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bonpourlorient · 1 year ago

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Quick Thoughts About the Elections

Here are some disorganized thoughts I jotted down in the aftermath of the elections in Turkey. These aren’t in anyway authoritative. Just my hotcakes (with apologies to Sera).

1. It feels like shit.

Some have described what has taken place in Turkey over the last election cycle as a historic defeat. For my part I can only say that electoral losses, while familiar by now, also feel like shit. Talking to other friends from Turkey, especially people who I’ve organized with, been in political parties with, protested with, this feeling seems to rıng true for others.

There are immediate material reasons that account for why the results feel so shit – a new regime of austerity, broader immiseration, worsened conditions of exploitation, further policing and violence against migrants, an enduring violence against women and LGBTQ people, the continuation of the Turkish state’s war against the Kurdish freedom movement… This seems to be the immediate future of Turkish politics.

In addition to all of this, I think the sense of despair I see in the Turkish left is an acknowledgement, in affective terms, of the ongoing foreclosure of the capacity to act collectively. This suspension is especially frustrating because at various times over the past 20 years, multiples centers of power on the left have found ways to mobilize despite adverse conditions. The election was especially frustrating, in other words, because it immediately followed the mobilization that the left in Turkey helped organized in the immediate aftermath of the February 6th earthquakes. It was shitty to witness Erdoğan win on the day the Gezi Park protests started. It’s additionally shitty that the mainstream opposition abandoned the more organized forms of collective resistance that have persisted throughout the 20 years of the AKP; especially queer liberation and the Kurdish freedom movements were not actively acknowledged or mobilized as bases of power.

Sure, all electoral politics are inherently liberal and almost always entail a foreclosure of radical politics in the long run. In this sense, elections will seldom ever be not disappointing. But there are two mechanisms that amplified this in the recent elections in Turkey. First is the amount of effort and attention that elections suck up. In an increasingly authoritarian regime like that of the AKP, where the party itself exercises sole authority over all state institutions, it takes a fuck ton of effort and time from hundreds of thousands of volunteers to hold elections. Second is that getting rid of Erdogan becomes such an overwhelming priority for so many people that actual matters of political contention are constantly suspended. The first dynamic I think is easier to make sense of. The AKP stuffs ballots, monopolizes all apparatuses of the state, dominates majority of news media through direct and indirect forms of control and economic pressure, intimidates voters especially in Kurdish majority regions, once elected mayors in Kurdish majority towns are suspended by the state and replaced with appointed trustees. But in a sense all of that is to be expected from this regime. What feels more shitty is the suspension of political priorities on the left, perhaps a deliberate almost strategic inaction.

2. The Myth of Authoritarian Ineptitude

One common story that was told about the elections was that the government was already bound to lose the elections, that economic conditions were so bad, that poverty had worsened to such a degree, that jailing of reporters and dissidents had gotten so bad, that Erdogan and the regime oriented around him had finally lost so much credibility that it was bound to lose. This intuition that the AKP were “gidici” (on their way out) was something I heard over and over again during my time in Turkey.

I think what subtends this sense that the AKP were “gidici” is a of myth of authoritarian ineptitude. Maybe you’ve heard of the myth of fascist efficiency – the idea that, yes, fascists are terrible but at least they kept the trains running on time. I think there is a similar myth of authoritarian ineptitude – that regimes like that of Erdogan are so inept, so organized around a single charismatic figure, so ready to hallow out state institutions that they will, given time, self-annihilate. The sentiment that the JDP was bound to lose, that they were “gidici” given “objectively” how bad conditions are I think is in part related to this narrative of ineptitude.

The narrative betrays a liberal understanding of authoritarianism as a kind of irrational “populism” that rears its ugly head whenever experts are dismissed and strong men take charge. And of course it is wrong; the AKP regime and Erdogan are neither bumbling buffoons nor fascist masterminds but are responding to the realities of class politics, neoconservatism and racialization and the unfolding crises tendencies of capitalism as they manifest in a credit dependent, growth obsessed, hooked on cheap labor regime like that of Turkey.

Yet perhaps even more so, it misses the multiple power formations and forms of rightwing politics operating within the AKP regime. In fact, what has been especially instructive in the 20 years of the AKP era has been the constant dialectic between fascism and authoritarianism; the fascism of unrestrained credit backed by state power; of broadened immiseration but secured employment, of the dream of corporate sovereignty that wrests economic power away from international flows of capital (described as “the West” or the “interest lobby” by the AKP) on the one hand; the authoritarianism of controlled investment; of rising interest rates; of austerity and unemployment; of a rule based market-system on the other. I think what is hard for many liberals to accept is that this dialectic is one that is wholly internal to capital; it is a kind of double movement of capital.

