Erdogan’s surprise

Written by Nasser Kandil,

It has taken place an unexpected surprise in the Turkish elections that has granted the Justice and the Development Party a winning that its leaders have not awaited as the Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu has announced publicly after the winning, and as the Turkish broadcast news have started when they covered the news. It is duty to say bravely that I was among those who were confident that everything has stated that the Justice and the Development Party will not succeed in overthrowing the Republican Peoples’ Party of the 10%  which is a necessary condition to win the majority, thus it will not win through this majority, however it won with one important difference, it was not the success by bringing out the Democratic Peoples’ Party away from the 10%, but by getting the share of the Nationalist Movement Party which represents mainly the traditional Rightist, and some of voters of the Democratic Peoples’ Party, in addition to the increase of rate of the voters on the other hand, therefore it must be admitted  that the estimation which was the basis of the conclusion did not match the result but it came reversely, it was no longer important that the Democratic Peoples’ Party has remained in the competition, or that the Justice and the Development Party has astonished itself, or that its opponents have astonished, or as the Turkish media has agreed to describe it as a surprise, it was no longer important our resort to the polls which the most optimistic of them did not expect that it will be in favor of the Justice and the Development Party by exceeding the ratio of 44%, since all the available information has shown that. The analysis and the conclusion are not a matter of anticipation but a recognition that based on facts, and despite all of that we must be  courageous to admit that we have adopted a conclusion where the results are reverse, so it is of our duty out of responsibility and credibility towards the reader and the follower to explain this surprise without leaving any doubt or ambiguity that what we are going to say is a kind of justification of our previous conclusion which the results have contradicted.

The main question is, whether the factors of the effect which were among the hypotheses of the probable political analysis in Turkey and the world have led to this surprise, the answer is the negation, where the major newspapers such as Washington Post, The New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian and others have overbalanced the failure of the bilateral Recep Erdogan and Davutoglu in gaining the majority once again, moreover the polls have not shown a transformation in the mood of the Turkish voter that made him expected the surprise which the media makers and the politicians meet in Turkey and outside it by naming it the surprise, even the center of the party was preparing itself a week ago to promote a project of a coalition government which considers it a need for the stability, in case the party does not win so it can form a government alone, towards the speech of Oglu himself about there will not be third elections, this means that what has happened was not an accumulative  development that has an ascending track in the public opinion and that led to this result, but it is a sudden event that was prepared in the dark to arouse the surprise, so what is this sudden thing?

The question which preceded the answer here is do we convince that the rule in a country such as Turkey can be resolved by a pure democratic process where is invoked by the popular will apart from any active roles of the global forces especially Washington which Turkey is the most important regional ally of it, and within a moment of developments which accumulated in the Turkish neighboring near its borders with Syria, Iraq, and Iran? Was the retraction of the Justice and the Development Party like the decline of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and Tunisia outside the American satisfaction and after the resounding failure which affected the ruling organization in Turkey along with Egypt and Tunisia by overthrowing Syria? Was the rising of the Kurdish factor in Turkey outside the American and the Western Satisfaction? Did the electoral voting have another function of showing the ongoing transformations in the American considerations in the region, especially the attempts of Turkey ( Erdogan) to preserve their Brotherhood privacy in managing the relation with ISIS, the negotiation with Iran , and the dealing with the war against Syria according to agenda that intersected, differentiated and varied with the American vision and strategy in a moment that does not need all these margins?

The retuning to the last year of the era of the bilateral of Erdogan and Oglu explains widely the emergence of the American messages which expressed of themselves by the splinter of the group of Fethullah Gulen away from the Justice and Development Party, and the war of dominance which took place between the team of Erdogan and Davutoglu on one hand, and the team of Gulen on the other hand, and which has been translated by the elections of the last June by giving the supporters of Gulen their votes for each one of the Nationalist Movement Party and the Democratic Peoples’ Party  to form the failure of Erdogan, but this time the shift of the opposite votes in five million votes cannot be explained but by the movement of the electoral blocks which are produced through unannounced accurate deals that are impossible to be completed and to be expressed electorally with this accuracy without the presence of American interference.

What was between the Americans and Erdogan’s party during the last week, or may be in the last two days to pave the way for its emergence and to renew the confidence in it by the votes of the block of Fethullah Gulen? What is the cost which Erdogan has paid, so what has happened in the last week and the last two days must be greater than the event of the Russian entry powerfully in the war in Syria which despite its magnitude and importance did not change the attitude of Washington, nor the process of the voting of Gulen’s supporters, there was one thing that happened recently it is the understanding of Vienna and what it included of the admission of putting the issue of the departure of the President Al-Assad outside the debate and adopting the elections as a way to resolve the Syrian constitutional institutions within the great understanding of stopping the dual policy with the terrorist organizations. This is an American Russian understanding,  it is clarified a  day after a day that it is final, stable and big and maybe historic, but Erdogan and his party are the first refusals publicly of these two items, the abandonment of escalation under the title of the departure of the Syrian President, in addition to the abandonment of sponsoring the armed groups that stem from Al-Qaeda Organization in its variations, so did Erdogan and Oglu undertake to Washington to be committed to Vienna’s meeting?