Turkey will hold its next presidential election on May 14, 2023. There is a huge list for Challenges of Erdogan. who is seeking a third term in office. He is facing a challenge from the main opposition candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
The election is expected to be close. Erdoğan has been in power for 19 years, and he has a strong base of support. However, the Turkish economy is in a state of crisis, and many voters are unhappy with the direction of the country.
The election will be held under a new electoral system that was approved by a referendum in 2017. The new system will allow voters to cast two votes: one for a party and one for a presidential candidate. The party that wins the most votes will get a bonus of 10% of the seats in parliament. This means that it is possible for a party to win a majority of seats in parliament without winning the most votes.
The 2023 Turkish presidential election is a critical moment for the country. The outcome of the election will have a major impact on Turkey’s future.
Table of Contents
Background
About 64 million eligible citizens are going to exercise their right to vote in Turkey tomorrow including six million first-time voters to elect their president for the next five years to lead the country. For the convenience of 64 million eligible voters, Turkey’s Supreme Election Council has established around 190,736 polling stations across the country where the voters can exercise their right to vote from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm.
However, over 3 million overseas voters already cast their vote on May 09, 2023. According to the Supreme Election Council of Turkey, over 1.7 million voters exercised their vote by using the overseas mechanism which is 57 percent of the total registered overseas voters.
Such impressive voter turnout indicates how Turkish overseas voters are emotionally connected to their country’s elections even though the election’s result does not affect their everyday lives in their current residing countries. The voter turnout in Turkish elections is quite impressive, in the 2007 presidential elections about 81 percent of voters cast their ballot papers, likewise, 74 percent in 2014, and in the country’s last presidential elections held in 2018, 86 percent of voter turnout.
Presidential Elections 2023
On May 14, 2023 (Sunday) the people of the Republic of Turkey will vote for the next president of the country and also elect the new members of the Turkish Parliament.
In the elections Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu of the Nation Alliance-Republican People’s Party (CHP) is contesting against the current president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of People’s Alliance-Justice and Development Party (AKP) there are the two main candidates, between whom there is competition in the elections to be held on May 14, 2023.
To secure a seat as President of Turkey, a candidate must obtain 50+1 of the cast ballots on the poll day on May 14, 2023, if no candidate succeeds in securing 50 percent of the votes in the first round, then on May 28, 2023 runoff will be held between two leading candidates if the candidates secure the required number of percentages become the next President of the Republic of Turkey.
The opponent of Recep has been part of Turkish politics for a long and has run against Recep Tayyip Erdogan three times in previous elections, but always lost.
The Candidates
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: The incumbent President of the Republic of Turkey belongs to AK Party (AKP) and he is in power last 20 years. Recep won the 2018 presidential elections in the first round and secured 53 percent of the total polled votes. He also hopes to extend his tenure in the apex office as Turkey’s longest-serving leader since the inception of the Republic of the Country.
According to some recent polls shows that about 45 percent of citizens of the country support Recep in the coming elections. Likewise, (Al-Jazeera) said that there is only 33 percent of citizens still believe in Recep Tayyip and they are going to vote for the current president.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu: Kemal is the chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), CHP is founded by the Mustafa Kamal Ataturk the founder of the modern republic of Turkey. As mentioned above that he is in Turkish politics since long and also contested in the previous elections.
However, this time Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is the joint candidates of the six political parties. The recent polls show that about 50+ percent population of the Turkey support Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in coming elections.
Sinan Oğan: Mr. Sinan won a seat in Turkish Parliament in 2011 from eastern Anatolian Region of the country. He is the third potential candidate for the presidential elections against the two veteran politicians. Sinan is the independent candidate in this election, but the part of the Ancestral Alliance.
The Comparison Between Recep and Kemal: Recep Tayyip is a charismatic leader who started his politics from the streets of Istanbul and became the mayor of the country’s largest city and increased the city’s development. He is very vocal to protect the rights of his citizens and more specially the rights of the Muslims around the world at every forum, and he has very macho way of ruling, and this is the reason due to which the whole world especially Muslims consider him as their leader.
On the other side Kemal is softer spoken and very compromising figure in the Turkish politics. Apart from this Kemal wanted the country have more of a western look as Mustafa Kamal Ataturk wanted and brought in European-style of governance system such as secularism.
Over the secularism way of life also led to conservative and religious portion of the country felt marginalized and excluded from the public life, like women were not allowed to wear headscarf in educational institutions and government offices. But, things went changed went the AK Party become in the power.
