Erdogan’s Kurdish Electoral Gamble Will Reverberate in Turkey and Iraq

On Sunday, Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan racked up an astounding victory in municipal elections. The party’s success came despite waves of civil unrest last year, the economy taking a downturn, daily revelations about corruption in the highest echelons of government and a crackdown on online media. There are many political and socio-economic reasons for the AKP’s dominance, but in Turkey’s Kurdish southeast, Erdogan was able to count on one unexpected campaigner on his behalf: the president of the Kurdish autonomous region in Iraq, Massoud Barzani.

On Nov. 18, facing his darkest hour after the Gezi Park protests and after losing Istanbul’s Olympics bid, Erdogan landed his greatest public relations coup to date, when he staged a mass rally with Barzani in Diyarbakir, the spiritual center of Kurdish nationalism in Turkey. There Erdogan broke a taboo by referring for the first time in a public address to “Kurdistan” as a territorial concept. He also listened to Barzani addressing the crowds in Kurdish and enjoyed the performance of artist Shivan Perwer, another legendary figure of Kurdish ethnic identity, who after 37 years in exile had returned to his homeland. Barzani, in turn, concluded his speech by shouting, in Turkish, “Long live Turk-Kurd brotherhood, long live freedom, long live peace.’’

For decades, Turkey vehemently opposed any degree of Kurdish autonomy in neighboring Iraq for fear of instigating similar demands among Turkey’s Kurds. How, then, does one explain the Turkish prime minister drawing on support from the president of the Kurdish quasi-state in Iraq in order to secure the Kurdish vote for his party in local elections?

The truth is that not only do Erdogan and Barzani see eye-to-eye on many issues, they are strategic partners in the region. Indeed, with Turkey’s diplomatic interventions in Syria and Egypt having failed, Barzani’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) may very well be Ankara’s last steadfast ally left. Politically and economically, Iraq’s Kurdistan region today is completely dependent on Turkey. The KRG imports 90 percent of its goods through or from Turkey; more than half of the foreign companies registered there are Turkish. Both sides, just before the Diyarbakir meeting, struck a deal on direct oil and gas pipeline connections. And Turkey has replaced the U.S. as Iraqi Kurdistan’s major external backer against the centralizing Maliki government in Baghdad. Some analysts even go so far as to speculate that one day Turkey will play “midwife” to Iraqi Kurdish independence.

Yet, as the Diyarbakir episode illustrates, this relationship is not one-sided: Erdogan may need Barzani as much as Iraqi Kurdistan relies on Turkey. The two men are united in their antagonism toward the radicalism of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Kurdish militant group. Barzani, the head of the freest political entity in Kurdish history, is increasingly trying to exert his influence and clout as a pan-Kurdish leader beyond Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish voters of the AKP are Barzani’s prime target audience in Turkey—at the expense of Turkey’s main Kurdish party, the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP), which is often portrayed as the political figurehead of the PKK. Erdogan, on the other hand, intended to capitalize on Barzani’s allure, holding him out to Kurdish voters as a Kurd the AKP can do business with and whose loyalty gets rewarded. Their strategy, to some extent, seems to have paid off.

The BDP, with its commitment to Kurdish regional autonomy, managed to hold the municipalities of Diyarbakir, Batman, Siirt, Sirnak, Hakkari, Van and Tunceli, and in addition won Mardin, Agri and Bitlis from the AKP. But its share of the vote nationwide fell to 4.4 percent, down by about 1 percent compared to its predecessor, the DTP, which was banned by the Turkish constitutional court in 2009. Thus, although the BDP remained the strongest party among Turkey’s Kurdish voters, the AKP, with Barzani’s help and under very difficult conditions, came in a strong enough second in the Kurdish strongholds to moderate the BDP’s rise. To make matters more complicated, though, there are signs of AKP-BDP collusion to share votes in municipalities where they do not directly compete—such as Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara, Hatay, Adana, Mersin and Erzurum—to hold the Kemalist opposition at bay for the AKP.

Such collusion would not only be typical of the complex dynamics and shifting alliances of Kurdish politics, it also makes strategic sense for the AKP. For its pet project of constitutional reform, the AKP is missing a few votes in parliament—votes that, in the current constellation, only the BDP as a possible ally can deliver. The BDP in exchange would demand more concessions on Kurdish autonomy. Erdogan therefore has an interest in moderating the BDP’s pull among Kurdish voters to keep their demands from becoming too excessive, while at the same time not antagonizing them too much. With this gambit, as with the overall election, Erdogan has clearly won big. Not only did he manage to avert the greatest challenge to his rule in a decade, he proved himself both indispensable to his party—thus choking off the emergence of any potential rival—as well as invincible to the electorate.

Since Sunday, Turkey’s political system has been in rapid flux, with rumors abounding about whether Erdogan will still pursue the presidency or, buoyed by his victory, and after amending his party’s statutes to allow him a fourth term as prime minister, risk snap elections. Either way he seems likely to continue his strategy of dividing the Kurdish vote in upcoming elections. Yet it remains to be seen whether or not, after the dust of the coming campaigns has settled, Erdogan will reach out to the BDP and dare striking the grand bargain on qualified autonomy and democratic and cultural rights the Kurdish community is waiting for. What is beyond doubt is that, after Sunday, the personal alliance between Erdogan and Barzani has only grown stronger, with profound repercussions for the AKP, BDP and Kurds in Turkey as well as for the future of the Kurdistan region in Iraq.

Hannes Cerny, formerly Hannes Artens, is a Ph.D. researcher and assistant lecturer at the Institute for Arab and Islamic Studies, University of Exeter, United Kingdom. His most recent journal article on the PKK and Iraqi Kurdistan was published in Ethnopolitics.

Photo: Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, June 7, 2012 (photo from the website of the government of South Africa).

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