Turkey’s longest-running leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will stay on as President for another five-year term
earlier this year that left at least 50,000 dead and runaway inflation that critics pin on his unwonted economic policies. It’s not the first political challenge Erdoğan has faced: his party, the Islamist Justice and Development Party, lost its hold over Parliament in 2015, and a failed coup attempt in 2016 sought to remove him from power. But this year’s vote has been the most significant electoral challenge to Erdoğan’s rule in 20 years.
With the election victory, Erdoğan will only continue to erode Turkey’s democratic institutions and stifle political dissent, says İhsan Yılmaz, research professor and Chair of Islamic Studies and Intercultural Dialogue at Deakin University in Australia. “There are tens of thousands—politicians, journalists, and academics in prisons now—based on fabricated charges,” Yılmaz says. “He can send a few more; that won’t be difficult for him.
Erdoğan rivals, including Kılıçdaroğlu, capitalized on growing discontent and campaigned on a pledge to reverse Turkey’s long slide toward authoritarianism. But Erdoğan was the favorite entering the second round of voting after he defied polls and emerged as the clear frontrunner with a nearly-five percentage point lead over Kılıçdaroğlu earlier this month, albeit falling short of the 50% threshold to win on the first ballot.
In the lead-up to the second round of voting, Erdoğan continued to court nationalists and campaigned heavily on security issues. He went as far asthat falsely imply his opponent had links to the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party that has waged a decades-long fight for a separate state for some 10 million Kurds in Turkey.
The election skewed further in Erdoğan’s favor this week after Sinan Oğan, a far-right nationalist who came third in the first-round election with some 5% of the vote, threw his support behind the Turkish President.
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