Can Inflation Cost Erdogan his Seat? A Look at Turkey’s Presidential Elections

On May 28, the second round of presidential elections will be held in Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdogan may lose power for the first time in 20 years. According to a study by one of Turkey’s leading national trade unions, in the 20 years that Erdogan’s party has been in power, food prices have risen by a record 1,750 percent. At the same time, over the past 10 years, the lira has become cheaper against the dollar by almost 20 times. Therefore, even at the very beginning of the presidential race, it was clear that inflation could cost Erdogan his seat.

The Turkish lira has just broken another record. This is Istanbul’s Ayalki Borsa – “stock exchange on legs” in Turkish. Here they trade in gold, which has jumped sharply in price today. Precious coins that the Turks give for weddings, at the birth of a child, and indeed for any occasion, for many local residents have become unaffordable.

“Over the past 10 years, gold has risen in price by 5 times. 10 years ago, a quarter of a coin of gold cost 650-750 liras, now it costs 2,600 liras. Of course, the results of the elections also influenced this. It was expected that the dollar would fall in price, but it rose even higher. Tayyip Erdogan hasn’t been able to rule the country for so many years, it’s better to go to die,” says Ahmet, an Istanbul gold merchant.

In the presidential elections in 2023, the victory of the opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroglu was expected not only by market traders, but also by many large foreign investors. They hoped for a more predictable Turkish economic policy. Immediately after the first round, Bloomberg, for example, wrote that the voting results were a huge disappointment. The lira fell in price, the stock market fell by 6 percent. What this threatens to ordinary Turks is regularly explained in the opposition. At the headquarters of Kılıçdaroğlu, they constantly talk about how expensive it has become to live in Turkey.

Kemal Kylychdaroglu

“We took a kilogram of rice. Last year it cost 18 lira, today it is 39. Do you know how much rice a family of four needs? Of course you know, but people in the palace don’t. Let’s take a kilogram of beans, which cost 17 last year lira, this year 36. Sugar – 20 lira last year, this year 47. A liter of milk. Last year 14, today 27 lira,” presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu said.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan

Erdogan, in response, says that if re-elected, he will fight against rising prices, continue to reduce bank interest rates and increase the salaries of civil servants. The opposition, which consists of six different parties, he says, understands nothing about economics.

“We know what kind of people the National Alliance’s team of economists consists of. These are people with not very famous names. But what are they doing? They meet behind closed doors with representatives of the World Bank, and then ask to borrow from the World Bank. borrow money, Kılıçdaroğlu?” Recep Tayyip Erdogan says

However, Erdogan’s government has so far failed to contain extreme inflation. All these years, food, technology, clothing continue to rise in price. According to a study by one of Turkey’s leading national trade unions, in the 20 years that the president’s party has been in power, food prices have risen by a record 1,750 percent. At the same time, over the past 10 years, the lira has become cheaper against the dollar by almost 20 times. Therefore, even at the very beginning of the presidential race, it was clear that inflation could cost Erdogan his seat.

As a result, in the first round of voting, he really could not get the number of votes necessary for victory. Erdogan was supported by 49.52 percent of Turkish voters, Kılıçdaroglu – about 44.88 percent.

SEE ALSO: “Plays for the rural population and head, probably in the past.” Orientalist on why Erdogan did not win the first round of elections in Turkey

Now, in the second round, citizens will have to make a choice between completely different politicians – a conservative Islamist, constantly criticizing the West, Erdogan, and a secular politician who promises to eliminate the super-presidential power, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

Besy, 73, lives with her husband in the village of Sairantepe near Gaziantep. The woman says that in recent years there is not enough money for many products. For example, they have not bought beef or lamb in their house for a very long time.

“Our only income is the harvest from the garden and vegetable gardens. We do not receive a pension. Some villagers are provided by children who live abroad. Some have cattle. Only the old people remained in the village. The youth went abroad – to Germany, Switzerland, Austria”, Besy says.

Tired of poverty, the couple eventually voted in the first round of the presidential election for opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. However, they did this not only for economic reasons. Besy and Bektesh, like the majority of the inhabitants of this village, are representatives of the ethnic minority – the Kurds.

Of the 150 people who live in Sairantep, 120 supported the opposition and only four supported Erdogan.

Pro-government human rights activist Musa Ozer says the Kurds are likely to vote for Kılıçdaroğlu in the second round as well. Although, as he believes, it is the current government that protects national minorities: “Let’s, for example, take one of Turkey’s biggest problems – the Kurdish issue or the issue of the Alevis, to which Kılıçdaroglu himself belongs. In all these issues, the policy of revenge and murder was opposed by the People’s Republican Party , formed in 1923. Now it is headed by Kilichdaroglu. Erdogan is trying to peacefully resolve all these issues. Although in Europe, in America they believe that it is the Republican People’s Party that declares the rights of people and injustice. It turns out that such concepts as justice and law, work only when it is beneficial to the West.”

