ANKARA (INP): Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan next Sunday puts his two-decade legacy on the line in a knife-edge vote against a powerful alliance built on anger over economic hardship and his authoritarian turn. The 69-year-old has become one of Turkey’s most important and divisive leaders since his Islamic-rooted party ended half a century of secular rule and launched an era of social transformation.
Turkey became a strategic player with a vibrant economy and a modern army of drones that shifted battlefields in wars stretching from Libya to Ukraine.
Erdogan’s global stature soared when he helped stem Europe’s migrant crisis in 2016 – and then plunged when he unleashed a crackdown on dissent later that same year.
He enters one of the biggest elections of Turkey’s modern era with his popularity weighed down by a crippling cost-of-living crisis and the social aftershocks of a February earthquake that claimed more than 50,000 lives.
The real possibility of defeat has seen Erdogan defiantly turn to sharply polarising themes that have given the polls a powder keg feel.
He accuses the West of funding his “pro-LGBT” rivals and portrays himself as a defender of conservative values against attacks by foreign “terrorists”. The increasingly febrile atmosphere prompted opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu to ask supporters to stay home if they win.
“If we go out, there may be riots, armed people may take to the streets,” the 74-year-old secular opposition leader warned.
The nation of 85 million appears as splintered as ever about whether Erdogan has done more harm than good in the only Muslim-majority country of the NATO defence bloc.
The entry of two minor candidates means that Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu will likely face each other again in a runoff on May 28.
But some of Erdogan’s more hawkish ministers are sounding warnings about Western efforts to undermine Turkey’s might through the polls. The parliamentary and presidential polls will see Erdogan face a six-party alliance that crosses Turkey’s vast political spectrum and includes some of his former allies.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu has repeatedly referred to US President Joe Biden’s 2019 suggestion that Washington should embolden the opposition “to take on and defeat Erdogan”.
“July 15 was their actual coup attempt,” Soylu said of a failed 2016 military putsch that Erdogan blamed on a US-based Muslim preacher.
“And May 14 is their political coup attempt.”
Turkey’s undefeated Erdogan nears knife-edge vote
