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20 May 2023

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In Turkey's run-off election, the votes of women - representing 50.6% of the electorate - will be key

When Turkish voters return to the polls in a week's time to pick a president, their choice will make waves across the globe. Turkey's future could look very different depending on who wins - and the world is watching.

Turkey's current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been in power for two decades. He has forged bonds with both East and West, but his increasingly authoritarian rule has led to friction with some allies.

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition challenger, has promised to restore Turkey's democracy and improve human rights. Some Turks, though, question whether he has the presence on the world stage and commitment to security that Mr Erdogan has made his trademark.

Polls before the first round of the election on 14 May suggested the vote would be finely balanced between the two men. But when the ballots were counted, Mr Erdogan defied predictions, with a lead that now looks difficult for his opponent to overturn.

"Turkey is a country that I used to describe as one of our swing states," explains Baroness Ashton, the EU's former foreign policy chief.

"What happens in Turkey in terms of its democracy and in terms of its place in the region has a huge impact on Europe, on Asia, and of course on all of the global issues that we're all grappling with. So it is really important."

Since Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Turkey has cemented its position as a valuable diplomatic broker. It facilitated some early talks between the warring nations, but made a real breakthrough only when it negotiated the crucial grain deal that has kept Ukrainian exports flowing through the heavily-mined Black Sea.

President Erdogan also prides himself on the lines of communication he keeps open with everyone from the UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and US President Joe Biden to Presidents Putin of Russia and Xi of China.

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President Erdogan has ties with a range of political leaders, from US President Joe Biden (right) to China's President Xi

"Turkey has always had this ambition to be part of the West," says Evren Balta, a professor in international relations at Istanbul's Ozyegin University.

"This has not changed in the two decades of [Mr Erdogan's AK Party] rule," Prof Balta, continues. "But Turkey's international alliances have diversified. It has pursued what we call 'strategic autonomy', the idea that countries can be in alliances or in alignments with more than one country or security umbrella."

Turkey's multiple relationships and ability to juggle them has proved valuable. But the picture is not entirely rosy.

Take the Nato military alliance for instance, where Turkish forces make up the second-biggest army. Its members readily agreed that bringing in Finland and Sweden would strengthen security for the whole bloc.

Turkey was the lone voice of dissent, slowing down Finnish membership and continuing to block Sweden's. It said it wouldn't support Swedish membership until it extradited dozens of members of the PKK, a Kurdish rebel group that has waged an armed struggle against Turkey since 1984.

Selin Nasi, the London representative of the Ankara Policy Center, thinks a change of president could be helpful for relations with Nato.

Mr Kilicdaroglu has promised to solve the so-called S400 issue - Turkey's use of a Russian missile defence system that the US deemed incompatible with its F-35 fighter jet programme. Turkey's access to F-35s was removed in 2019, but the opposition has promised to take steps to restore it.

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Kemal Kilicdaroglu (centre, with flowers) has pledged to restore democracy in Turkey and restart efforts to join the EU

"Under the current circumstances, Turkey is an ally, but its loyalty and commitment to Nato is questioned," says Nasi. "Remember the G20 summit in Bali. We came to the brink of a nuclear war.

"An emergency meeting was held there and Turkey was not invited. This displayed the ambiguous position of Turkey within Nato. In order to overcome these suspicions and judgments, I think we need to solve the S400 issue, the sooner the better."

And then there is the EU. Turkey was officially recognised as a candidate for membership in 1999. But the process stalled in 2016, with Brussels criticising the Turkish government's record on human rights and democratic freedoms.

Mr Kilicdaroglu and the opposition said they would make a renewed bid to get things moving again. But is that even a feasible aim?

Ilnur Cevik, the chief advisor to President Erdogan, does not think so. He says the opposition leader is "hallucinating".

"The EU are always putting stumbling blocks in our way to becoming a full member. [Mr Kilicdaroglu] says after he comes to power that in three months he would create the environment that the European Union would allow Turks visa-free movement, which is a load of baloney."

Faik Tunay is poetic in his reply to that. He is the deputy chair of the Democrat Party, one of the members of Mr Kilicdaroglu's opposition alliance.

"I would define the relationship between the EU and Turkey as an impossible love story," he says.

"Sure, Turkey has made a lot of mistakes. It didn't complete the homework which was given by the EU: the freedom, the democracy, the human rights or any other issues. But if Turkey can catch EU standards 100% in all aspects, then it's not important to be a member of the EU, or any other thing."

