President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced his victory at presidential elections. On the eve of the day of the elections, he urged his supporters to deal with his opponents with an “Ottoman slap at the ballot box tomorrow”. Erdogan conjured up a long gone Turkish era to tickle the feelings of voters in search of a personal dream he wanted to achieve.
He no longer hides his intentions to bring back the Ottoman era in Turkish politics. The man talks about his desire to restore the colonial era. This reveals the nature of his policies and future directions. Erdogan had won by 53%, meaning that his popularity has declined. Careless to this fact, he dealt with disdain and superiority with his political opponents, in his country and abroad.
Since he took power, Erdogan was impressed by Ottomanism. He had appeared publicly in his new presidential palace. Turkish opponents see the palace as symbolic of his authoritarian tendency. The 1,100-room palace was built at a cost of more than $ 600 million. It embodies the president’s wishes to take on the mantle of Ottoman sultans and follow their policies. Erdogan forgot about the massive regional and international developments that took place over a century.
No one can deny that Erdogan has achieved great economic successes for his country. In recent years, however, his authoritarian policies and random interventions in the country’s economy and financial policies have destroyed all his achievements. He has been trying to employ Turkish foreign policy to serve his narrow ideological agenda. His policy defies the basic orientations of the modern Turkish State. It attempts to deviate from the secular Kemalism to the Ottoman Erdoganism. At least half of the Turkish people reject this trend.
Erdogan has not spoken to his voters about the truth of his intentions. In a striking mix of ideology and economy, the man manipulated his supporters. He forgot the important fact that the majority of his opponents belong to major cities where people are highly concerned about his tyranny.
Erdogan sees the results of the recent presidential and parliamentary elections as a popular endorsement to declare the return of the Ottomans. His use of the term “Ottoman slap” was a clear declaration of his intentions. It meant that a new Turkey is expected to radically change its regional and international strategic directions.
The Turkish democracy that Erdogan wants is an Ottomanic democracy. A democracy controlled by one man who decides anything in the Turkish State with no objection from the rest of the country’s institutions. The world and the region have to expect more Erdoganism and more Turkish interference in the internal affairs of Arab countries such as Syria and Iraq.
The presidential system that was endorsed in a tight referendum last year guarantees the president a wide range of new powers. However, the Erdoganic character of the new republican regime establishes an authoritarian era, not a republic. Erdogan and his party were pushing for this change, regardless of violations, abuses and international criticism. The referendum witnessed excesses and violations that have nothing to do with democracy.
Erdogan will assume sweeping new powers after the post of PM was abolished. They include:
- Directly appointing top public officials, including ministers and vice-presidents
- The power to intervene in the country’s legal system
- The power to impose a state of emergency.
The new Turkish presidential system is of absolute individual authoritarian nature. It has nothing to do with an institutionalized system where authorities are divided and balanced within equal equations to ensure that no constitutional power is vested in the individual power.
Erdogan’s victory, with all his tendencies toward others, is likely to signal further turbulence and regional Turkish interference. Erdogan will turn the equation of Turkish politics upside down. Ankara’s policies will shift from clearing problems to their fabrication. Now the Turkish president will begin a settling of accounts with his opponents and enemies in his country and abroad. This means adding fuel to the fire of crises in the Middle East.
