Why Erdoğan Won … Again—2023 Turkish Elections Recap

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan speaks in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, at his 2023 inauguration into power for a third five-year term. Photo courtesy of The Presidential Press and Information Offices of Azerbaijan.

The Turkish people have been fearing for their country’s stability—and rightfully so. In the wake of an economic crisis, raging inflation, a dwindling domestic industry, and horrific earthquakes in southeast Turkey, the 2023 presidential election had the potential to significantly change Turkey’s status quo. But it didn’t. Instead, with 52 percent of the popular vote in a historic runoff election, incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan secured five more years in office. 

Undeniably, this was one of the most contentious elections to date. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the country’s main opposition party, the CHP (the Republican People’s Party), formed the Nation Alliance with five other political parties as an alternative to Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian rule. The alliance was formed as early as 2018, but it only announced Kılıçdaroğlu as their official candidate in March 2023 because of internal disagreements over their choice of nominee. Although Erdoğan’s new term marks over twenty years of domination in Turkish politics, his electoral win despite faulty economic policies and decreasing individual freedoms demonstrates that the fear of instability determines Turkish public opinion.

Why did Erdoğan win? Turkish domestic news is overwhelmingly trying to solve this question, and the answer goes beyond Erdoğan’s use of corrupt electoral practices. Though corruption did play a big role in the election, understanding Erdoğan’s continued appeal (and, conversely, the opposition’s inability to convince voters to trust their competence) is central to explaining his ultimate victory. Grasping Erdoğan’s strategy offers an important lesson for recognizing (and hopefully preventing) the tactics of populist and authoritarian leaders around the world.

The 2023 election cannot be assessed without first acknowledging the corruption involved in the process. As has been the case in preceding elections, there were numerous instances of miscounted ballots in the first round of voting, especially in the contested southeast region. The opposition cited numerous discrepancies between official ballot results and records from polling stations. The AKP (The Justice and Development Party) recalled ballot boxes that the opposition won to cast into doubt the public’s support for the opposition and disincentivize voters from casting ballots for the Nation Alliance during the runoff. 

Turkish news media was also a significant source of corruption in the 2023 election, and all the opposition groups have pointed their fingers at the absence of free news. According to Reporters Without Borders, the government controls 90 percent of Turkish media, regulating most information disseminated to the public. For instance, Erdoğan received 48 hours of official broadcasting on TRT Haber, Turkey’s most-watched news channel. Kılıçdaroğlu got only 32 minutes. This coverage discrepancy highlights the unfair conditions created by the government leading up to the elections. Although corruption is a prominent factor in analyzing the Turkish election, exclusively labeling it as the sole reason for Erdoğan’s success minimizes the election’s complexity.

In hindsight, political commentators note that Kılıçdaroğlu was the wrong choice for candidate of the Nation Alliance. The alliance was made up of six major opposition parties, including Kılıçdaroğlu’s CHP. Although praised for bringing together different factions to form a stronger opposition, the Nation Alliance’s makeup angered political leftists for its inclusion of Ahmet Davutoğlu and Ali Babacan, who both held positions in Erdoğan’s cabinet through the 2010s, including as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Davutoğlu was even Prime Minister until 2016. The internal division within the alliance surfaced during debates over which candidate to officially announce earlier in 2023. Meral Akşener, leader of the Good Party and a member of the alliance, preferred current Istanbul mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, who won against his AKP counterpart in the highly contentious 2019 election and had higher approval ratings than Kılıçdaroğlu. Her support was in part because Kılıçdaroğlu has led the CHP opposition since 2010 and faced off unsuccessfully against Erdoğan multiple times. In the end, Kılıçdaroğlu, as the leader of the Nation Alliance, failed to convince opponents of the AKP regime that his victory would secure long-term peace and stability for the country. Consequently, the results of the election led many to critique the alliance’s decision to choose Kılıçdaroğlu as their frontrunner. 

