The tables had turned somewhat as the day of the second round of Turkey’s presidential elections arrived. If before Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the candidate of six parties from left to right, with a campaign based on a heartfelt speech and for the democratization of society, led the polls and finally came second in the first round, now the advantage is given to the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. But Kilicdaroglu’s transformation from the man who made hearts with his hands at rallies into an entrenched opponent of the refugees could attract the votes of the nationalists and scramble the bills again, with 15% undecided four days before the vote.
It is true that the approximately 2.5 million votes away for Kilicdaroglu have not stayed in the polls from one round to the next, but Erdogan is ahead. As Turkish writer Mustafa Akyol puts it, Erdogan has “created an unbreakable bond with Turkey’s largest socio-political bloc: religious conservatives. He also charms them with a grandiose story: Despite nefarious enemies and hideous conspiracies, he is making Turkey great again and Muslim”. in a text published in Washington message. Or, in the words of author Zulfu Livaneli, in an article in El País, “Turkey has turned into a bizarre “republican” regime in which a single person, elected by the people, has the power to decide everything alone and without accountability to the people. The voting mechanism was used to elect an “elected sultan ” to create”.
“Stability and trust are very important and people who have that feeling will do what is necessary at the ballot box.” Recep Erdogan
Younger voters have known no other leader. In two decades, Erdogan has shaped the country in the image of his increasingly conservative and Islamist party, along with more than a decade of economic growth. The media has been muzzled since the 2016 coup attempt and during the campaign, Twitter, whose owner Elon Musk claims to be a defender of free speech, censored accounts at the request of the Turkish presidency.
In recent months, Erdogan has raised the minimum wage and civil servant salaries and allowed more than two million people to retire. Taking into account the majority achieved by the alliance led by his AKP, he presents himself as the guarantor of stability, promising a new constitution and the beginning of a “Turkish century”.
Arriving in the second round, the opposing field bet on a change of strategy. “The nation has given us a very effective message,” said Kilicdaroglu. “Some of our citizens did not go to the polls, some voted reactively and others reluctantly went for Erdogan,” vowing to act accordingly. One of the messages sent by voters was the vote for third-place ultra-nationalist Sinan Ogan, who received about double the percentage predicted in the polls, or 2.8 million votes.
In a video of him performing with a painting by Ataturk, Kilicdaroglu made a violent statement blaming Erdogan for the flow of people “seeping through the veins” of the country, claiming that there are 10 million in this situation. The candidate, who is leader of the Kemalist CHP party, has promised to return all refugees within a year.
“We are not going to give up our homeland to this mentality that brought 10 million illegal refugees to our country. The border is our honor.” Kemal Kiligdaroglu
The Turkish authorities have clarified that there are about 5 million foreigners in the country, of which 3.4 million are Syrians. With the hardening of speech, Kilicdaroglu gained the declared support of two parties in the Ogan alliance, while Ogan finally announced the vote for Erdogan. The president, pressured by the growing electoral weight of the nationalists (25% of the vote in parliamentary elections), says he will encourage a million Syrians to return to the country.
According to a poll for Al-Monitor, refugees are the second most important issue for voters (16%), though a far cry from the first, the economy (57%). Erdogan – he is said to dictate central bank policy – has stuck to his premise that “the lower the interest rates, the lower the inflation,” as he told CNN.
A thesis that has not been endorsed by the economists, nor by the foreign investors who have left the country since 2020. They predict difficult times for the Turks after the damage caused by the earthquakes (equivalent to 9% of GDP), the electoral measures to be paid, the successive interventions to prevent the lira from falling further, and the concealed debts, such as the Russian gas bill, which Moscow promised to receive after the election.
Source: DN
