2023-05-12 17:49:51
The election too many? For four days, struck down by an intestinal virus, he stopped his meetings during the most crucial electoral campaign of his political career, appearing only by videoconference, his features drawn. After twenty years in power, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 69, is tired. But don’t give up. As soon as he was back on his feet, he resumed the frantic race of rallies across the country, while, for the first time in years, another candidate could take his place: Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) , 74 years old.
What is the recipe for the extraordinary longevity of Recep Tayyip Erdogan at the head of this great country of 85 million inhabitants (in 2020) located between East and West? And how did this herald of a moderate political Islam, respectful in its beginnings of the rules of democracy and human rights, become an autocrat practicing a personal exercise of power in defiance of justice and respect human rights ?
La mue du “Beckenbauer de Kasimpasa”
Is it the fear of seeing power escape him, he who conquered it by the force of his wrist? “Erdogan is a man of the people”, recalls Jean Marcou, university professor at Sciences Po Grenoble, specialist in Turkey. He was born in 1954 in the popular district of Kasimpasa in Istanbul, in a pious and modest family. His father, a ship’s captain on the Bosphorus, was from Rize, a city on the Black Sea, “a region among the most nationalist in the country and religiously traditionalist”continues Jean Marcou.
The father is tough, authoritarian and very conservative. He sends his son to study not in a secular school, but in a religious college (of the imam hatip type) where preachers are trained, a rare practice in Kemalist Turkey. His son has a passion, football. In the Istanbul club to which he belongs, he is “the Beckenbauer of Kasimpasa”. He has the stature. At 16, the club’s center-forward has already reached 1.85m. But there will be no question of football, so decided his father.
A revenge to take
A thwarted vocation and frustration. But also already a lot of ambition and desire to take revenge, “that of these neo-urbanites like him, established in Istanbul and who feel excluded from power because they do not belong to the elite”, continues Jean Marcou. Erdogan is working hard to climb the ladder. He became a militant of the Turkish Islamist movement, neoconservative, the Millî Görüs led by Necmettin Erbakan, himself influenced by the Muslim Brotherhood. The party would become Refah, the “Party of Prosperity”, then, in 2001, Erdogan co-founded the AKP, the Justice and Development Party, conservative, carrying a modernized political Islam which puts forward the fight against corruption and its attachment to democracy.
His first big victory, he won in 1994, at 40 years old. While the country is going through a catastrophic economic crisis, he is running for mayor of Istanbul with the banner of anti-corruption. He is elected, a consecration. His political career was launched and successes followed one another: Prime Minister from 2003 to 2014, he was elected President of the Republic, thanks to an amendment to the Constitution, a position he has held since 2014. “Erdogan is patientcontinues Jean Marcou. He took his time, almost ten years, to nibble away at the power of the army and to conquer all the cogs of power. »
An outstanding tribune
He is also one of the most charismatic Turkish politicians since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, and an outstanding tribune. “His speeches are extraordinarily beautiful. His relatives prepare notes for him but very quickly he throws them away and improvises in excellent Turkish, using literary references.explains political scientist Bayram Balci, director of the French Institute for Anatolian Studies (Ifea), researcher at Ceri-Sciences Po.
Erdogan is also a great pragmatist. In 1996, he let go, during an interview: “Democracy is like a tram: you get off when you reach the terminus. » For Samim Akgönül, political scientist and director of the Turkish studies department at the University of Strasbourg, “Erdogan’s most consistent aspect is his lack of consistency. Beyond principles and ideology, he was able to adapt to all situations, all contexts. He often turned his jacket around without giving the impression of deceiving his ideals”.
Between 2003 and 2007, the liberal opening
And to cite the example of its relationship with Europe: “He was the most European and liberal leader that Turkey has known and since 2017 he has been the most anti-European. » It is true that, in the meantime, Turkey has not completely fulfilled the specifications required by Brussels and that, on the European side, conservative leaders such as Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are dampening the hopes of the Turks.
Same swing on the Kurdish question: “Until 2011, he had a very liberal approach to it, new rights were recognized for the Kurds and, since 2011, he had an exclusively nationalist vision of it, continues the political scientist from the University of Strasbourg. Same thing with religion. With the arrival of the AKP, it was first approached in the context of individual freedoms with the authorization to wear the veil, and from 2013 it became more dogmatic with the domination of Sunni Islam. »
In the first decade following Erdogan’s rise to power, first as prime minister, Turkey is a growing, courted country with great ambitions. Between 2003 and 2007, it was the liberal opening, accompanied by a series of political reforms which contributed to the democratization of the country. But the failure of the Arab revolts put an end to the Turkish model of a political and democratic Islam, praised by Erdogan. During the protest movement in Gezi Square in 2013 in Istanbul, the government also responded with a repression of rare violence. But the tipping point came in 2015 with the retreat of the AKP in the legislative elections and simultaneously the entry of Russia into the Syrian conflict. President Erdogan sees in this war the threat of the creation of a Kurdish state on the border with Turkey.
Repressive shift
“He has changed a lot because of the Syrian crisis. He was obsessed with security issues, and from there adopted an authoritarian policy”notes Bayram Balci, who also blames “the international community, for its mismanagement of the Syrian crisis”.
After the failed coup of 2016, Erdogan took an even more repressive turn: purges in the army, bringing justice and universities into line, the press was muzzled, in addition to a degraded economic situation and the deadly earthquake of February 6 which darkens the future of the country. If the president keeps a base of faithful, the Turks are more and more numerous to think that the hour is with the change. But the reis will not be easily dethroned.
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From mayor to president
1994. Mayor of Istanbul until 1998.
2001. He founded with Abdullah Gül the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which obtained a landslide victory in the legislative elections the following year.
2003. Prime Minister, he amended the Constitution so that the Head of State was directly elected by the citizens.
2005. Opening of negotiations for accession to the European Union, bogged down for years.
2013. Millions are demanding Erdogan’s resignation after protesters violently cracked down on an urban development project in Taksim Square in Istanbul.
2014.After eleven years at the head of the government, Erdogan becomes the first president of the Republic of Turkey elected by direct universal suffrage.
2016. Coup attempt that strengthens his position and leads to massive purges.
2018. Re-elected to the presidency after an early election, he inaugurated a presidential regime.
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