Media advisory: Professor can comment on potentially close election, aftermath in Turkey

LAWRENCE – With Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan facing personal jeopardy in the most serious challenge to his rule in two decades when the nation votes May 14, anything can happen, according to a University of Kansas expert who is available to comment on the potentially momentous results.

F. Michael Wuthrich, associate professor of political science and associate director of KU’s Center for Global & International Studies, is the author of the book “National Elections in Turkey: People, Politics, and the Party System” (Syracuse University Press, 2015). It covers the period from 1950 to 2011.

He is also the co-author of “Beyond Piety and Politics: Religion, Social Relations and Public Preferences in the Middle East and North Africa” (Indiana University Press, 2022).

Erdogan’s main rival is Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the center-left Republican People’s Party, who heads a coalition of six opposition parties. Erdogan heads the Justice and Development, or AK, Party, which Wuthrich considers socially conservative and populist.

If Turkey were a true democracy, Wuthrich said, Erdogan would very likely be ousted based on a combination of the nation’s recent economic woes, his government’s poor response to the Feb. 6 earthquake and backlash against his authoritarian moves.

Instead, Turkey is a “competitive but authoritarian regime,” Wuthrich said, where Erdogan has “co-opted and controlled” the media, pushed through constitutional changes that remove parliamentary checks and balances and consolidated his power through a presidential system.

Even so, the KU expert said, most polls show Erdogan losing by a close margin on Sunday. Thus, the question becomes, “Can he cheat enough to win without being blatant about it? Can he make a plausible enough argument he should have won that he might maintain his hold on power? But in a country like Turkey, where people say their vote is their honor, he also can’t be caught with his hand in the cookie jar, stuffing ballots.”

On the other hand, Wuthrich said, if he loses, “Erdogan realizes that many of the things he has done, he would have to stand trial for. ... He’s got everything to lose by losing.”

Wuthrich is available to news media over the weekend to comment on the election results. Email him at mwuthrich@ku.edu.