As Turkey goes to the polls on May 14, the question is if Erdogan will win or lose and what he'll do after, writes ianbremmer
. First as Prime Minister, then as President, he built a political foundation with support from voters outside the country’s powerhouse cities—Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir—with appeals to traditional religious values and socially conservative policies.
Now he faces his toughest test. The largest opposition parties have united behind the candidacy of a single challenger, a technocrat named , Erdogan has established a degree of independence between the West and Russia. At various times, he has both courted and infuriated Russia, Europe, and the U.S. with a transactional approach to nearly every important question. His ability to play one off the other is limited by Turkey’s dependence for security on NATO and on Russia for a strong economy, particularly in the tourism sector.
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