Challenges of Erdogan and the 2023 Elections
Recep Tayyip Erdogan has very committed and strong base in the political system of Turkey, but over the time this base also shrinking and many political experts’ thinks that the coming Presidential Elections may change the politics of the Erdogan. And many also believe that the even the conservative and religious voters do not blindly go to vote for AK Party this time (Asli Aydintasbas, visiting fellow at Brookings Institution).
Erdogan also facing other major challenges like the tanking economy, because the last few years the economy is tanking in a rapid way due to several rang of pressures like, security situation at the Syrian borders due to civil war which led to refuges and Turkey take about 3.6 million refuges on his soil which left huge impact on country’s economy, the COVID-19 situation, and the slow response in recent deadly earthquake in country’s south-central part on February 6, 2023 where over fifty-thousand people lost their lives. Erdogan himself also accepted the slow response to the earthquake, saying that we had made a mistake, and he apologized to the nation on slow response of his government.
Political Alliances and Divide
Since the inception of the modern Turkey the secular versus the conservative divide is the primary driving force in Turkish politics, like the old Kemalist ideology which is highly secular and they always tried to push back the conservative and Islamic political parties.
This divide still exits in many ways. But, now that shift is very clear in coming elections where the secular and conservative political parties are teaming up in Kemal’s alliance which is a secular state of mind person who lead the party founded by the Mustafa Kamal Ataturk.
Such secular and conservative political alliance may make things harder for the Recep Tayyip in the election, although he still has very strong base and huge portion of the total population still willing to vote for him (Al-Jazeera, Tariq Oguzlu, Prof. IR at Istanbul Aydin University).
For this type of electoral system in Turkey, the political parties in the country field their joint candidate in the elections and therefore political alliances are formed during the elections which are also considered very important.
In this elections the Erdogan’s got his own AK Party (National Conservative), and the Nationalist Movement Party (Turkish Ultra-nationalism), and New Welfare Party (Religious Party) that’s the People’s Alliance. On the other-side the Nation Alliance headed by the Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu Chairman of the Republican People’s Party (CHP).
Nation Alliance got the support of five other political parties including the Good Party (Turkish Nationalism), Democracy and Progress Party (Liberal Conservatism), Future Party (Conservatism), Felicity Party (Religious Party), and Democrat Party (Liberal conservatism).
Overview of Presidential Elections of 2018
In the 2018 presidential elections there were six candidates who were contesting the presidential election from different parties and alliances whose names appeared on the ballot papers, and there was a contest between Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Muharrem Inchi, in which Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the People’s Alliance secured the 53 percent of total polled votes and became the country’s president for the next five years.
However, the runner-up candidate Muharrem Inchi of the Nation Alliance able to secured only 31 percent of the total polled votes on June 24, 2018. Likewise, Selahattin Demirtaş of People Democratic Party secured eight percent and the only female candidate for Presidential Elections 2018 Meral Akşener of a Good Party (National Alliance) able to secured only seven percent of the total polled votes. Similarly, other two candidates such as Temel Karamollaoğlu of the Felicity Party and Doğu Perinçek of the Patriotic Party who utterly failed to gain the attention of the voters and secured just 0.89 percent and 0.20 percent of the polled votes.
Following map shows the province-wise secured votes by each contesting candidate in Presidential Elections 2018
Conclusion
Without any doubt that, there is large number of constituencies across the country which is quite happy with the initiatives of the Erdogan during is tenure in the office and most of the people think that if the Erdogan loses the power in coming days they will also lose their gains.
During his early years in the power, he really transformed the economy and in early 2000s there was an economic boom in Turkey that lifted many into the middle class, he also revalued the Turkish Lira which eventually helped to bring decades of high inflation under control.
He took important steps to make the country self-sufficient in terms of energy due to which new projects were made to explore for oil and gas in the Mediterranean Sea. But despite taking steps in the interests of the country, Erdogan is feeling his position in the upcoming elections breaking.
Apart from this right now there is the other huge issue which affecting the country right now the devastation the earthquakes in which more than fifty-thousand people died over two million lost their homes, and some cities disappeared from the earth. The reconstruction and rehabilitation of earthquake is a huge challenge for the person and government who assumed the office after this election.
Many political experts and critics think that the current political system gives to much power to the President without any check and balance, the critics also accusing the President Erdogan and his party that they are undermining the democratic values of the Republic of Turkey through controlling the mainstream media of the country and gradually weakening the judicial system.
If the Candidate of Nation Alliance wins the elections, he is promising in his election campaign that if he wins then within in few years of the power he will move Turkey back to a parliamentary system from current presidential system.
