A fridge, a kettle and a farm. Metaphors abound in Turkey’s troubling presidential election

“Demirtaş’ prison kettle has since become a symbol of free speech...” Ilgin Yorulmaz

 

On Sunday June 24 Turkish voters will go to the polls to elect a new president, with five other candidates challenging incumbent and race favourite Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for a five-year term.

 

As the sparks fly in a campaign taking place as the country enters its third year under emergency rule, undercurrents of political humor are floating atop a giant tide of political fear.

 

Ordinarily electoral campaigns should represent the promises and visions of a given candidate or party. But these are testing times for Turkish democracy, and this election is far from ordinary.

 

The country has now been under emergency rule for nearly 24 months following the failed coup attempt in July 2016, that the government attributed to the secret organization — dubbed the state within the state — led by President Erdoğan’s arch-rival Fethullah Gulen.

 

President Erdoğan, who is the candidate for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), has been in power since 2002, having served as premier for more than a decade before he was first elected president in 2014.

 

The two years following the botched coup d’etat attempt in July 2016 have been defined by a crackdown on political opposition, the free press and even social media. posts.

The civil service has been purged of perceived opponents, as has the military, the judiciary and academia. Wikipedia, the world’s largest crowdsourced online encyclopedia, is currently blocked inside the country.

 

Against this background, it is perhaps unsurprising Erdoğan’s rivals for the presidency are finding it difficult to make themselves heard by a near 60 million-strong electorate including some 1.5 million new voters who have just turned 18.

 

Erdoğan, in turn, has denied that the generous coverage his campaign has received from the national broadcaster and other pro-government mass media under the current state of emergency constitutes an advantage.

 

“Give me one example. Where and which campaign did the state of emergency block?” he asked this week, speaking in his hometown of Güneysu in Rize along Black Sea region of northern Turkey. He also hinted during the same appearance that the state of emergency may be lifted after the elections.

 

It is widely accepted that as the main newsmaker, President Erdoğan is determining the discourse surrounding the election.

 

However, his opponents have been quick to turn his words back on him. In addition to providing comic relief from a heavy political atmosphere, these exchanges offer important insights into what really matters in this election for Erdoğan, his three most significant opponents and the Turkish voters.

 

Emptying the fridge? Meet Erdoğan’s closest vote rival

 

The candidate Erdoğan would likely have to go head to head with in the event elections enter a second round is a physics teacher-turned-MP from Yalova, a city 94 kilometres from Istanbul in western Turkey.

 

Witty and charismatic, Muharrem Ince stresses his modest beginnings as a shepherd in his speeches, seemingly a deliberate attempt to distance himself from the secular and elitist base of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) that nominated him.

 

Ince is seen as a potentially unifying leader, but his performance among Kurdish voters, where CHP has historically been weak, remains to be seen.

 

Although lacking Erdoğan’s national profile, Ince’s electoral tactics have been impressive, notably exposing the incumbent’s penchant for gaffes and other unforced errors.

 

In one prominent example, Erdoğan used the growth in annual fridge purchases in Turkey since AKP came to power as an indicator of economic progress under his party. Ince wasted no time in snapping back, causing the Turkish word for fridge, buzdolabı, to trend on Turkish language Twitter:

#CANLI Cumhurbaşkanı Erdoğan Sakarya’da konuşuyor https://t.co/iTvGTXqTkH

— CNN Türk (@cnnturk) June 5, 2018

 

Erdoğan speaking at a rally in Sakarya, an industrial town 154 kilometres from Istanbul: “What was the number of fridges sold (back in 2002)? 1,088,000! How much has it risen to since then? 3,107,000! This means that (people aren’t) poor. If there’s a fridge in every household today — hallelujah — welfare must be everywhere.

 

İnce’den Erdoğan’a: “Buzdolabı vardı, içini sen boşalttın”https://t.co/tHy9nhWS9V pic.twitter.com/w7Ame2vU1F

— Cumhuriyet (@cumhuriyetgzt) June 6, 2018

 

Ince to Erdoğan: The fridge has been around for 40 years. It’s you who emptied it!

