Bigger Victory Margin for the Incumbent AKP
After another big victory, AKP once again claimed its dominant place in Turkish politics. Despite the liberal concerns over civil liberties and the secularist concerns over Turkish secular lifestyle, half of the voters thought that AKP was their best choice among more than dozen parties in the elections. After impressing these voters with their two term performance since 2002, Erdogan and company will face serious challenges right after this election victory. How they respond to these challenges will shape the athmosphere of Turkish politics.
Overheating economy
The most immediate concern is the overheating Turkish economy. After experiencing a significant boom last year, Turkey is facing the twin trouble of accelerating trade deficit and inflation. Both of these problems stemmed from expansion of domestic credit to fight the recession. Although the Turkish Central Bank increased the reserve requirements for the commercial banks earlier this year, their interest rate policy stayed largely expansionary. With almost 0 real interest rates, banks had no trouble increasing their reserves and lending more. The most troublesome lending was lending to consumers, as they preferred to buy more imported goods. Increasing domestic inflation partly caused by rising energy prices, partly by increased domestic credit, became another sign of overheating. As global economy has its own concerns, Turkey can’t rely on capital flows to finance its current account deficit for too long. Macroeconomic policy should be on top of the agenda for prime minister Erdogan.
Unemployment and Population Growth
There are also longer term economic worries awaiting the new AKP cabinet. Unemployment is too high after the recession added 1million new members to the sad army of unemployed. As more young people enter the labor force in upcoming years, AKP needs to find ways to create more and more jobs to limit the unemployment. 3 children per family recommendation of Erdogan may be AKP’s suicidal policy, as the Turkish population grows and unemloyment problem becomes more severe.
Trade deficit has also longer term aspects, because growth in Turkish economy always foments more imports. Turkey needs export based growth and more domestic energy sources.
Constitutional Reform
Most pre-election discussion was on the constitutional reform in Turkey. Most parties agree on the idea that Turkey needs a new civil constitution that is different from the miltary constitution of 1982. However, had AKP won 367 seats in the parliament, it would have the power to reform the constitution unilaterally. Given the autocratic tendencies of AKP such as trying to soften the separation of powers to strengthen the executive, a unilateral AKP constitution could be Russian Roulette for the already struggling Turkish liberal democracy. Mainly for this reason The Economist supported the social-democrat opposition party, namely Republican People’s Party (CHP). However the election results gave 326 seats to AKP, which is not enough even to amend the constitution through a referendum. Erdogan acknowledged this result as a public call for consensus building before drafting the new constitution. With Nationalist Front’s strict red lines, CHP’s secularist and liberal concerns and Kurdish MP’s call for education in native language, building this consensus will be hard. We hope that the result will be a constitution that protects civil liberties, and maintains the system of separated powers.
Libya and Syria
Erdogan needs to reassess its stance regarding Syria and Libya if he considers Turkey as a regional power. So far, Turkey did hardly nothing more than kindly observing the Arab Spring. However, as the most advanced democracy in the Middle East region, there are many opportunities. Turkey needs to reaffirm its liberal and democratic stance against the despots in the region, that are supported by the oil-rich Arab monarchies. A solid liberal stance can be Erdogan’s last chance to reject the claims that he is a superficial supporter of democracy in Turkey.