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Ali Demir was six years old when Recep Tayyip Erdoğan came to power in Turkey in 2003. He has never met another head of government. For a long time he did not want to see anyone else. “Erdogan was a leader for me. Strong. Religious. Powerful. A man who puts the interests of the country before his own,” he says.
Demir, who does not want to appear in this article by his real name for fear of repression, grew up in Konya, a stronghold of the conservative Muslim Erdogan AKP party in central Anatolia. His parents are strictly religious. They sent their son to a Koran school. Later, the family moved to Istanbul. Little changed in his worldview. The demir were loyal supporters of Erdogan, the members of the opposition were infidels or terrorists for them.
Only Ali Demir himself slowly began to doubt the then prime minister and later president. It all started, he says, when Erdogan took action against the president of the football club Fenerbahce, a rival, in 2011. The turning point was reached when Erdogan cracked down on anti-government protests in Istanbul’s Gezi Park in 2013. Erdogan polarized Turkish society. “He wants us all to think the same way.”
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Demir completed his political studies with the best grades. However, he was unable to find work during the economic crisis in Turkey. Now he works in a hotel reception. Demir is still religious. In the Istanbul local elections in 2019, however, he voted for Erdogan’s opponent and Social Democrat Ekrem Imamoglu. It has concluded with the AKP. “I wonder if these people pray to the same God as me.”
More and more young people in Turkey seem to think like Demir. For years the country has been divided into supporters and opponents of the president. However, a poll by the American think-tank Center for American Progress and the Metropoll Institute in Turkey now indicates that Erdogan is losing approval even among conservative Turks. In six months, the number of AKP supporters who describe themselves as “loyal” to Erdogan has fallen between 10 percent and 66 percent. More than a third of those surveyed said they could imagine a party leader other than Erdogan.
The president’s approval ratings have fallen, especially in the 18-29 age group. This is bad news for the AKP. Because it is precisely this group that will make up the largest bloc in the 2023 presidential elections.
Religiosity has decreased and has not increased in Turkey under Erdogan
Erdogan is the most powerful Turkish head of government since the founder of the state, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. It has almost brought the party, the judiciary, the media and the security authorities under its control. However, he still gains legitimacy for his election policy.
Erdogan was always able to justify controversial decisions by claiming that he had the mandate of the citizens. But that is becoming increasingly difficult for him. Last year, his party lost local elections in the country’s three largest cities, Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. And according to polls, he currently doesn’t have the more than 50 percent majority nationwide that he needs to be re-elected president in 2023.
Erdogan’s success was based on the fact that he was able to unite the right wing in Turkey, made up of Islamists, nationalists, conservatives and economic liberals, behind him. But this alliance is unraveling. His former allies, former Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu and former Foreign Minister Ali Babacan, have founded their own conservative parties. Nationalists are increasingly excited about the Interior Minister, Suleyman Soylu, who is said to want to inherit the president. And the mayors of Ankara and Istanbul, Mansur Yavas and Ekrem Imamoglu, also attract former AKP voters.
Erdogan once promised to form a “pious generation.” But during his tenure, religiosity in Turkey decreased and did not increase, as a study by the opinion research institute Konda showed in 2019. According to this, the number of citizens who describe themselves as “religious” fell from 54 to 51 percent in the years 2008 to 2018, only one in ten Turks considers himself “deeply religious”; in 2008 it was 77 percent.
Unlike their parents, young Turks do not remember the time before Erdogan. For Ali Demir’s generation, previous AKP reforms, such as lifting the ban on the veil at universities or expanding the health care system, play a secondary role. They rate the government based on its current performance, and many believe that it is insufficient.
The Turkish economy has been in crisis for years, which has been exacerbated by the corona pandemic. At 9: 1, the lira is at a record low against the euro. One in four Turks under the age of 25 is unemployed. Erdogan’s aggressive foreign policy has largely isolated Turkey internationally. His promise to make Turkey a world power sounds hollow to many Turks.
Even Erdogan’s own people seem concerned that the president will lose touch with the realities of life for many people in the country. A YouTube conversation between Erdoğan and young voters in June ended in disaster: critics of the government torpedoed the event by attacking Erdoğan with the hashtag “OyMoyYok” (“You don’t get my vote”).
