Istanbul, Turkey:
Turkey’s polls closed on Sunday in a historic runoff that could extend President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two decades of dominant but divisive Islamist rule to 2028.
The longest-serving NATO member leader defied critics and doubters by taking a comfortable lead against his secular challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the first round on May 14.
Kemal Kilicdaroglu forged a powerful coalition that grouped Erdogan’s disenchanted former allies with secular nationalists and religious conservatives.
Opposition supporters saw it as an opportunity to prevent Turkey from turning into an autocracy by a man whose consolidation of power rivals that of Ottoman sultans.
“I invite all my citizens to vote to get rid of this authoritarian regime and bring real freedom and democracy to this country,” Kilicdaroglu said after casting his vote in Turkey’s first presidential election.
Tayyip Erdogan’s nearly five-point lead in the first round came in the face of one of the world’s worst cost-of-living crises — and with nearly every poll predicting his defeat.
The 69-year-old looked tired but at ease as he voted with his wife Emine in a conservative district of Istanbul.
“I ask my citizens to come and vote without complacency,” Erdogan said.
Emir Bilgin heeded the Turkish leader’s call.
“I’m going to vote for Erdogan. There’s no one like him,” said the 24-year-old from a working-class neighborhood in Istanbul where the young future president grew up playing street football.
Opposition gamble
Kemal Kilicdaroglu emerged as a transformed man after the first round.
The message from the former social unity and freedoms official gave way to speeches about the need to immediately deport migrants and fight terrorism.
His right-wing turn targeted nationalists who emerged as the big winners of the parallel parliamentary elections.
The 74-year-old had always adhered to the staunch nationalist principles of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, a respected military commander who formed Turkey’s secular CHP party and Mr Kilicdaroglu.
But these had played a minor role in his promotion of social-liberal values practiced by younger voters and residents of large cities.
Analysts doubt Mr Kilicdaroglu’s gamble will work.
Due to his informal alliance with a pro-Kurdish party that portrays Tayyip Erdogan as the political wing of banned militants, he has been accused of collaborating with “terrorists”.
And Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s courtship with Turkey’s hard right was hampered by Erdogan’s endorsement of an ultra-nationalist who finished third two weeks ago.
Some opposition supporters sounded defeated after coming out of the polls.
“Today is not like last time. I was more excited then,” said Bayram Ali Yuce in one of Istanbul’s heavily anti-Erdogan neighborhoods.
“The outcome seems clearer now. But I voted anyway.”
Champion of the poor
Tayyip Erdogan is idolized by poorer and more rural sections of Turkey’s fractured society for his promotion of religious freedoms and modernization of once-derelict cities in the Anatolian interior.
“It was important for me to keep what I have gained in Turkey over the past 20 years,” company director Mehmet Emin Ayaz told AFP in Ankara.
“Turkey is not what it used to be. There is a new Turkey today,” said the 64-year-old.
But Erdogan has caused increasing consternation in the Western world for his crackdown on dissent and for pursuing a muscular foreign policy.
He launched military incursions into Syria that enraged European powers and pitted Turkish soldiers against US-backed Kurdish forces.
His personal relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin also survived the Kremlin’s war against Ukraine.
Turkey’s troubled economy is benefiting from a crucial deferral of payments for Russian energy imports, which has allowed Erdogan to spend lavishly on campaign pledges this year.
Tayyip Erdogan also delayed Finland’s membership of NATO and still refuses to admit Sweden into the US-led defense bloc.
‘Day of reckoning’
Turkey’s unraveling economy will be the most direct test of whoever wins the vote.
Erdogan went through a series of central bankers to find one that would carry out his desire to cut interest rates in 2021 at all costs — flouting conventional economics in the belief that lower rates could drive chronically high inflation. cured.
The Turkish currency quickly went into free fall and last year annual inflation reached 85 percent.
Tayyip Erdogan has promised to continue this policy and rejected forecasts of economic danger from analysts.
Turkey has wasted tens of billions of dollars to prop up the lira from politically sensitive pre-vote declines.
Many analysts say Turkey should raise interest rates now or stop trying to support the lira.
“The day of reckoning for the Turkish economy and financial markets may now be upon us,” Capital Economics analysts warned.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by DailyExpertNews staff and is being published from a syndicated feed.)