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Mr Erdogan has reshaped his country more than any leader since its modern-day founding father Mustafa Kemal Ataturk

In the original campaign, both sides promised to return as many Syrian refugees home as possible within weeks of the presidential vote. But as the run-off gets closer, that has crystallised into a key topic of discussion, with each man vying to be the most hard-line on the topic.

It's a worrying moment for Syrians, who fear they're about to be returned to a country that still isn't safe for many. That could create a headache for the wider world, too, who would have to accommodate them if Turkey puts a stop to its support.

Turkey's chequered history on rights and freedoms continues to complicate the country's relationship with the West. If the opposition wins, it insists it would make things better, and the pledge to return to democracy has been one of its key campaign messages.

"If under a different government we see any improvement on the democratic rights and freedom of expression, it would improve Turkey's image in the international arena," says the Ankara Policy Center's Selin Nasi. "An Erdogan victory would also mean that political prisoners will remain in jail."

Turkey's voters are facing a stark choice. No doubt domestic issues like the struggling economy are at the forefront of most minds as ballots are being cast. Turkey's place in the world may feel like a less important consideration to some, but the direction its next leader takes will define the future stability and success of the country for decades.

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Turkey election: Why the world is watching the presidential race - BBC

Video Duration 24 minutes 25 seconds 24:25

President Erdogans dominating media presence helps him take Turkeystightly fought election to a run-off. Plus, is the media making the Sino-America divide worse?

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With President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the verge of re-election in the second round next week, whats next for what is left of Turkish journalism?

Contributors: Mustafa Akyol Senior Fellow, Cato InstituteRavza Kavakci Kan AK Party Member of ParliamentSeren Selvin Korkmaz Co-founder, IstanPol Institute & Lecturer, Stockholm UniversityGney Yildiz Researcher & Analyst

Another death in Guatemala. Producer Flo Phillips reports on elPeriodico, the investigative magazine forced to close after coming into conflict with the powers that be.

Reflecting tensions or creating them? Producer Meenakshi Ravi looks at the medias role in the geopolitical staredown between two of the worlds great economic and military powers China and the United States.

Contributors: Kaiser Kuo Host, Sinica PodcastLizzi Lee Journalist, Wall Street TVEinar Tangen Senior Fellow, Taihe Institute & Founder, Asia Narratives

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Published On 20 May 202320 May 2023

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Erdogans media domination and the vote in Turkey - Al Jazeera English

ANKARA, Turkey (AP) Turkey's presidential election will be decided in a runoff, election officials said Monday, after incumbent Recep Tayyip Erdogan pulled ahead of his chief challenger, but fell short of an outright victory that would extend his increasingly authoritarian rule into a third decade.

The May 28 second-round vote will determine whether the strategically located NATO country remains under the president's firm grip or can embark on a more democratic course promised by his main rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

READ MORE: Runoff in Turkey's election appears more likely after dip in voter support for Erdogan

While Erdogan has governed for 20 years, opinion polls had suggested that run could be coming to an end and that a cost-of-living crisis and criticism over the government's response to a devastating February earthquake might redraw the electoral map.

Instead, Erdogan's retreat was still less marked than predicted and with his alliance retaining its hold on the parliament, he is now in a good position to win in the second round.

The uncertainty drove the main Turkish stock exchange BIST-100 more than 6% lower at the open Monday, prompting a temporary halt in trading. But shares recovered after trading resumed, and the index was 2.5% lower in the afternoon compared to the market close Friday.

Western nations and foreign investors were particularly interested in the outcome because of Erdogan's unorthodox leadership of the economy and often mercurial but successful efforts to put Turkey at the center of many major diplomatic negotiations. At a crossroads between East and West, with a coast along the Black Sea and borders with Iran, Iraq and Syria, Turkey has been a key player on issues including the war in Syria, migration flows to Europe, exports of Ukraine's grain, and NATO's expansion.

Preliminary results showed Erdogan won 49.5% of the vote, while Kilicdaroglu grabbed 44.9%, and the third candidate, Sinan Ogan, received 5.2%, according to Ahmet Yener, the head of Supreme Electoral Board.

The remaining uncounted votes were not enough to tip Erdogan into outright victory, even if they all broke for him, Yener said. In the last presidential election in 2018, Erdogan won in the first round, with more than 52% of the vote.

