Turkey’s prime minister Racep Tayyip Erdogan will win next month’s presidential elections and become the country’s first directly elected president, according to a panel of experts assembled at the Frontline Club on 22 July 2014.

The Frontline Club event was chaired by Murat Nisancioglu, the head of Turkish Service at BBC Global News and brought together Alexander Christie-Miller, an Istanbul-based freelance journalist and Turkey correspondent for Newsweek, The Times and Christian Science Monitor; Fadi Hakura, associate fellow at Chatham House; Sir David Reddaway, British ambassador to Turkey between 2009 and January 2014; and Karabekir Akkoyunlu, who recently completed a PhD about political change in Iran and Turkey at LSE.

The consensus of the panel was that Erdogan would win a convincing victory at the coming polls.

From left: Murat Nisancioglu, Karabekir Akkoyunlu, Sir David Reddaway, Alexander Christie-Miller and Fadi Hakura debate the prospects for Turkey’s forthcoming presidential poll. Photo by Richard Nield

“The elections are taking place at a critical time for Turkey, at a time of heightened socio-political tensions, and yet despite this fact it’s almost a dull election,” said Akkoyunlu.

“There’s very little excitement even compared to the local elections [earlier this year]. Perhaps it’s because the main opposition candidate hasn’t excited an opposition base. But probably the main reason is that Erdogan will prevail – the question is whether he wins in the first or the second round.”

According to Reddaway, Erdogan and the party machine of his Justice and Development Party (AKP) made him a likely winner in the first round.

“Whether you like them or not they’re an extremely effective organisation and Erdogan is a formidable leader,” he said.

Erdogan continues to dominate Turkish politics even after the crackdown on protestors demonstrating against the closure of Gezi Park in late May and early June 2013, resulted in up to 8,000 casualties and at least eight deaths and tarnished the reputation of his government irrevocably.

His reputation has even survived his spectacular mishandling of the Soma mining disaster in May.

“You couldn’t conceive of a government handling a crisis worse in PR terms,” said Christie-Miller. “It’s a measure of how Erdogan and his government is effectively bullet-proof.”

Erdogan has given a voice to a segment of Turkish society that had felt unrepresented, said Christie-Miller, and he has also delivered economic advances.

“The government is still perceived to be doing a very good job on the economy,” he said. “Compared to 10 or 11 years ago, Turks are much better off.”

But although Erdogan’s electoral success is assured, there may be tougher times ahead for Turkey, according to the panel.

Damaged brand

Erdogan’s domestic failings, coupled with the turn of external events, have already had an impact on Turkey’s standing overseas.

In 2011, the government was championing a policy of ‘zero problems’ with its neighbours, and Turkey was being held up as a possible model for regime changes in Tunisia and Egypt. But Egypt’s counter-revolution, the Gezi Park protests and Turkey’s powerlessness to influence the Syria crisis has meant that this is little more than a memory.

“It was an admirable aspiration, but you couldn’t pick a more difficult neighbourhood to have zero problems with,” said Reddaway. “The Turkish brand has taken a huge knock because of Gezi, and not being Arabs is a huge impediment. To be an active leader of the region was never going to work for a non-Arab country.”

“Each time Turkey has been held up as role model it has failed,” said Akkoyunlu. “There was popular support for Erdogan in the region, but with the fall of the Muslim Brotherhood and the turning of the tide in Syria that has pretty much lost its tinge.

“Since 2011 with the Arab Spring and [events] in Turkey, something changed. I would call it hubris. There was a feeling that its rise was unstoppable, but events really pulled the rug away and brought us to where we are now.”

Deteriorating media freedom

Media freedom is also being eroded, said Christie-Miller.

“It’s going to get worse. In recent months the government has passed several laws curtailing internet freedom and which indirectly affect media freedom,” he said. “The Turkish government doesn’t mind having a media criticising it, it just doesn’t want a media criticising it on certain issues.

“It is able to maintain the impression that it has a free press, but the freedom to carry out independent reporting is dramatically decreasing.”

Party political representation in the media in the run-up to elections has also been heavily biased towards the government.

“In the run-up to the local and general elections the amount of space and time dedicated to the ruling party was 89% in the local elections, with 11% for the other three parties,” said Akkoyunlu. “This time just two minutes [of air time] has been given to the main opposition party and no time at all for the pro-Kurdish opposition.”

Economy crucial

Reddaway warned that the economy will remain crucial to Erdogan’s success.

“The economy is the key to the AKP’s success,” he said. “It has to be careful not to alienate foreign investors and drive Turkish investment out of the country.”

But the economy may not be plain sailing in the coming years.

“Turkey has had growth of 5.2% a year which is relatively easy because it has moved from a low income to a middle income country,” said. Hakura. “But to go from middle income to high income is a whole different dimension. In the past 30 years only five countries [have done this] and they are all from Southeast Asia.

