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Challenges and Opportunities in Turkey's 2023 Presidential and Parliamentary Elections

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Turkey is bracing for what is expected to be a pivotal moment in its political history as the country gears up to hold parliamentary and presidential elections on May 14, 2023. With a range of significant challenges facing Turkey — from the erosion of democratic institutions to economic instability and concerns about its foreign policy — the outcome of the elections is likely to have far-reaching implications for the country's future.

To shed light on the electoral landscape and the stakes involved, we sat down with Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Associate Director of CDDRL’s Program on Turkey, to discuss the key issues at play and what they mean for Turkey's trajectory.

Turkey will have two elections on Sunday, May 14. Can you talk about why these elections are important?


The upcoming elections in Turkey hold immense importance due to several reasons. The country has faced a multitude of challenges, including the erosion of democratic institutions, political polarization, and a struggling economy. Firstly, the government, led by President Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party(AKP), has used its power to silence opposition voices, restrict the press, control the judiciary, and crack down on civil society organizations. These actions have led to fear and intimidation among citizens, creating an environment where dissent is not tolerated. In addition, the government's efforts to centralize power under the presidency have further weakened the checks and balances essential to a functioning democracy. This election is Turkey's chance to reverse the democratic decline.

Secondly, the two major earthquakes that affected 11 cities and millions of people in February exposed the decay in state institutions under the current government, causing significant human and urban destruction. When the current government is responsible for much of this destruction, it will be a mistake to let it lead to the urgent recovery needed in the earthquake region.

Thirdly, Turkey's economy is in disarray due to President Erdogan's erratic economic policies and mismanagement, leading to rising inflation rates, a weakened currency, and economic instability. The COVID-19 pandemic has only added to these challenges, further impoverishing the people. In addition, the economic situation has resulted in an exodus of the most educated sections of society, causing a significant setback to Turkey's human development and economic potential. Therefore, Turkey needs a government that can fix these economic problems.

Finally, the elections come at a time when Turkey faces increased tensions with several international actors, and the ongoing conflict in Ukraine adds to the existing pressures. The foreign policy stance of the next government will have far-reaching implications for global democracy and security, making it vital for Turkey to be governed democratically and to uphold the rule of law.

The outcome of the elections will decide how these issues will be addressed, and the re-election of President Erdogan and his AKP would further deteriorate the situation. On the other hand, if the opposition coalition wins, they plan to undo Mr. Erdogan's autocratic presidential system of government, shift back to a rational economic policy, release jailed opposition figures and journalists, and, most importantly, restore democratic institutions and practices.

Can you explain the political landscape in Turkey and the major political parties contesting the upcoming elections?


There are two distinct races in Turkey's upcoming elections — one for the presidency and the other for parliament. In the presidential election, four candidates are vying for the position, with Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the leader of the main opposition party Republican People's Party (CHP), being the strongest contender against President Erdogan. Muharrem Ince, the CHP's 2018 presidential candidate, is also running again. His few percentage points serve no one other than Erdogan in this closely contested race.

There are 26 parties and three election coalitions on the ballot for parliamentary elections. Erdogan's People's Alliance includes his Justice and Development Party (AKP), the ultra-nationalist MHP, and two Islamist fringe parties. The main opposition coalition, known as the Table of Six or Nation Alliance, includes the CHP, the ultra-nationalist Iyi Party, and three other small parties with significant political personalities. The Labor and Freedom Alliance of Turkey's Labor Party and pro-Kurdish Green Left Party support Kilicdaroglu in the presidential race. Polls indicate that Erdogan will be unseated by a small margin and the opposition will win at least a parliamentary majority, which unfortunately may be less than what is needed to make constitutional changes.

What are the key issues and challenges facing Turkey in the lead-up to the upcoming elections, and how are the major political parties addressing these concerns in their campaigns?


Election security is the key issue. Turkey has been grappling with significant election security concerns in recent years. There have been allegations of voter fraud and irregularities in past elections. The independence of the High Electoral Board and the fairness of the electoral process are also of major concern. We have seen how the Board repeated the 2019 Istanbul elections when the ruling party candidate lost it.

