Turkish elections — lessons for Pakistan

Consider the Elections Act, 2017. There was a lot of enthusiasm in the country when the parliament passed it unanimously. Pakistan’s political class made us believe that strengthening of democracy has begun.

On the first test though, the whole political class and other stakeholders failed us unscrupulously. Moreover, while the ruling coalition was celebrating the golden jubilee of Pakistan’s Constitution, it didn’t care about trampling every article concerning elections. Like all the previous elections, the 2018 general election was no different. Each stakeholder was either a beneficiary or a victim of political engineering, gerrymandering and rigging at some level and at some time. Yesterday’s victims have become today’s beneficiary – and vice versa. But the scale of repression and rigging this time is much higher than in the past. Neither the superior judiciary nor the media or civil society could force the PDM government and its backers to hold election to the dissolved legislatures of Punjab and KP.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating: the test of the electoral system is in the conduct of election. The social contract seems to have been thrown out of the window. One of the most important lessons of history for rulers is to keep citizens prosper and happy and that could be achieved only by providing good governance and justice. And the topmost duty of the state is to make sure that every official respect and act lawfully because if they don’t, citizens will imitate them.

Now let’s talk about Turkey. On 6th February, a massive earthquake devastated Turkey. It killed about 55,000 people, displaced 14 million or 16% of Turkey’s population and rendered 1.5 million homeless. Unlike us, Turkey despite the devastating catastrophe held the election on 14th May as scheduled. Neither the opposition nor President Erdogan used the disaster as an excuse to postpone the elections and amazingly the turnout in the first round of presidential election was nearly 90% – one of the highest in the world, showing the level of trust in electoral system, judiciary and governance.

The Turkish election also reminds us of a controversy around facilitating overseas Pakistanis to vote from their host countries. Our election commission appears to have buried the issue. In Turkey according to media reports, out of 3.4 million, 1.7 million or 50% of Turks living abroad or travelling participated in the polling, which is indeed an impressive achievement. But this is also a result of elaborate arrangements that the Turkish election authorities had made for voters’ convenience. For instance, even on airports polling booths were set up, which were manned by two election officials and one representative of each of the three largest parties present in parliament.

Yet, as no candidate could win 50% plus votes, the second round of presidential election had to take place under the Turkish law. In the first round, Mr Erdogan received 49.51% – short of just 0.50% to win. In total 196,000 polling stations were set up. Had it been in Pakistan, our ‘favourite’ party would have helped cast two extra or spoilt two votes of the opposition candidate to cross the threshold of 50%. That would have saved the nation from runoff election. But, in Turkey nobody could even imagine that. Therefore, a second round of polling became mandatory. Resultantly a run-off election took place on 28th May. Though the overall turnout in the run-off election dropped to 85.7%, Mr Erdogan and his immediate rival’s vote bank increased to 52% and 48% respectively. Mr Erdogan was hence declared the winner.

Also, despite intense polarisation and highly contested elections, the opposition didn’t use the narrow margin of Erdogan’s victory as an excuse to reject the results or demand a recount. Also, it is worth appreciating that unlike in Pakistan, no one tried to use excuse of financial crisis or rehabilitation of earthquake victims to sabotage the second round. Every step of the election process was to be followed by election authorities, the contestants and the incumbent government. Had it been Pakistan, our parties would have created massive doubts and launched agitations about the whole exercise.

What is it that makes the difference between Pakistan’s political class and Turkish politicians? Consider this. On 15 July 2016, a group of Turkey’s armed forces tried to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan through a coup. At the time Turkey was ‘losing’ credibility in the western world, and secularism – a foundational pillar of modern day Turkey – was reportedly under serious threat from the authoritarian regime of the President. Resultantly, liberal and secular political parties, civil society, intellectuals and academics were vehemently opposing his regime. Some of them were even facing legal cases and imprisonment.

The abortive coup leaders appeared to have misjudged the commitment of opposition leaders for democracy and perhaps expected support from them. Unlike Pakistan’s politicians, their crony intellectuals and so-called human rights champions, their counterparts in Turkey not only condemned the coup attempt but also sided with the President. No one used the situation as an opportunity to grab power. The opposition leaders and civil society of Turkey proved their commitment to democracy. In Pakistan though, almost every political leader willingly or pro-actively served the miltablsihment and never apologised from the nation.

What makes Turkey’s political class and state different from ours requires further examination, which will be discussed in the next article. In one line, the nature of politicians and political parties of Turkey seems to be radically different from ours. In one country, filling a gap of 0.50 votes is considered a sin while in the other spoiling 1.7 million votes is no issue.

 

Published in The Express Tribune, June 26^th, 2023.

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