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Turkey on Sunday voted in a crucial election that could either extend President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 21-year hold on power or put the Muslim-majority country on a secular course.
The presidential and parliamentary ballot has become a referendum on Turkey’s longest-serving leader and his Islamic-rooted party.
It is also the toughest of more than a dozen Erdogan is facing – one that polls suggest he could lose.
The 69-year-old has steered the nation of 85 million through one of the most transformative and divisive periods in the post-Ottoman state’s 100-year history.
Turkey has become a military and geopolitical heavyweight playing roles in conflicts from Syria to Ukraine.
The NATO member’s footprint in Europe and the Middle East makes the outcome of the election as critical for Washington and Brussels as it is for Damascus and Moscow.
But Erdogan’s first decade of economic revival and warming relations with Europe was followed by a second filled with social and political turmoil.
He responded to a failed coup attempt in 2016 with sweeping purges that sent a chill through Turkish society and made him an increasingly uncomfortable partner for the West.
The emergence of Kemal Kilicdaroglu and his six-party alliance — a group that forms the type of broad-based coalition that Erdogan has preferred to forge throughout his career — has given foreign allies and voters the Turkey is a clear alternative.
Polls suggest the 74-year-old secular opposition leader is within touching distance of breaching the 50-percent threshold needed to win the first round.
A runoff on May 28 would give Erdogan time to regroup and reframe the debate.
But he is still reeling from Turkey’s worst economic crisis of his time in power and turmoil over his government’s faltering response to a February earthquake that claimed more than 50,000 lives.
‘I can’t see my future’
Kivanc Dal, an 18-year-old first-time voter, said economic difficulties would push him to back Kilicdaroglu. “I can’t see my future,” the university student told AFP in Istanbul on the eve of the vote.
Erdogan “can make as many tanks and weapons as he wants, but I have no respect for that as long as there is no penny in my pocket”.
But kindergarten teacher Deniz Aydemir said Erdogan will get his vote, citing Turkey’s social and economic progress in recent decades and dismissing the idea that a six-party coalition could be manage effectively.
“Yes, there are high prices… but at least there is prosperity,” said the 46-year-old last Saturday.
Erdogan’s campaign has become more tailored to his core supporters as election day approaches.
He called the opposition a “pro-LGBT” lobby that takes orders from outlawed Kurdish militants and is bankrolled by the West.
Erdogan’s ministers and pro-government media point to a Western “political coup” plot.
The opposition is beginning to worry that Erdogan is plotting ways to hold on to power at any cost.
Tensions flared when opposition Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu — a sworn enemy of Erdogan’s future vice president Kilicdaroglu — was pelted with bottles while touring Turkey’s conservative heartland.
Religious support
The opposition leader ended his campaign on Saturday by laying carnations at the mausoleum of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk — a revered military commander who created Turkey’s secular state.
Erdogan wrapped things up by leading prayers at the iconic Hagia Sophia mosque in Istanbul, a behavior that has evolved to openly defy his critics and command respect from his most ardent followers.
Hagia Sophia was built as a Byzantine cathedral — once the largest in the world — before being converted into a mosque by the Ottomans.
This museum was created as part of the modern republic’s effort to remove religion from public life.
Erdogan’s decision to turn it into a mosque in 2020 cemented his hero status among his religious supporters and contributed to growing Western dismay at his rule.
Heavy turnout
The election is expected to show a heavy turnout of the country’s 64 million registered voters.
The last national election saw Erdogan win 52.5 percent in a turnout of more than 86 percent.
Turkey does not have exit polls but will count ballots quickly.
Polling stations close at 5:00 pm (1400 GMT) and all reporting restrictions are lifted four hours later. The first results are sometimes published before.
Voters will also elect a new parliament with 600 seats.
Polls suggest Erdogan’s right-wing alliance is edging out the opposition bloc in the parliamentary ballot.
But the opposition can win a majority if it gets support from a new leftist alliance that represents the Kurdish vote.
(AFP)
