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34 I Outlooks 2018 bne February 2018
Turkey Outlook 2018
bne IntelliNews
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan enters 2018 leading a country that has been under a state of emergency for one and a half years. The emergency regime, which gives Erdogan the power to rule by decree, was intro- duced after the botched coup attempt of July 2016, and neither the president nor government ministers have given any reliable signal of when it might be lifted.
Erdogan’s grip on the levers of power was immensely tightened by the April referendum last year which – according to the narrow margin of victory calcu- lated by the heavily contested official vote count – approved plans to drasti- cally scale back the role of parliament and bring in an executive presidency. The vote for constitutional changes, which critics say will greatly diminish many democratic checks and balances, has hugely damaged Turkey’s prospects of making progress along the path towards eventual membership of the European Union – as have the massive post-coup purges that have resulted in the arrest of more than 50,000 people and the firing from their jobs of at
least 150,000 individuals, including military personnel, judges, academics, journalists, police officers, teachers and
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civil servants. Turkey has, meanwhile, become the biggest jailer of journalists in the world with around 150 behind bars, one ‘indicator’ Brussels, and the Turks’ chief EU interlocutor Berlin, will watch closely this year as they look for scope to improve damaged relations.
On the home front, political fortunes may be somewhat linked to how many more stimulus measures the government decides Turkey can afford. The economy was in 2017 lifted by a TRY250bn ($67bn) credit guarantee fund used to backstop lending to businesses and other moves
Turkey Annual GDP Growth
such as lower consumer taxes, which have translated into a boost in the opinion polls for Erdogan's Justice and Develop- ment Party (AKP). An October survey by polling agency Optimar estimated public support for the AKP at 50.6%, while pollster Gezici concluded that the ruling party enjoyed public support of between 44% and 47%. According to these two polling companies, public support for the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was hovering around 23-27%, meaning it arrived in the new year not even close to posing a credible challenge to the all-powerful president.