Erdoğan turns a page in Turkey

Welcome back. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, who turns 71 next month and is in his third decade as the nation’s leader, has an appetite for power that appears as healthy as ever.

On Monday, he declared 2025 to be “the year of the family” and unveiled measures aimed at raising the national birth rate.

To grasp the significance of Erdoğan’s speech, it’s useful to explore the way that his economic and social policies overlap with his foreign policy ambitions, Turkey’s religious and ethnic minority issues, and the ever-present tensions between democracy and the nation’s traditions of strongman rule. I’m at tony.barber@ft.com.

Population size and national power

As I read about Erdoğan’s initiative in the English-language Daily Sabah, it struck me that his language and arguments resembled those of President Vladimir Putin just over a year ago when he announced that 2024 would be “the year of the family” in Russia (which I discussed in a previous Europe Express newsletter).

Putin and Erdoğan each take the rather old-fashioned view that a country’s international power is intrinsically bound up with the size of its population. As the Daily Sabah report put it:

Erdoğan . . . addressed Turkey’s demographic challenges, particularly its declining fertility rate, which has fallen to 1.51, well below the replacement rate of 2.1. He warned that this could lead to a shrinking population and a reduced global influence.

Linking demography and national power to religion, Erdoğan then criticised expensive wedding ceremonies for putting a financial burden on young couples. Such events ought to be “simple, without extravagance or waste, as advised by our Prophet”, he said.

In this commentary for the Warsaw-based Centre for Eastern Studies, Zuzanna Krzyżanowska makes the point that Turkey’s declining fertility rate is, in many respects, a consequence of long-term trends such as urbanisation, higher education levels and cultural change.

Similar developments have long contributed to lower birth rates across most of Europe, where some governments have also tried — without much success — to reverse the trend.

With regard to Turkey, Krzyżanowska suggests:

Another factor contributing to the falling birth rate is the persistent economic crisis, which, combined with high inflation (71.6 per cent year-on-year in June 2024 according to official data), has worsened living conditions and likely influenced decisions about childbearing.

Which brings us to the Turkish economy.

Inflation and economic orthodoxy

Inflation has fallen since Krzyżanowska wrote her article last year but, at just over 44 per cent in December, it is still unusually high by European standards.

As the chart below shows, inflation has been a persistent problem in Turkey since at least the 1980s. But it shot up spectacularly in the build-up to the 2023 presidential election as Erdoğan raised public sector salaries, pensions and the minimum wage in a bid for votes.

To make matters worse, he insisted that the Turkish central bank should keep interest rates low, taking the unorthodox view that high rates would stimulate rather than curb inflation.

No sooner had Erdoğan won re-election than he reversed course — to the relief of investors at home and abroad. Scope Ratings, a credit-rating agency, last month upgraded Turkey, citing “sounder economic and financial management driving the replenishment of international reserves, easing pressure on the balance of payments and reducing financial stability risks”.

Breakthrough on the Kurdish question?

A key figure in the return to economic orthodoxy is Cevdet Yılmaz, profiled here by the FT’s Adam Samson. The career of Yılmaz, Erdoğan’s vice-president, offers useful insights into the connection between economic policy and Turkish politics.

First, Yılmaz is a veteran of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP), which makes him one of the president’s most trusted advisers.

Second, he has been prominent in the government’s recent initiative to address what is arguably Turkey’s oldest, most intractable problem since the modern republic’s creation in 1923. This is the Kurdish minority’s push for recognition and rights from the Turkish state.

At various times, and especially since 1984, this struggle has often taken the form of armed rebellion.

When the government last month announced a $14bn investment in mainly Kurdish-populated south-eastern Turkey, it was Yılmaz who hailed the move as a chance to end “terrorism”.

In particular, he welcomed a statement from Abdullah Öcalan, the jailed leader of the banned Kurdistan Workers party (PKK), to the effect that it was time for peace in Turkey and its neighbourhood.

