Turkey’s presidential election is just over a month away. As a result, the primary contenders for the highest office in state government have been identified, and the election campaign is in full swing. The major clash is undoubtedly between incumbent President Recep Erdoğan and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the sole representative of the six-party opposition coalition. Muharrem Ince, Sinan Oğan, Fatih Erbakan, and Doğu Perençek are the other candidates who are unlikely to come out on top. This list of additional participants is simply a formal monument to democratic values.
Many Turkish and foreign experts have given considerable attention to the variety of domestic and foreign policy issues Turkey is currently facing In their analyses and evaluations of the impending elections. Several variables, in my opinion, will influence the peculiarity and complexity of the Turkish elections in 2023:
a) Recep Erdoğan, the leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), has ruled the country without interruption for 20 years;
b) a severe financial and economic crisis in the nation, which is accompanied by a deteriorating depreciation of the lira;
c) the tragic consequences of the Southeast earthquake disaster, which claimed more than 50,000 lives and left behind immense amounts of material devastation;
d) ongoing tensions in US-Turkish relations brought on by Washington’s displeasure with President R. Erdoğan’s administration’s independent course.
It is clear that Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of Republican People’s Party (CHP), and his team, as well as their internal and external partners, will try to take advantage of the complex situation to win. The United States is its main ally in the international arena, while the six-party opposition bloc Nation Alliance and the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) as well as internal issues and errors of the ruling party are its main allies in Turkey respectively. Various research institutions and services provide diverse evaluations on the election marathon’s outcomes. It is quite understandable, because the structures close to the government will speak and give the numbers of the opinion polls in favor of the acting president, Recep Erdoğan (47 or more than 50% of votes). In contrast, the institutions supporting the opposition and hired by the USA will publish the same figures but already in favor of the leading rival, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
We are not interested in reading tea leaves or otherwise falsifying the truth about the approaching general elections in Turkey. We can confirm that these elections will be complex in nature and in terms of competition, and that they will go down in Turkish history as a kind of milestone, for Nagorno-Karabakh formally associated with the year of the Turkish Republic’s 100th anniversary, meaningfully determining the next century of Turkish statehood. The latter is determined by the objective course of both Turkish history and the current international situation, as well as the scale of Recep Erdoğan’s personality and his rival from Ataturk’s party, and finally, by the United States’ special attention (if not interference) in Turkey’s internal political struggle.
Since the second half of the twentieth century, after Turkey joined NATO, the USA has repeatedly intervened in the political fate of its ally and actually initiated coups in 1960, 1971, 1980 and 1997. Another such attempt, in July 2016, was, as we all know, a flop for Washington.
And each time the United States was unsatisfied with the Turkish leaders’ policy, who campaigned for relative independence from the White House administration. Some unpopular leaders were either removed through new appointees and local jurisdiction (as in the case of Adnan Menderes) or died by strange coincidence, supposedly from illness (as in the case of Turgut Özal), others were denied the right to hold public office (such as Necmettin Erbakan). True, the Americans have yet to find a mechanism to oust Recep Erdoğan from power.
It should be noted that the failure of the July 2016 attempted coup and the preservation of Recep Erdoğan’s life and power were made possible not only by the prompt action of president’s loyalist Hakan Fidan, head of Turkey’s National Intelligence Agency MIT but also in large part by anticipatory information from the Russian Foreign Intelligence Agency. The latter would have been unfathomable during the Cold War, but it became a reality thanks to the personal relationship of Turkey’s and Russia’s leaders, as well as the two countries’ partnership. However, it was Russia’s pro-Turkish stance and key role in saving both Turkey and Recep Erdoğan’s life from another process of internal political division and crisis, redistribution of power, and loss of independence in favor of the USA.
Following an objective examination of the history of Russian-Turkish ties, it should be recognized that Russia gave Turkey crucial aid three times in the 17th, 19th, and 20th centuries in response to the West’s hostile tactics. Sultan Selim III specifically requested that Paul I of Russia send a squadron under the command of Admiral Ushakov against the French in 1798. Nicholas I of Russia sent a squadron under the command of Admiral Mikhail Lazarev to the Bosporus in 1833 by request of the Sublime Porte. This prevented Sultan Mehmed II from losing the throne to Egyptian commander Ibrahim Pasha, who acted at the instigation of Europe. In 1920, the Lenin government provided invaluable military-technical, food, and diplomatic support to Mustafa Kemal Pasha (known as Ataturk) government, which was not recognized. This enabled the Turks to inflict military defeats on the Entente-supported Greeks and Armenians, as well as to preserve strategic territories in the west, northeast, and southeast as part of the future Republic of Turkey.
