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(May 25, 2023 / JNS)

It is incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s biggest political challenge since taking office in 2014, following a landslide victory in Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections last week.

Michael Doran, senior fellow and director of the Center for Middle East Peace and Security at the Hudson Institute, said Erdogan’s re-election is guaranteed. In fact, he called him the most successful leader after Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey.

Erdogan is part of a group of leaders representing “popular nationalism”, including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Doran told JNS.

“In their view, they want to protect national traditions from international elites who want to transcend and transform the country,” Doran said.

Erdogan has leaned toward nationalism and away from Islam over the years for a variety of reasons, including the 2015 alliance between the AKP (Erdogan’s Party) and the Islamist-inspired National Party, MHP. He supported the independent candidate Sinan Öğan Erdoğan, who received only 5.17% of the vote, which reinforces this trend, Doran said.

“They want to protect national traditions from the international elite, in their opinion, they want to cross and change the country.”

Michael Doran, senior fellow and director of the Middle East Peace and Security Center at the Hudson Institute

“Besides the party alliance, these include an official agreement between Erdogan and the security services and military affairs, according to which foreign and security policy, with the exception of a few portfolios, is not in Erdogan’s hands,” Doran said. “This change to Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel, as well as the withdrawal from the Muslim Brotherhood, is part of that arrangement, and will not change because of the election.”

Turkish political experts told JNS last week that Erdogan’s victory could lead to an improvement in Turkish-Israeli relations. But other experts say the re-election of the autocratic leader, who supported Hamas, will embolden Islamists in Turkey.

“Hezbollah Terrorism Will Be Active Again”.

Mehmet Efe Kaman is an assistant professor of political science at Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada, and an expert on Turkish politics. He told JNS that Erdogan’s alignment with the Independent Affairs Party (HÜDA PAR) would be a boon for Muslims in the country.

“HÜDA PAR joining Erdoğan’s coalition is undoubtedly in line with the Islamic-nationalist direction of the current regime,” he told JNS.

The Sunni Islamist party is the legal wing of the Hezbollah terrorist group operating in Turkey. The latter is not linked to Hezbollah in Lebanon, Uzai Bulut, a Turkish journalist and researcher at the Philos Project, told JNS.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Turkish election
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan By August 2022 Credit: Wikimedia Commons.

“Many people joined Erdoğan’s election rallies waving the HÜDA PAR flag,” she said.

Kaman added that the Free Cause Party joining Erdogan’s coalition is a “worrisome development that could lead to Hezbollah’s resurgence of terrorism in Turkish Kurdistan.”

Doran disagreed with the assessment that HÜDA PAR failed to impose ideology on Erdogan.

“HÜDA PAR is a Kurdish Islamic party. “It is better understood as a way for non-PKK Kurds to express their hatred for the PKK, not as an Islamic party to impose a strong ideological orientation on Erdogan.” “PKK is officially banned in Turkey, but HDP [the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party] He gets support from sympathetic voters.

The PKK is the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, a militant Marxist-Leninist Kurdish separatist group designated as a terrorist organization by Turkey and the United States.

‘He used Islam as an ideology’

Kaman said that if Erdogan is re-elected, he will continue his strong support for Islamist groups outside the country, including Hamas in the Gaza Strip and al-Qaeda-linked groups. He pointed out that Erdogan sympathizes with an ideology that reflects anti-Semitic, anti-Western, Islamist and jihadist elements.

“Erdogan will continue to support terrorist organizations such as Hamas, considering that he has hosted Hamas leaders in Turkey in the past, seeing such organizations as ‘Muslim brothers’ at every opportunity,” Kaman said.

If re-elected, Erdogan is predicted to continue his support for the Islamic State (ISIS) and Syria’s al-Nusra Front.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in March 2023. Credit: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi via Wikimedia Commons.

“Turkey has a regime that has adopted and used Islam as an ideology. “That is why organizations like Hamas always support a dictator like Erdogan,” Kaman said. “Erdogan and his ideology seriously threaten Turkey, the Middle East and world peace.”

Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Council – abbreviated as “YSK” in Turkish – announced on May 15 that Erdogan had won 49.51% of the vote. Turkish law requires a candidate to score more than 50%, so a runoff is scheduled for May 28. Kemal Kilisadaroglu came close with 44.88%.

Experts predict that Erdogan will win, possibly for another five years.

Bulut warned Erdogan that he would give too much political support to his cooperation with domestic Islamist groups such as Turkey’s Hezbollah.

In the year In the 1990s, Turkey’s Hezbollah kidnapped, tortured and killed many civilians in the country, she said. In the year In 2012, the Turkish acronym that also refers to the Arabic “Party of God” was renamed HÜDA PAR Political Party.

“As a result of this alliance, in the near future, true Hezbollah supporters will become members of the Turkish parliament,” Bulut predicted.

Erdogan’s victory will not change the leader’s relationship with Hamas in any way, and it will not have a major impact on Islamist groups inside and outside Turkey, Doran said.

“Ten years ago, Islam reached its peak in Turkey. Since 2015, Erdogan has been moving away from Islam and towards nationalism, Doran said.

Doran said the Turkish president’s support for the fight against the PKK (and the US’s tendency to support the Kurdish party) and Azerbaijan is not an Islamic issue in Turkey, but a nationalist one.

“The country is bigger than Erdogan. Regardless of the Islamic faith in his heart, he knows that voters, especially young voters, have other priorities.

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