Nefeli Lygerou: Will Gul face Erdogan in the 2023 Turkish presidential election

Rumors are circulating in Turkey that former Foreign Minister, Prime Minister and for seven years President Abdullah Gul may be elected by the main opposition as an opponent of Tayyip Erdogan in the 2023 presidential elections, signifying a clash between two former close associates.

Indeed, the two men have a rich past. They were two of the top four (the other two were Bulent Arinc and Abdulatif Sener) of Necmettin Erbakan’s party leaders who split in 2001 and founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP), giving the Turkish political world a different face. .

Gul became prime minister in November 2002, when the AKP won the election because there was a legal impediment to Erdogan taking office. He then served as Foreign Minister and President of the Republic (2007-2014) when Erdogan was Prime Minister. The former comrades, however, have turned into rivals since 2014 and now Gul is one of the critics of the Turkish president, although he avoids high tones.

Opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu said in an interview on August 17th that the government was very afraid of a possible Gul candidacy for the presidency. However, he denied reports that he spoke to him every week. “Those who talk about weekly meetings and imagine conspiracies are under the control of others,” Kilicdaroglu said.

Gul is generally a rather low-key politician, which is why he does not have much enmity against him. However, opinion polls suggest he faces a significant chunk of secular Turkish society, which blames him for remaining silent when Erdogan carried out the “institutional diversion” in order to build his regime.

It is also known that Gul is associated with the newly formed Party of Democracy and Progress, which was founded by the former tsar of the Turkish economy, Ali Babacan. He has not yet clarified his intentions. His candidacy may repel voters belonging to the secular Western-style minority wing of Turkish society, but on the other hand he has the conditions to attract disgruntled AKP voters and thus succeed in ousting Erdogan.

Towards conservative values

Gul’s possible choice for the 2023 presidential election by the main opposition Kemalist party reflects its 20-year political-electoral inability to stand up to Erdogan, which pushes him towards more conservative values and political positions. Indeed, the Kemalist party wants to have a candidate for President of the Republic who can elect Erdogan’s party.

On the other hand, Gul, as a personality, gives the impression that he can not stand tall against Erdogan. It does not exude the dynamism of a political fighter capable of defeating Erdogan in contrast, for example, to the much younger Istanbul mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu. In essence, Gul’s candidacy in today’s terms is gaining votes from the AKP, but is losing those of Western secularists. Unless their anti-Erdogan stance pushes them into the opposite pole.

The AKP has recently been criticized for not understanding the younger generation, which is likely to judge the 2023 elections as well. Burk Essen, a political analyst at Bilkent University in Ankara, says many see Gul as a “compromise option”.

Turkey’s political landscape has changed dramatically since the opposition won last year’s local elections. The opposition has younger, more capable and credible candidates than Gul, and perhaps this debate over Erdogan’s opponent in the 2023 presidential election will push the opposition to seriously consider anointing one of them, albeit such a choice, would de facto undermine Kilicdaroglu’s already unstable position in the Kemalist leadership.