As tough elections loom in Turkey, Erdogan is spending for victory

ISTANBUL - Just months before pivotal elections that could reshape Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy, the government is spending billions of dollars in state funds to bolster President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his governing party at the ballot box, while unleashing an array of legal threats to weaken those who seek to unseat him.

Some economists call the spending spree unsustainable, and potentially harmful, as Mr Erdogan tries to soften

the blow of hyperinflation

on Turkish families in the run-up to the vote.

Recent polls suggest that at least two potential opposition candidates could roundly beat Mr Erdogan and one of them faces four legal challenges that could knock him out of the running and give Mr Erdogan’s party control of Istanbul, Turkey’s largest city and home to one in five of the country’s eligible voters.

Mr Erdogan and his aides insist they are setting policy purely to serve the country of 84 million, whose citizens have rewarded him and his party with multiple electoral wins over the past two decades.

His critics say he has used his many years as Turkey’s top politician to concentrate power in his own hands and is now using it to shape the outcome of the election before voters even go to the polls.

“Erdogan is trying to fight this battle on ground he chooses, under the framework he determines, with the weapons he picks, and preferably with the opponent that he prefers,” said international relations professor Ahmet Kasim Han at Istanbul’s Beykoz University.

Both Mr Erdogan’s government and the political opposition view the simultaneous presidential and parliamentary elections as a momentous opportunity to set the future course for a Nato member with one of the world’s 20 largest economies and strong diplomatic and business ties across Africa, Asia and Europe.

The vote’s timing adds smbolism. Mr Erdogan has said it would be held on May 14, months before the 100th anniversary of the foundation of modern Turkey after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire.

Meanwhile, he and his government have introduced vast spending for initiatives to insulate voters from the economy’s troubles, at least until the election.

Since late December, Mr Erdogan has increased the national minimum wage by 55 per cent; bolstered the salaries of civil servants by 30 per cent; expanded a programme to give subsidised loans to tradesmen and small businesses; and moved to abolish a minimum retirement age requirement, allowing more than 1.5 million Turks to immediately stop working and to collect their pensions.

Mr Erdogan has said that if he wins, it would vindicate his efforts to build Turkey’s economy, increase its influence abroad and protect the country from domestic and international threats.

Speaking to his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, in Parliament last week, he dismissed the political opposition as incompetent and billed himself as the best person to lead the country into its second 100 years, which he has called “Turkey’s century”. He said: “Look, here I am as a politician who solves problems in his region and the world, who takes responsibilities, who sets directions.”

Mr Erdogan has been Turkey’s paramount politician for two decades, as prime minister from 2003 to 2014 and as president since then. His first decade in power saw a drastic expansion of the economy that lifted millions out of poverty and expanded industry.

But in recent years, the economy has weakened and Turkish opponents and Western officials have accused Mr Erdogan of pushing the country towards autocracy, largely because of sweeping powers he has granted himself since a narrow majority of voters passed a referendum in 2017 that expanded the president’s role.

Mr Erdogan’s detractors say he has cowed the media, limiting critical reporting, and extended his influence over the courts, leading to politically motivated trials. He has also taken charge of foreign and fiscal policy, sidelining the Foreign Ministry and the central bank.

Six parties have joined forces to try to unseat Mr Erdogan and they say that if they win, they will restore the independence of government bodies and reduce the power of the president by returning to a parliamentary system.

“The election is not only about changing the government,” Mr Canan Kaftancioglu, the Istanbul chair of the largest opposition party, the Republican People’s Party, said in a recent interview. “It is between those who are in favour of democracy and those who are against democracy.”

The country’s economic troubles, however, have caused some voters to question Mr Erdogan’s stewardship.

Largely because of his unorthodox financial policies, the national currency lost nearly two-thirds of its value against the dollar in the past two years and year-on-year inflation hit about 85 per cent in November before falling to 64 per cent in December.

Turkey’s peak inflation rate in 2022 was nearly 10 times that of the United States and was the second-highest among the Group of 20 largest economies, after Argentina. Soaring prices have eroded the middle class, damaging Mr Erdogan’s popularity.

But the opposition faces tough challenges, too.

Mr Erdogan is a deft political operative and orator who can rely on a vast party apparatus that is enmeshed with the state and its resources. The opposition has yet to name its candidate, fuelling speculation of internal divisions.

The recent government spending spree adds to initiatives introduced last year: a cash support programme for low-income families; government forgiveness of some debt; and state-funded accounts to protect local currency deposits from devaluation.

Many economists say this flood of state spending could buoy voters until the election, but will most likely fuel even higher inflation and could tip the country into a recession sometime after the vote.

“The plan is, up until the election, they can spend lots of money,” said Mr Ugur Gurses, a former central bank official and finance expert. “I think they think it is worth it if they are going to win. But if they lose, it will fall into the hands of the newcomers.”

The opposition’s position is further complicated by new legal threats to Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, one of the potential rivals who recent polls suggest could beat Mr Erdogan.

Last month, a court barred Mr Imamoglu from politics for two years and seven months on charges of insulting state officials, after he called electoral officials who overturned his initial victory in the 2019 Istanbul mayor’s race “fools”.

The race was rerun a few months later, and Mr Imamoglu beat Mr Erdogan’s candidate again, this time by a much larger margin.

Mr Imamoglu remains in office while appealing against the conviction. But since last month’s court ruling, he has faced three new legal threats that could temporarily knock him out of politics and remove him from office, passing control of Turkey’s largest city to Mr Erdogan.

The Interior Ministry has sued Mr Imamoglu for alleged corruption during his previous job as an Istanbul district mayor in 2015; the Interior Minister has accused the mayor’s administration of employing more than 1,600 people with links to terrorism; and Mr Imamoglu is being separately investigated for allegedly insulting another district mayor, who is a member of Mr Erdogan’s party.

Assistant professor of criminal law Hasan Sinar at Altinbas University in Istanbul dismissed the legal threats as “purely political”, saying: “It’s all about Imamoglu because he’s the rising star of the opposition, and they want to stop him.”

While it was unclear whether Mr Erdogan had personally intervened in the case, assistant professor Sinar said he doubted that a judge would rule against such a high-profile figure without knowing that Mr Erdogan would approve.

“This is a political act that looks like a legal one,” he said, “and no one can do this if it is against the will of the president.” NYTIMES