By not accepting defeat during the Istanbul elections on the 31 March, by a mere 13K majority, AKP might have prepared its own doom. The victory of Imamoglu is shifting the paradigm away from the traditional dichotomies that explained Turkish politics so well in the past.
There is a deeper and more dangerous reason why Erdogan’s Islamist party is not ready to accept a defeat in elections. This deeper reason relates to the classical dar al-Harb / dar al-Islam distinction that was a central motif in the Islamist discourse of the National Outlook, the ideological core of the AKP.
Despite the fact that Sunday’s elections were local elections, Erdogan saw it as a ‘matter of life and death’ and therefore the elections turned into a referendum. What people voted for was the Erdogan regime. The most important result of the elections is the fact that Erdogan has now entered his period of decline.
A pre-2011 Syria with Assad at the helm would be catastrophic to not only the Kurds but for other minorities and would signal to the region that you can kill over 600,000 civilians, target half your population and force them to be refugees and IDPs and still get away with it all. This is the message if the global coalition, led by the United States abandons the Kurds. For Kurds, anything less than autonomy in Syria is a loss.
Provided that American forces will eventually withdraw, Trump’s strategy, no matter how ambitious or theoretically promising it is, runs a serious risk, not unlike the one that the US faced in Iraq.
Having long called for an end to US protection of Syria’s YPG, Ankara might yet rue its success in achieving what it asked for. And both Washington, and Ankara, might yet come to regret the ease with which they handed control over Syria’s destiny to Putin.
We are delighted to present the Turkey Institute’s fourth publication, written by Mustafa Cakmak and focused on the diaspora politics of the Turkish-speaking community in the United Kingdom.
Professor Ihsan Yilmaz has presented (via Skype) a co-authored paper at a roundtable discussion organised by The Turkey Institute (London) on “Attempts to legitimise... Read More
The gradual radicalisation of Muslim youth in recent years has been perhaps one of the greatest challenges to national security in Western countries. Non-state... Read More
After the July 15 coup attempt in 2016, the Turkish government immediately declared a three month state of emergency and began to govern the... Read More
The results of the rerun of the Istanbul mayoral vote surpassed the expectations of the most opposition friendly forecasts. Almost all of the public... Read More
The reluctance of the AKP politicians in relinquishing the municipalities they have lost in last week’s local election is another way of telling the... Read More
When analyzing the March 31 local elections, we must do it under three headings. These are 1. How did Turkey go to elections? 2.... Read More
