Turkey's Democratic Backsliding

with Esra İşsever-Ekinci

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Show notes episode #26

Schedule:

  • 00:00 Introduction 
  • 03:07 Personal questions 
  • 05:34 Main discussion 
  • 40:29 Recommendations by Esra İşsever-Ekinci

Summary:  Turkey has experienced a severe erosion of democratic principles. Democratic institutions have been changed, the media heavily influenced and controlled by government forces, and opposition politicians are intimidated and persecuted.

With Esra İşsever-Ekinci I discuss Turkey’s democratic backsliding. She explains what steps the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) took to secure their power grab. Changing the democratic institutions was an essential part of preserving power, so that now it looks unlikely that the opposition forces are able to seriously challenge this power in the upcoming elections in the 2023 general elections.

To name just two setbacks, a presidential system was introduced in 2017, that concentrates more power in the executive, and the media have become heavily controlled by the government so that the opposition has mostly lost its voice.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci is a postdoctoral researcher at Koç University in Istanbul. She got her PhD in Political Science and Government from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in the U.S. in 2019. Her research is in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Institutions and Electoral Systems, focusing especially on issues of electoral reform and gender.

CORRIGENDUM: 08:33: Democrat Party instead of Democratic Party; 13:20: 1970s instead of 1960s; 19:47: 15 million votes, it may sound like 50 million.

References to books, papers, and other contributions:

Full Transcript:

Introduction: 

Hello, and welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast, where it is my job to discuss democratic institutions. 

When I was about 20 years old, back in the early 2000’s, I looked at Turkey as one of the most trendy countries in Europe. It was opening up, a place to go for artists and entrepreneurs and travelers. Everyone wanted to go to Turkey and see its beauty and a fast developing and modernizing nation. Unfortunately, that perception is mostly lost. Democratic institutions were not robust enough to prevent the severe authoritarian turn.

With Esra İşsever-Ekinci I discuss Turkey’s democratic backsliding under the Justice and Development Party AKP and its leader President Erdogan. Based on her research and experiences in Turkey, she shares with us how democratic institutions were changed, and political rights and civil liberties dismantled to ensure the grip on power by the AKP. 

In the first part of the conversation Esra recounts the main historical political developments in the 20th century that set the stage for the more recent constitutional and legal amendments that secured the power in the hands of the AKP. To name just two setbacks, a presidential system was introduced in 2017, that concentrates more power in the executive, and the media have become heavily controlled by the government so that the opposition has mostly lost its voice. 

Esra İşsever-Ekinci is a postdoctoral researcher at Koç University in Istanbul. She got her PhD in Political Science and Government from the Maxwell School at Syracuse University in the U.S. in 2019. Her research is in Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Institutions and Electoral Systems, focusing especially on issues of electoral reform and gender.

I am your host, Stephan Kyburz, and this is the twenty-sixth episode of The Rules of the Game podcast. I am a political economist with a PhD in Economics from the University of Bern in Switzerland. And I previously held positions at the London School of Economics and Political Science and the Center for Global Development.

You find a full transcript of this episode on my website rulesofthegame.blog. I am always curious to hear your opinion, so just send me an email to [email protected], and please leave a review and share this episode with friends and colleagues.

Now please enjoy this wide ranging conversation with Esra İşsever-Ekinci.

Interview:

Stephan Kyburz: Esra İşsever-Ekinci welcome to the Rules of the Game podcast. I’m very happy to have you on the show.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Thanks for having me Stephan.

Stephan Kyburz: As always, my first question is what is your first memory of democracy or of politics in general?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: So from very early on I went to the polling station with my family for each election, even though I wasn’t able to… Eligible for voting. I was amazed by the organizational issues there, like people lining up towards and bullet box attendants verifying the voter ID’s, deciding whether it was etiquette for the person to be able to vote and then, for me, not being able to go to the votinging boots because of the vote’s secrecy but I wasn’t aware at the time and then people getting the ink on their fingers showing that they voted in an election, all those things were like things that I questioned a lot and tried to learn why, for instance, they would get the ink or why I wasn’t allowed with my mom in the voting boot and it all showed to me that there are a lot of important assurances that have to be in an election and that to decide how we are gonna be governed and that is open to manipulation oftentimes and there were rules to prevent that from happening and it was very important and I think it shaped my experience in Democracy or in elections and also it shaped my research a lot as well. And relatedly I remember that I also get disturbed by the lack of women in Media, women politicians in media and especially in the leader positions and I remember when a woman became a leader of one of the major political parties, this is in 90’s I was really in a mixed situation because it was not the party that our family supported but then she was a women figure in the end, like, and she became prime minister as well. I was kind of having mixed feelings but very happy that there are women in politics as well. So those two experiences, I think, shaped a lot of my experience within elections and politics in Turkey and so my research interest as well.