Even as it became clear a runoff was likely, Erdogan, who has governed Turkey as either prime minister or president since 2003, painted Sunday's vote as a victory both for himself and the country.

"That the election results have not been finalized doesn't change the fact that the nation has chosen us," Erdogan, 69, told supporters in the early hours of Monday.

He said he would respect the nation's decision.

Kilicdaroglu sounded hopeful, tweeting around the time the runoff was announced: "Don't lose hope. We will get up and win this election together."

Kilicdaroglu, 74, and his party have lost all previous presidential and parliamentary elections since he took leadership in 2010 but increased their votes this time.

Right-wing candidate Ogan has not said whom he would endorse if the elections go to a second round. He is believed to have received support from nationalist electors wanting change after two decades under Erdogan but unconvinced by the Kilicdaroglu-led six party alliance's ability to govern.

The election results showed that the alliance led by Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party looked like it would keep its majority in the 600-seat parliament, although the assembly has lost much of its power after a referendum that gave the presidency additional legislative powers narrowly passed in 2017.

Erdogan's AKP and its allies secured 321 seats in the National Assembly, while the opposition won 213 and the 66 remaining went to a pro-Kurdish alliance, according to preliminary results.

Howard Eissenstat, an associate professor of Middle East history and politics at St. Lawrence University in New York, said those results would likely give Erdogan an advantage in an eventual runoff because voters would not want a "divided government."

As in previous years, Erdogan led a highly divisive campaign. He portrayed Kilicdaroglu, who had received the backing of the country's pro-Kurdish party, of colluding with "terrorists" and of supporting what he called "deviant" LGBTQ rights. In a bid to woo voters hit hard by inflation, he increased wages and pensions and subsidized electricity and gas bills, while showcasing Turkey's homegrown defense industry and infrastructure projects.

Kilicdaroglu, for his part, campaigned on promises to reverse crackdowns on free speech and other forms of democratic backsliding, as well as to repair an economy battered by high inflation and currency devaluation.

But as the results came in, it appeared those elements didn't shake up the electorate as expected: Turkey's conservative heartland overwhelmingly voted for the ruling party, with Kilicdaroglu's main opposition winning most of the coastal provinces in the west and south. The pro-Kurdish Green Left Party, YSP, won the predominantly Kurdish provinces in the southeast.

Results reported by the state-run Anadolu Agency showed Erdogan's party dominating in the earthquake-hit region, winning 10 out of 11 provinces in an area that has traditionally supported the president. That was despite criticism of a slow response by his government to the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people.

Nearly 89% of eligible voters in Turkey cast a ballot and over half of overseas voters went to the ballot box. Voter turnout in Turkey is traditionally strong, despite the government suppressing freedom of expression and assembly over the years and especially since a 2016 coup attempt.

Erdogan blamed the failed coup on followers of a former ally, cleric Fethullah Gulen, and initiated a large-scale crackdown on civil servants with alleged links to Gulen and on pro-Kurdish politicians.

Critics maintain the president's heavy-handed style is responsible for a painful cost-of-living crisis. The latest official statistics put inflation at about 44%, down from a high of around 86%. The price of vegetables became a campaign issue for the opposition, which used an onion as a symbol.

Bilginsoy reported from Istanbul. Associated Press writer Cinar Kiper contributed from Bodrum, Turkey.

Read more:
Turkey presidential election heads to runoff as incumbent Erdogan surges - PBS NewsHour

Secular leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu gave the opposition's best performance of Erdogan's dominant era in May 14 parliament and presidential polls.

The retired bureaucrat of Kurdish Alevi descent broke ethnic barriers and Erdogan's stranglehold on the media and state institutions to win almost 45 percent of the vote.

But Erdogan still came within a fraction of a point of topping the 50-percent threshold needed to win in the first round.

The 69-year-old leader did it despite Turkey's worst economic crisis since the 1990s and opinion surveys showing him headed for his first national election defeat.

Kilicdaroglu will now need to rally his deflated troops and beat the odds yet again to wrest back power for the secular party that ruled Turkey for most of the 20th century.

The Eurasia Group consultancy put Erdogan's chances of winning next Sunday at 80 percent.

"It will be an uphill struggle for Kilicdaroglu in the second round," Hamish Kinnear of the Verisk Maplecroft consulting firm agreed.

Erdogan rode a nationalist wave that saw smaller right-wing parties pick up nearly 25 percent of the parallel parliamentary vote.

Kilicdaroglu is courting these voters in the second presidential round.