Yet, in the months before the election, the majority of non-state media painted a different picture. Free media sources aimed to fill the limited news coverage created by the AKP’s domination over the free press by disseminating hope for change and heightening the people’s trust through polling data. Even before the opposition officially announced Kılıçdaroğlu as its candidate, he was trailing ahead of Erdoğan in popularity votes. Although inaccurate polling is not exclusive to Turkey’s election, the media relied on boosting public opinion by focusing on polling statistics. The media was not entirely wrong. The 2023 election was the closest the country has gotten to removing Erdoğan from office. For the first time since Turkey adopted a presidential system in 2017, Erdoğan was unable to surpass the 50-percent-plus-one threshold required to forgo a runoff election. However, in the lead-up to the election, the media’s focus on polls created a false sense of hope in the public. Despite polls demonstrating that Kılıçdaroğlu’s popular support surpassed Erdoğan’s by a margin of over 2.5 percent in April 2023, Erdoğan’s victory was secured by 4.36 percent. The polls were also blindsided by a third candidate in the first round of voting: Sinan Oğan. An alt-right nationalist, Oğan was polling at 2 to 4 percent but received 5.7 percent of the vote on May 14, 2023. Not only did this result reveal the rising nationalist and Islamist tendencies among the Turkish electorate, but it further demonstrated how politicized polls overestimated the Nation Alliance without sufficiently warning the public of its shortcomings.

At the onset of their electoral loss, many liberal constituents who opposed Erdoğan’s win initially looked at another explanation: a new voting class. Erdoğan, in an effort to strengthen his international image as a champion for Muslims around the world, passed a series of reforms to facilitate citizenship for the millions of Syrian refugees who entered the country after the start of the Syrian Civil War. Additionally, in 2019, Erdoğan changed the citizenship process by decreasing the amount of money required to obtain citizenship through property investment from $1 million to $250,000. This led to an influx in citizenship applications, especially from Middle Eastern investors. Although this was partially a ploy to increase Turkey’s immediate revenue without investing in long-term infrastructure or industrial expansion, it also augmented Erdoğan’s voter base. New Turks overwhelmingly voted for Erdoğan, citing his generous position on immigration and his appeal to religious commonality. Furthermore, public statements from the opposition calling for decreased migration increased fears of deportation, thus reinforcing Erdoğan’s loyal voter base.

Erdoğan further employed economic incentives to secure votes. In the months leading up to the election, Erdoğan artificially stabilized the Turkish lira by selling $17 billion of foreign currency and gold reserves. After his victory in May, the lira immediately dropped. Additionally, Turkey’s new monetary policy since Erdoğan’s election is to increase interest rates to combat the lira’s devaluation, a strategy Erdoğan vocally opposed for years and in his political platform. These two developments demonstrate how Erdoğan’s primary goal was not to address the country’s failing economy, but instead, to secure his position in power.

Among the contributors to Erdoğan’s success was fear. Erdoğan often relied on the narrative that conservative Islamists were victimized by the state since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of the Turkish Republic, adopted secularism as one of the core principles of the country. Although Erdoğan’s victimization of his conservative voters is by no means an accurate depiction, he built on the increasing fear of marginalization as a central tactic of his populist governance. For instance, Erdoğan personally broadcasted an admittedly false video that linked Kılıçdaroğlu with the PKK, a Kurdish militant group in southeast Turkey. Recognized as a terrorist organization, these claims associating the opposition leader with the PKK created a sense of uncertainty if Erdoğan lost the election. This fear contributed to why Erdoğan’s support was unexpectedly high in the southeast, the same region that had been hit by a fatal earthquake earlier this year.

Despite Erdoğan’s win and his sustained support base, Turkey’s future is unclear, though people voted for stability and Erdoğan’s established status quo. Yet, with no clear heir to the AKP’s power because Erdoğan has ostracized any possible successors to ensure his political power, associating the country’s stability with Erdoğan himself spells out dangerous implications for the dwindling “democracy.” Before making predictions about the next presidential election in 2028, Turkey needs to take the opportunity to reflect on the opposition’s failures. Instead of attributing the loss to instances of electoral corruption, albeit prevalent throughout the country, the Nation Alliance should acknowledge its inability to convince the electorate of Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy. Erdoğan used his power to skew economic conditions in his favor to increase his support from new citizens, including Syrian refugees and wealthy investors that benefit from his rule compared to alternatives. Significant national and international opposition to Erdoğan’s governance and human rights abuses aside, he has indoctrinated a deep-rooted sense of fear of reforming his established system. As millions of Turks mourn the loss of hope at the failed chance to end Erdoğan’s rule, Erdoğan secures his seat in his presidential “palace” in Ankara and the revered title of President of the Turkish Republic.

Ada Baser (GS ’24) is a staff writer for CPR studying political science. Her main interests include U.S.-Middle Eastern relations, water governance, and transitional justice.