Stability after all?

But occasional irregularities aside, Turkey’s presidential election result is uncontested, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has won another term with 52% of the vote, defeating Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

Erdoğan ran a negative campaign based on smearing his opponent. He turned Kılıçdaroğlu's unconditional support from the pro-Kurdish Green Left Party’s into an advantage by accusing his rival of cooperating with the Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK), which Turkey, the EU, and the United States deem a terrorist organization. Erdoğan also made use of disinformation, including through deepfake videos, and exploited his asymmetric access to media and public resources. He enjoyed an uneven playing field heavily tilted in his favor.

Kılıçdaroğlu ran in the first round of voting two weeks ago a positive campaign based on conciliatory messages and populist economic and social promises. Seeing that this would not ensure victory, he reverted to a nationalist and anti-refugee rhetoric in the runoff, but that, too, proved insufficient.

Kılıçdaroğlu will inevitably come under fire in his own party for choosing the wrong allies and from his allies for insisting on his own candidacy. He is unlikely to maintain his party leadership through the next presidential election. The opposition alliance he also led could collapse before it remerges in some other form. After all, nearly 50% of the Turkish electorate demonstrated a thirst for democracy and freedom. They will not give up.

Erdoğan, emerging as strong as ever from a competitive election, may breathe a sigh of relief, but it will be a brief one. He needs to manage a precarious economic situation of his own making. Last week, for the first time since 2002, the Turkish central bank’s net reserves dropped below zero. Turkey averted a pre-election currency crisis only due to assistance from Qatar, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates in the form of swap deals and postponed energy payments. Just before the runoff, Erdoğan admitted that “some Gulf states and others stocked money in our system. This is recent, and this relieved our central bank and market, even if for a short while." He added that “after [the] election, leaders of those countries will visit Turkey, or I will visit them to show gratitude.”

Turkey will avoid irritating the Kremlin and continue its delicate balancing act between Russia and the West concerning the war in Ukraine.

Current Turkish economic policy is unsustainable without international financial assistance and may be unsustainable even with it. Still, foreign policy is likely to prioritize continued assistance from countries that supported Erdoğan during the election. Turkey will avoid irritating the Kremlin and continue its delicate balancing act between Russia and the West concerning the war in Ukraine. Looking south, Ankara will also continue its rapprochement with Egypt to ensure warm relations with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and consider a rapprochement with neighboring Syria’s Assad regime. Meanwhile, the Turkish opposition’s eleventh-hour anti-refugee rhetoric may lead some in the EU to believe that Erdoğan, not the opposition, is the lesser of two evils. As long as new tensions with Greece do not reemerge, a more stable EU-Turkey relationship is in the cards, barring the bloc’s usual protests about Turkey’s democratic backsliding.

Despite the democratic backsliding, a matter of grave concern itself, Turkey will remain a critically important NATO ally whose main security partner is the United States.

More substantial changes can be expected in Ankara’s relationship with Washington. Before the election, the Biden administration adopted a cautious wait-and-see approach to avoid being accused of political interference. With voting over, this will change. Biden, like many other Western leaders, lost no time congratulating Erdoğan and is now likely to engage with him more directly. The United States will use this opportunity to press its points on Russian sanctions and NATO enlargement more strongly. Washington would be well advised in this process to offer Erdoğan an offramp from the S-400 crisis and work with him to overcome congressional resistance to Turkey’s request to purchase F-16s. Biden’s and Erdoğan’s unfolding policies on these issues could pivot the bilateral relationship in any direction.

Despite the democratic backsliding, a matter of grave concern itself, Turkey will remain a critically important NATO ally whose main security partner is the United States. And despite all the rhetoric about friendly regimes that can contribute to Turkey’s occasional need for short-term capital inflows, the EU will remain its main trading partner. The country cannot afford to lose these two anchors. Current circumstances may not allow Turkey to overcome all existing challenges with either, but relations can be stabilized, benefiting all the parties. Closer dialogue among leaders in Ankara, Brussels, and Washington will be key to getting even that far.