The 74-year-old revamped his campaign team and tore up his old playbook for the most fateful week of his political career.

He has replaced chatty clips that he used to record from his kitchen with desk-thumping speeches and pledges to immediately rid Turkey of millions of migrants.

"As soon as I come to power, I will send all the refugees home," he said in his first post-election address.

He has chased the endorsement of a little-known ultra-nationalist, whose tiny vote share pushed Turkey into its first presidential runoff.

And he has punched back against Erdogan's claims that he was associating with "terrorists" -- a code word for Kurdish groups fighting for broader autonomy in Turkey's southeast.

"We have millions of patriots to reach," Kilicdaroglu said.

But Kilicdaroglu's sharp right turn could prove costly with voters from Kurdish regions that overwhelmingly backed him in the first round.

Kurds embraced Erdogan during his first decade in power because he worked to lift many of their social restrictions.

They turned against him when Erdogan formed his own alliance with Turkey's nationalist forces and began to unleash purges after surviving a failed coup attempt in 2016.

Kilicdaroglu's new and more overtly nationalist tone echoes a secular era during which Kurds -- who make up nearly a fifth of Turkey's population -- were stripped of basic rights.

The political battles are being accompanied by market turmoil that set in once it became apparent that Erdogan was on course to keep his grip on power.

Turkey's recent years have been roiled by economic upheaval that erased many of the gains of Erdogan's more prosperous early rule.

Most of the problems stem from Erdogan's fervent fight against interest rates -- an approach some analysts link to his adherence to Islamic rules against usury.

"I have a thesis that interest rates and inflation are positively correlated," he told CNN this week.

"The lower the interest rates, the lower inflation will be."

The markets' trust in more conventional economics have put massive pressure on the lira.

Government data showed Turkey's foreign currency reserves -- topped up by aid from Arab allies -- dropping by $9 billion and reaching their lowest levels in 21 years in the week running up to the first-round vote.

Analysts think most of the money was spent on efforts to prop up the lira against sharp and politically sensitive falls.

"There is now a very real risk that an Erdogan victory could lead to macroeconomic instability in Turkey, including the threat of a severe currency crisis," Capital Economic warned.

- 'Special relationship with Putin' -

But Erdogan has exuded confidence since the first round.

He has ridiculed his rival's nationalist overtures and stuck by some of his more controversial policies -- including an increasingly strong relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Erdogan's turn towards Russia has helped secure billions of dollars of relief on Turkey's huge energy bill.

"Russia and Turkey need each other in every field possible," Erdogan told CNN.

He also argued that his more "balanced" stance towards Putin helped him negotiate a UN-backed deal with Russia under which Ukraine was allowed to resume exporting grain.

"This was possible because of our special relationship with President Putin," Erdogan said.

He also scoffed at remarks from 2019 by US President Joe Biden -- recalled by Erdogan's allies throughout the campaign -- calling Erdogan an "autocrat".

"Would a dictator ever enter a runoff election?" Erdogan asked.

Read more from the original source:
Erdogan eyes third decade of rule in historic runoff - FRANCE 24 English

Politicians who do not have vision, ideals and cleargoals cannot outline development horizons and become a source ofhope for the people, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said,Azernews reports citing Trend.

He made the remark in the publication in connectionwith the second round of voting in the presidential electionsscheduled for May 28.

Erdogan urged his fellow citizens, including theyounger generation of voters, not to believe in negative scenariosthat a number of politicians are trying to manipulate before thevoting day.

"We have ruled in Trkiye for 21 years. Most of us areyour peers. For all these years, the authorities have neverinterfered and did not allow interference in the lifestyle of youngpeople. We have always listened to the opinion of the youngergeneration and supported it," he said.

The Turkish president also drew attention to theopportunities open to the Trkiye's youth.

"The number of universities in Trkiye has reached208. There are 96 technoparks, 316 design and 1,249 researchcenters in the country. More than a million young citizens canexpress themselves at the TEKNOFEST festival venues. Modern Trkiyehas all the opportunities for international competition. Thanks tothe National Technological Initiative, our country has moved out ofthe category of consumers and has become one of the states thatcreate, develop and produce. All this is done for you. We willbuild Trkiye of the future together," Erdogan said.

He expressed confidence that the date of May 28 willbe the starting point for the implementation of the "Centenary ofTrkiye" concept, in which young people will become activeparticipants.

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Modern Trkiye has all opportunities for international competition ... - AzerNews.Az