/ world today news/ Western publications assure that the upcoming elections will be “the most difficult test for Erdogan in the last 20 years”. In doing so, they refer to the results of studies conducted by various centers. Their accuracy depends on the methods, range and other parameters. Therefore, there is a discrepancy in the results as well
In exactly one month, on May 14, presidential and parliamentary elections are to be held in Turkey. They are held early. The election was originally scheduled for June 18, and there is a lot of historical symbolism in its postponement.
“The main feature of the election campaign”
On May 14, 1950, the country’s first free multi-party elections were won by the “Democratic Party” by a large margin and the 27-year monopoly of the Kemalist Republican People’s Party was ended. The government was led by Adnan Menderes. His premiership was marked not only by a significant recovery of the country’s economy, but also by the strengthening of authoritarian tendencies, nationalist rhetoric and the growing influence of Islam.
As a result of the May 27, 1960 coup organized by Cemal Gürcel, Menderes was removed from his post, arrested, found guilty of treason and corruption in violation of the constitution, sentenced to death and hanged. Foreign Minister Fatin Rüstiu Zorlu and Finance Minister Hasan Polatkan were executed together with him. The day of their execution in Turkey is still called “Day of Shame” and “Black Day”.
Turkey’s current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, believes that his Justice and Development Party (AKP) is a successor to the ideas of Menderes’s Democratic Party and says that voters today, after 73 years, “they have to tell the opposition coalition again – enough! “. Erdogan also alludes to the failed coup of July 16, 2016.
As the British magazine The Economist writes, “this is due to the fact that in the West they began to transfer the fate of Menderes to Erdogan as well”, pointing out “the fragility of Turkish democracy”, the President’s desire to “rewrote history for itself, turning it into a political weapon to achieve certain goals in domestic and foreign policy.”
At the same time, it is emphasized that “the execution of Menderes set a precedent: in the following four decades, the armed forces overthrew three more governments, and this process in Turkey is not yet complete – if the civilian coup fails, an armed military coup is now possible.
It is no coincidence that the Turkish newspaper Milli Gazete compared Erdogan to Menderes, who “made an attempt to turn the foreign policy of the country from the West and was removed from his post”.
Of course, historical parallels are always arbitrary.
But Erdogan is holding them to evoke the necessary historical associations in the country’s citizens before the elections, which many Turkish experts believe is “the main feature of the current election campaign, which is being built by the ruling coalition according to the rules of political engineering.”
The alignment of political forces
On April 11, the High Electoral Commission of Turkey examined the issue of compliance with the legislation of the candidates for participation in the parliamentary elections. Election lists have been formed. Electorally, the country today is quite fragmented, so politicians are forced to form alliances in an attempt to consolidate the votes of the voters in their platform as much as possible.
The main struggle, according to many experts, will unfold between the opposition Millet ittifakı (“National Alliance” or “People’s Alliance”), also known as the “Table of Six”, according to the number of parties included in it, and a pro-presidential coalition led by the ruling Justice and Development Party. Accordingly, in the presidential elections, the two main candidates between whom the main struggle is unfolding are Erdogan and the leader of the “Table of Six”, the leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) Kemal Kulçdaroğlu.
Apart from them, Muharrem Indje and Sinan Ogan were admitted to the elections. They have no chance of winning, but how many votes they collect for themselves will determine whether one of the leaders of the race will be able to win more than 50% (and therefore win in the first round).
Muharrem Ince was nominated by the CHP in the 2018 presidential election, and then left the party and created his own political force, Memleket (“Motherland”).
As for Ogan, a candidate for the so-called “Father’s Coalition” (Alliance Ata), which includes five right-wing parties, he was previously a member of the Nationalist Movement Party, which is now part of the ruling coalition. He speaks Russian, defended his doctoral thesis at MGIMO and studied Russia, Ukraine and the Caucasus at the Turkish ASAM center.
Experts believe that those who refused to nominate their candidate, the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) and the two leftist forces that joined it, may have a greater influence on the outcome of the election. In the 2014 and 2018 elections, they nominated Selyahatin Demirtaş for president, and in 2018 the politician was already in pre-trial detention and campaigning from a prison cell. Currently, Demirtas cannot run, but around 10% of HDP supporters are very likely to vote for Kulçdaroğlu. That’s not much.
There is an opinion in Turkey that the opposition does not so much want to take power as to continue to “oppose” the current leadership. Indirectly, this is also proven by the diversity of the opposition: nationalists, Islamists, supporters of European aspirations, pro-Westerners, Kemalists, Pan-Turkists, anti-Westerners, etc. are found together.
Against this background, “Erdogan’s coalition” seems a more cohesive force.