How likely is a lasting, comprehensive settlement of the Kurdish question? In this FT article, Gönül Tol cautions that Erdoğan’s initiative is driven to some extent by his desire to stay in power:

“One challenge Erdoğan faces is that Turkey’s constitution does not allow him to run for re-election in 2028. Without a big enough parliamentary majority to change it, he needs support from the pro-Kurdish party to remain in power.”

Democracy and strongman rule

The Kurdish question blends into the issue of democracy and civil liberties in Turkey.

In the Pew Research Center survey below, we see that a majority of Turks are attached to representative or direct democracy, and display an aversion to rule by the military and even a strongman (although Erdoğan is exactly that).

Writing for the Brookings Institution, Halil Karaveli contends:

The Turkish regime appears to recognise that the volatility in its neighbourhood and smouldering discontent at home could potentially jeopardise its survival …

This provides a window of opportunity for the west to re-engage with Turkey on democratisation and reform.

Karaveli recalls how, after the second world war, Turkey liberalised itself and turned from a one-party state to an admittedly somewhat flawed multi-party democracy.

This was prompted by the ruling elites’ view that Turkey needed both US financial aid and protection against the Soviet Union — a point emphasised in Jeremy Seal’s 2021 book A Coup in Turkey, reviewed here.

Foreign policy: Syria, the Kurds and Trump

The Kurdish question is also inextricably tied up with Turkey’s foreign policy — especially towards the US, and with regard to Syria after the fall of dictator Bashar al-Assad.

Whereas the US has maintained ties with PKK-linked forces in Syria as part of its anti-terror campaign against Isis, Erdoğan sees those same forces as a threat to the Turkish state because of the Kurdish connection.

Will Assad’s demise and Donald Trump’s return to the White House improve US-Turkish relations?

Rich Outzen, writing for the Atlantic Council, thinks there will be opportunities for Trump and Erdoğan to promote “progress (albeit gradual) rather than the cycle of crisis and mutual mistrust that marked the two preceding presidential terms”.

By contrast, in this article for the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, Mehmet Yegin and Salim Çevik argue that the room for improvement will be limited, not least because of what they call “Turkey’s declining overall geostrategic significance for the US”.

Foreign policy: the Brics group and Africa

Frictions with the US, and with Europe, go some way to explaining why, in a speech in September, Erdoğan said:

“Of course, our face is turned to the west, but this certainly does not mean that we will turn our backs on the east.”

Indeed, Turkey applied last year to join the Brics group — though full membership seems unlikely.

Simon Waldman makes the good point, in this article for the London-based Royal United Services Institute, that the leading members of Brics — China, India and Russia — all have reasons to be unhappy with aspects of Turkey’s foreign policy.

Nonetheless, Turkey’s influence beyond western democracies is real. A striking example concerns Africa, where Erdoğan last month brokered talks between Ethiopia and Somalia to reduce their deep-seated frictions.

Foreign policy: Europe

Lastly, Turkey and the EU.

Turkey’s EU membership bid has been effectively frozen for many years, partly — from the European perspective — because of concerns over democracy and Erdoğan’s foreign policy.

Other differences between Turkey and European countries tend to receive less attention.

A case in point is the dispute over two French high schools in Turkey, originally intended to educate locally based French children, but now patronised by Turkish parents eager to give their sons and daughters a French education.

Despite such difficulties, some specialists contend that the EU must focus on working with Turkey on defence and security. Galip Dalay, writing for the London-based Chatham House think-tank, says:

For European security, Russia remains the most immediate threat, and Europe cannot afford to have a security order that is set against Moscow and excludes Turkey simultaneously.

It is a sensible point — and Turkey’s improving economic outlook, if coupled with progress on the Kurdish question, might well present an opportunity for a better EU-Turkish relationship.

More on this topic

Reflecting on Turkish-American relations in a second Trump term — a commentary by Selim Koru for the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute

Tony’s picks of the week 

Climate change may be intensifying “hydroclimate whiplash”, a weather phenomenon marked by sharp swings between very wet and very dry conditions, as California has experienced in recent years, science commentator Anjana Ahuja writes for the FT

Ukraine’s admission into Nato appears unattainable, so armed neutrality may be the country’s next best option to protect against future Russian aggression, Eugene Rumer writes for the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations