Re-elected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may increase pressure on the opposition

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ruled Turkey for 20 years, won the presidential election for the third time on May 28 and received the right to rule the country for another five years. Even before the vote was summed up, the leaders of Russia, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Libya, Algeria, Hungary and Iran congratulated him on his victory. Vladimir Putin called these elections “clear evidence of the Turkish people’s support” for Erdogan’s efforts “to strengthen state sovereignty and pursue an independent, independent foreign policy” and attached great importance to the implementation of joint projects in the construction of the Akkuyu nuclear power plant and the creation of a gas hub on the territory of the Turkish state. Erdogan himself, after the victory, speaking to thousands of his supporters at the presidential complex in Ankara, proclaimed the onset of the “golden age of Turkey” and spoke about his program for the coming years.

He assured that one of his main priorities will be the fight against inflation, which, according to Turkstat, in April exceeded 43% on an annualized basis. The second task is to eliminate the consequences of the earthquake, which claimed more than 50,000 lives.

The head of state promised to implement a new economic model in the country, “facilitating the access of consumers, increasing the income of producers, and reducing the costs of farmers and livestock breeders.” Whether the government will adjust the soft pro-inflationary monetary policy in the country, Erdogan did not specify in his speech. Immediately after the announcement of Erdogan’s victory, the national currency fell by 0.5% and reached a record high of 20.05 lira per dollar as of the morning of May 29.

Leading Turkey out of the economic crisis will be Erdogan’s top priority in the next five years, Pavel Shlykov, Associate Professor at ISAA Moscow State University, believes. “First of all, he will deal with the problem of inflation and the breakthrough of Turkish industry to the international market. He repeatedly spoke about this, speaking to his supporters, ”the expert noted. But, according to Shlykov, it will be extremely difficult for the Turkish government to solve these problems while maintaining the dependence of the central bank on the government and maintaining a policy of low interest rates. “The Turkish president reiterates that he will not succumb to the pressure of the interest rate lobby and will continue his unconventional approach to monetary policy. Because of it, the situation in the country today is difficult: the reserves of the Central Bank are depleted after the distribution of generous campaign promises. The entire society will have to pay for populism, and the government will have to look for ways to adjust its approaches,” the expert believes.

At the same time, Erdogan is unlikely to start liberalizing the political system and is likely to continue repressive pressure on the opposition, Shlykov said. “The degree of control of the head of state over all branches of power in Turkey is quite high. The process of consolidating power around the president began with Erdogan coming to power and ended after the unsuccessful coup of 2016, the expert said. “Turkish courts finally lost their independence after the transition of the republic to a super-presidential system in 2017. Since then, the head of state has control over the personnel policy in the courts through the Supreme Council of Judges and Prosecutors dependent on him.”

In foreign policy, Erdogan in his speech focused on the geopolitical changes in the international order. “The balance of power in the world is changing, and against this background, Turkey will appear as a completely different country – stronger and more authoritative. We will intensify the fight against threats to national security, including in the fight against terrorism along the southern borders of Turkey,” Erdogan said.

In the near future, Ankara will go for some softening of relations with the West, says Andrey Chuprygin, senior lecturer at the HSE School of Oriental Studies, political scientist. “I expect that after the elections, the Turkish authorities will finally approve Sweden’s entry into NATO. I believe that negotiations are also intensifying on Turkey’s return to the American program for the joint production of fifth-generation F-35 fighters, ”the expert noted.

At the same time, Russian-Turkish relations will not undergo major changes, Chuprygin continues: “Russia is an extremely important country in terms of Turkey’s energy security. Nowhere does Ankara receive such an amount of energy resources as from our country. Therefore, the economic model of relations will not change.” At the same time, in the future, according to the expert, points of tension may arise between the two states in a number of regions. “Erdogan will probably try to activate Turkey’s influence in the Caucasus, and this will cause a clash of interests between Moscow and Ankara. Given the process of normalization of relations between Armenia and Azerbaijan, Turkey will try to play a more active role in regional politics,” Chuprygin believes. According to him, the policy in the Syrian direction will not change: Ankara will not withdraw its troops from Syria, at the same time it will continue to support the buffer zone in the north of this country. To this end, the authorities will gradually begin to populate this territory with Syrian refugees, the expert believes. The problem of Syrian displaced persons was one of the main election topics of the opposition in the second round. Immediately after the election, Erdogan said at a rally that about 600,000 refugees had left Turkey, and promised to return another 1 million Syrians to their homeland in the near future after the construction of houses was completed with the support of Turkish and Qatari companies. In total, according to the Turkish leader, 4 million displaced people live in the country, of which 3.5 million are Syrian citizens. “As long as there is a fairly high level of activity of militants from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party in Syria, with which the Turkish military has been fighting for several decades, Turkey will not leave the borders of the Arab state. The problem of the Kurds is a red line in Ankara’s Middle East strategy,” the expert concluded.