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks for sharing these memories. That’s very interesting also because they are related to the rules of the game, of course in terms of representation and in terms of electoral integrity. 

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yeah.

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz: Today I’d like to discuss Turkey’s political developments over the last few decades and especially that democratic backsliding we’ve seen over, at least two decades and you will elaborate on that, for sure, on when do you see that start of democratic erosion. But first probably it will be very good for the audience to have a little bit of historic background of the establishment of the Turkish Republic and what were, kind of, the major events that led to its democratic development? And also maybe when did you see the peak or when did you feel that the Turkish democracy was most democratic?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Very important questions. I think there are major events, many of them. Unfortunately due to the military interventions to the civilian politics in Turkish history. But the most important and a fundamental one, I think, is the emergence of multi-party elections in 1946 when a newly formed political party, which was called Democratic Party and it was formed by the former members of the incumbent Republican People’s Party, which ruled the countries since the establishment of the Turkish Republic and this new party, when it was established and fought in the 1946 elections, I think that was the first important point in moving towards democracy. But of course there were questions about the integrity of these elections, whether how the votes were countunted and tabulated, it was a bit secretly done because the incumbent was not expecting defeat and it was a bit surprising results for them. But the first peaceful alternation in government, which came in after the 1950 elections when the Democratic Party won the victory and formed the government afterwards, I think was a very important and fundamental turning point in Turkish history because there was a peaceful transition in the government and the incumbent party, which ruled the country, the Republican People’s Party which ruled the country since its inception accepted the results, accepted the victory of the opposition and then returned the power to them and then, I think, it was a very defining moment. And from that point onwards we have seen, like, three successive elections where the Democratic Party won the elections. And I think that is also our first experience of democratic erosion in Turkey because once a challenger, a pro-democracy party tried to cling to power after that until the electoral scene, electoral game against the opposition. So there were a lot of developments at the time where the incumbent now, the incumbent Democratic Party tried to censor the opposition and especially opposition press and also form the parliamentary committee, investigation committee within the parliament to investigate the opposition activities, I think, those were very important things that showed that the opposition had almost no space in the Turkish politics, right? It started to lose its space in Turkish politics. And I think at the time of the elections, in the 50’s, were conducted in a plurality system but in multi-member districts so it was producing a lot of disproportionality in the election results. And another thing, I think, that showed that the ruling party was not in a position or was not gonna turn on the power to the opposition was that they ban the electoral coalition and that would be formed by the opposition parties. And because at the time the opposition parties, each of them started to gain votes but if they formed the coalition that would be getting more seats in the parliament but that was prevented by the incumbent political party.

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, actually I have looked through the results of these elections and it was really extreme results, right? Like 80/90% of one party winning the vote share. And then maybe one element that is important also to know but that we’re going to talk later more, is the introduction of the proportional list system in 1961. So I think that probably was also an important turning point, right?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yes, exactly. And actually this enormous disproportionality resulting from this electoral system – I think as a side note it would be good to mention Bernie Groffman’s argument that this electoral system, plurality system in multi-member districts is the most suitable electoral system for autocrats. Like if they want a political institution they want that, because that would enable them to form majority governments after each election but to be fair, the Democratic Party inherited this system like it was not their fault that the elections were taking place within this system.

Stephan Kyburz: So that’s the old system. 

