How the earthquakes affect the Turkish election
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Published 16 March 2023
In the middle of a deep economic crisis, Turkish president Erdogan faces his toughest electoral challenge in 20 years. Political anger is brewing, opposition parties have teamed up against him, and on top of that, he faces strong criticism over his handling of the destructive earthquakes that hit Southern Turkey last month. Does the opposition stand a chance of dethroning Erdogan? And how did last month’s earthquakes affect the race?
Key Takeaways
The Turkish presidential election race is wide open. Erdogan is expected to finish first in round one, but if the opposition can rally behind opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu in the second round, his chances of winning are at least as good as Erdogan’s
The presidential elections are crucial for Turkey’s economy and democracy. An opposition victory appears to be Turkey’s best shot at medium-term economic recovery and preventing further democratic backsliding
It is likely that the earthquakes weakened Erdogan’s electoral position. Contrary to media consensus, we use poll matching to show a small but significant negative effect of the earthquakes on Erdogan’s poll performance
What is at stake?
Figure 1: Turkey + BRICS on the EIU Democracy Index over time
In Turkey’s closest presidential race in 20 years, the stakes could not be higher. At its core, the elections revolve around two things: democracy and the economy. To start with the former, over the last two decades, the country has transitioned from a competitive democracy to a political system showing more and more signs of autocratic rule. Its president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has used constitutional reforms to expand the power of the Turkish presidency and managed to obtain significant control over the media and the courts. Freedom House now officially classifies the country as ‘Not Free’, and it is highly questionable whether Turkey can still credibly be called a democracy (also see Figure 1 for the Economist’s Democracy Index).
To make matters worse, Turkey also faces spiking inflation and a very weak currency, the lira. In October last year, Turkey’s inflation rate reached a record 25-year high of 85.5%. Just two years ago, the Turkish lira traded at eight to the dollar - now, it’s at 19. Add to that the recent destructive earthquakes in Southern Turkey and Northern Syria (damage in Turkey estimated at ~$84 billion) and it is not hard to see why investor confidence in the Turkish economy is currently very low.
Amidst all of this political and economic turmoil, the Turkish presidential and parliamentary elections are set to take place on the 14th of May, 2023. For the first time in his 20 year rule, Erdogan faces a serious electoral challenge. The Nation Alliance, a big tent coalition of liberal, conservative, and nationalist opposition parties, has put forward Kemal Kilicdaroglu as their shared presidential candidate. 73 year old Kilicdaroglu is a retired bureaucrat and long-standing leader of the centre-left CHP. A consistent critic of Erdogan’s strongman rule, he has a reputation of being honest and trustworthy, if a bit colourless.
The stakes of the election are high: Kilicdaroglu represents a fundamental departure from Turkey under Erdogan. He has vowed to revoke many of Erdogan’s policy measures over the past years and, most strikingly, replace the current political system with an all-powerful president with a consensual form of parliamentary democracy. And although he has yet to produce a clear economic vision (a weakness of the ideologically diverse coalition), it is likely that Kilicdaroglu would halt Turkey’s resistance to an IMF bailout, instead seeking court aid packages from both the IMF and the World Bank. Lastly, a Kilicdaroglu presidency would also create a window of opportunity for a more pro-Western course. Although the candidate is critical of the 2016 EU-Turkey deal, he has signalled his willingness to foster a closer relationship with the EU and even resume accession talks.
What do the polls say?
Polling shows a tight race between Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu, who was chosen on the 6th of March to represent the CHP. The Turkish presidential electoral system closely resembles the French system. A candidate can win the presidency in the first round, as Erdogan has done in all elections since 2014, by securing 50% of the vote. If no candidate meets that condition, the two candidates with the highest vote share progress to a second round head-to-head run-off.
Figure 2: Line graph of Turkish presidential polling trends grouped by party affiliation. Dashed line marks the date of the 2023 earthquakes.
