors. And while the AK Party is currently leading in İstanbul, the lead it enjoys is not one that cannot be overcome. There is a very strong likelihood that, on a countrywide level, the AK Party's votes will dip below 40 percent. To me, it appears that votes between 35 and 40 percent for the AK Party will truly place it in the category of being the true loser of the coming elections.

Regional elections have their own particular set of dynamics. Unlike in general elections, candidates bring their party-based votes closer to one another in terms of percentages. Right between the 2007 elections, when the AK Party picked up 47 percent of the vote, and the 2011 elections, when it picked up 50 percent of the vote, the 2009 regional elections saw the AK Party receive only 38 percent of the vote -- this sums up the unique aspect of regional elections. Today, we see the AK Party going up against CHP competitors whose ability to garner votes appears to far surpass those generally cast for their party in both Ankara and Istanbul. When one adds the factor of Gülen movement votes drifting into a non-partisan zone, one sees an AK Party vote that will certainly dip beneath 38 percent. It is this situation that provides the backdrop for the hopeless polemic in which the prime minister has been engaging in lately over the video footage of Kabataş during the Gezi protests. The prime minister is headed for the toughest set of elections in his political career thus far.

It is not only this, but the votes he will pick up as well will be the direct creation of his own choices and strategies. The struggle carried out by the prime minister against the corruption investigation will certainly not have a positive effect on the election results for the AK Party; if anything, it may pull votes down lower. In fact, what the prime minister is really doing is waging war against those who voted for him in the previous elections.

The results of the March 30 elections may not stop at just losing Ankara and İstanbul for the AK Party; they may lead to even greater changes. In fact, the real fallout from an AK Party vote that falls between the 35-40 percentage bandwidth would be reflected in the presidential election. Would it really be possible for Erdoğan to win a presidential election that comes in the wake of such results? The answer to this question lies in who the opposition puts forward as a candidate against Erdoğan. If perchance a compromise can be reached on a candidate that appeals to the mainstream voter and can pick up votes from a range of parties, then it is quite possible that Erdoğan could lose the presidential election. And this result would mean that the ruling party would then head into the 2015 elections under the helm of a new general leader.

The 12-year period of Erdoğan's leadership is finally coming to an end. In democracies, such processes can be slow. In order to see this period come to a real close, three elections need to take place. The strong likelihood is that Erdoğan will be a “retired” politician in 2015. He talks constantly of “ballot boxes,” and this particular result is one which the ballot box will show us all.

Published on Today's Zaman, 18 February 2014, Tuesday