Will Erdoğan respect the election outcome?
As discussed in our previous post, our forecasters put 55% on Erdogan winning the 2023 Turkish presidential election, in part by virtue of his interference with the democratic process. The president’s ability to put his thumb on the scales is clearly dominant in forecasters’ thinking, but how far will it go?
The Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe observes the elections held in its 57 participating states and writes up comprehensive reports detailing their findings. In 2017, they criticised how Turkey's 2017 constitutional referendum was conducted, saying that "fundamental freedoms essential to a genuinely democratic process were curtailed and voters were not provided with impartial information about key aspects of the reform". It's apparent that forecasters expect similar concerns to be reported this time too, but what are the chances that Erdoğan will go as far as manipulating the vote count?
Forecasters think this is a high bar and one that is unlikely to be crossed, putting the chances of an OSCE report of vote manipulation at just 6%. While some interference is feasible, there are strong limits on how far Erdoğan can go.
Since the founding of the Republic of Turkey in 1923, the country has seen several military coups and periods of military rule, and the Turkish Armed Forces continue to have a strong influence over both Turkey's politics and economy. While Erdoğan conducted a huge purge of the military after the 2016 coup attempt, removing 24,339 officers over 5 years, forecasters still see Erdoğan as beholden to the military's interests. One explains their view of the situation:
The military is a big commercial enterprise and has a direct financial interest in the stability of Turkey. That constrains him from going all out on electoral interference.
They are a huge political and economic actor (even despite the purge) and own key pieces of infrastructure; they’re not going to sit by and let things go crazy.
In addition to safeguarding its vast commercial enterprises from destabilisation, the military considers itself the guardian of the Republic. Therefore, in order to avoid military intervention, Erdoğan is compelled to preserve at least the appearance of election integrity.
Will Erdogan leave office if he loses?
While our forecasters do not think the election will be rigged outright, they do not guarantee that Erdoğan will accept the result. They recall the Istanbul mayoral election in 2019, where the initial results were contested, leading to a re-run. In that case, the opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu won by an even larger margin in the re-run.
For this election, our forecasters are generally inclined to think that Erdoğan would accept a loss, putting the chances at 80%. For the same reasons that make ballot stuffing unlikely, the Turkish military would probably oust Erdoğan rather than let him illegally cling onto power (and forecasters do not expect him to risk such an outcome).
If he were to lose, it is unlikely that Erdoğan would face severe consequences from the opposition. Aggressive actions against him could risk destabilizing the country, as it would anger the pro-Erdoğan half of the population, and Kılıçdaroğlu does not appear to be signalling any intent to purge the government of Erdoğan's influence.
Furthermore, if things did turn against him, our forecasters expect that Erdoğan already has a well-prepared exit plan, so the stakes of giving up power are not as large as they could be. Additionally, it may be sensible for Erdoğan to gracefully accept an unfavourable election outcome; the opposition coalition might not stay together for long and another election may be just around the corner.
A 20% chance is not negligible, however, especially given that forecasters think this carries the risk of a subsequent military intervention. Tomorrow we will share our forecasters’ views on how things will look under Kılıçdaroğlu versus Erdoğan, including the chances of a military coup before the end of this year.