Western publications assure that the upcoming elections will be “the most difficult test for Erdogan in the last 20 years”. In doing so, they refer to the results of studies conducted by various centers. Their accuracy depends on the methods, range and other parameters. Therefore, there is a divergence in the results: the impression is created of a possible victory in the elections either of the opposition alliance or of the ruling coalition led by Erdogan.
Therefore, the general trend of the political preferences of Turkish voters can only be tentatively discussed.
All polling services, even openly sympathetic to one of the candidates, agree that there are many undecided voters. The Turkish electorate is emotional and much will depend on the actual steps taken by both the opposition and Erdogan’s team in the run-up to the election.
Battle of the programs
Erdogan said the May 14 election would be a “turning point in the country’s history” as his proposed program would be vital to the implementation of the “Turkey Centenary” strategy. The main idea is for Turkey to become one of the world leaders in political and economic terms.
Thus, the president initially raises the political bar in the elections, tying them to the high international rating of the country and forcing the opposition to discuss in this direction.
Now Turkey’s voice in the international arena has become stronger. It issues ultimatums to the major powers, conducts military operations and, based on national interests, does not join Western sanctions against Russia. For an ordinary Turk to see such displays of his homeland’s strength is an effective enough emotional argument to be proud of, including the current president.
The opposition does not demonstrate such geopolitical ambitions, stating that “Erdogan is only conducting a dangerous geopolitical experiment on all platforms at the same time: in the Eastern Mediterranean, in Syria, Iraq, Libya and the Caucasus, without having adequate economic resources to do so,” And “a way out of the situation, including solving acute socio-economic problems, can only be found by returning to the West.
At the same time, the opposition believes that the presidential system introduced after the 2017 referendum is the root of all problems and raises the question of returning to the form of a parliamentary republic.
To undermine Erdogan’s play on traditional values and geopolitical symbolism, the incumbent president’s opponents are trying to turn the discussion into an economic plane, pointing to high inflation and a decline in citizens’ living standards.
Erdogan is accused of ” showed a poor response to the devastating February earthquakes that killed more than 48,000 people “, that he “has not prepared the country enough for the cataclysm”, although earthquake-prone Turkey is not the first to face such natural disasters.
But Erdogan, without getting into arguments with the opposition, did something that had never happened before: he publicly repented. He asked for a year to rebuild the housing stock and the foundations have already started in the provinces (he promised to build 319,000 houses). At the same time, the president unequivocally hinted that the opposition, in case of victory, would not be able to effectively deal with this.
The Turkish leader need not worry too much about this, however: the affected regions – with rare exceptions – have traditionally supported the president or his allied Nationalist Movement Party.
Ankara spent a record 1.4 percent of its budget on social welfare in 2022, including energy subsidies, a doubling of the minimum wage and a pension reform that allowed more than 2 million residents to retire immediately.
According to Erdogan, “the elections on May 14 will also be Turkey’s message to the West.” According to him “now we are busy with our own affairs, in the defense industry the level of self-sufficiency has reached 80% and this is a success, a turning point”.
In recent years, Erdogan’s policy has been aimed at emphasizing Turkey’s “special role” as a mediator between the West and the East, pushing his own agenda in the Middle East.
Surrounded by Kulçdaroğlu, they claim that if they win the elections, the opposition will “is striving for equal relations with Moscow, but I will remind it about Turkey’s membership in NATO”. Therefore, it is possible that the coming to power of the opposition will change the course of the state in the opposite direction.
Similar thoughts are caused by the statements of the foreign policy advisor Kulçdaroğlu Unal Çevikez, who claims that if the People’s Coalition wins, Ankara can unfreeze the negotiations for the country’s accession to the European Union, which were interrupted many years ago.
The development of events
It seems that the decisive factor in the election will be the leadership qualities of both Erdogan, his ability to hold the reins of power and control the situation, and the leaders of the opposition.
Personal positioning of candidates is very important.
Erdogan has extensive political experience, knows how to turn negative things to his advantage. He has also taken good advantage of the current political chaos in the West due to the Ukraine crisis, realizing, as London’s Financial Times writes, that he still “walk the fine line”.
As for Kulçdaroğlu, his position is not as strong as he would like, since he was not nominated as a candidate the first time and a number of important opposition parties were not drawn into the coalition. In this regard, the opposition is currently acting only as a political extra, a few steps late in its actions. It has no clear solutions to key economic and political issues, ignores existing geopolitical realities, and has no vision for Turkey’s future.
But the election battle is heating up and many wild cards could be thrown into the scene. New intrigues are expected.
And so a third party joined the ruling coalition, the renewed conservative Prosperity Party, which is able to play a role in the alignment of political forces.
The situation remains unstable, many things will be decided literally in the last days before the vote. Many factors will influence the results: the development of the earthquake plot and the new foreign policy maneuvers regarding Iran and Syria, as well as the economic situation. So even a month before the election, the results are still hard to predict.
Translation: EU
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