“Turkey’s elections are indicative of a global trend where elections are technically free but profoundly unfair,” wrote columnist Fareed Zakaria in an opinion piece for The Washington Post.
Zakaria’s analysis, published on 19 May, delves into the recent Turkish elections and the troubling political landscape surrounding them.
According to Zakaria, despite not winning outright re-election, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan managed to secure a partial victory. “He did better than polls predicted and came out well ahead of his main opponent, leaving him highly likely to win a runoff scheduled for May 28,” Zakaria stated.
The columnist expressed astonishment at Erdoğan’s performance, given Turkey’s economic catastrophe and the government’s mishandling of the recent earthquakes. “This is stunning, given that Turkey is a country in economic catastrophe, with sky-high inflation. The vote also took place just months after an earthquake, in which the government performed miserably,” Zakaria emphasised.
Zakaria highlighted the circumstances surrounding the elections, noting the limited alternatives for the opposition. “Erdoğan was up against Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the opposition candidate, a colourless bureaucrat without much charisma or eloquence. But the opposition had little alternative,” Zakaria explained. He further noted Erdoğan’s elimination of Ekrem İmamoğlu, a charismatic politician from the same party as Kılıçdaroğlu, who posed a significant threat to Erdoğan’s power.
Describing the removal by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) of İstanbul Mayor İmamoğlu’s chances to run for presidency, Zakaria first noted his victory against the ruling party candidate in the 2018 municipal elections when “On the flimsiest grounds, Erdoğan’s party claimed fraud, and the electoral council ordered a fresh round of voting. İmamoğlu won the second election by a larger margin. So İmamoğlu was then charged with insulting public officials over the incident and was tried by a judiciary which has been widely described as packed with ruling party loyalists.”
Zakaria expressed concern about the political playing field in Turkey, which he described as massively tilted in Erdoğan’s favour. “The state lavishes funds on his supporters, and the country’s media is slavishly pro-government. Most of Turkey’s major media properties have been bought by business executives who are supporters of Erdoğan,” he said.
Highlighting the overwhelming bias in state television, Zakaria stated, “State television, the country’s main source of broadcast news, relentlessly extols the virtues of Erdoğan and his party and trumpets the achievements of the government. In April, state TV spent 32 hours on coverage of Erdoğan versus 32 minutes for his opponent.”
Zakaria underscored Erdoğan’s systematic control over supposedly independent institutions, saying, “Erdoğan’s government has systematically taken over ostensibly independent institutions, including courts and the body that controls elections.”
In his analysis, Zakaria called for a re-evaluation of the vocabulary used to describe such elections. “Are such elections free? Technically, yes — but they are also profoundly unfair,” he concluded, emphasising the need to recognise the fundamentally unfair nature of these elections.