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yes. When the elections were one party, with one party only, the rules were designed to select candidates and in that respect did not matter much and the ruling party did not change the electoral system when they moved towards the multi-party election and I think they suffered a lot from that. And that was, like, something they didn’t plan on and I think that resulted in their disadvantage. But when they banked the electoral alliances I think that was the major point where they decided that they don’t want opposition to form alliances and win more seats and maybe a majority as well, within the parliament and that’s why they tried to bend the forming of alliances, I think, and that was an important thing.So I wanted to mention this um deterioration of democracy within the hands of first political party because now the literature is much familiar with the a democratic erosion of it. Currently there’s not military takeovers having much resilience right now, instead of one political party getting more power and one leader, populist leader getting more power is much discussed right now, but Turkey has been experiencing this from very early on and, I think, Turkish academia is very much familiar with the democratic erosion from the very early on. But another important thing I think is that this government, when they formed the government they became a victim of the military coup in 1960 and I think one of the reasons why people, when academics and scholars discuss Turkey they discuss mostly military and democratic breakdowns by military because we have many of them and these type of small interlude periods were kind of ignored or lost in detail. So Turkey had experienced military interventions in 1960 and 1980  and two military memorandums in 1971 and in 1997. So we have quite a bit of history of military intervention in politics.

Stephan Kyburz: And may I ask the military, did they represent a certain class or a certain part of society? Or were they more interested in intervening in terms of you know power or reestablishing security? I don’t know. 

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: If you think about that, the formers of the Turkish Republic were coming from the military as well, because they fought in a war, Independence war and then formed the Republic and so there was a close relationship between them. But at some point, I think in a new kind of, like try to separate the military from military and civilian relationships formed in such a way that civilian matters were out of the reach of the military to a certain extent, even though they could have some reserve domains. I mean there are many articles written on that and it’s a very deep topic, I think, but I could say that there are differences, different groups within the military. So we can’t really take the military as one actor. 

Stephan Kyburz: Would you agree that there’s like a history of different groups, different parties, the military taking power, so the respect and the stability of the rules or the consistency was not that great in that period, right? So there was a lot of turmoil and changes in government.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yes. In usual the points where the military intervened, there was a lot of turmoil in different extremes. In 60’s for instance, there was… When the military intertwined it was an accumulation of power within the one political party, for instance in ‘60’s it was too many political parties not able to form coalition and durable stable government in addition to major protests and working movements having quite power within the civil society as well. I mean those kinds of things and the institutions they built were kind of like a reaction to what happened in the earlier political circumstances.  In 1961 when we returned to multi-party elections, the institutions were set up by the assemblies formed by military were quite different because they introduced a lot of veto points because the aim was to curb the power of the one political party and avoid a leader assuming too much power. So the senate was introduced and Turkey has experimented with the bicameral system for 20 years and then proportional representation system,now national electoral threshold was introduced so that small parties would get representation in the parliament as well. And then also another veto point would be the constitutional court, which is one of the most important vito points and those were introduced in 1961.Those were the political institutions.

Stephan Kyburz: And this um list proportional system is essentially still in use, right? 

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yes.

Stephan Kyburz: But there is now an electoral threshold.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yes.

Stephan Kyburz: Which is very high in international comparison which is 10%?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Currently lowered to 7.

Stephan Kyburz: It has been lowered to 7 recently. Also I’d like to discuss that maybe later, but the 10% threshold was quite important also in bringing the party of Erdoğan to power, right? Because the Justice and Development Party came to power in 2002 and only because the threshold was so high. There were only three parties entering the parliament, so a lot of small parties didn’t get represented. So now I made segway to the more moderner period. Would you kind of agree with that development? And also the threshold when was that installed?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: So it was installed by the constitutional assembly formed by the military coup, formed after the military coup of 1980. In 1980 we had another coup and then in 83 we returned back to multi-party elections and civilian rule. So institutions now has been reversed. So there was a return back to unicameral system, an introduction of 10% to the proportional system that we had because the aim was to promote stability by reducing the number of parties that could enter the um parliament. And it was not just 10% threshold, there was also district threshold of hare-quota meaning that in 83 lowest district threshold was 14% so that in a for instance, 3 seat district parties had to obtain 33% of the votes to win a seat and if only one party passes this threshold, even though the runner-up has 32% for instance in that electoral district, the first one gets all the seats in that district. So it kind of, like, increases the disproportionality by introducing  the district threshold as well. Another thing that made the electoral system much more majoritarian, even though it was in the proportional representation system umbrella, was that introduction of a maximum size for each electoral district. It was set to 7 even though, for instance, Istanbul could have more than 7 because of the huge population. So Istanbul was divided into 6 different electoral districts, so that’s that the maximum size of any electoral district was set to 7. So electoral boundaries within each province has to change. So these were really important in creating majority, meaning political party. Then it worked in 83, it worked in 87 as well, but then with the 87 – there was a referendum to allow the politicians who were banned from participating in political activities due to the coup, and that referandum enabled the politicians return back to politics and after that new parties were formed. And that kind of changed the balance within the parliament as well because some of them were able to pass the 10% threshold and then it became… the parliament had more political parties than envisioned by the rule seters, rule designers.

