After Being Hit By A Disaster, Erdogan Also Faced A Political Earthquake

JAKARTA - The Erdogan government has been hit by a lot of shocks at this time. In addition to the earthquake in Turkey, his government was shaken by a political earthquake.

This is like when an earthquake rocked Turkey on August 17, 1999, claiming 19,000 lives, the Turkish government at that time was heavily criticized by opposition and civilians who accused the government of Prime Minister BuleNT Ecevit of being slow to deal with the earthquake so that many people could not be saved.

At that time, Osman Durmus, who came from the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and formed a coalition with the government led by the Democratic Left Party (DSP), even denied foreign aid to overcome the impact of the 1999 earthquake.

Among those who vocally criticized the Ecevit government was Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who a year earlier served as mayor of Istanbul.

MHP is in a coalition with DSP, which won the most votes in the April 1999 legislative elections. This coalition also consists of the Indonesian Party (ANAP).

The bad response of the DSP-MHP coalition government brought the coalition to collapse in the 2002 election after a new force called the Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Erdogan won a landslide victory in the election.

AKP became an alternative force when most people were fed up with the DSP coalition government, including the result of their poor response to the impact of the 1999 earthquake.

After 24 years later in February this year, it was AKP and Erdogan's turn, who were accused of being slow to respond to the impact of the earthquake after a powerful earthquake of magnitude 7.8 on February 6, claimed far more victims than the 1999 earthquake victims.

Until this writing was published, the earthquake victims that occurred two weeks ago in Turkey and Syria had claimed more than 4,500 human lives.

One of Erdogan's slow reactions was not quickly deploying the military in the process of searching and rescuing earthquake victims.

Erdogan only deployed the military after announcing a state of emergency that the opposition sees as a sheath to suppress government enemies.

The relationship between AKP-Erdogan and the military itself is not really good, especially as a result of the 2016 failed coup involving a number of military officers and the movement led by the cleric Fethullah Gulen which has a broad influence among the educated, bureaucratic, military, and Turkish law enforcement systems.

The 2016 failed coup became an entry point for Erdogan to paralyze his political enemies, including to further marginalize the military from the political world that has occurred since the late 1990s.

Since Mustafa Kemal Attaturk took control of Turkey in 1923, the military has become a dominant force. They became loyal bodyguards for Turkish secularism.

However, after disbanding Prime Minister Necmetin Erbakan's government through a covert coup in 1997, military positions began to falter.

Relations with the military

Erbakan is the founder of a political Islam-oriented Refah Party (Welfare Party) and for that it is considered contrary to the strongly guarded secularism of the military.

In the 1999 elections when election participants were almost all secular parties, religious-based parties lay down after Refah was declared a banned party following Erbakan's 1997 overthrow.

The 1999 election launched DSP as the most voters but did not reach the majority, so it had to form a coalition. DSP then chose MHP and ANAP as coalition partners.

Four months after the ruling coalition government, a devastating earthquake rocked Turkey in August 1999.

The government is considered slow to deal with the impact of the earthquake by some, including Erdogan, who was then a member of the Virtue Party.

The government's performance was getting worse after Turkey was dragged into a recession that hit Europe in the early 2000s.

Public pressure on the Turkish government is getting even greater. At the same time, Erdogan and Abdullah Gul formed a party that gathered moderate Muslims.

They learned from the mistakes of the Refah Party by not highlighting the identity of political Islam which was considered "haram" by Turkish secularism. Erdogan's party formed by Erdogan is called the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

In the 2002 elections, coalition parties collapsed. On the other hand, AKP won absolutely because it became an antithesis for the approaches taken by the parties that were ruling Turkey.

Erdogan and AKP are also in power in Turkey. Erdogan was prime minister from March 14, 2003, to August 28, 2014, but since late August 2014 he was president of Turkey who at that time only served ceremonially and was elected by the legislative council.

At the end of his second term in 2017, Erdogan promoted a referendum to convert the parliamentary system into a presidential system so that the president's power became no longer just ceremonial.

A year later, Erdogan and AKP changed the parliamentary system to a presidential system where the term of office of the Turkish president was limited to two terms.

He then won the 2018 presidential election, but AKP lost the majority in parliament so he had to form a coalition. Ironically, AKP chose the MHP which Erdogan criticized during the 1999 earthquake.

A year after the 2018 election, AKP's popularity was eroded in Ankara and Istanbul after his representatives lost in the elections in the two cities. In fact, Ankara and Istanbul are places that breed AKP so that it becomes the most dominant political power in Turkey.

AKP lost after Turkey experienced a crisis triggered by a currency crisis due to the global financial crisis. This devastating economic crisis has had a negative impact on the lives of most Turkish citizens and was then used as ammunition by the opposition to further suppress Erdogan and AKP.

Towards the 2023 election

The devastating earthquake in the southern part of the country four years later, made the pressure on AKP and the Erdogan government even faster.

Erdogan is already in his second term as president of Turkey, but although the constitution states that the presidential term is limited to two terms, Erdogan is believed to be trying to run again.

Turkish constitutional law experts themselves think Erdogan can run again if the election is moved forward before his term ends in June this year.

Erdogan himself has conveyed the signal that the election will be pushed forward in May this year, giving rise to allegations that he is trying to run again as president of Turkey.

Meanwhile, his opponents, of the six opposition parties that formed opposition ranks, have yet to announce their presidential candidates. On the other hand, the Kurdish Party, which has the third most seats in the Turkish parliament, is likely to nominate its own candidate.

So far, the opposition has accused the presidential system of making Erdogan in power authoritarianly, triggering economic mismanagements that create crises, and creating civil rights and freedoms.

This highlight became even tougher after the February 6 earthquake. Moreover, Erdogan implemented a state of emergency which allowed him to take strategic policies without seeking parliamentary approval.

Even though the state of emergency was only applied in ten provinces affected by the earthquake, Erdogan was worried that he would be repressive, as after issuing an emergency due to the 2016 coup, it would be even greater.

Efforts to rule over closing Twitter are for example. This step was criticized by many circles, including parliament, for considering social media as the only way they could connect with earthquake victims and at the same time monitor the post-earthquake rehabilitation process.

From an economic point of view, the February 6 earthquake has made Turkey's gross domestic product in 2023 estimated to fall 1 percent.

For countries that are experiencing a crisis due to the global recession so that currencies experience such a deep devaluation, the projected GDP down due to this earthquake can make people's lives even more difficult.

Erdogan may be able to get out of all crisis flips like this. His expertise for more than 20 years leading Turkey could be a factor that led him to get the right formula that kept him out of crisis.

On the other hand, if blurred by power that is increasingly concentrated on him, Erdogan could suffer a similar fate to the Turkish regime which was displaced by the 1999 earthquake and the 2000s recession.

Two scenarios that attracted the world's attention, especially because Turkey's increasingly important position in the world map when it was led by Erdogan, will be answered in the mid-year Turkish elections.