“Turkey has entered a long period of economic stagnation with 2–4% growth, which is quite slow for the current phase of Turkey’s development.”

Erdogan’s legacy

Asked how he would advise the government of Turkey, Reddaway warned that the dominance of Erdogan and the AKP, which is expected to continue in the general elections in 2015, is itself something that the president apparent must guard against.

“One of the problems of successful politicians is that if you’ve won a series of elections it becomes harder and harder for people to give you advice you don’t want to hear.

“I would appeal to his sense of history. As we go towards 2023 [the 100-year anniversary of Turkey’s independence], I would want Erdogan to install a model that means that the baby doesn’t get chucked out with the bathwater when the AKP runs out of steam as it eventually will.”

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In the aftermath of victory for Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in recent presidential elections, Egypt’s government faces a huge challenge to unite a fragmented society behind difficult economic reforms, agreed a panel of experts speaking at the Frontline Club on 10 June 2014, chaired by Rasha Qandeel, presenter and journalist at BBC Arabic.

From left: Chaired by Rasha Qandeel, Dalia Abd Elhameed, Mohamed Yehia and Tarek Osman in conversation at the Frontline Club.

Al-Sisi was sworn in as president on 8 June after winning more than 90 per cent of the vote in elections at the end of May.

There are some positives to the outcome of the election, suggested Tarek Osman, a political economist focused on the Arab world.

“It is the first time since 2011 that the executive has command over the institutions of Egypt,” said Osman. “Wide sections of the Egyptian people are ecstatic about the election of Al-Sisi.”

But huge challenges remain.

“The challenges are great,” said Mohammed Yehia, head of multimedia output at the BBC’s Arabic Service. “There are the divisions [within society]; there’s the dire economic situation; there’s the low-level insurgency that we’ve seen in the Sinai and that has started to spread in other cities.”

Key to the challenge faced by the government is the lack of a broad consensus behind the president and the lack of support from younger members of the population, said Osman.

“The level of polarisation is unprecedented in the last 200 years, and this is seriously worrying,” he said. “Youth participation in the referendum in January was very low and my estimation is that youth participation in the presidential election was also very low.

“The level of consent right now is huge in certain segments [of society] but . . . in the decisive segment – young people – that level of consent is not high. You need to get that consent and if you don’t you have a real problem.

“Egypt will be in a state of fluidity for a number of years because the vast majority of Egyptians are young and disillusioned.”

Osman argued that the vast majority of Egyptians did not want to break the Egyptian republic in 2011, but simply to reform it. But Dalia Abd Elhameed, head of the gender programme at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, disagreed.

“People wanted fundamental political change,” said Elhameed. “I don’t think that people just want reform, because corruption is embedded.

“I don’t think stability can be accomplished without addressing the most serious issue, which is restructuring the ministry of interior. The police are coming back with much more grave violations and a growing fascist tone. They have popular support, but I think this will fade away.”

The Egyptian military’s return to the forefront of Egyptian politics is a major setback for the 2011 revolution, argued Elhameed.

“We’re definitely at the moment of defeat with the huge militarisation in Egypt,” she said. “We thought so when the Muslim Brotherhood took over the country, but we were in the street. Now we don’t have access to the street.

“The current government is behaving in the same way that Mubarak used to do. They would give us some rights-based laws and a good constitution, but with no implementation and with complete impunity for the police and the military.

“Al-Sisi said that he wants to meet the youth of January 25, but he can’t find them. Of course he can’t find them, because most of them are behind bars. So many of the iconic figures of January 25 are behind bars now.”

The authoritarian behaviour of the state is undermining the rights of women in Egypt, said Elhameed.

“You can’t look at the behaviour of the masses without looking at the state,” she said. “The state is a perpetrator of sexual violence. Police commit rape in police stations. It’s a sign to society that sexual violence can pass unpunished.”

Despite the erosion of much of the hopes of the 2011 uprising, some positives remain, suggested Yehia.

“The mentality has changed since 2011,” he said. “People now have a voice, and they became an important factor to be considered in any policy-making decision. We used to say that 2011 broke the wall of silence, and in that sense there is a new beginning.

“New media is becoming very influential to the point that it’s starting to make the media machine irrelevant to large sections of the people.”

The most pressing concern for the government is to confront the huge economic challenges faced by the country.

“Al-Sisi has indicated that he is willing to take the painful steps to fix the economy that his predecessors shied away from,” said Yehia. “But to what extent will the people of Egypt be willing to wait before they see the fruits of this?”

According to Yehia, urgent reforms to the state’s burdensome system of subsidies could deepen societal issues unless they are handled carefully.

“If the current government learns from the mistakes of the Muslim Brotherhood in being more inclusive and allowing space for young people who are disillusioned to be a player in the scene there could be a bright opening,” he said. “But if [it] adopts an authoritarian line we could see another wave of revolt.”

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