All Eyes on Turkey’s Elections

Date: 14 May 2023 - 22:37

News ID: ۱۱۵۰۷۵

ANKARA, Turkey (Dispatches) — Election polls closed Sunday in Turkey, where President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 20-year leadership of the country hung in the balance after a strong challenge from an opposition candidate.
The election could grant Erdogan, 69, a new five-year term or unseat him in favor of the head of an invigorated opposition, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who has promised to return Turkey to a more pro-West path. If no candidate receives more than 50% of the vote, the race will be determined in a May 28 run-off.
Voters also elected lawmakers to fill Turkey’s 600-seat parliament. If his political alliance wins, Erdogan could continue governing without much restriction. The opposition has promised to return Turkey’s governance system to a parliamentary system of governance if it wins both the presidential and parliamentary ballots.
Pre-election polls gave a slight lead to Kilicdaroglu, 74, the joint candidate of a six-party opposition alliance who leads the center-left, pro-secular Republican People’s Party, or CHP.
Voting began at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) and polls closed at 5 p.m. (1400 GMT). Under Turkey’s election custom, news organizations are barred from reporting partial results until an embargo lifts at 9 p.m. (1800 GMT). There are no exit polls.
More than 64 million people, including 3.4 million overseas voters, were eligible to vote in the elections, which come the year the country will mark the centenary of its establishment as a republic. Voter turnout in Turkey is traditionally strong, reflecting citizens’ continued belief in democratic balloting.
Turkey is wracked by a steep cost-of-living crisis and is reeling from the effects of a powerful earthquake that caused devastation in 11 southern provinces in February, killing more than 50,000 people.
Internationally, the elections were being watched closely as a test of a united opposition’s ability to dislodge Erdogan who has accused the opposition of colluding with “terrorists”.
In a bid to secure support from citizens hit hard by inflation, he has increased wages and pensions and subsidized electricity and gas bills, while showcasing Turkey’s homegrown defense and infrastructure projects.
He also extended the political alliance of his ruling Justice and Development Party, or AKP, with two nationalist parties to include

a small leftist party and two marginal Islamic parties.

Kilicdaroglu’s six-party Nation Alliance pledged to dismantle an executive presidential system narrowly voted in by a 2017 referendum. The opposition alliance also promised to restore the independence of the judiciary and the central bank.

The alliance includes the nationalist Good Party led by former Interior Minister Meral Aksener, a small Islamic party and two parties that splintered from the AKP, one led by a former prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and the other by a former finance minister, Ali Babacan.

The country’s main Kurdish political party, currently Turkey’s second-largest opposition grouping, is supporting Kilicdaroglu in the presidential race.

People were seen walking to schools acting as polling stations on a warm spring day in much of the country, and forming long lines outside classrooms. Officials in Ankara said they expected turnout to be even higher than previous years.

The lines were partly due to problems many voters encountered trying to fold bulky ballot papers — they featured 24 political parties competing for seats in parliament — and to fit them into envelopes along with the ballot for the presidency.

“It’s important for Turkey. It’s important for the people,” Necati Aktuna, a voter in Ankara, said. “I’ve been voting for the last 60 years. I haven’t seen a more important election that this one.”

Large crowds gathered outside the polling stations where Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu cast their votes.

“From now on, you will see that spring will come to this country,” Kilicdaroglu said after voting at a school in Ankara, where his supporters chanted “President Kilicdaroglu!”

Erdogan said voting was underway “without any problems,” including in the earthquake-affected region where people were voting “with great enthusiasm and love.”

“It is my hope that after the evening’s count ... there will be a better future for our country, our nation and Turkish democracy,” he said.

Also running for president was Sinan Ogan, a former academic who has the backing of an anti-immigrant nationalist party. Another candidate, center-left politician Muharrem Ince, dropped out of the race on Thursday following a significant drop in his ratings, the country’s election board said his withdrawal was invalid and votes for him would get counted.