People walk past an election campaign poster for Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on May 25, 2023 in Istanbul, Turkey. The country is holding its first runoff election after neither candidate won more than 50% of the vote in the May 14 elections.
Chris McGrath | Getty Images News | fake images
Millions of Turks will vote on Sunday for the second time in two weeks to decide the outcome of what has been the closest presidential race in Turkish history.
Powerful incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 69, clashed with opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in what many described as the most serious fight of Erdogan’s political life and a potential death blow to his 20-year reign. But the initial round of voting, in which there was a whopping 86.2% turnout, turned out to be a disappointment for the opposition, with Kilicdaroglu, 74, losing by roughly 5 percentage points.
Still, no candidate passed the 50% threshold required to win; and with Erdogan with 49.5% and Kilicdaroglu with 44.7%, a second round of elections was set for two weeks after the first vote on May 14. The winner will preside over a divided country in flux, a cost-of-living crisis and complex security issues. and, as NATO’s second largest army and a key mediator between Ukraine and Russia, an increasingly crucial role in global geopolitics.
Country analysts are almost certain of an Erdogan victory.
“We expect Turkey’s President Erdogan to extend his rule into his third decade in the runoff election on May 28, and our judgment-based forecast assigns him an 87% chance of victory,” Hamish Kinnear said. , a senior MENA analyst at the risk intelligence firm. Verisk Maplecroft wrote in a research note.
In the span of two short weeks, some of the candidates’ campaign messages have changed dramatically, with both contenders doubling down on malicious accusations, extreme nationalism and scapegoating.
‘Send all refugees home’
Kilicdaroglu, known for his more conciliatory and soft-spoken demeanor, took a surprising step toward xenophobia and fear as part of his runoff campaign strategy, tapping into Turkey’s widespread discontent with the country’s more than 4 million refugees. .
He vowed to “send all the refugees home” if elected and accused Erdogan of flooding the country with them. He also claimed that Turkey’s cities would be at the mercy of criminal gangs and refugee mafias if Erdogan remained in power. The vast majority of refugees in Turkey come from neighboring war-torn Syria.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the 74-year-old leader of the center-left and prosecular Republican People’s Party (CHP), holds a news conference in Ankara on May 15, 2023.
Bulent Kilic | Afp | fake images
Earlier, Erdogan’s main rival had run on a platform calling for economic stability, democratic values and better relations with Europe and NATO.
Kilicdaroglu’s new strategy appeared to be a response to the fact that hardline nationalist third-party candidate Sinan Ogan garnered just over 5% of the vote on May 14, essentially making him a doer. Kings. Whoever Ogan endorsed would likely win a potentially decisive share of the votership from him, and despite Kilicdaroglu ramping up nationalist and anti-refugee rhetoric, Ogan ultimately endorsed Erdogan.
“Kilicdaroglu has taken a tougher line on immigration and security ahead of the runoff…it’s unlikely to be enough,” Kinnear said.
Meanwhile, Erdogan’s supporters circulated numerous fake posters and videos intended to make it appear that Kilicdaroglu’s party, the CHP, was supporting Kurdish militant groups that Ankara classifies as terrorists.
The German medium DW reported that the posters were falseciting Turkish fact-checking organization Teyit.org.
And in a televised interview on Tuesday, Erdogan supported to project manipulated images during his campaign rallies for Kilicdaroglu who falsely portrayed the latter as summoning with Kurdish militants.
In an unexpected twist, a far-right anti-immigrant party called the Victory Party endorsed Kilicdaroglu on Wednesday because of his promise to return refugees to Syria, dividing right-wing groups between the two presidential candidates.
“We now have two anti-refugee political leaders backing the rival candidates,” Ragip Soylu, head of the Middle East Eye Turkey bureau, said in a Twitter post.
economy, earthquakes
Erdogan’s continuing and seemingly unwavering popularity comes despite several years of economic decline in the country of 85 million.
The Turkish lira lost approximately 80% of its value against the dollar in five years and the country’s inflation rate hovers around 50%, thanks in large part to the president’s unorthodox economic policy of lowering interest rates even though inflation was already high.
And a series of devastating earthquakes in February killed more than 50,000 people, a tragedy made worse by slow government response and reports of widespread corruption that allowed construction companies to evade earthquake building safety regulations.
People carry a body bag as local residents wait for their relatives to be pulled from the rubble of collapsed buildings in Hatay on February 14, 2023, after a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the southeast of the country.
Bulent Kilic | Afp | fake images
But Erdogan seems largely intact politically; yet he garnered the most votes in Turkey’s quake-hit eastern provinces, which are overwhelmingly Islamically conservative. In addition, his powerful AK party won a majority in Turkey’s parliament, meaning his opponent would have much less power as president.
“Erdogan wasted no time in asking voters to back him to avoid a destabilizing split between parliament and the president,” Kinnear said. Meanwhile, Kilicdaroglu has called on the 8 million Kurdish and Gen Z voters who did not vote in the first round to back him.
However, his anti-refugee rhetoric has already angered many of his supporters and prompted resignations from some of his campaign allies.
With the incumbent’s victory looking increasingly certain, analysts are not holding their breath for a return to economic normality. Turkey’s central bank is already aggressively imposing new regulations to stifle foreign currency purchases in local liras, in an effort to prevent a further decline in the lira. The currency fell to its lowest level against the dollar in six months after the first round of voting, when Erdogan’s advantage became apparent.
“Investors should not expect a fundamental change in Turkey’s unorthodox approach to economic policymaking any time soon. Erdogan’s belief that lower interest rates lead to lower inflation, influencing monetary policy will continue to spook markets,” Kinnear wrote.
Amid speculation about the direction of the lira after the vote, Timothy Ash, emerging markets strategist at BlueBay Asset Management, said the only question now is “how weak is the lira going and how, without the ability to use higher interest rates, the CBRT (Turkish central bank) can prevent a devaluation-inflation spiral again.”