2023-05-30 02:24:41
The image puzzled as much as it questioned. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, re-elected on Sunday with more than 52% of the vote for a new 5-year term at the head of the country, was seen leaving his polling station distributing 200-pound notes (9.29 euros) to residents present in the vicinity of the premises.
A practice which contrasts with the modalities that we know in France, where this practice could be related to corruption and where the candidates for the elections are compelled to a reserve period in the 48 hours which precede the ballot and cannot take speak publicly only after the closing of the polling stations. However, in Türkiye, it is not illegal.
To understand how this is possible, one must first watch the video in detail. If the crowd seems massed around the Turkish president, there are above all little girls in the front row. And it is to them that Recep Tayyip Erdogan hands out tickets, not to adults, whose hands he just shakes.
He had already done the same during the first round of the Turkish presidential election on May 14, as relayed by our colleagues from Release. “Even before the first round, he had distributed doll boxes”, underlines with the Parisian Didier Billion, deputy director of the Institute of international and strategic relations (Iris).
For adults, chess games and internet data
And there again, no scandal: “It is a very widespread practice throughout the Mediterranean basin, insists Didier Billion, it is not uncommon to see politicians practicing this type of action, which is the most clearer of clientelism”. It evokes a “shocking” practice in our Western European eyes, but “not an exceptional practice in the region”.
It is also very common to “give pocket money to the youngest on the occasion of holidays and important occasions”, explains the Parisian journalist Ragıp Soylu, head of the Turkish office of the independent site Middle East Eye. “Recep Tayyip Erdogan just got into the habit of doing it wherever he goes. »
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According to him, if Kemal Kilicdaroglu did the same, it wouldn’t cause a scandal in the country either. “Some might criticize him because he represents a more modern face of politics, while Erdogan is more traditional,” he acknowledges, but this remains within the framework of a commonly accepted tradition.
“In his entourage, this type of practice is completely condemned, that said, clientelism was not invented by Erdogan”, adds Didier Billion. Indeed, there is no law prohibiting this type of practice. in Türkiye and even for opponents of Erdogan, it is not considered corruption, underlines Ragıp Soylu.
Images which therefore challenge from the French point of view, but which have nothing abnormal on the Turkish side. Adults generally do not receive money, as can be seen in the videos: “Erdogan could give money to adults if they asked for it, but there would have to be a valid reason. When he receives this type of request, he asks his advisers to take charge of the problem of the person concerned”, sums up the Turkish journalist. “It’s not exceptional, but it’s not a daily practice either,” recalls Didier Billion.
Instead, the Turkish President and his government are resorting to gifts to residents, like “tea or a game of chess”. Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu, for example, “offered up to 12 gigabytes of free Internet data to anyone who wanted it,” says Ragıp Soylu. In February, the presidential party AKP had also organized distributions of bags of coal in the municipalities that it leads, “to the poorest populations, this also stems from a clientelist policy”. And there again, a leaflet in favor of the AKP was often attached or distributed with the bag, notes Didier Billion.
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