Bilal Necmetin Erdogan has finally surfaced in public again. He had been shying away from the cameras for months due to his alleged involvement in corruption and graft probes and the voice attributed to him on a number of leaked telephone recordings that had gone viral on the Internet. But there he was again this week, side by side with his father, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the balcony of the ruling Justice and Development (AKP) Party's headquarters in the upscale Balgat neighbourhood of the Turkish capital. There was no need for him to make a speech, as his physical presence made it clear that he had not fled the country and that the accusations against him were pure fabrication. Proof of the latter was the electoral victory of the AKP, which came out far ahead of the other parties in Sunday's municipal polls. Because the graft probes had begun to encroach on the Erdogan home, other members of the family were there on the balcony too. Erdogan's wife, Emine Hanem, and two daughters waved to the crowds. They flashed the Muslim Brotherhood's “Rabaa” hand as their way of signalling victory over the “rumour-mongering traitors” who had tried to sully the country's leaders and who have now walked away from the polls with their tails between their legs. The celebrations were centered on Erdogan, the self-acclaimed heir of Ottoman glory who told his followers on the morning of polling day, henceforth to be known as the “Battle of 30 March,” to give the “charlatans,” in other words Erdogan's enemies, an “Ottoman slapping.” That evening's celebrations began shortly before midnight while the sorting and counting of ballots was still in full swing and the rival mayoral candidates remained neck-to-neck, especially in the country's major cities. Taking a leaf out of the book of the Muslim Brotherhood's Supreme Guide in Cairo and the Judges for Egypt Movement, which proclaimed the victory of former Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi long ahead of the official Presidential Elections Commission, the official Anatolian News Agency proclaimed that the AKP had won Istanbul and Ankara at a time when only 25 per cent of the ballot boxes had been counted. It was soon revealed that the director of the news agency was on the third floor of the ruling party headquarters in Balgat when his agency announced that “Erdogan's AKP” was in the lead throughout “the whole of Anatolia.” “If he wasn't colluding in the party's operations, what was he doing there,” asked a senior official of the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). Meanwhile, the independent Cihan News Agency, founded by members of preacher Muhammed Fethullah Gülen's Hizmet Movement, announced that the CHP had won in many governorates and that in the key cities of Ankara and Istanbul the CHP led the AKP by 45 to 44 per cent and 46 to 45 per cent, respectively. In view of such conflicting reports, CHP and AKP leaders began to accuse each other of tampering with the results. And it does not appear that this issue will be settled when the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) announces the official results. What is certain is that nothing like this has happened before in the six decades since the Turkish Republic was founded. For the first time in Turkish electoral history, a candidate for the ruling party proclaimed his victory in the capital before a large proportion of the ballot boxes had been counted, and a deputy chairman of the AKP announced the victory of the Party's mayoral candidate for Istanbul – Kadir Topbaş – after only 20 per cent of the votes had been counted. Just as the ruling party was in the midst of its euphoria, the AKP deputy from Kayseri, Ahmet Öksüzkaya, announced his resignation from the party in protest against its policies. With this latest resignation, the ruling party has lost its tenth seat in parliament since the graft scandal broke on 17 December, bringing its parliamentary representation down to 317. The CHP had not deluded itself, and it had expected the AKP to come out ahead in Sunday's municipal polls. However, it does not regard the polls as a victory for Erdogan, despite the latter's majority, since the leaders of this opposition party still insist that the prime minister's days are numbered. He would not stand a chance of winning the presidency due to his implication in the graft and corruption probes, the party's leaders say, and his record of violating basic civic freedoms has largely put him out of the running. Issuing this prognosis on Erdogan's political future, CHP Deputy Chairman Faruk Logoglu voiced harsh criticisms of the AKP, which he said had exploited Islam to promote its policies and had exploited the Kurds, forgetting them as soon as the election season was over. The Kurdish vote, cast in accordance with instructions from Abdullah Öcalan, leader of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) who is serving a sentence of life imprisonment on the Imrali Island in the Sea of Marmara, was instrumental in boosting the votes cast for the AKP in the elections from 39 per cent in 2009 to 45.6 per cent this year. Naturally, Erdogan and his party will be expected to return the favour in the coming weeks. But will they, or will Logoglu's assessment of the government's attitude towards the Kurds prevail? If the latter is the case, the most likely scenario, Turkey risks plunging once again into a dark spiral of armed confrontations, especially in view of the fact that Öcalan had given the government a respite until after the municipal elections before it had to fulfil the commitments it had made to the Kurds. There is a dark haze hovering behind the glee of the around 12 million people who voted for the AKP and the gloom of the equal if not greater number whose vote was split between four parties – the CHP, the National Movement Party (MHP), the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) and the Saadet (Felicity) Party. It is little wonder, therefore, that Turkey's Cumhuriyet newspaper described the situation that emerged from Sunday's polls as the crystallisation of the tensions that Turkey has been experiencing and would continue to experience in the coming period. Outside Turkey, the election results have done little to calm European and US concerns. The same applies to the Arab region, where the Turkish Prime Minister has been eyed with increasing suspicion since he began to pose as a latter-day Ottoman padishah. Indeed, whereas many had once seen Erdogan as a source of inspiration for introducing a model of government that blended Islam and democracy, they now describe him as being yet another despot and fear for the future of the so-called Turkish miracle. Such fears are warranted, and not just given the bans on Twitter and YouTube, which are only the most recent cases of restrictions on civil and human rights and liberties. Sadly, it looks as if Turkey is headed for further repression under Erdogan who has made it perfectly clear that he is indifferent to the opinion of the international community which “can go to hell,” as one Turkish official put it to the Washington Post in the course of his attempts to justify the clampdowns on democratic freedoms in his country. To be fair, other political forces are also to blame. True, these are at a considerable disadvantage since most of the country's media is controlled by Erdogan, who has also turned all the facilities of the state to promoting his party. However, as the Washington Post pointed out, they lack charismatic leaders and the powerful patronage network that Erdogan has built up over the past 11 years.