In addition, there have been incidents of violence and intimidation at polling stations, which have led to questions about the safety of voters and the integrity of the electoral process. During the current election period, the government has made every effort to delegitimize the contender parties by accusing them of collaborating with terrorist groups. But the attack on the opposition is not just in words. Over the weekend, we saw a violent mob attack one of the opposition leaders, the Istanbul mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu, and his audience during a rally in the eastern city of Erzurum. Unfortunately, the police neither intervened to stop the mob nor arrested anyone afterward. Imamoglu responded well, calling his supporters to calm down and retreat and ending the rally prematurely. However, I worry that these violent attacks will ramp up in these last days before the election.

Finally, the upcoming elections are closely watched with concerns about potential interference and attempts to manipulate the results. It is a big question for me and many others if the opposition parties have adequate means and preparations to deter these manipulations. We will soon know the answer.

What critical issues and concerns are shaping the campaign discourse in Turkey, and how might they resonate with American voters?


The condition of the Turkish economy, growing inflation, joblessness, corruption and plundering of Turkey’s resources, and the decline of democratic institutions, freedom, and human rights are prominent problems that the opposition campaign addresses. The government alliance holds a negative campaign accusing the opposition of collaborating with terrorist organizations and portraying it as inept in solving Turkey’s economic problems. The discourse of associating the opposition with terrorism reached a new level last week when the Ministry of Interior declared that if Erdogan loses, they will consider the elections as a coup against the government. This issue would strike a particular chord with American voters.

More importantly, Turkey is the largest country by land area and population in Europe, with an important sphere of influence in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. Turkey’s economy, despite its problems, is among the twenty largest economies in the world. Turkey has the second-largest military force in NATO and plays a pivotal role in regional security, as evident in the wars in Ukraine and Syria. If the US government worries about global democracy and security, it will be better off having Turkey governed not by a single man but with democracy and strong institutions, and that is what the opposition promises.

Ayça Alemdaroğlu

Ayça Alemdaroğlu

Research Scholar and Associate Director of CDDRL's Program on Turkey.
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In this Q&A, Ayça Alemdaroğlu, Associate Director of the Program on Turkey at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, discusses the key issues and their implications for the country's future.

Turkey after the Earthquakes, on the Eve of Historic Elections

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On February 6, two devastating earthquakes struck a region spanning southern Turkey and northern Syria. One was the largest earthquake in Turkey since 1939. Tens of thousands of people were killed in an event that affected 16 percent of Turkey's population and a cross-section of Turkey's highly diverse society. Meanwhile, Turkey is scheduled to hold general elections in May, when voters will decide whether or not to reelect President Tayyip Erdoğan, who has led the country since 2003 under the banner of the Justice and Development Party. The earthquakes and the elections bring to the fore a number of issues that have been shaping regional politics over the past decade (at least), including the Syrian refugee crisis, demands for Kurdish autonomy, Alevism in Turkish society, the rise (and fall?) of neoliberal development models, and political Islam as a form of democratic governance. Now, in this moment after the earthquakes but before the elections, faculty from Stanford's Program on Turkey—representing the disciplines of History, Literature, Anthropology, and Sociology—will hold a "teach-in on Turkey" for all members of the Stanford community.

Stanford faculty speakers will include Ali Yaycıoğlu (History), Burcu Karahan (Comparative Literature), Serkan Yolacan (Anthropology), Denise Gill (Ethnomusicology), and others.

All Stanford students, staff, and faculty are warmly invited to join this lunchtime discussion. Lunch will be provided for those who RSVP.

This event is co-sponsored by the Sohaib and Sara Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, the Mediterranean Studies Forum, CDDRL's Program on Turkey, and Stanford Global Studies.

Encina Commons
615 Crothers Way, Stanford, CA 94305

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More Parties, Better Parties: Building a Stronger Democracy in America

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Extreme polarization between the two major parties has given us an unresponsive government and an American public that is dissatisfied and disaffected. A growing share of Americans identify as independents and say they would like to see more parties. At a time when polarization and extremism threaten our democracy, some reformers view political parties as unnecessarily divisive, and thus aim to undermine their role. However, anti-party efforts have a poor historical record. Parties are the essential institutions of modern mass democracy. They give voters meaningful choices and help political actors organize for collective action necessary to actually govern. Many experts believe we need more parties and stronger parties. How do we get there?

