Recep Tayyip Erdogan came out on top in the first round of the presidential election on Sunday May 14. He retains a majority in Parliament. The results are there, despite everything that seemed to threaten his victory: the February earthquake, massive inflation, a persistent financial crisis, the repression of freedoms, a good campaign by the opposition candidate Kemal Kiliçdaroglu and his allies.
This result is explained as the effect of a “democracy” established since the failed coup of 2016. It is repeated that Ankara is playing against its interests. One is tempted to think of the place of Turkey. Do we thus understand why 26 million Turks turned out to vote in favor of Erdogan, when everything seems to be going wrong, when many of them are unable to make ends meet and when the earthquake has illustrated the impasses in the governance of the Justice and Development Party (AKP)? No.
The ruling coalition came out on top because Erdogan was able to articulate his record with a projection. I saw it again on May 14 in Erzurum, in eastern Anatolia, where I was and where the president won more than two-thirds of the vote: the country has grown rich; everywhere roads and hospitals, everywhere parks and schools. But above all because the Islamist president knew how to embody one of the founding principles of Kemalism: “Happy is he who calls himself a Turk”adding to it the happiness of proclaiming oneself a Muslim.
Erdoganism is post-Kemalism. To want to be Western was to fear never to be enough. Wanting to join the EU at all costs meant taking the risk of never being accepted as a European and of being a little less Turkish by having to share national sovereignty. Of which act.
Erdoganism invites us to leave this quest for an impossible recognition to embrace the project of a sovereignty within reach. “Keep wanting what you have”, such is the key to happiness for Saint Augustine. For twenty years, Erdogan has been doing for his “aziz millet” – his dear people – the inventory of what he possesses. He gives it back its places of memory, remakes Hagia Sophia into a mosque, quotes the poets of Islam in his speeches. Abroad, he congratulates himself on having given the country back its name: no longer Turkey or Turkey in English, which makes you smile, but Türkiye. In a large part of the votes on Sunday, May 14, the feeling of renewed pride for twenty years prevailed over fears of an uncertain future.
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