For Turks, it wasn’t just the economy 

FOR years, political scientists believed that elections were driven by “retrospective evaluation” of voters’ economic consequences. In folksier terms, the key was Ronald Reagan’s key question: “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” If the answer is “yes”, then incumbents can expect to win re-election and if not, not. And if you’re Recep Tayyip Erdogan, all bets are off.

Over the weekend, Erdogan, who has effectively ruled Turkey for two decades, was re-elected for another term despite truly dreadful economic performance over the last five years. The number of Turks who feel better off since 2018 must be vanishingly small. But he managed to get back in. Erdogan has made a habit of attacking orthodoxies. The retrospective evaluation model of elections has to be added to the list.

Erdogan has done almost everything that “Davos Man” would dislike. The consensus of those who meet at the World Economic Forum and create the globalised expression of elite thinking each year would come down overwhelmingly against the Erdogan monetary policy of cutting interest rates because raising them would increase inflation. It also seemed inevitable after one of the worst earthquakes in history, only a few months ago, that people would turn against a government that appeared to botch the response. Away from the narrowly economic, Erdogan’s friendliness toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia is also a finger in the eye for Davos Man. But Turks decided, even though forcing him to a second-round runoff for the first time, to give Erdogan another term.