On April 13 and 14, Stanford’s Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law, the Center for Ballot Freedom, New America, Protect Democracy, and Lyceum Labs will host a 2-day in-person conference on political party reform and multiparty politics. The conference will bring together a select group of academics and practitioners to explore the value of political parties in democracy, the challenges associated with governing in a two-party system, and possible strategies for reform, focusing on the revival and re-legalization of fusion voting. The goals will be to expand scholarship and conversation about these topics and to build a community of thought leaders across the ideological spectrum.

Attendance is by invitation only. Memos available by request.


By invitation only.

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Routledge Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa is the first book to examine all aspects related to elections in the Middle East and North Africa. Through such comprehensive coverage and systematic analysis, it will be a key resource for students and scholars interested in politics, elections, and democracy in the Middle East and North Africa.

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Chapter in the Routledge Handbook on Elections in the Middle East and North Africa, ed. by Francesco Cavatorta and Valeria Resta

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Between Electoral Cooptation and Violence: Managing Competitive Authoritarian Elections

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Autocratic elections are often marred with systematic intimidation and violence toward voters and candidates. When do authoritarian regimes resort to violent electoral strategies? I argue that electoral violence acts as a risk-management strategy in competitive authoritarian elections where: (a) the regime’s capacity for coopting competitors, local elites, and voters is low, and (b) the expected political cost of electoral violence is low. I test these propositions by explaining the subnational distribution of electoral violence during the most violent election in Mubarak’s Egypt (1981-2011): the 2005 Parliamentary Election. The results indicate that electoral violence is higher in districts where: the regime’s capacity for coopting local elites and competitors is low, clientelistic strategies are costlier and less effective, and citizens’ capacity for non-electoral mobilization is low. The conclusions provide lessons for efforts to contain electoral violence in less democratic contexts.

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Arc of Power: The First Pelosi Speakership and the Coming Mid-Term Election

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Join us for a book talk with John Lawrence, author of "Arc of Power: Inside Nancy Pelosi's Speakership, 2005-2010."  Lunch will be served.

Arc of Power book cover
Drawing from his thousands of pages of notes written while serving as Chief of Staff to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, John Lawrence has written a narrative documenting his insider perspective from 2005 to 2010. These momentous years included furious political and legislative battles over the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the economic recession, the 2008 presidential election, the productive first two years of Barack Obama’s presidency, as well as many key legislative products, such as the Troubled Assets Relief Program, the Affordable Care Act, and Wall Street reform.

Lawrence offers valuable insights into the differing and often conflicting role played by the House and Senate given their design and composition, and shows how even a House led by powerful individuals is frequently undercut by the Senate, and how that weakness especially impacts the political power of minority populations.

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John A. Lawrence served for 38 years as a senior staff member in the U.S. House of Representatives, the last eight as Chief of Staff to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). He is a visiting professor at the University of California (Washington Campus). He is the author of Arc of Power: Inside Nancy Pelosi's Speakership 2005-2010 (2022) and The Class of '74: Congress After Watergate and the Roots of Partisanship (2018) that Kirkus Review called “an essential work of congressional history.” He has also published numerous Sherlock Holmes pastiches including the collection The Undiscovered Archives of Sherlock Holmes (2022) and the forthcoming The Affair at Mayerling Lodge (2023).  He graduated from Oberlin College and has a Ph.D. in history from the University of California, Berkeley. He blogs on Congress and public affairs at DOMEocracy.

This event is co-sponsored by the Bill Lane Center for the American West and the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law.

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Pacted Democracy in the Middle East: Tunisia and Egypt in Comparative Perspective

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Hicham Alaoui Pacted Democracy in the Middle East event

To mark the 20th anniversary of the establishment of CDDRL, Hicham Alaoui joins ARD to discuss his recently released book, Pacted Democracy in the Middle East: Tunisia and Egypt in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022). Click here to order a copy of the book.