Stephan Kyburz: So it was essentially a proportional system that was made more majoritarian by all these thresholds, the district thresholds, the maximum amount of members per district.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yes. So until 95 it was like that and in 95 this maximum seat number for each electoral district was abandoned. And from that point onwards I actually… it became… Well once political parties passed the 10% threshold they would be able to get their representation within the parliament. So that was kind of a turning point. But in 2002, of course, that was one of the most disproportional elections in Turkish history because all the earlier political parties were discredited by the two consecutive economic crises.  And the Turkish Lira depreciated a lot. And there were a lot of problems, economic problems. And when they had the elections, it was an early election in 2002, there was a disillusionment with the existing political system and existing political parties. And only two parties were elected to the parliament and they weren’t elected in the 1999 elections and one of them was the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the other was the Republican People’s Party, they weren’t in the parliament in 1999. So these two political parties were the two parties that had passed the threshold and got these proportionate seats in the parliament and I think AKP’s vote was around 34 at the time and they got around 65% of the seatshare. 

Stephan Kyburz: Wow, that’s quite spectacular. Yeah.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: So for instance, you said and I and I said earlier that the first elections in ‘50’s were really disproportionate. The disproportionality level with the least square index was around 30/35 in those elections and I checked in for the 2002 election, it was around 27. It shows how disproportional was the elections. And another thing is that around 50 million votes were not represented in the parliament because, like, some of the parties were, like, 9 percent and they wouldn’t enter the parliament. And it’s a shame that the outgoing government did not change the electoral system because surely they were going to lose the election, they knew from the beginning but they didn’t change the electoral threshold before they announced the early elections.

Stephan Kyburz: So actually I read that in 2002, 46% of the voters were not represented, which is very high.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yeah.

Stephan Kyburz: And then from 2002 onwards the Justice and Development Party (AKP) they pretty much were able to consistently confirm like, their hold on to power, which then also led to other developments that are more recent and also that kind of led to this backsliding. Since 2002, what were then kind of the major developments?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: So every political crisis kind of, like, resulted in a change in some of the rules of the game. For instance in 2007, there was… the president at the time was elected through parliamentary members and Erdoğan wanted Abdullah Gül to be elected, the party, political party wanted Abdullah Gül to be elected and it was through a lot of games within the quorum, the opposition parties try to prevent that from happening and that led to a changing of the the way president is elected. In 2007 there was a referendum that made it possible for elections to take place, a popular election of the president and I think that was one of the most important changes because it gave a mandate to the president. Even though, because they were from the same party from […], afterwards then Gül was elected and then AKP was always forming the government. There weren’t many clashes between the president’s office and the prime-minister and his cabinet. But because presidents even without the presidential system in Turkey had the veto power, his election, first after the 2007 elections within the parliament and then the enabling of the popular mandate for president was important turning points in the Turkish system and paving the way for the introduction of the presidential system in a decade later, I think.

Stephan Kyburz: So just to recap quickly. So before 2007 the president was elected by parliament. 

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Parliament. Yeah. 

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah, exactly and that was really the introduction of the popular election of the president which was the first step.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yeah.

