ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has remained in power for 20 years, weathering repeated political crises: mass protests, allegations of corruption, an attempted military coup and a huge influx of refugees fleeing war. civil of Syria.
The Turkish people and economy are now reeling from sky-high inflation, and many are still recovering from a devastating earthquake in February, made worse by the government’s slow response.
However, Erdogan, a populist with increasingly authoritarian instincts, enters a runoff election on Sunday as a strong favorite against opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu after falling close to victory in the first round of the votes So, even with a weak hand, what accounts for its longevity and broad appeal?
Erdogan, 69, has cultivated deep loyalty from conservative and religious supporters by elevating Islamic values in a country that has been defined by secularism for nearly a century.
He has strengthened his grip on power by deploying government resources to his political advantage: spending lavishly on infrastructure to please voters and tightly controlling the media to silence criticism.
And he has swayed many Turks to his side with the way he navigates the world stage, showing his country has an independent streak — and can flex its military — as it engages with East and West.
Erdogan’s popularity at a time of economic crisis also seems to derive from the mere fact of his resistance; Many people seem to want some stability, not more change, according to interviews with voters and analysts.
“In times of national crises like this, people tend to rally around the leader,” said Gonul Tol, an analyst at the Middle East Institute in Washington. “Voters don’t have enough faith in the opposition’s ability to fix things.”
Erdogan, who is already Turkey’s longest-serving leader, would extend his rule by a third decade, until 2028, if he wins the majority of votes in the second round.
He received 49.5% of the vote in the first round, four percentage points ahead of Kilicdaroglu, a social democrat who has led the country’s main opposition party since 2010. And on Monday, Erdogan won the endorsement of the candidate of ‘extreme right that was third. place, giving him a boost for the return.
Kilicdaroglu, an economist and former member of parliament, is the joint candidate of a six-party coalition. He has promised to undo Erdogan’s economic policies, which experts say have fueled inflation, and reverse Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian tendencies, including crackdowns on free speech. But his campaign has struggled to attract Erdogan’s supporters.
“Look at the stage our country has reached in the last 20 years. (The opposition) would set us back 50-60 years,” said Bekir Ozcelik, an Ankara security guard who voted for Erdogan. “There is no other leader in the world who is up to Erdoğan”.
What Ozcelik and many other supporters see in Erdogan is a leader who has shown that Turkey can be a major player in geopolitics.
Turkey is a key member of NATO because of its strategic location at the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and it controls the alliance’s second largest army. Under Erdogan’s rule, Turkey has proven to be an indispensable and sometimes problematic NATO ally.
He vetoed Sweden’s entry into NATO and bought Russian missile defense systems, prompting the United States to kick Turkey out of a US-led fighter jet project. However, together with the UN, Turkey brokered a vital deal that has allowed Ukraine to send grain across the Black Sea to parts of the world struggling with hunger.
After the outbreak of civil war in Syria in 2011, Erdogan embroiled Turkey in supporting opposition fighters who wanted to oust President Bashar Assad. The fighting led to a surge in Syrian refugees that Erdogan has used as leverage against European nations, threatening to open Turkey’s borders and flood them with migrants. And now Turkey controls large swathes of territory in northern Syria, following a succession of military strikes targeting rebel-affiliated Kurdish groups that Turkey has banned.
Erdogan has touted Turkey’s military-industrial sector on the campaign trail, citing home-made drones, planes and a warship billed as the world’s first “drone carrier,” and the message seemed to resonate with voters on May 14 , according to analysts.
Domestically, Erdogan has raised the profile of Islam in a country whose secular roots are slipping away.
He has clamped down on the powers of the once staunchly secular military and lifted rules banning conservative women from wearing headscarves in schools and government offices. To further rally his conservative supporters, Erdogan has scorned Kilicdaroglu and the opposition for supporting what he called “deviant” LGBTQ rights.
The biggest threat facing Erdogan at the moment is the economy. Their main method of attacking declining household purchasing power has been to unleash government spending, which, along with lower interest rates, only makes inflation worse, economists say.
Erdogan has increased public sector wages, increased pensions and allowed millions to retire early. It has also introduced subsidies for electricity and gas and written off some household debt.
He has also promised to spend whatever is necessary to rebuild the large areas affected by the earthquake. At every inauguration ceremony he attends, Erdogan says only his government can rebuild lives after the disaster that leveled cities and killed more than 50,000 in Turkey.
Erdogan’s party won 10 of 11 provinces in the quake-hit region, an area that has traditionally supported him, despite criticism that his government’s initial response to the disaster was slow.
Mustafa Ozturk, an Erdogan supporter in Ankara, said his standard of living has fallen as a result of inflation. But as he sees it, Turkey is not the only country struggling with inflation since the pandemic.
“It’s not Erdogan’s fault,” he said. Ozturk said he would never vote against Erdogan, saying he felt “indebted” to him for bringing Islam more to the forefront of society.
Erdogan’s message and power are amplified by his tight control over the media.
State broadcaster TRT Haber has devoted more than 48 hours of airtime to Erdogan since April 1, compared to 32 minutes given to Kilicdaroglu, according to Ilhan Tasci, a member of Turkey’s radio and television watchdog.
Kilicdaroglu’s promise to repair the economy and defend the rights of women to wear Islamic headscarves in schools simply did not resonate with the country’s conservative heartland.
“Kilicdaroglu changed the image of the (opposition) party, but Erdogan controls the narrative, so there is this fear factor” among conservative women who wear Islamic-style headscarves, Tol said. “They believe that if the opposition comes to power, they will be worse off.”
After Turkey’s pro-Kurdish party backed Kilicdaroglu, Erdogan described the opposition as backed by Kurdish “terrorists”. Opposition efforts to refute this were rarely broadcast by the media.
Erdogan “thoroughly engineered a race to victory that included leaning on state institutions, leaning on information control and demonizing the opposition as terrorists or (having) beliefs interpreted as un-Muslim,” he said. said Soner Cagaptay, an expert on Turkey at the Washington Institute and author. of numerous books about Erdogan.
“The media changed the debate to how Turkey has become a military-industrial giant under him. And it worked,” Cagaptay said.
During the first round of voting on May 14, Turkey also held legislative elections, in which Erdogan’s alliance of nationalist and Islamist parties won a majority in the 600-seat parliament. That gives him an extra edge in the runoff, analysts say, because many voters are likely to back him to avoid a fragmented government.
“Parliament is overwhelmingly with us,” Erdogan said last week in an interview with CNN-Turk. “If there is a stable administration, there will be peace and prosperity in the country.”
