Erdogan faces tight race against emboldened opposition The cost of living crisis is seen as affecting his chances. Turkey’s two-decade transformation at stake
ANKARA, May 14 (Reuters) – Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan has cultivated the image of a tough and invincible leader during his two decades in power, but he appears vulnerable as the political landscape may be shifting in his favor opponent in Sunday’s presidential vote.
Erdogan rose from humble roots to rule for 20 years and reshape Turkey’s domestic, economic, security and foreign policy, rivaling the historic leader Mustafa Kemal Ataturk who founded modern Turkey a century ago.
The son of a sea captain, Erdogan has faced strong political headwinds ahead of Sunday’s election: he was already at fault for an economic crisis when a devastating earthquake struck in February. Critics accused his government of a slow response and lax enforcement of building regulations, failures they said could have cost lives.
With opinion polls showing a tight race, critics have drawn parallels with the circumstances that brought his Islamist-rooted AK party to power in 2002, in an election also marked by high inflation and economic turmoil.
Two days before the vote, Erdogan said he came to office through the ballot box and that if he had to, he would leave the same way.
“We will accept as legitimate all the results that come out of the polls. We expect the same commitment from those who oppose us,” he said in a televised interview on Friday.
For his enemies the day of retribution has come.
Under his autocratic rule, he amassed power around an executive presidency, clamped down on dissent, jailed critics and opponents, and seized control of the media, justice and the economy. He filled most public institutions with loyalists and emptied critical organs of the state.
His opponents have vowed to debunk many of the changes he has made in Turkey, which he has tried to shape into his vision of a pious, conservative society and an assertive regional actor.
The high stakes of Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary elections are nothing new for a leader who once served a prison sentence – for reciting a religious poem – and survived an attempted military coup in 2016 when soldiers rogues attacked the parliament and killed 250 people.
A veteran of more than a dozen electoral victories, Erdogan, 69, has taken aim at his critics in typically combative fashion.
It has peppered the run-up with celebrations of industrial milestones, including the launch of Turkey’s first electric car and the unveiling of its first amphibious assault ship, built in Istanbul to carry Turkish-made drones.
Erdogan also activated Turkey’s first delivery of natural gas from a Black Sea reserve, promising free supplies to households, and inaugurated its first nuclear power plant in a ceremony virtually attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
His attacks on his main rival, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, have included unproven accusations of support from the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which has been outlawed since the 1980s in an insurgency that has killed more than 40,000 people Kilicdaroglu has denied the allegations.
As he seeks to bolster his appeal among conservative voters, Erdogan has also spoken out against LGBT rights, calling them a “deviant” concept he would fight against.
‘BUILDING TURKEY TOGETHER’
Polls suggest the vote could go to a second round later this month – if neither Erdogan nor Kilicdaroglu win more than 50% of the vote – and some show Erdogan trailing. This hints at the depth of a cost-of-living crisis caused by his unorthodox economic policies.
The authorities’ push to cut interest rates in the face of rising inflation was intended to boost economic growth, but it pushed the currency down in late 2021 and worsened inflation.
The economy was one of Erdogan’s main strengths in the first decade of his rule, when Turkey enjoyed a prolonged boom with new roads, hospitals and schools and rising living standards for its 85 million people. ‘inhabitants.
Halime Duman said high prices had put many groceries out of her reach, but she remained convinced Erdogan could still solve her problems. “Erdogan can solve it with a flick of the wrist,” he said at a market in central Istanbul.
The president grew up in a poor district of Istanbul and attended an Islamic vocational school, entering politics as the local leader of the party’s youth wing. After serving as mayor of Istanbul, he rose to the national stage as head of the AK Party (AKP) and became prime minister in 2003.
His AKP tamed Turkey’s military, which had toppled four governments since 1960, and in 2005 began talks to achieve a decades-long ambition to join the European Union, a process that later stalled brusque way
GREATER CONTROL
Western allies initially saw Erdogan’s Turkey as a vibrant blend of Islam and democracy that could be a model for Middle Eastern states struggling to shake off autocracy and stagnation.
But his push for greater control polarized the country and alarmed international partners. Ardent supporters saw it as a reward for a leader who put Islamic teachings back at the core of public life in a country with a strong secularist tradition and championed the pious working classes.
Opponents portrayed it as a foray into authoritarianism by a power-hungry leader.
After the 2016 coup attempt, authorities launched a massive crackdown, jailing more than 77,000 people pending trial and firing or suspending 150,000 from state jobs. Rights groups say Turkey became the world’s biggest jailer of journalists for a time.
Erdogan’s government said the purge was justified by threats from supporters of the coup, as well as Islamic State and the PKK.
At home, a sprawling new presidential palace complex on the edge of Ankara became a striking sign of its new powers, while abroad Turkey became increasingly assertive, intervening in Syria, Iraq and Libya and often deploying Turkish-made military drones with decisive force.
Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer and Ali Kucukgocmen Writing by Tom Perry Editing by Jonathan Spicer, Samia Nakhoul and Frances Kerry
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