Vladimir Erdoğan: How The Turkish Premier Is Consolidating Power, Russia-Style

Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development party (AKP) has its candidate for Turkey’s presidency. To no one’s surprise, it’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

After winning three elections in a row, each with a larger majority, Erdoğan isn’t ready to retire from Turkish political life. Instead, Erdoğan has taken a page out of Vladimir Putin’s handbook. He appears to have learned from Russia’s president how to subvert an underdeveloped and fragile democracy, exploit its power base, and restructure the political system to serve his interests.

Having served his first two terms from 2000-2008, Putin was forced to vacate the presidency due to term limits. Unwilling to step away, Putin installed his close ally Dmitry Medvedev as president and claimed the post of prime minister for himself. And while Medvedev may have had more power constitutionally, it was clear to the world who was in charge over the next four years. Then, in 2012, Putin returned to an even longer presidency with at least another potential twelve years of power ahead of him, thanks to Medvedev’s constitutional amendment.

How Putin was able to maneuver this is now rather clear, particularly with the benefit of hindsight. He did so through manipulation of the system, limiting basic civil liberties, and stalking political opponents through tax related prosecution.

This sounds eerily familiar to Turks. Now notorious for sapping the potency of Turkish civil society, attacks against the freedom press, and targeting his rivals, Erdoğan as prime minister is undeniably Putinesque. His bid for the presidency takes it a step further. 

The president, as the head of state, is conventionally a symbolic figure in Turkey, while the prime minister, the head of government, holds the power. Considering his significant executive powers as prime minister, it seems curious why Erdoğan would want to change his position. After all, the only thing standing in the way of a fourth term as prime minister is the AKP’s internal charter (which sets the limit at three-terms). Erdoğan could have easily convinced his party to yield.

But Erdoğan has a different presidency in mind. In 2012, the AKP submitted a proposal to the parliament for a new presidential system in which the president would be both the head of state and government, usurping the executive powers of the current prime minister. Political difficulties led the AKP to drop the proposal, but the idea persisted. AKP officials, pointing to the new system in which Turkey will elect its president with popular vote for the first time, consistently remarked that a popularly elected president would have a very different meaning than one elected by parliament, as was done in the past.

It’s not hard to see where this is heading. In April, Erdoğan declared, “I will use all of the constitutional powers if I become president,” referring to summoning and heading cabinet meetings – powers that have been rarely used by presidents in the past. “We will elect Erdoğan to the presidential post in August, and come the 2015 general elections, the AKP will have enough parliamentary seats to change the Constitution and allow Mr. Erdoğan to serve his nation until 2023,” Mehmet Ali Sahin, deputy leader of the AKP said in June.

For many in Turkey, current President Abdullah Gul is widely expected to become Erdoğan’s Medvedev. In April, however, Gul has indicated that he would not be comfortable with such a system, saying,” I believe the Putin-Medvedev formula wouldn’t be a suitable model in Turkey.”

But Gul has already played a pivotal role as Erdoğan’s placeholder. In 2002 when the AKP first came to power, Erdoğan, the party's leader, was banned from participating in elections due to his past incarceration. Gul was chosen as prime minister. Amending the constitution to allow for Erdoğan’s political participation was among the first things that the AKP did after it took office and Erdoğan was soon elected into the parliament. Two days after his election, Gul resigned as prime minister, and Erdoğan took his place.

Even if Gul refuses to play the Medvedev role in 2015, any other incoming AKP prime minister is likely to embrace the system preferred by Erdoğan in light of his significant power. Indeed, the move appears to be inevitable.

Of course, the Turkish president is required by the constitution to be an independent figure, detached from any political affiliation. Should Erdoğan win the presidency, he would legally need to cut his ties to the AKP. However, Erdoğan seems to have no such intention. In a recent speech to his party leaders, Erdoğan stated: “I am here as your leader, you will not search for a new leader.”

Thus, the table is set for an extended reign of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan’s political re-structuring reflects that Turkey’s democracy, while older than Russia’s, is just as malleable. And in such democracies what ultimately drives the decisions of the electorate is stability. But without massive energy resources like Russia, Turkey’s stability remains dependent on foreign perception of the country and its leader. While Putin derives economic power through its abundance of energy, Turkey relies on its image abroad to attract the necessary investments for a growing economy. This could be Erdoğan’s Achilles Heel.

Merve Tahiroglu is a research associate at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, focusing on Turkey. Boris Zilberman is deputy director of congressional relations at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies where he also focuses on Russia.