Erdoğan, ultranationalists and 'family values'

[Celerity]

The victorious Turkish president is likely to pursue a hardline conservative agenda with his ultranationalist allies.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/erdogan-ultranationalists-and-family-values



After a bitter and hard-fought campaign that went to a second, run-off vote, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has retained the Turkish presidency in an election some deemed ‘free but not fair‘. Having first won power in 2003, Erdoğan has been able to extend his rule for a further five years by creating an alliance with ultranationalist parties. A key aspect of the next term is likely to be a hardline conservative agenda. In an agreement between Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) and his hardline Islamist New Welfare party (YRP) ally, he has pledged to re-evaluate existing laws to ‘protect the integrity of the family’.

Potential discrimination

Turkey’s LGBT+ community is likely to be a target. Erdoğan and his allies ramped up anti-LGBT+ rhetoric during the election campaign. This is by no means a new part of Erdoğan’s programme but it has intensified in the last few months. For instance, the AKP and its YRP coalition partner signed a declaration which suggested potential discrimination against the LGBT+ community could follow. The YRP has previously called for the closure of LGBT+ organisations. Immediately after his victory was announced, Erdoğan accused the opposition of promoting LGBT+ rights while stressing that ‘LGBT forces’ had not been able to infiltrate the AKP.

Women’s rights are also at risk. The 6284 law, which aims to protect women, particularly from domestic violence, was introduced by the AKP government in 2012. Both radical Islamist parties within Erdoğan’s coalition, YRP and Huda Par, have called for it to be repealed and made their support for Erdoğan conditional on a pledge to amend this law. This comes against a backdrop of high levels of violence against women in Turkey. In 2022 at least 116 women were murdered by their partners. Huda Par has also proposed criminalising extra-marital sex and adultery and getting rid of alimony rights for women, as well as arguing for single-sex education.

The Erdoğan-led majority in parliament was propped up by another of AKP’s coalition partners, the ultranationalist Nationalist Movement party (MHP). It also received backing from the extreme nationalist presidential candidate, Sinan Oğan of the ATA (Ancestral) Alliance party, who won around 5 per cent of the vote in the first round before declaring his support for Erdoğan. When it became clear that anti-immigrant views had been popular in the first round, the opposition leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, pivoted to a hardline anti-immigration stance in the second. Billboards promised Syrian refugees would have to leave the country, if he was elected.

Anti-Syrian rhetoric...............

snip