On the afternoon of April 4, 2023, the Center for West Asian and North African Studies at the Institute for International and Area Studies (IIAS) of Tsinghua University hosted the third lecture of the “Western Asian and North African Studies from a Multidisciplinary Perspective” series for the 2022-2023 spring semester via Zoom. Themed “Türkiye’s Looming Election: Political Cleavages, Performance and Opposition Coordination,” this lecture was delivered by Alper Yağcı, Assistant Professor of Boğaziçi University Department of Political Science and winner of the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TUBA) Outstanding Young Scientist Award, and presided over by Hu Shulei, doctoral student at the IIAS. Over 90 scholars and students from various universities at home and abroad and those interested in the topic attended the lecture.

At the beginning of the lecture, Mr. Yağcı introduced the schedule of Türkiye’s upcoming elections, the political parties and the camps. He then expounded on the performance of the incumbent government and the opposition coordination and the cleavages to overcome.

In the first part of the lecture, Mr. Yağcı reviewed the economic situation of Türkiye since the beginning of the 21st century: Türkiye’s GDP grew at 5.1% annually from 2002 to 2020, which only grounded to a halt in the wake of the 2008 international financial crisis. Türkiye relies on domestic consumption and foreign capital inflows, which, however, have dried up due to deepening authoritarianism, polarization and deteriorating relations with the West. Expansionary monetary and fiscal policies have renewed economic growth, but hyperinflation is on the way. Citing data, Mr. Yağcı said that in 2018, many Turkish people were dissatisfied with the economy, but they believed that the situation could get worse should President Recep Tayyip Erdogan be replaced. Mr. Yağcı pointed it out that such belief was largely attributed to the audience ratings of pro-government media. In 2023, a majority of people think that the economy would be better without Erdogan, indicating that the incumbent government is losing middle- and lower-class voters. Mr. Yağcı stated that the advantages and opportunities of the incumbent government mainly rest on the following three aspects: (1) Erdogan’s personal charisma; (2) authoritarian control of the media and judicial institutions to sustain its edge; and (3) heresthetics, which means leaving no chance to the opposition and leveraging social cleavages to influence election results.

In the second part of the lecture, Mr. Yağcı presented a 2018 pool on the importance of religion and national pride, and introduced and analyzed various political parties and the two electoral coalitions. He pointed it out that political parties with divergent views on religious issues are trying to win votes from nationalists, and if an opposition party wants to win, Kurdish votes are important, but this may repulse some nationalist voters. Then, Mr. Yağcı introduced the ruling party candidate Erdogan and three potential candidates from the opposition party, among whom the two more hopeful failed to qualify as the final candidates. In the last part, Mr. Yağcı did a summary of the lecture and stated that the poor performance of the incumbent government makes the election results unpredictable, and the polarization of social cleavages is favorable to the incumbent government, while the opposition parties are trying to form a coalition to overcome cleavages, which may not work.

During the Q&A session, Mr. Yağcı interacted with the audience and answered a range of questions raised by them, such as the future competition between China and Türkiye in the economic realm, whether extreme nationalism could become the mainstream ideology in Türkiye, and the impact of the Russia-Ukraine conflict on the Turkish economy.

Alper Yağcı is Assistant Professor of Boğaziçi University Department of Political Science, and winner of the Turkish Academy of Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist Award. His research interests include comparative politics, international political economy, political behavior and Türkiye’s politics. He authored a number of academic papers published in Comparative Political Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Party Politics, Electrical Studies, New Political Economy, Mediterranean Politics, Turkish Studies, etc.