In this sense, the AKP has always already been about its own self-reform. Party leaders routinely promise a return to the party’s “factory settings”; back to the early 2000s when the JDP promised a happy union between neoconservatism and neoliberalism; party leaders routinely admit that the regime needs restoration; are able to change policies and easily adapt. Similarly, today, the JDP are signaling a more “mainstream” economic policy, that will rise interest rates, seek to discipline labor, will increase unemployment. In many senses, this is the economic policy that the opposition also endorsed. Opposition political leaders and economic advisors often described the “bitter pill” (read austerity and unemployment) that would need to be swallowed to bring the Turkish economy under control. Under such conditions the regime’s plan of austerity wrapped up in narratives of economic sovereignty, megaprojects and neoconservative familial belonging might even be more palatable.

Opportunism; cynicism; pragmatism. These affects are part and parcel of contemporary capitalism even when this capitalism is articulated in more openly authoritarian hues.

3. The Shitiness of Strategic inaction

This sentiment that the JDP were on their way out lead to a politics of strategic inaction – whereby oppositional actors of all political persuasions decided to suspend political action instead focusing narrowly on electoral results. Which lead to an incredible resurgence of rightwing sentiment of all kinds during the course of the last election.

Perhaps the most obvious case of such inaction was on the issue of refugees. The mainstream opposition openly embraced anti migrant rhetoric the main opposition party CHP even hung a poster with the phrase “borders are our virtue” on it from their party headquarters. They promised to “send back Syrians and Afghanis” within 2 years, later revised to 1 year in an attempt to court more far right voters. I honestly don’t know how one can carry out such promises without committing major human rights violations. This contributed to an atmosphere where anti migrant sentiment became the tip of the spear of far right politics in Turkey and helped become one of the main narratives through which opposition against the JDP was articulated. Inflation and rising cost of rent was articulated as a problem of migration. Increased political violence was articulated as a problem of migration. Even the opposition losing the elections was attributed to migrants being registered to vote for the JDP.

What’s frustrating about all of this is that the JDP’s migrant policy sucks. It effectively turns Turkey into the colonial office that contains and polices migrants on behalf of European nations. It denies migrants passage to Europe in return for financial aid to Turkey. It moreover denies migrants refugee status and forces migrants to act as a cheap labor force that helps discipline labor in Turkey. Last, it condones the Turkish military and state’s foreign interventions that act to cause migration in the first place.

What is frustrating is that strategic inaction refuses to politicize such issues. It refuses to imagine how migrants can become subjects of politics in Turkey rather than a problem to be solved. It refuses to imagine how to mobilize with migrants rather than silently condoning others mobilizing against them. Even when parties had progressive policies and stances against migrants we saw them reluctant to advocate or voice such policies instead choosing strategic inaction. More than the CHP for example it was disappointing that other, ostensibly socialist, and radical parties refused to openly politicize the issue.

A similar story is true about class politics more generally. In the aftermath of the pandemic, when inflation sky rocketed, a number of important workers strikes, protests and social reproduction struggles around rent materialized throughout Turkey. The opposition chose to deliberately ignore these in fears that they would distract from voting AKP out. What is more there was no compelling vision of what socialist parties would do for workers in Turkey. Beyond a generalized discourse about poverty and inequality there was no compelling vision of class politics. I think this is also true for how parties organized. The Turkish Labor Party who’s operations I have followed more closely and can speak more freely about, seemed to have embraced a tactic that was reminiscent of Justice Democrats in the US. Nominating charismatic, social media savvy MPs and seeking to grow participation through the “buzz” and interest this would generate. The flipside of such a tactic is that there is no strong class base for this kind of politics, you are beholden to what these charismatic figures individually say or do. Sure, they talk about “class” but there’s no class politics happening in the party structure, rather the party is composed of people who have found the idiosyncrasies of these media figures individually interesting or compelling. There weren’t really any overarching policies that became prominent during the campaigning stage – apart form we will oust Erdoğan and the AKP and will hold them to account after.

Last, neoconservative politics has been an important force in Turkey. In his victory speech on May 28th Erdogan directly targeted LGBT people in Turkey, rallying to “defend the family”. The same strategic inaction was also visible in this front. Mainstream opposition parties were almost wholly silent in response. But even more oppositional parties like the coalition of Kurdish, socialist and green left politics HDP/YSP and the socialist/populist TIP despite nominating trans and queer people as members of parliament didn’t openly vocalize an LGBTQ politics in their campaigns.

I think all of this also contributes to the shitty feeling. The story that the Turkish left collectively told itself was that once Erdoğan was ousted we could finally start to act politically once again.

I think it’s important to sit with this shitty feeling. And rather than paper over it with cheap optimism maybe once again ask, what does it mean to act?

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