Although there have been many wars and conflicts between our countries since the 17th century, but when Russia and Turkey’s interests coincided (usually in opposition to Western countries’ aggressive policies), St. Petersburg and Istanbul saw an opportunity to act as allies and conclude mutually beneficial agreements. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, despite their membership in different military-political organizations (CSTO and NATO), Russia and Turkey have once again found themselves on the same side. This partnership was formed not so much (or only) by personality factors (i.e., the leaders of the two countries), but by the objective course of recent events, the chances for mutually beneficial economic cooperation, and the cessation of military threats against each other. An objective examination of the chronology of the continuous development of Russian-Turkish ties demonstrates that this trend has remained constant since 2002, i.e. during the period of Vladimir Putin being in power in Russia and Recep Erdoğan being in power in Turkey. The only exception to this partnership was a six-month episode from the fall of 2015 to the summer of 2016 about the Russian Sukhoi Su-24 jet shot, down by Turkish F-16 fighter planes in the skies over Syria.
During the first quarter of the 21st century, Russia and Turkey have developed mutually advantageous partnerships in trade, tourism, energy, business, military-technical cooperation, and regional collaboration. The trade turnover between the countries during the Erdoğan administration has almost tripled (from $30 billion to $80 billion). A number of significant energy projects for Turkey have been implemented (the construction of two Russian gas pipelines – Blue Stream and TurkStream, the Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant, which is the only nuclear power plant in Turkey). A new global project is planned to create a gas hub and re-orient the export of Russian gas from the destroyed by the West Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 to Turkey. Turkey has become a favorite vacation destination for Russian tourists, adding billions of dollars to its budget. Regardless of the US reaction, Turkey was able to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems due to Erdoğan’s charisma. Many fascinating and mutually beneficial transit communications initiatives are planned between Moscow and Ankara via the South Caucasus. Finally, at the turn of the twenty-first century, despite the unfavorable results of the new Georgian authorities’ policies, Russia did not obstruct the development and operation of an energy and transport interconnections for Turkey’s access to Azerbaijan’s oil and gas. Russia and Turkey have managed to overcome the contradictions in the local war situation in the North Caucasus and have identified sites of interaction in Syria and Nagorno-Karabakh.
And all of these positive bilateral achievements occurred during the presidency of Recep Erdoğan who understands the importance of maintaining a balance of power in the international arena, objectively assesses Russia’s role in regional and global affairs, and takes a pragmatic approach to the development of mutually beneficial economic projects. As a result, Russia has established a sufficient impression of Turkey’s leader’s personality, objective respect for Erdoğan’s policies against US hegemony in international affairs, and enthusiasm for the establishment of a multipolar world in which Turkey is one of the authoritative centers and poles.
Recep Erdoğan understands that if Ankara continues to disregard Moscow and its interests on the post-Soviet territory, the idea Turgut Ozal declared in 1992, “21st century would be the century of the Turks” will be left on the level of ideas. Meanwhile, Turkey’s strategic cooperation with Russia in the 2000s enabled Erdoğan to establish the Turkic Council in October 2009, and the Organization of Turkic States in November 2021, after Second Nagorno-Karabakh War.
Turkey’s adaptable approach to peaceful mediation in the midst of deteriorating Russian-Ukrainian relations is extremely important to Russia. Moscow values Erdoğan’s diplomacy, his persistent attempts to restart the negotiation process, his unwillingness to accept Western anti-Russia sanctions, his major role in the “grain deal,” and his participation in the prisoner exchange.
Of course, Russia is paying close attention to the upcoming Turkish elections and wishes the Turkish people a successful vote, the conclusion of which will determine the future fate of an independent and strong Turkey. Moscow will be ready to back a balanced and robust Turkey that maintains its independence in foreign affairs and favors pragmatism in selecting allies, with Russia playing a specific role. All that has been accomplished over the last 20 years, as well as the projected goals of Russian-Turkish collaboration, can be expanded in the next years, taking into account the realistic program of AKP leader Recep Erdoğan.
Aleksandr SVARANTS, PhD in political science, professor, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
