(Wall Street Journal)
Medeni Sungur May 7, 2019 6:41 p.m.
Turkey’s Supreme Electoral Council ordered a new election for mayor of Istanbul Monday, handing a victory to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party, known by the Turkish acronym AKP. Mr. Erdogan’s candidates were defeated in five of six major cities on March 31. Despite this week’s ruling in Istanbul—where the new vote is set for June 23—the results should serve as a lesson to Mr. Erdogan and populist politicians everywhere.
The opposition is now set to govern major Turkish cities for the first time in the 17 years since Mr. Erdogan became prime minister. It happened despite heavy propaganda, use of public resources to promote the AKP, and the demonization of opposition parties as terrorist collaborators. What happened? The answer lies in the faltering economy.
AKP was first elected in 2002 in the midst of a deep financial crisis that caused Turkey’s old political order to crumble. The party inherited a successful standby deal with the International Monetary Fund, which came with the most extensive package of institutional reforms in the history of the Turkish republic. In its first 10 years in power, the Erdogan government stuck to the program, expanded civil liberties and pursued European Union membership. It was a success story. Foreign investment flowed in. Consumption skyrocketed. New hospitals, highways, cars, apartments and public schools improved life for ordinary Turkish citizens.
But the quality of Turkish government started to decline in the early 2010s. Turkey’s ranking dropped in international indices measuring aspects of institutional quality—the rule of law, human rights, democracy, transparency. In a country without natural resources, this would normally mean a loss of confidence and diminution of economic growth. But an external factor enabled Turkey to get away with some bad economic policies: cheap credit.
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