Stephan Kyburz: And then after that what were the next steps?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: In 2010, and I think it was one of the major points where they changed the way the judges were elected to the constitutional court and it gave more weight to the political branches and that’s one of the important things. And also I think in addition to the institutional changes, there were a lot of things that were, especially against the media, I think that helped them increase their power because the way they use some of the laws to silence the media, to lead the media to self-censor themselves, I think was important because the watchdog position and role of the media was lost. And I think we saw that in Gezi Park Protests a lot like, it took the private media like almost a week to comment on the issue. Like, when the protests began they were not in any of the media, the conventional media. Only people following social media were aware of that. And I think one of the really successful uses and I think that was very much implemented by many populist leaders in different countries was the defamation laws and criminalizing defamation and the libel laws. I think that was one of the important ways through which Erdoğan and his party was able to silence, well increase the cost for the journalists to criticize the government, criticize the party and the leaders. And the other important thing, I’m sure you might have an idea about this, they use different laws, which are not political, to prohibit, for instance, they can use some of the tax evasion laws or sending tax audits to the media groups because most media are part of the larger corporations in Turkey. So it’s not only targeting the media but the other corporations within the large conglomeration. So what happens is that using tax fines and tax audits to silence the media was especially used against one of the private media groups, the one media group during this time. And the other thing was, I think that kind of, like, affected the way the public debate was shaped was when there’s an important event that would show a weakness on the part of government, that could be even things like, attacking a woman, for instance, by some men, and those kind of crimes increase in Turkey right now, these things, seemingly nonpolitical things but that would kind of increase the criticisms against government, they were prohibited from coming to the media because if the media start to discuss that it would breach the confidentiality of the investigation. And this kind of thing was also used by different democratic regimes. But the intention is there not to shut down the criticism but really to establish the confidentiality of the investigation. But here the use of this um excuse for not allowing different news to get on the media, the discussion of these by the commentators on the media, helped the idea for the voters, especially, that everything is normal right now. No big problems in terms of domestic governance happening right now. So that’s very important, I think, as well.

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz: I kind of remember all these things happening over time, you know, the media being attacked in quite peculiar ways. You talked about the politicization of the economy even, to bring down some media houses and to just increase this control over the public debate. Which then again, also, I guess, led to the conservation of power by AKP, right? To win the next election because the opposition was essentially silenced.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yes. in the conventional media, really, the opposition does not have much of a voice, actually. These independent alternative news channels through, which usually make their publication on Youtube, for instance, or they use other alternative social media sources to reach to their voters and also to other people as well, to show what’s really going on right now and I think that’s one of the important things, that how the party political party was able to create so much power on their behalf and give less and less space for the opposition political parties and opposing views and ideas to be on the media.

Stephan Kyburz: And also, probably, the control of the media helped a lot to have these constitutional amendments approved, right? Because these were usually referendums and they were approved by the voters and obviously controlling the media was an important tool to make that happen, right?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Actually the last referendum, I think, was one of the most problematic in that respect because it was right after the coup attempt and people were already emotional about it and the public was so, already in that respect, to also in a way to be manipulated by the different discourses to vote for a yes in this referendum, in the last referendum.

Stephan Kyburz: So that was the referendum of 2017 which was probably the most consequential in terms of concentrating power, because it introduced the presidential system, it introduced many powers for the president in terms of ruling by decree, controlling the justice system, as well. So this referendum was approved by just 51% of the voters. Can you give me some more details about this referendum and this constitutional amendment? What it meant for the Turkish democracy?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: To give a brief background of it, in 2015 we had a snap election after the election where AKP lost the majority and that was like one of the first events, I think, where the decreasing votes of the AKP became apparent. And until that point the AKP’s aim was to maximize votes and all the institutional changes were in a way to maximize votes. In the elections they enabled the diaspora to vote for the national elections and that was again, Erdoğan and AKP knew that the diaspora were sympathetic to the AKP and they were more willing to vote for that political party and they allowed them to vote in 2014, I think that the first time they voted and that kind of helped them and it was a vote maximizing strategy. And I think with the 2015, it became apparent that the votes were getting lost and in there the snap election was a bit problematic with the securities issues that were going on in the, especially, southeast of the country and in the November elections the party was able to form the government again. But from that point onward the changes, even the current change was to enable the party, even though the preferences would change, of the voters, to hang on to power. And I think the presidential system, the official introduction of the presidential system was that. One of the steps of that. And it gave enormous power to the presidential office, in terms of decree and it kind of curbed all the power that the parliament had in terms of checking the power of the government and also the president has the power to appoint any individual to the secretary position or the ministry positions as well. And ministries, actually, has become less and less important posts in the government, like, people do not really know the names of the ministries anymore. Well currently they know, for instance, the health minister because the pandemic team had to make a lot of announcements. But before the pandemic, I mean, the names of the ministers was not really known to the public at all. There would be changes and that would go unnoticed.

