ISTANBUL, March 30 ― Millions of Turks are voting today in municipal elections that will test the popularity of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, hurt by allegations of corruption and autocratic rule.
Erdogan says a victory for his Justice and Development Party, or AKP, will show the nation is more interested in improvements to the economy, health care and transport that his government has brought than in a scandal concocted by political enemies. The opposition says a shrink in Erdogan’s vote will mark the beginning of the end of his 12-year rule. The AKP won 39 per cent of the vote in the last municipal election in 2009, and 50 per cent in the 2011 parliamentary contest.
From politicians to voters, most Turks agree that the local vote hinges on Erdogan, even though national power isn’t at stake. A deluge of wiretapped recordings, some purportedly from police investigations, has flooded the Internet and called into question everything from the financial probity of Erdogan’s ministers and family and their religious piety, to the independence of a media browbeaten by the government and the integrity of Turkish foreign policy.
Blaming Gulen
Erdogan blames the leaks on supporters of US-based Islamist cleric Fethullah Gulen inside the police and judiciary. He has responded by firing prosecutors and police officials, and slapping bans on Twitter and YouTube.
If the AKP surpasses 40 per cent of the vote, “then Erdogan will likely feel emboldened in his confrontational behaviour,” said Anthony Skinner, head of analysis at Maplecroft, a UK- based global risk forecasting company. Voting started at 7 am in eastern Turkey. Western Turkey goes to the ballot boxes at 8 am.
Support for the premier may hold up because “recent political turbulence has yet to fully pull through in the economy and hit the electorate in the pocket,” Skinner said by e-mail. If Erdogan’s vote falls below 40 per cent, it may open fissures inside his own party, he said.
Market rally
In the last week before the vote, Turkish stocks, bonds and the lira all rallied; paring the losses they have posted since December 17 when the graft allegations became public. The benchmark equity index added 7 per cent in the week, though it’s still down 7.7 per cent since December 17. Yields on benchmark two-year bonds fell 69 basis points last week to 10.79 per cent, and the lira gained 2 per cent against the dollar.
Today’s vote opens an election season that will see a presidential ballot in August ― in which Erdogan may aspire to run ― followed by parliamentary elections by mid-2015.
Key races today include Istanbul, where Erdogan himself was mayor in the 1990s, and the capital Ankara. In both cities, opinion polls show that the AKP faces a tighter contest than in past elections.
Kurdish separatism
In southeast Turkey, Kurdish parties that favour moves toward regional autonomy are set to make gains. Erdogan has broken taboos by starting a dialogue with Kurdish militants who have been fighting the Turkish army for three decades. The separatists have warned that violence may flare again if Erdogan doesn’t take concrete measures to meet their demands soon after the local vote.
There are almost 53 million registered voters nationwide. They’ll cast at least four separate votes to elect mayors and members of city halls, as well as district or village officials, at more than 193,000 ballot boxes across the nation. Voting will end at 5 pm local time and unofficial initial results are expected to be announced within a few hours. Voter turnout was about 85 per cent in the 2009 local elections.
‘Market-Friendly’
Erdogan’s party has won every Turkish election since 2002, campaigning on a record of economic growth averaging more than 5 per cent a year. Economists have cut their growth forecasts for this year amid the political crisis and the slide of the lira, which led the central bank to raise interest rates in January. The median estimate in the latest Bloomberg survey of economists on March 27 was 2.2 per cent.
A vote of between 40 per cent and 45 per cent for Erdogan’s party would be “perceived by the majority of market players as the most market-friendly outcome,” Istanbul-based economist Yarkin Cebeci at JP Morgan Chase & Co. said in an e-mailed report on March 26.
“A weaker performance would increase the risk of early elections and the fragmentation of voter preferences, while a stronger performance could result in concerns over more authoritarian governance by the AKP,” Cebeci said. ― Bloomberg View
