What’s Going To Happen After the Turkish Elections? A Turkish version of the 'Kristallnacht'?

What’s Going To Happen After the Turkish Elections? A Turkish version of the 'Kristallnacht'? HT: ottomansandzionists.

The short answer is, nothing good. No matter how things shake out on Sunday when Turks go to vote in municipal elections, I don’t thing the results are going to alleviate Turkey’s current instability but will only exacerbate it.

The reason for this is that whether the AKP does well or the AKP underperforms relative to expectations, it is going to take away the wrong lesson from the whole process.

Should Erdoğan and the AKP do worse than expected, and somehow lose Istanbul – which to them is the worst possible thing that could happen given its symbolic importance to the AKP, its role as a political bellwether for the rest of the country, and Erdoğan’s view of the city as his own personal fiefdom – they will not take it as a humbling warning.

They will go into panic mode, and lash out at everything and anything. Expect to hear claims of election fraud, efforts to obstruct AKP voters, and Gülenist plots. Social media will become an even bigger target, protestors will be dealt with even more harshly, and Turkish cities will become even more frequent sites of confrontations between police and civilians. 

The hyper nationalist rhetoric will get turned up, and I wouldn’t even put it past the realm of possibility that Erdoğan would seek to create a distraction, such as military escalation with Syria, to change the subject and try to regain his footing.

If I had to make a prediction, I think that there is a good chance that the CHP takes Ankara, but the AKP will hold on to Istanbul.  In Istanbul, however, Erdoğan is not going to allow any other party to win. I say that in the sense that Istanbullu friends tell me that the mismatch in money and campaign organizing between the AKP and CHP is evident all over the city, and I say it in the sense that the APK will do anything to win Istanbul, legal or not. Istanbul has huge symbolic importance given its status as the imperial Ottoman capital during Turkey’s glory days, to which Erdoğan and the AKP constantly harken back, and the AKP sees it as its headquarters, and I don’t see him giving it up willingly.

To all my Turkish friends and readers, please make sure to go out and vote on Sunday, and let’s hope that the aftermath is not quite so dire as I predict.Read the full story here.