Erdogan Returns to AKP Leadership

Turkey’s President Erdogan on Sunday was voted in as head of the AK party in one of the more consequential moves made possible by the presidential powers referendum last month. As Reuters reports:

President Tayyip Erdogan pledged to fight Turkey’s enemies at home and abroad on Sunday as he was elected leader of the ruling AK Party, a move enabling him to reassert his grip on the party and its legislative work.

Erdogan, who founded the Islamist-rooted AKP in 2001 and led it to victory in a general election a year later, had to give up its leadership nearly three years ago when he was elected president, a position traditionally above party politics.

That changed with April’s referendum in which Turks narrowly backed constitutional changes creating an executive presidency with sweeping new powers. Allowing the head of state to be a party member or leader was among the reforms.

The move, though widely expected, is an important step towards the consolidation of Erdogan’s personal control of the state. Turkey’s parliament is elected by proportional representation in a party-list system, and the party leader sets the list. With his renewed leadership of the AKP, Erdogan will be able to reward cronies and eliminate independent-minded MPs, creating a rubber-stamp parliament that he can craft in his own image. No civilian politician in Turkey has wielded such unitary and unchecked power since Ataturk. Erdogan has promised that his post-referendum rule will bring a “new era” in Turkish politics. In the midst of mass purges, crackdowns on dissent, breaks with the West, and suppression of free expression and other rights, the era might be new, but it won’t be pretty.