Kurds make up over 20 percent of Turkey’s total voters. It is in the regions where they live that Kılıçdaroğlu received the largest number of votes. Including, for example, in the cities of Hakkari and Shirnak, where clashes took place more than once between Kurdish groups and the forces of the Erdogan government. The popularity of the opposition leader in these regions is due to the fact that one of the parties that fights for the rights of the Kurds supported Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu. However, the authorities accuse this organization of links with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which is recognized as a terrorist organization in Turkey.

Meanwhile, many Turkish and international experts were confident that the February earthquake, which claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, will affect the results of the vote, as the government is criticized for not doing enough to eliminate the consequences of the disaster. However, the areas affected by the disaster supported the current government. About why they voted for Erdogan and his party, we decided to find out from the residents of these regions themselves.

More than 2,300 dead in Turkey and Syria as a result of the earthquake. Photo

“The cutest girl in our class died. Another friend of mine from another class died. They were my closest friends. th class from Kahramanmarash.

More than 320 families lived in the destroyed residential complex “Ebrar site”. This area of ​​the city accounts for a horrendous death toll – about 4,500 people.

“Yes, we smile, we walk as usual, but in fact our soul still hurts,” says Selima, a tent camper in Kahramanmaras.

Selima and her family have nowhere else to live. The money allocated to them by the government is not enough to build a new house. But despite this, she decided to vote for the current President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the second round of the presidential elections.

In Kahramanmarash, which was the epicenter of the devastating earthquake, almost 72 percent of local residents supported Erdogan in the first round. The picture is similar in other areas where people lost loved ones and were left homeless due to the earthquake. Although in Turkey they talked a lot about the fact that in the first day after the disaster, the authorities were unable to send enough rescuers and equipment to some of the affected areas.

“Look how poor-quality material was used in the construction of the building. Look, the foam block just crumbles like flour,” Mustafa, a resident of the city of Gaziantep, shows.

The local press wrote that the earthquake helped the opposition to strengthen its position in the country. About two million people were left homeless, the economic crisis deepened. In the opposition party, from which Kemal Kılıçdaroglu is nominated, they are surprised why, after all that has happened, citizens continue to vote for Erdogan.

“I graduated from university in 1969. If I had been told then what this country would turn into, I would never have believed it. People who have intelligence are leaving Turkey. Turkey, of course, is not Afghanistan or Iran, but religious “Motives in the country are growing. In general, it is difficult to find an answer to this question, we will never understand why such poor and hungry people continue to vote for them. When we find the answer to this question, Turkey will come to prosperity,” said a member of the People’s Republican party Ismail Yilmaz.

In addition to promoting secular values, members of the Republican People’s Party insist on a tough migration policy. Party leader Kılıçdaroğlu promised from the outset to send Syrian refugees back to their homeland. After the first round of the presidential elections, his position only hardened. If among the Turks themselves this statement found support, then among the migrants, the oppositionist Kılıçdaroğlu is frankly disliked.

“God forbid, if President Erdogan leaves, everything will be bad for us. We will just be sent to certain death. We will just go there and die. But, thank God, Erdogan loves us because we are Muslims,” says a refugee from Syria Sheriff Selimoglu.

SEE ALSO: Why Erdogan needs Syrian refugees and why he came to Putin, and not vice versa. What do the agreements between the presidents of Turkey and Russia mean?

The sheriff fled Syria as a child. There he was wounded in the leg. In Istanbul, he was treated, he learned Turkish and began to work. He sends almost all the money he earns home.

“I have 9 people in my family,” says Sherif Selimoglu. “I have five sisters. I am the eldest, I pay for their education. There is no work, the maximum you can earn there is one dollar a day. All these years, about 4 million people have died in Syria.”

However, the opposition is confident that Erdogan simplifies immigration laws for a reason. They have repeatedly accused the government of wanting to have time to distribute passports to more than 3.5 million Syrians who could support the current government. However, according to official data, about 200,000 Syrians have received Turkish citizenship, of which only half will allegedly be able to vote in the presidential elections.

Sinan Ogan

Another important factor in the second round of voting was the question of who will be supported by the supporters of the third candidate who dropped out of the presidential race, Sinan Ogan. Five percent of voters voted for him, whose votes can play a decisive role on May 28. Five days before the vote, Ogan announced his support for Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

So now the opposition leader’s main hope is for the votes of those people who did not come to the polls in the first round. Such as the seller of the famous Turkish tea at the Istanbul bazaar, Yusuf.

“How much does a glass of this tea cost now? Five lire. When it cost one lire, I got a thousand lire a month, and now I get five thousand lire. So nothing affects me. No difference. What can happen to the elections? One will leave , another will come. What can change? Nothing will change,” Yusuf is sure.

Although, according to Yusuf, although not irreproachable, Turkey taught the lesson of holding democratic elections to many countries. Therefore, in the second round, he still, perhaps, will go to vote. For whom exactly – does not say. He jokes that the whole world is waiting for this day: they say, you will find out when the winner of the presidential race is announced.