Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may be facing the biggest political crisis since he came to power.
On April 1, the preliminary results of Turkey's local elections were released, and the mayors of its three most populous cities, Istanbul, the capital Ankara and Izmir, were all won by the largest opposition party, the Republican People's Party.
What is this concept?
Together, these three cities have a population of more than 26 million, which is about one-third of Turkey's total population. Nationally, the Republican People's Party (CHP) won 37.74 percent of the vote, while Erdoğan's AKP received only 35.49 percent of the vote.
This is also the first time since Erdogan came to power, the AKP's total vote share has lagged behind the Republican People's Party.
Erdogan, who has always been scheming, really can't laugh.
This exposes the deep divide between conservatives and secular factions in Turkey, Erdogan has always been a representative of conservative forces, and has been suppressing the development of left-wing forces since he came to power.
The Russian media said even more sharply: "This election has become a political earthquake and even a tsunami in Turkey." ”
As a political veteran who has been in power for more than 20 years, how did Erdogan gradually lose his ruling roots?
Can he still become the "father of the nation" of Turkey with great ambitions?
The forces behind Erdogan
This division within Turkey has existed since the founding of the country in 1923.
Turkey's predecessor, the Ottoman Empire, had a glorious history of 600 years, and then with the advent of the industrial age, it gradually lagged behind the West and became the "sick man of West Asia", which was completely sunk after World War I. Until the arrival of Kemal, the "macho man from the sky".
Kemal not only led his army to repel the invasion of the Entente, but also won the due benefits for the Turks at the Paris Peace Conference.
In 1923, Kemal established the Republic of Turkey and implemented a series of secularized reforms with heavy-handed means, transforming Turkey from an Islamic feudal monarchy to a secular capitalist state, and promoting the development of modernization.
Kemal is also known as the "Father of the Turkish Nation".
However, as a country with a history of more than 600 years of rise and fall, it is difficult to completely overturn the lifestyle and conservative ideas left over by the Ottoman Empire through the reform of one person.
It is clear that Kemal's successors have lived up to Kemal's expectations.
More seriously, they unleashed the political monster of the Kemal era of military dictatorship.
In 1971, 1980, and 1997, Turkey experienced three military coups, each under the banner of defending Kemal's secularism, but in fact to reshuffle the distribution of power at the top and to divide more money from government spending.
OYAK, a well-known Turkish military pension fund, is its representative.
The Turkish military's direct entry into business can lead to market disruption and hinder participation in business activities at the bottom. A growing number of Turkish people are disgusted with the government and are turning against it, and this rebellion is driving them to move closer to Islam.
It is against this background that Erdogan gained fame.
In April 1998, Erdoğan, then the mayor of Istanbul, recited an ancient Islamic fundamentalist poem during a public speech, only to have it before the secret police, hidden in the crowd, rushed to him and took him away.
And before being taken away, Erdogan shouted at the top of his voice: I haven't finished singing yet...
The faces of the secret police must have been darkened.
Erdogan was then charged with "anti-secular crimes" and spent 10 months in prison.
This was also a sensational news at the time, and interestingly, Erdogan also played music while in prison and released a personal record, which sold more than 1 million copies, and earned money while squatting.
For Erdogan, going to prison is no different from brushing up on qualifications, and as soon as he was released from prison, he showed his old edge again and united right-wingers from all walks of life to form the Justice and Development Party.
The gathering of conservative elites from various places soon gathered so much energy that the Turkish military did not dare to defy the world's condemnation and brutally suppress it as usual.
In November 2002, the AKP won parliamentary elections, and a year later, at the age of 49, Erdoğan became Turkey's prime minister, making him the highest position in the AKP, so he effectively held the supreme power in the country.
By 2014, Erdogan was elected president and became the rightful leader.
The Middle East "madman" jumping left and right
Erdogan has been in office for more than 20 years, making him the longest-serving president in Turkey's history.
And he also did three "big things" during his reign, each of which was jaw-dropping:
The first is to promote religion and hype Islamism.
Kemal's doctrine was completely forgotten and replaced by a resurgence of conservative ideas, such as women wearing headscarves, having at least children, limiting alcohol consumption, and so on.
The Turkish people seem to see the shadow of the Ottoman Empire, so Erdogan has a nickname, "Ethiopian Sultan".
The most typical example is his conversion of the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Istanbul from a museum to a mosque, which is not only a rebellion against Kemal's nearly 100-year-old decree, but also a unanimous condemnation from the entire Western world.
After all, before 1453, Hagia Sophia belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire.
Second, Erdogan has developed a set of "Erdogan economics" that is completely contrary to the mainstream economy.
Even before Erdoğan came to power, Turkey's inflation rate remained high due to excessive liberalism, excessive foreign debt, and the shock of the oil crisis.