Stephan Kyburz: Because also it didn’t matter that much.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yeah. That’s the thing, they don’t matter that much. And another important thing, because the changes – the presidential system came after such a turbulent issue of coup attempt, Erdoğan’s office had already offered much power because of some of the emergency laws and decree power that he had and of course with this presidential system it even increased. And, I mean, of course Erdoğan has these tendencies to rule by himself, claim that he represents the nation because of the votes that he receives. But even if it wasn’t Erdoğan, any other political figure would have enormous power. And I think that’s why, one of the reasons why the old opposition parties when they come together, one thing they agree is to go back to, well, not earlier, some kind of a parliamentary system where checks and balances would be in place and that was the only declaration they could make as a group of 6, that they want to return to the parliamentary system, which is much more stronger than the earlier system where parliament would have more stronger position in comparison to the parliamentary system of Turkey before. And that was, I think, one of the most important points in there. 

Stephan Kyburz: Yeah. What is the condition of the opposition right now? I mean you said in terms of like there is this trial to go back to, you know, the parliamentary system but I guess in reality that’s quite far away.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yeah. So in 2023 we will have another election. And currently all the opposition political parties are getting together to form a common ground and a platform for this election. And this election is also important in terms of it’s going to be a century that the country was formed. So it’s very important in that respect. And they want, of course, the current situation with the democratic erosion and impossibility of the opposition to come to power make them coordinate and come together. But the issue is, currently the most important problem Turkey faces right now is the economic situation and the exchange rates and the depreciation of Turkish Lira and the living conditions, the high inflation that we face right now. Each month is increasing. And the people actually want something from the opposition, like some declaration in terms of these much practical issues, as well. In addition to their promise for the return to Democratic politics. So I think in that respect the opposition is kind of a lagging behind but as I said the most… One thing they come together, if they agree on one thing, that’s to institute the parliamentary system with checks and balances and they made the declaration for that. But still their candidate for presidential election is not set. They couldn’t agree on one name. So this is one of the important things because they want to come as a block and suggest the name and with the results of the Hungarian elections they realized that, this is very important to come together as a unique coalition. 

Stephan Kyburz: Like a big coalition essentially of all opposition parties, right? As we have seen in Hungary, yeah, just the same example came to mind.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: So the consolidation of power, through all these means that we discussed, I think prevents some of the things they could do. For instance, they wanted to come together and because the electoral system right now allows that, but now there is a change in the electoral system that’s kind of like targets and tries to prevent that coalition to emerge and coordination to emerge on the part of the opposition. I think this is an important thing because it’s a relative game. So one political party or one group makes a movement and the other groups then change their behavior accordingly. 

Stephan Kyburz: So we mentioned briefly in the beginning that the threshold was reduced from 10% to 7%. Was that part of this… I mean from the outside it looks like: Okay this it makes it easier for smaller parties to win power, right? But maybe there is probably another side of the coin right?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: And actually this is the package, like, it introduces the lowering of the national electoral threshold but also introduces some other changes that makes it much more difficult for smaller parties to enter the parliament. So we can say it’s a very strategic move. So lowering the threshold has this effect of, for instance, some political parties which might think that their vote level is around 7% to participate in the election as one political party rather than within the group within the alliance. But in addition to that, this is important because there are two new parties, political parties formed. And they are going to run in the elections and these are coming from the AKP, like, the former members of the AKP establish these political parties. So they would like to, for instance, form themselves as a political party and have a distinct platform, to establish a platform. But with this framework they would, in general, would be in a coalition and would help both in terms of a coalition, both percentage and seat percentage, also their own political party seat percentages as well. But with this 7%, lowering the threshold to 7% meant for them to like, whether they should for instance, run as one political party rather than within a coalition. But one important thing is that before, in 2018, when they introduced the new electoral system the dom system was used in such a way that first the seats were allocated to the electoral coalitions for each district and then to the political parties within each coalition. That would mean that the opposition would get more seats, because when they come together, because it’s a very divided opposition in terms of parties, number of parties, that would mean that they would get more seats as a coalition and then within the coalition of course a larger party gets more seats but the others get seats, as well. Current law changes that and now seats are allocated to the political parties according to their votes without distributing to the coalition first. So it kind of renders through coalitions. Useless in a way because they lowered the electoral thresholds and one of the advantages of forming coalition, this two-way distribution of electoral seats were not possible right now. So the forming of coalitions are not as advantageous as it had been in 2018. And there were some simulations about these, whether what would be their effects. Some of the simulations say it would mean a loss of 28 votes for the opposition coalition and 19 of them going to the AKP and Nationalist Action Party and then 9 of them going to the Kurdish Political Party which would run as an independent party rather than joining the coalition. So that kind of like changes the seats dynamics within the parliament and actually one important thing, I think and that’s always a question when someone and some political party introduces an electoral change or institutional change in the system is that they can – that’s based on some of the assumptions and the assumption behind this current change is that the first party is going to be Justice and Development Party. And some scholars warned that if that changed, if the first party becomes another party, that whole calculation that is the basis of this law change can fall apart and lead to an unintended consequence of victory by the opposition. So I think Sebnem (Yardimci) Geyikci kind of like, make this comment and I think it’s very important that even this change can be fruitless depending on the votes of the political parties and since we are in an economic crisis right now that kind of can change.

