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Power shift in Turkey: how Erdogan alienates the youth

2020-09-23T10:14:41.658Z


A study shows how Recep Tayyip Erdogan is losing support, especially among young conservatives in Turkey. Does the president have to fear his re-election?


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President Erdogan is increasingly unpopular with Turkish youth

Photo: Adem Altan / AFP

Ali Demir was six years old when Recep Tayyip Erdogan came to power in Turkey in 2003.

He has never seen another head of government.

For a long time he didn't want to see anyone else.

"Erdogan was a leader for me. Strong. Religious. Powerful. A man who puts the country's interests above his own," he says.

Demir, who does not want to appear in this article by his real name for fear of repression, grew up in Konya, a stronghold of the Muslim conservative Erdogan party AKP in central Anatolia.

His parents are strictly religious.

They sent their son to a Koran school.

The family later moved to Istanbul.

Little changed in their worldview.

The Demirs were loyal Erdogan supporters, opposition members were infidels or terrorists for them.

Only Ali Demir himself slowly began to doubt the then prime minister and later president.

It all started, he says, when Erdogan took action against the president of the football club Fenerbahce, a rival, in 2011.

The turning point was reached when Erdogan put down the anti-government protests in Istanbul's Gezi Park in 2013.

Erdogan polarized Turkish society.

"He wants us all to think the same way."

Demir completed his political studies with top marks.

Nevertheless, he could not find a job during the economic crisis in Turkey.

He now works at the reception in a hotel.

Demir is still religious.

In the local elections in Istanbul in 2019, however, he voted for the Social Democrat and Erdogan opponent Ekrem Imamoglu.

He has concluded with the AKP.

"I wonder if these people pray to the same God as I do."

More and more young people in Turkey seem to be thinking like Demir.

For years the country has been divided into supporters and opponents of the president.

A survey by the US think tank Center for American Progress and the Turkish Metropoll Institute now indicates, however, that Erdogan is losing approval even among conservative Turks.

Within six months, the number of AKP supporters who describe themselves as "loyal" to Erdogan has fallen by ten percent to 66 percent.

More than a third of those surveyed said they could imagine a party leader other than Erdogan.

The approval ratings for the president have fallen, especially in the 18 to 29 age group.

This is bad news for the AKP.

Because it is precisely this group that will make up the largest bloc in the 2023 presidential election.

Religiousness has decreased and not increased in Turkey under Erdogan

Erdogan is the most powerful Turkish head of government since state founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

He has almost completely brought the party, the judiciary, the media and the security authorities under his control.

Nevertheless, he still draws legitimacy for his politics from elections. 

Erdogan was always able to justify controversial decisions by stating that he had the mandate of the citizens.

But that is increasingly difficult for him.

Last year his party lost the local elections in the country's three largest cities, Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir.

And according to surveys, he currently does not have the majority of over 50 percent nationwide that he needs to be re-elected president in 2023. 

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Young women protest against Erdogan's government in Istanbul

Photo: Yasin Akgul / AFP

Erdogan's success was based on the fact that he succeeded in uniting the right in Turkey, consisting of Islamists, nationalists, conservatives and economic liberals, behind him.

But this alliance is crumbling.

His former allies, ex-prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu and ex-foreign minister Ali Babacan, have founded their own conservative parties.

Nationalists are increasingly enthusiastic about Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu, who is said to want to inherit the president.

And the mayors of Ankara and Istanbul, Mansur Yavas and Ekrem Imamoglu, also attract former AKP voters.

Erdogan once promised to form a "pious generation".

But during his term of office, religiosity in Turkey decreased and not increased, as a study by the opinion research institute Konda showed in 2019.

According to this, the number of citizens who describe themselves as "religious" fell from 54 to 51 percent in the years from 2008 to 2018, only one in ten Turks consider themselves "deeply religious", in 2008 it was 77 percent .

Unlike their parents, young Turks do not remember the time before Erdogan.

For Ali Demir's generation, earlier AKP reforms such as the lifting of the headscarf ban at universities or the expansion of the health care system play a subordinate role.

They rate the government based on its current performance - and many believe that it is insufficient.

The Turkish economy has been in a crisis for years, which has been exacerbated by the corona pandemic.

At 9: 1, the lira is at an all-time low against the euro.

Every fourth Turk under the age of 25 is unemployed.

Erdogan's aggressive foreign policy has largely isolated Turkey internationally.

His promise that he would transform Turkey into a global power only sounds hollow to many Turks.

Even Erdogan's own people seem concerned that the president will lose touch with the realities of many people in the country.

A YouTube conversation between Erdogan and young voters in June ended in disaster: Government critics torpedoed the event by attacking Erdogan under the hashtag "OyMoyYok" ("You don't get my vote").

Icon: The mirror

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2020-09-23

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