 

Ince’s retort was significant in that much of Erdoğan’s hope for a first-round victory rests on how the electorate assesses his  stewardship over the faltering economy. In the past, AKP could rely on significant backing from the business community in addition to the socially-conservative electoral base that forms the core of the party’s support.

 

But while Turkey’s GDP per capita has tripled to $10,883 in the 16 years AKP has been in power according to the latest official statistics, the economy has been vulnerable on many fronts. Moreover, the Turkish Lira’s steady depreciation against the US dollar has seen real incomes sag since the beginning of this year, while the party is regularly criticised for ploughing public money into expensive construction projects, where critics have complained corruption is rife.

 

The caged bird that still tweets

 

Perhaps the most unusual candidate in Turkey’s election is Selahattin Demirtaş, the co-leader and presidential candidate of the Kurdish-backed left-leaning People’s Democratic Party (HDP), who has been running his campaign from a prison cell.

 

Imprisoned without trial since May 2016, he was recently able to speak on the national broadcaster only once for the 10-minute time allotted to every candidate as a matter of course.

 

Nevertheless, he has engaged with voters via the  #DemirtaşaSoruyorum hashtag (#ImAskingDemirtaş) and occasionally manages to reach the outside world with tweets through an account administered by his lawyers.

 

Demirtaş’ Twitter activity is something prison officials can’t seem to wrap their heads around. In September 2017, guards searched his cell, hoping to find the computer that they assumed he was tweeting from.

 

“4- Odada twit bulunamadı doğal olarak. Çay için kettle vardı sadece, ondan da twit atılamayacağına kanaat getirildi.”

— Selahattin Demirtaş (@hdpDemirtaş) September 30, 2017

“Obviously, they couldn’t find a tweet in the cell. There was only a kettle for (making) tea, and they concluded that it couldn’t be used to tweet from.”

 

Demirtaş’ prison kettle has since become a symbol of free speech and is keeping fridges company on social media timelines ahead of the vote. In the same post-search tweet barrage Demirtaş mocked Erdoğan for being “afraid of the Twitter bird” and advised him “not to sow corn.”

 

At 45, Demirtaş is the youngest of all the six candidates running for presidency and by far the most adept in connecting with the youth. When Erdoğan questioned his “qualifications” for running in the vote given his incarceration, Dermitas shot back:

 

“Bak bu defa sana katılıyorum Erdoğan. Örneğin senin Cumhurbaşkanı adayı olabilmen için mutlaka üniversite diploman olması lazım, ama bugüne kadar diplomanı gören olmadı. Benim kriterlerim tamam da, asıl seninkiler şüpheli. pic.twitter.com/jlmLvIv6Sf”

— Selahattin Demirtaş (@hdpDemirtaş) June 14, 2018

 

“Look, this time I agree with you, Erdoğan. For example, you need to have a college diploma in order to be a candidate for the presidency. Yet, no one has seen yours so far. We understand my qualifications, it is your (qualifications) which are dubious.”

 

The she-wolf that won’t be tamed?

 

More ambiguous in terms of her relationship with the AKP and Erdoğan is Meral Akşener, a seasoned nationalist politician and former Interior Minister from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) who broke ranks sensationally to form the Good Party in October last year.

 

Nicknamed Asena (she-wolf), Aksener accuses Erdoğan and the AKP of having turned state agencies into a “farm” for his supporters. She has promised to release the said bodies into their natural habitat, should she be elected.

 

Aksener’s team of young activists have also been very effective online.

 

Recently, they bought ads on Google to promote free room at Erdoğan’s presidential palace — another publicly-funded project widely viewed as an extravagance — for every search involving the terms “AKP” and others.

 

Some are suspicious that Aksener is all howl and no bite, and that she may yet take a plum political position if Erdoğan — who needs nationalist backup in the parliament — wins as expected. Nevertheless, for the moment, the race’s only woman candidate is singing a different tune.

 

In her campaign song “Turn Your Face to the Sun”, young men and women decry the current situation in the country, complaining: “Everyone has turned mute / I miss speaking out.”

 

Source:

This article by Ilgin Yorulmaz originally appeared on Global Voices on June 20, 2018.

Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0)

 

& Image:

Demirtaş’ famed kettle – an artist’s impression.

Taken from Demirtaş’ official Instagram

 

 

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