Anyone with common sense in economics knows that interest rates should be raised at this time to reduce the amount of money circulating in the market, increase the cost of borrowing for businesses, and people will prefer to put their money in the bank rather than spend it indiscriminately, and the aggregate demand in the market will decrease, which will weaken inflation.
But Erdogan did the opposite, and the more inflation he had, the more he cut interest rates.
His economic philosophy is roughly like this: the lower the interest rate, the more people like to spend their money instead of putting it in the bank, and everyone spends money, and the demand for materials in various industries will increase.
What will be the result, the market will be full of goods to be sold, and inflation will naturally come down.
I'm sure many people don't understand this anymore, what kind of outrageous brain circuit is this?
Erdogan's own interpretation is based on Islamic teachings, saying: "Interest rates are the parents of the devil." ”
What's even more strange is that Erdogan's economics really worked.
Before the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in 2022, although Turkey's inflation rate has been between 10% and 20%, its economy does not look like it is about to collapse at all, but during the epidemic, GDP still rises steadily, which is rare in the world.
Why did the "Erdogan economics," which has been questioned so much, not bring Turkey to collapse? Is it Erdogan challenging the bottom line of the world economy, or is the world economy challenging Erdogan's bottom line, or is there no economic law at all?
These have become one of the difficult problems that economists in the world are puzzled with.
Hence the joke: Erdogan and modern economics, only one can live.
After talking about Erdogan's bizarre economic policy, let's talk about his even more bizarre foreign policy, which can be described in one word, that is, jumping left and right.
In 2011, the "Arab Spring" gave the "Ethiopian Sultan" an opportunity to re-intervene in the Middle East, and the United States wanted to use this opportunity to stir up trouble in the Middle East, but it was not willing to end up directly, so the United States and Turkey began to have frequent contacts out of geopolitical demands.
But in September 2016, factions within the Turkish military staged a coup against Erdoğan, who was still on vacation abroad. Putin, who got the news early, quickly sent him a letter, and Erdogan quickly returned home to put out the rebellion.
In the aftermath, Erdoğan accused the Obama administration of being behind the coup d'état, tearing up its face with the United States and instead running to step up ties with Russia.
It stands to reason that Russia and Turkey are also a pair of old enemies.
In the long run, there have been 12 Russian-Turkish wars in history, each of which has affected the national fortunes of the two countries for a long time.
More recently, in November 2015, Turkish-backed Syrian rebels openly shot down a Russian plane, much to Putin's annoyance, and then imposed a series of sanctions against Turkey.
After this "rapprochement", Turkey took the initiative to contact Russia and spent a huge amount of money to purchase the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system from Russia, and since then Russia has become Turkey's main arms buyer.
Turkey's meaning is very clear, it can be regarded as "reparation".
As a NATO country, it took the initiative to get close to Russia, and the faces of Western countries led by the United States were darkened. The United States has also angrily used the method of defaulting on its debts and refusing to refund Turkey's $1.4 billion deposit for F-35 fighter jets in order to exert pressure.
But Erdogan still insists on friendly relations with Russia and praises Putin as his "close friend."
And this is not the first time that Erdogan has jumped sideways from side to side, and it is not a big deal.
Turkey has always wanted to join the European Union, but how European countries see Turkey and how it feels that it does not look like a European country.
Only 3% of its land is in Europe, and its belief in Islam is generally different from that of European countries, and there are many territorial disputes between Turkey and EU member Greece, so the EU has not been willing to take Turkey to play.
Seeing this scene, Erdogan resorted to a "poisonous plan". He used refugees as a tool to blackmail EU countries, and as long as negotiations with the EU tend to break down, Erdogan declared that he would open the borders of refugees and allow them to seek refuge in Europe.
These European countries have always held a humanitarian shelf and are unwilling to bear the economic burden of accepting refugees, so every time Erdogan plays the refugee card, it will give the EU a headache.
However, it is not in the EU's interests to easily admit Turkey, and the United States does not want the EU to be close to Turkey, so Turkey's accession has been deadlocked until now.
Although Erdogan's performance in the international arena has been criticized, it has still enhanced Turkey's international influence to a certain extent, and in this regard, Erdogan has similar characteristics to India's Modi Laoxian.
And the two are more similar in that they may not be far from stepping down.
The outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine conflict has profoundly affected the trend of the international situation, making Turkey, which is heavily dependent on imports, very unbearable, and its inflation rate once rose to more than 80%, coupled with the collective withdrawal of foreign capital, the Turkish economy suffered a heavy blow last year.
At this level, Erdogan's re-election in 2023 is actually somewhat incredible.
It has to be said that the banner of nationalism is still effective in Turkey, and Erdogan's years of deep cultivation have also played a lot of roles.
The time has come to 2024, and we can see that the influence of the AKP is gradually declining, and the left-wing forces are returning in a new guise, which may be a harbinger.
The Turkish people have been dreaming of the Ottoman Empire for 20 years, and it is time to wake up.