The economic context of Turkey's June and November 2015 elections.

AuthorAlptekin, Huseyin

Introduction

The recent June 7th and November 1st general elections in Turkey let us witness a great change in the electoral decisions of the Turkish public in a time span as short as five months. The incumbent AK Party received 40.87 percent of the overall valid votes in the June elections--a 9 point fall compared to its performance in the previous general elections of 2011. With these results, the AK Party lost its privilege to form a single party government for the first time since 2002. The party had come to power with the 3 November 2002 general elections and had increased its votes for the following two general elections in 2007 and 2011. Hence, the June elections of 2015 were extraordinary for the public, who were used to seeing the AK Party's easy wins in terms of the distribution of parliamentary seats and the consolidation of its dominant party position over time. (1)

Following the June 2015 elections, the incumbent AK Party and the main opposition party CHP could not conclude their coalition negotiations success fully and the Parliament called for a snap election while an interim election government was formed to govern the country. Only five months after the June elections, the AK Party increased its votes to 49.5 percent in the snap elections of November 1st, 2015 by increasing its votes by 9 points with an increase of about five million votes. What caused such a radical shift in the electoral behavior of the voters? What led those five million voters to swing their votes and choose to vote for the AK Party?

This article compares the role of the economy in Turkey's June and November general elections. It argues that the two elections, in terms of the context in which they were carried out in and the determinants of their results, differ to a great extent with regard to the economic factor. This difference played a great role in the results of the June and November elections. In a nutshell, while the Turkish economy was generally on a downward trend in the atmosphere of the June elections, some indicators, such as current account balance, improved slightly, and some other indicators, such as the growth rate, improved beyond expectations before the November elections. Such improvements, together with the inability of the parties to form a coalition government in the interim period, were efficiently "spun" by the AK Party's campaign for the November elections, which portrayed the party as the only realistic choice for economic stability in the country. In other words, the AK Party was the first, if not the only, choice for voters who wanted to see a functioning government, which for conjectural reasons, had to be a single party government. As the AK Party significantly increased its emphasis on the economy (and further, focused more on improving citizens' individual economic situations and less on macroeconomic indicators), the economy is a significant explanatory factor for the party's loss of votes in the June elections and for its comeback in the November elections.

With regard to the differences between the two elections in terms of the economy, it should be noted first, that the economy was a central issue of the June elections (especially for the opposition parties) whereas its primacy was shadowed by rising security and identity-related issues preceding the November elections. (2) Second, while Turkey's macroeconomic indicators were largely unpromising prior to the June elections, the growth rate rose higher than expected soon before the November elections. The growth figures, with the help of the AK Party and mainstream media's presentation of them, revived the public's optimism regarding the AK Party's current economic performance. (3)

The final striking difference between these two elections with regard to the economy appeared in the electoral campaigns of the incumbent AK Party vis-a-vis the opposition parties. Prior to the June elections, the AK Party had resisted the appeal of the populist electoral promises of the opposition parties and, instead, had stressed financial discipline and budgetary concerns in its electoral campaign. In fact, the economy was not even at the center of the AK Party's electoral campaign for the June elections, as the party emphasized other issues that were not directly within the realm of economics. Most prominent among the AK Party's promises was the proposed shift to the presidential system from the country's long-standing parliamentary system. (4) Nevertheless, the party stayed quiet on this promise and turned back to the economy in its November electoral campaign. Moreover, the party even joined the opposition parties by not only stressing economic stability but also promising further redistributive policy changes that would favor low and middle income groups. I argue that these three differences between the June and November elections played a great role in the AK Party's electoral victory in November.

The Picture of the Turkish Economy Before the June and November Elections Respectively

The economy seems to be among the main determinants of June 7 electoral results, if not the primary one. It seems that (a) the erosion of the post-2001 Turkish economic miracle in the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, (b) the increasing emphasis of the opposition parties on the economy in their electoral campaigns, and in turn, (c) the electorate's search for new alternatives to the AK Party to improve Turkey's national and their own individual economic wellbeing significantly shaped the June 7 electoral results.

The post-2001 Turkish economy has often been referred to as a success story. (5) While one side of this story has to do with the radical changes in the economic structure of the country, the other side involves giant public investments and social policies that favor greater numbers of citizens than ever before. With regard to the structural changes, the once-fragile banking system, which was one of the major reasons behind Turkey's 2001 economic crisis, was reformed, together with the entire financial system of the country, after the AK Party assumed governance in late 2002.

While structural changes tend to be felt by the public over longer periods and only indirectly, the AK Party also carried out a number of policies that touched individual voters directly. A major example of these policies, as seen in Figure 1, was the expansion of social assistance programs both in kind and quantity during the AK Party years. Even the critics of AK Party's social assistance programs, such as conditional cash transfers, acknowledge the role of such programs in diminishing poverty. (6)

With regard to public investments, particularly in the national infrastructure, the AK Party governments could reach millions of voters, as these investments became concrete evidence for the AK Party's performance in the national development of the country. In the post-2002 period, Turkey's highway network has increased by more than 15,000 kilometers; the number of airports has doubled to 50 in the country, and finally, "new, upscale housing complexes and shopping malls seem to flank every major city." (8)

The housing venture was particularly important amongst the infrastructure projects. According to the State Planning Organization, (9) the construction sector, with over 200 sectors connected to it, is the locomotive engine of Turkey. (10) Besides its macroeconomic role in pushing the growth rates up, the construction sector was also important for maintaining the AK Party's electoral support base among low and middle income families. Turkey's Housing Development Administration (TOKI), which constructed 43,145 housing units in the 19 years prior to the AK Party's rise to power in 2002, completed the construction of half a million houses from 2002 to 2011. (11) Given that over 80 percent of TOKI's construction projects are designated for middle and low income groups with long-term, low-interest and affordable payment plans, (12) the AK Party's housing policy has benefited millions of people and had the chance of attracting those millions' votes. The question thus becomes, why didn't the positive electoral impact of these policies endure for the AK Party in the June 2015 elections?

Despite the AK Party's longstanding social assistance programs and giant infrastructure and construction projects, the 2008 global financial crisis, the shortage of hot money to float to the developing world, and changing domestic parameters that raised questions about long-term stability in Turkey, gave rise to a number of concerns over the future of the Turkish economy. Turkey prior to the June elections seemed to be caught in the middle income trap like many other countries at its level of economic development. (13) Turkey could not escape from the global slowdown of growth rates in the post-2008 period; estimates anticipate a growth rate slightly over 3 percent for 2015. (14) Given that the electorate tends to decide which party to vote for by looking at the recent past rather than contemplating longer periods, the 2015 growth data seems to be more striking when compared to the previous year. While Turkey's growth rate was 4.87 percent in the first quarter (January-March) of 2014, the figure fell to 2.5 for the same period of 2015 just before the June elections. (15) In other words, the overall electorate's freshest memory of the country's economic trajectory was filled with slowing growth rates, rather than the better growth figures of the preceding years. Even if growth rates seem to be abstract for ordinary citizens and many may not even follow the news on the recent growth data, the economic growth rate is palpable due to growing or shrinking industrial production, consumption, investments, etc. all of which make up the overall growth rate.

The slowing growth rate was not the only problematic indicator as the June elections approached. While Turkey's gross domestic product per capita...

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