As Figure 2 shows, most polls currently show Erdogan falling short of the 50% mark by an average of seven percentage points. If that margin turns out to be correct, a second round run-off will take place between Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu. In that case, the odds of an Erdogan defeat will depend on his ability to rally first round non-Erdogan voters under his banner.
As part of the Nation Alliance’s backing, the leaders of centre-right IYI and a host of smaller parties have already committed to backing Kilicdaroglu in the run-off. What remains is convincing voters of the HDP, a left-wing party with a strong backing in Kurdish communities. So far, the Nation Alliance candidate has been hesitant to court these voters explicitly, fearing that that may open him up to attacks from Erdogan regarding the alleged relationship between HDP and the Kurdish PKK. The latter is considered a terrorist organisation by the Turkish government. However, it is currently unclear whether Kilicdaroglu will be able to beat Erdogan in a run-off without the HDP’s vote. If it comes to a second round, this dilemma will be the key dynamic to watch.
Did the earthquakes affect the race?
Figure 3: Line graph of Turkish presidential polling trends between 30 November 2022 and 13 March 2023. Dashed line marks the date of the 2023 earthquakes.
Natural disasters, like the earthquakes that hit Southern Turkey in early February, can have a real impact on electoral races. However, the direction of that effect varies on a case-by-case basis. Incumbents may see their poll numbers drop if they are blamed for poor preparation or relief efforts, but may also see their poll numbers tick up as a result of a spike in media coverage and their ability to project themselves as a unifying national figure. Alternatively, trends in both directions can take effect simultaneously whilst affecting different sub-groups of the population, effectively cancelling each other out in terms of electoral impact.
In Turkey, we may expect to see the effects go either way. On the one hand, Erdogan is a skilled public speaker and has used the earthquakes to try and present himself as a unifying national figure. However, his critics blame him and his government for poor enforcement of building regulations in the area, something that is likely to have made damages much worse than they needed to be. Relief efforts have also been painted as slow and ineffective.
At the moment of writing, analyst consensus appears to be that the earthquakers have not negatively affected Erdogan’s polling numbers. A recent Reuters analysis of post-earthquake polls concluded that despite widespread criticism, Erdogan and his AK Party “appear to have largely retained their support after last month’s earthquake.” Based on a simple look at polling trend lines (see Figure 3), this appears to be correct. Even when expanding our sample of polls and including parliamentary polls estimating AK Party support, the incumbents seem to either have retained their lead or may even have expanded it.
Figure 4: Polls of Erdogan/AKP vote share before and after the earthquake, matched by pollster and election type
However, this analysis is too simplistic. Turkish pollsters employ vastly different methodologies, resulting in relatively large ‘polling house effects’. Some pollsters consistently produce polls that make Erdogan seem either weaker or stronger, a likely artefact of their methodological approach. As a result, simply comparing a pre-earthquake polling average with a post-earthquake average does not tell us much. The mix of post-earthquake pollsters may simply be more pro-Erdogan than the mix of pre-earthquake pollsters. Instead, to estimate the ‘earthquake effect’, we need to compare apples to apples and compare estimates of the same pollster before and after the earthquakes.
Figure 4 shows the results of this ‘poll matching’ exercise. Aggregating these results, we find no evidence to suggest that Erdogan’s presidential polling has been affected by the earthquake. However, this part of the analysis is limited due to the small number of available polls. Strikingly, parliamentary polling does show an average decline of 1.1% in AKP polling since the earthquakes. The main opposition party CHP benefits most, with a 1.7% increase in their numbers, whilst the opposition as a whole gains 1.5%.
These findings highlight that there is reason to believe that the earthquake has negatively affected the incumbents’ popularity. The larger CHP gains also suggest that the CHP has been able to effectively rally some of the opposition vote under their banner. The effects are small, but in addition to existing political anger about the poor economic situation, this polling momentum could contribute to creating the perfect storm needed to end Erdogan’s 20 year rule.
