Turkey would consider boycotting Israeli goods following last week’s violence in Gaza, where Israeli security forces killed at least 60 Palestinians in protests, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said on Sunday.
“We will put our relations on the table, in particular our economic and trade relations,” Mr Erdoğan said on Sunday, following a pledge from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for a boycott on Israeli goods.
The Turkish president, whose country did about £3.7 billion of trade with Israel last year, said these steps would be taken after snap presidential and parliamentary elections on June 24.
The remarks, which came after an election rally for Turkish expatriates in Sarajevo, follows the expelling of both country’s ambassadors and a harsh exchange of words on Twitter between Mr Erdoğan and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Mr Erdoğan also called for the world to stand up to Israel’s “state terrorism”, pledging allegiance to “our Palestinian brothers and sisters” and offering “to lead Muslims in this fight”.
Political analyst Ebru Erdem-Akçay said Turkey’s bellicose leader was making the remarks with an eye to voters back home.
“The AKP [ruling Justice and Development Party] is trying to [hold] the ranks, to make sure that core supporter group stays, and the way to do this, especially given that they can’t refer to [a strong] economy, is to appeal to emotions,” she said.
Turkish polling companies Metropoll and Gezici put Erdoğan’s support at under 50 per cent amid ongoing concerns over the troubled economy.
“It’s back to the 1990s, when devaluations and inflation was the reality,” Ms Erdem-Akçay said.
On Wednesday, Turkey’s lira briefly plunged to 4.92 to the dollar. The currency has lost almost a quarter of its value this year, partly thanks to Mr Erdoğan’s steadfast refusal to allow Turkey’s central bank to implement necessary measures such as raising interest rates to curb the runaway inflation.
Erdoğan’s son-in-law and energy minister Berat Albayrak dismissed the devaluation as “a very open and clear operation” against Turkey from “foreign sources”, and a recent study by Konda found that 65 per cent of AKP supporters agree with him in blaming the economic troubles on a foreign plot.
Karabekir Akkoyunlu, a research associate at the University of Graz, said the days of the AKP’s successful economic reforms that saw years of very high growth are long over, so Mr Erdoğan and the party have to appeal to identity politics.
“They can’t talk about economic success anymore. They also can’t talk about Syrian refugees, which consistently ranks among the highest problems for a majority of the population. So identity politics, and the discourse of terrorist supporters, traitors, foreign agents, etc., is all that’s left,” Mr Akkoyunlu said.
“This has been the narrative since 2015 and especially after the [July 15, 2016] coup attempt, but we might be seeing that it is no longer enough to keep the electorate fired up and convinced.”
In Sarajevo, Mr Erdoğan also invoked the language of identity. He called on his followers to “take good care of your religion and language”, warning that “if you lose those, you’re lost,” and castigating the main opposition CHP for not having focused enough on Turkey’s Ottoman past.
Back in Turkey, several Islamic congregations, known as cemaats, have publicly lent their support for Erdoğan and the AKP, the first time they’ve openly supported a specific politician.
“I think the cemaats are being used to counter emerging challenges to the AKP from within the Islamist/conservative base, such as from Saadet [an Islamist opposition party],” Mr Akkoyunlu said.
The upcoming elections will see the implementation of an executive presidential system that was narrowly endorsed in a controversial referendum in April of last year. If Mr Erdoğan receives less than 50 per cent of the vote, the elections will go to a second round.