Pacted Democracy in the Middle East provides a new theory for how democracy can materialize in the Middle East, and the broader Muslim world. It shows that one pathway to democratization lays not in resolving important, but often irreconcilable, debates about the role of religion in politics. Rather, it requires that Islamists and their secular opponents focus on the concerns of pragmatic survival—that is, compromise through pacting, rather than battling through difficult philosophical issues about faith. This is the only book-length treatment of this topic, and one that aims to redefine the boundaries of an urgent problem that continues to haunt struggles for democracy in the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

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hicham alaoui
Hicham Alaoui is the founder and director of the Hicham Alaoui Foundation, which undertakes innovative social scientific research in the Middle East and North Africa. He is a scholar on the comparative politics of democratization and religion, with a focus on the MENA region.

In the past, he served as a visiting scholar and Consulting Professor at the Center for Democracy, Development and Rule of Law at Stanford University.  He more recently served as postdoctoral fellow and research associate at Harvard University. He was also Regents Lecturer at several campuses of the University of California system. Outside of academia, he has worked with the United Nations in various capacities, such as the peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. He has also worked with the Carter Center in its overseas missions on conflict resolution and democracy advancement. He has served on the MENA Advisory Committee for Human Rights Watch and the Advisory Board of the Carnegie Middle East Center. He served on the board of the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University and has recently joined the Advisory Board of the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

He holds an A.B. from Princeton University, M.A. from Stanford University, and D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. His latest book is Pacted Democracy in the Middle East: Tunisia and Egypt in Comparative Perspective (Palgrave, 2022). His memoirs, Journal d'un Prince Banni, were published in 2014 by Éditions Grasset, and have since been translated into several languages. He is also co-author with Robert Springborg of The Political Economy of Arab Education (Lynne Rienner, 2021), and co-author with the same colleague on the forthcoming volume Security Assistance in the Middle East: Challenges and the Need for Change (Lynne Rienner, 2023). His academic research has been widely published in various French and English journals, magazines, and newspapers of record.

This event is co-sponsored by ARD, the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies, and the Center for African Studies at Stanford University.​

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Is America Too Troubled to Be Mindful of Indonesia?

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Donald K. Emmerson
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An edited version of this opinion piece first appeared in the 14 July 2022 issue of The Jakarta Post.

How preoccupied is America with its own domestic problems? To the point of impairing the ability of President Biden’s administration to give Indonesia and Southeast Asia the foreign-policy attention they deserve?

The Group of Twenty’s meetings are now at or near the top of the Indonesian foreign ministry’s list of things to do. Foreign minister Retno Marsudi has worried, amid talk of boycotts, that Moscow-Washington animosity over Ukraine could ruin the G20 summit in Bali this November, to the embarrassment of its Indonesian host and chair. Presumably to her relief, Secretary of State Antony Blinken flew to Indonesia to attend in person the preparatory G20 foreign ministers meeting that she hosted and chaired in Bali on 7-8 July 2022, and he did so despite the participation of his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov.  In addition to holding a one-on-one session with Marsudi, Blinken also met with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi for a discussion of US-China relations that reportedly lasted five hours. Indonesia can take pride in having made that lengthy interaction possible. 

The foreign ministers’ meeting was not without drama. Twice, in response to criticism of Russia, Lavrov walked out of the room, and he left the conference altogether before it ended. Perhaps he forgot that in democracies, praise is not required.  But things in Bali could have gotten much worse, and in that sense America’s presence throughout the event helped save Indonesia’s face.

Biden’s administration has not neglected Indonesia or Southeast Asia, as recent diplomacy shows. In May he accommodated the priority on economic development favored by Indonesia and other Asian states by traveling to Japan to announce the formation of an Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF). Its 14 founding partners, including Indonesia and six other ASEAN members, account for 40 percent of global GDP. Earlier in May, in Washington, DC, Biden hosted a special summit with Indonesia and other ASEAN states. Their Joint Vision Statement with the US, as in IPEF, emphasized economic cooperation.

None of this diplomacy, however, could temper the strident political polarization that continues to disrupt America. Understandably, that frenzy of distrust and dissension has led some Indonesians to wonder how reliable a partner the US will turn out to be in years to come.    