Stephan Kyburz: So the crisis, the economic crisis which was also probably partly caused by the depreciation of the lira, which was also a consequence of reducing the independence of the central bank right? So Erdoğan was more pretty much involved in monetary policy, as well, or kind of saying what he expects from the central bank.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: And also changing the executive of the central bank whenever he wants. That’s one one of the things that he does as well. 

Stephan Kyburz: Right. So what do you expect from the economic crisis? I mean the developments… Does that help the opposition or the AKP? Or is it hard to predict?

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: So I think one of the claims of introducing a presidential system to introduce stability to the political system of Turkey was Erdoğan rhetoric during the referendum. And I think that stability actually turned out to be instability in terms of economy. If you look at the changes, as you said the independence of the Central Bank is not there anymore and Erdoğan is kind of responsible. What happened by meddling the monetary policy, changing the interest rates  or demanding interest rates to be low, in a more correct way to put it and those kind of make him responsible. So it would work in theory for the opposition because the current situation is…

Stephan Kyburz: Pretty harsh, pretty dire.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: And the responsible is out there very significantly known by all people. But I think the issue here is that whether the opposition is going to come up with some kind of an economic agreement like what they are going to do in terms of economic… bringing economic stability to the country. And that we haven’t seen yet. And I think, if we don’t see it until the election and we know that Erdoğan has charisma and a very pragmatic leader and he could come up with something before the election and then turn all the picture upside down again. And I think unless the political parties, which are forming the opposition group right now, somehow come up with an economic policy agenda together and change the… and come up with practical solutions to the problems that people have in everyday lives, if they can’t come up with that I think that would be to their detriment.

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks a lot for sharing all those thoughts and analyses. 

Intermezzo

Stephan Kyburz:  So for people who would like to read a bit more on these topics can you recommend any articles or books that would help? Maybe also summarize a bit of the developments. Because I think it’s a very important case. Turkey is a very important case. Initially when I contacted you actually the case also for me was it was a proportional system or is a proportional system, with thresholds of course, but still the democratic backsliding happened. 

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Yeah, and I think Berk Esen & Sebnem Gumuscu have a series of work on how rising competitive authoritarianism in Turkey and how that is established and what are the turning points in Turkish history that led to the democratic backsliding and a series of work published in different journals in political science. I think one in democratization, different journals and party politics as well. And so those I think would be very helpful to learn more about the context and Alı Çarkoğlu and S. Erdem Aytaç have a number of surveys on the elections and on vote buying and patronage analysis and Ozge Kemahlioglu has also a lot of work on patronage analysis as well, like the patronage relationship in different times in the Turkish history but mostly currently and Ceren Lord has some work on the majoritarian and institutional background of Turkish political system. I think that would be very helpful to understand the whole context of Turkish backsliding, democratic backsliding.

Stephan Kyburz: Thanks for sharing those recommendations and I’ll link to them in the show notes. Okay Esra, thank you so much for sharing all those um thoughts and for the discussion. It has been really interesting and maybe we could have an update next year around the election and see what’s happening. Thanks for taking the time.

Esra İşsever-Ekinci: Thanks for inviting me and for this discussion.