Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a political survivor. For greater than 20 years, first as Turkey’s Prime Minister after which as its President, he has weaved his approach via the sorts of crises that finish the careers of even essentially the most resourceful and resilient of leaders: runaway inflation, a spiraling foreign money, the arrival of hundreds of thousands of refugees, a devastating earthquake, corruption accusations, mass protests, worldwide condemnation and strain, and a 2016 coup try.
Erdoğan has all the time been a shrewd populist who understands the significance of cultivating each the proper associates and the proper enemies. There are few stronger examples on the world stage of a pacesetter who sees no everlasting allies or rivals, solely the never-changing must win yet another election. And by dismantling lots of Turkey’s unbiased state establishments—the army, the courts, and the media—he’s amassed main energy even at occasions his reputation was very a lot in query.
Learn Extra: The Man Who May Beat Erdoğan
After stinging defeats in native elections in March for his ruling Justice and Growth (AK) get together, Erdoğan took a step again to course of his losses. It could be time, he concluded, to re-establish some long-strained ties. Although he spent years demonizing minority Kurds to type a helpful alliance with the far-right Nationalist Motion Celebration (MHP), Erdoğan has labored to make peace with the Kurdish insurgency in Turkey’s southeast. He’s now floating “normalization” talks with Özgür Özel, chief of the Republican Folks’s Celebration (CHP), a center-left outfit. He’s made good with President-elect Donald Trump to spice up economically helpful relations with the U.S. He’s additionally utilizing politically unpopular austerity measures to attempt to convey inflation below management. As soon as once more, Turkey’s longtime chief is proving unpredictable sufficient to frustrate an opposition trying to find weaknesses.
However Erdoğan has a sensible downside: Turkey’s structure permits Presidents simply two phrases. He has the posh of time to discover a resolution, as a result of Turkey’s subsequent presidential election is scheduled for Could 2028. He has two choices to attempt to cling on to energy past that date. The primary is to push parliament to name early elections, which might enable him to run as soon as extra earlier than the expiration of his present time period. The second could be to vary the nation’s structure.
Erdoğan’s desire is to rewrite the structure. That’s an strategy he already took in 2017 when he pushed a profitable referendum that remodeled Turkey from a parliamentary system right into a presidential republic, cementing his grip on energy. He’ll promote the change to voters as a clear break from a troubled previous, permitting him to proceed to guide the Turkish Republic into its second century. Not content material to erase the time period restrict, he additionally hopes to make it simpler to win a 3rd time period by permitting a candidate to get elected and not using a majority of votes within the occasion of a second-round runoff.
However he faces an impediment. His alliance with the MHP doesn’t supply anyplace near the variety of parliamentary seats to even name a constitutional referendum, a lot much less to make the specified adjustments with out one. For this reason, even because the CHP resists Erdoğan’s name for a brand new partnership, he’s once more turning to the Kurds who supported him early in his profession with a suggestion to play peacemaker. Assist from the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Celebration (DEM) would possibly give him sufficient votes for the referendum.
There isn’t any assure this plan can work. Reducing a cope with Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed chief of the militant Kurdistan Staff’ Celebration (PKK), gained’t by itself finish a 40-year Kurdish insurgency—and any deal he makes with a broader group of Kurdish leaders will stay one terrorist assault away from blowing up Erdoğan’s plans.
No matter technique he chooses, there stays one fixed in Turkey’s politics: By no means wager towards the nation’s grasp political tactician.