The splitting of many Americans into rival partisan camps is in part structural. For example, compared with better-educated urban and suburban dwellers, less well-educated rural and small-town Americans are more likely to hold right-wing Republican views. The reasons why those views have become more extreme include the popularity of Donald Trump and his anti-democratic if not proto-fascistic campaign to re-install himself in the White House after losing the free and fair election of 2020.  His effort, Republican complicity in it, and the backlash against it have widened the separation of often coastal or near-coastal Democratic states from Republican ones more or less clustered in middle and southern America. Political scientist and statistician Simon Jackman goes so far as to argue that the US has not been this divided politically since the Great Depression of the 1930s—or possibly even since the 1860s Civil War.

The Vanderbilt University Project on Unity and American Democracy chooses the longer timeline. “Not since the Civil War,” it concludes, “have so many Americans held such radically opposed views not just of politics but of reality itself.” The project’s own findings, however, undermine the caricature of a country fatally hobbled by national schizophrenia and group delusions. 

The Vanderbilt Unity Index combines quarterly data from 1981 to 2021 on five variables—presidential disapproval, congressional polarization, ideological extremism, social mistrust, and civil unrest—to calculate changes in American national unity across those four decades on a 0-to-100 scale, from least to most unified. Over that period of time, the index has fluctuated in a close to middling zone between 50 and 70 on that 100-point scale. 

The index shows deep plunges in unity only twice since 1981, and both of those dives were linked to the uniquely calamitous presidency of President Trump. In contrast, the average score during the first five quarters of the Biden administration has been 58, a sharp improvement from the average of 51 under Trump. Heartened by that betterment, two of the Vanderbilt scholars surmise that America’s “disharmony may be dissipating.”

That could be an overoptimistic guess. Unity is one thing, victory another. Legislative elections will be held on 8 November this year. As of the end of June, prominent forecaster Nate Silver gave the still largely Trump-beholden Republican Party an 87 percent chance — a near-certainty — of replacing Biden’s Democrats as the majority party in the House of Representatives. The race for a majority in the Senate was too close to call. But even if Republicans control only the House, they will likely use that platform to undermine Biden’s administration during his final two years in office.      

As if likely losses of legislative power were not enough for Biden to worry about, maneuvers by Republicans to stack the Supreme Court with right-wing partisans have tilted that juridical balance steeply in their favor. The court’s new reactionary 6-to-3 majority has already made two shocking decisions. They have, in effect, denied women their long-standing right to abortion and made it easier to carry a concealed gun in public. Republicans claim to support individual rights. But they and their court appointees have deleted the long-standing constitutional right of a pregnant woman to decide whether to give birth or not, thereby depriving her of assured responsibility over her physical body and personal future. 

Regarding gun violence, in barely five months from 1 January through 5 June of this year, America has experienced 246 mass shootings — incidents that kill or wound four or more people. That puts the US on track in 2022 to match or exceed its record of 692 mass shootings in 2021, more than in any year since the Gun Violence Archive began counting them. The Republican-majority court’s unconscionable impulses seem to be to make women make more babies, wanted or not, and to make murders more likely as well.

There is good news. First, a massive popular backlash against these Republican decisions has either begun or is likely. Second, a nationally televised Congressional investigation of the violent attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021 has displayed the complicity of Trump, and by association the Trump-infected Republican Party, in an insurrection that killed at least seven people and injured roughly 150 more. Third, although Trump may not end up where he belongs, namely, in jail, at least he faces Republican rivals for the party’s nomination to run for president in 2024. Conceivably those rivals could come to include a candidate who is politically more moderate and personally less criminal, corrupt, and narcissistic than he. 

President Joko Widodo will host the G20 leaders in Indonesia merely one week after the 8 November 2022 midterm legislative election takes place in the US. Will Biden go again to Bali? Not if at that time right-wing fanatics claiming election fraud are destabilizing America. For long-term interactions between Jakarta and Washington relations, however, what will matter is not who will attend the 2022 G20 summit in Bali. It will be the names and plans of the Indonesians and Americans who will run and win in the national elections to be held in their respective countries in 2024.

Donald K. Emmerson heads the Southeast Asia Program at Stanford University's Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center. His recent publications include an edited volume, The Deer and the Dragon: Southeast Asia and China in the 21st Century.

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For long-term Jakarta and Washington relations, what will matter is not who will attend the 2022 G20 summit in Bali. It will be the names and plans of the Indonesians and Americans who will run and win in the national elections to be held in their respective countries in 2024.

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