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CNN
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Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the main opposition candidate in Turkey’s presidential election, is decidedly calm and mild-mannered in his bid to end President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-decade rule.
Much of his campaign messaging has been delivered from his quintessentially middle-class Turkish home and posted on Twitter, in videos that some observers have called his “kitchen diaries”.
Sitting down, often with tea in an “ince belli,” a Turkish teacup, he lays out his key campaign promises, announces the members of his potential coalition, and sometimes just plain talks to people, practically giving the welcome the public to your home.
These gestures are in stark contrast to the elitist image he and his party once had. Analysts say the desire to appeal to today’s voters has seen the presidential candidate change his image over the years. His messages now target Turkey’s middle class and the downtrodden, the very constituency Erdogan has always championed.
But his critics hold Erdogan to be responsible for the economic turmoil facing the country, largely because of his inability to control runaway inflation, an issue that polls say ranks high in the agenda of voters who go to the polls on the day. sunday Inflation in the country was a 43% in Aprildown from its peak of 85% last October.
For Erdogan’s opponents, this is fodder for campaigns against him.
The promise to fix Turkey’s faltering economy has been a cornerstone of Kilicdaroglu’s campaign. In a video posted on Twitter on Friday, she stood in the kitchen and held up staples like bread, eggs and yogurt, reminding viewers how much her price had skyrocketed in a year. In a separate four second clipsays: “Today, if you are poorer than yesterday, the only reason is Erdogan.”
Gulfem Saydan Sanver, a political communications expert who works with several politicians in Kilicdaroglu’s center-left Republican People’s Party (CHP), said the kitchen has become a “symbol” of the candidate, “who lives a (life ) humble”. and deals with the everyday life problems of ordinary Turkish citizens.”
“I wanted to show that Erdogan is the one who has forgotten the problems of families with less resources,” he said.
However, his use of Twitter to reach the electorate may not have been a choice. Most of the country’s mainstream media is controlled by government loyalists, which has resulted in the opposition leaning heavily on social media messaging.
When he took control of the cogeneration in 2010, Kilicdaroglu had an image problem, experts say. His party was staunchly secular and fiercely nationalist. Today, however, it has unified disparate political actors, is trying to court the Kurdish vote, and has even hosted defectors from Erdogan’s Islamist trend I Party
According to some who have known him, the career bureaucrat-turned-politician was seen as elitist and out of touch with the working class when he took control of the party, as perceived by the CHP itself. Erdogan’s government took advantage of this.
“The government made a lot of use of the distinction between people and elites … to discredit the opposition by showing them as part of some kind of power elite,” said Murat Somer, a professor of political science at Koc University from Istanbul. This created a “very hard, ossified, negative image that the opposition couldn’t shake,” he told CNN.
Home videos would have been hard to imagine in the early days of his political career, as his natural inclination is to keep his private life to himself, said Mehmet Karli, a CHP member and Kilicdaroglu’s longtime adviser. time
“He’s come to understand throughout (his) political life that the private and the public are very intertwined, especially if you’re leading a movement,” he told CNN.
But the smooth demeanor portrayed from home could have its downsides.
Sanver said the kitchen videos had the potential to appear too soft on some of Turkey’s toughest foreign policy issues, including ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin and the United States.
Erdogan has been able to leverage personal relationships and demonstrated effective leadership on one of the world’s most intractable problems. Alongside the United Nations, he managed to negotiate a grain export agreement between Ukraine and Russia, helping to prevent a global food crisis.
“It’s one of the criticisms I had,” Sanver, who has met with Kilicdaroglu throughout his campaign, told CNN. “He has to look strong because Erdogan is also very strong.”
Delivering some addresses from his office may have helped establish a more serious persona while showing he is still a different leader than Erdogan, he said.
In a country where ethnic and religious identity often play a role in public discourse and are exploited by some politicians, Kilicdaroglu has moved quickly to deprive his opponents of ammunition.
In a video posted on Twitter from his office last month, he declared to the electorate that he belongs to the Alevi sect, a minority faith group in eastern Turkey that has complained of persecution in the majority Sunni Muslim country for years. The video was viewed 36 million times.
“We will no longer talk about identities; we will talk about the successes”, he said. “We will no longer talk about divisions and differences; we will talk about our community and our common dreams. Will you join this campaign for this change?”
