Haaretz | Middle East News
Opinion | Turkey's Opposition Can Topple Erdogan. But There's One Problem
Despite an unfair playing field, Turkey's opposition is winning in the polls ahead of imminent elections. But as Erdogan launches blatant vote-buying campaigns, the opposition still has to break through to disaffected, but critical, voters
Rally for Kemal Kilicdaroglu, opposition presidential candidate: Turkey's opposition is having trouble picking up the disaffected Erdogan voters it needs to winCredit: Francisco Seco /AP
Simon A. Waldman
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May 4, 2023
Whatever you think about Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, you must admit that it’s pretty extraordinary that he's still so popular, despite his blatant economic mismanagement, intermittent international isolation, and ineptitude at managing natural disasters.
The party Erdogan leads and co-founded, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), remains the most popular in Turkey. And ahead of this month’s general elections, he’s running nearly neck-and-neck with the opposition’s candidate, 74-year-old Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP).
In their carefully calculated planning to defeat Erdogan, the opposition did the drastic, the untried, and the unprecedented. They introduced not one but two presidential running mates to reinforce their official candidate, Kilicdaroglu.
By having the young and popular Istanbul and Ankara mayors Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansur Yavas, standing to his literal and ideological left and right, Kilicdaroglu managed to appease his main coalition partner Meral Aksener of the far-right IYI Party, who feared that if Kilicdaroglu ran alone, he would lose.
An optimist might highlight, with reason, that with his two deputies, Kilicdaroglu now appeals to an impressively broad range of Turkish voters. Ekrem Imamoglu hails from the Black Sea region, just like Erdogan, he can excite a crowd, and appeals to younger left-leaning voters.
Mansur Yavas, the Ankara born son of a carpenter, could charm urban Turks with centrist to right-wing leanings.
Kilicdaroglu, who comes across as a stoic elderly statesman, is of Alevi minority descent, a heritage which he shares with 15-25 per cent of the population and has openly spoken about his identity. He comes from the largely Kurdish Southeast which means that he could appeal to Kurdish voters too.
This is the closest thing Turkish politics has ever got to a rainbow coalition, especially considering that the Kurdish-oriented and progressive Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), which, fearing its immanent closure by the authorities after years of sustained intimidation, is running together with the Green Left Party, recently declared its support for Kilicdaroglu.
Selahattin Demirtaş, former co-chair of the predominantly Kurdish HDP and imprisoned since 2016, tweets his vote for Kemal Kilicdaroglu for the Turkish presidency from his jail cell
But will having this leadership collage, with a leader and two deputies, work in a politically divided country marked by strongmen from Ataturk to Erdogan? Or will it backfire, giving Erdogan and his ruling AKP, who have enjoyed over 21 years at the helm, another five years?
To find out, we are going to have to embark on an extremely dangerous course of action fraught with perilous risk: consulting opinion polls. Let’s first look at the parliamentary race and then move onto the presidential election.
Recent polling data shows Erdogan’s AKP winning between 32 percent and 38 percent of the vote, its lowest vote share since 2002. The AKP’s main coalition allies, the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), looks to get around 7.5 or 7.7 percent. Together, this translates to less than 50 percent of the vote and not enough for a majority in parliament.
Campaign video by Erdogan's AKP emphasizing Turkish Muslim national identity: 'The sound of the muezzin and prayers will always sound from the domes of the Hagia Sofia mosque, symbol of the rebirth of the sun of our civilization'
The main opposition party, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), is predicted to receive anywhere from 27 to 30 percent of the vote. This is only a tiny bit higher than what the CHP usually wins.
In other words, despite economic crises marked by inflation and currency devaluations and the government’s disastrous handing of the destructive earthquake earlier this year, the CHP seems unable to pick up disaffected AKP votes.
Even with the CHP adding to its bloc the small Islamist SAADET (Felicity) Party as well as the Gelecek (Future) and DEVA parties, established by disaffected former AKP ministers, that hasn’t translated into significant levels of additional votes.
The CHP’s main partner in the opposition’s Nation Alliance, is the far-right secular nationalist IYI Party, is predicted to win between 7 and 11.5 percent of the vote, hardly impressive seeing that it won 10.5 percent in the last election.
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What this shows is that the opposition is failing to attract disgruntled AKP supporters, undecided voters, and some first-time voters, who together may constitute as many as 15 percent of the voting public.
This inability of the opposition to win former AKP voters becomes crucial when we turn our attention to the presidential race.
According to a mean average of the different opinion polls for the presidential race (one must tread with caution because averaging by mean puts an equal weighting on polls with vastly different sample sizes and methodologies), Kilicdaroglu is set to receive 46.2 percent of the vote while Erdogan trails behind at 42.6 percent.
At first glance, one might think that Team Kilicdaroglu is doing well. However, there’s a couple of reasons why he can’t pass the 50 percent threshold to win the election in the first round.
Open gallery view
Team Kilicdaroglu seems to be doing well. But there’s a couple of reasons why he's unlikely to pass the 50 percent threshold to win Turkey's presidential election in the first round
Team Kilicdaroglu seems to be doing well. But there’s a couple of reasons why he's unlikely to pass the 50 percent threshold to win Turkey's presidential election in the first roundCredit: MURAD SEZER/ REUTERS
The first is Muharrem İnce, a former CHP deputy and presidential candidate, who recently established a new party and is running for president and, according to the highly regarded pollster MetroPoll, is predicted to siphon a critical 5 percent of the vote from Kilicdaroglu.
The second is because most polls do not consider undecided voters, protest voters, or those who do not wish to disclose their preference. According to polls by Al-Monitor and MetroPoll, which do include such data, there are very high numbers of such voters (9.9 and 9.1 percent respectively). These polls place the race extremely close with only 0.3 to 1.5 percent difference between the two main candidates.
In a highly polarized country, it is one thing for disgruntled Erdogan and AKP voters to refuse to vote, but quite another for them to actually vote for the opposition. And part of the floating voter’s calculation would be whether one should vote for change and potential risk or prefer stability and vote for Erdogan.
Open gallery view
A billboard in Istanbul carrying an election poster of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and a slogan that reads: 'For the Turkish century: Right time, right man.'
A billboard in Istanbul carrying an election poster of Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and a slogan that reads: 'For the Turkish century: Right time, right man.'Credit: UMIT BEKTAS/ REUTERS
It is with this in mind that one should remember that back in June 2015 the AKP won just under 41 percent of the popular vote, which meant it couldn’t form a majority in parliament. As a consequence, the Turkish economy convulsed and, when elections were rerun in November 2015, Turks voted for stability and what they were familiar with. The AKP won 49.5 percent of the popular vote and got its parliamentary majority back.
The same could happen again. Closer to the election, those who are currently undecided may play 'safe' and vote for the AKP and Erdogan.
Meanwhile, Erdogan and his party are pulling out all the stops to reconnect with their former faithful.
Erdogan has pledged to keep interest rates low, an important concern for those of his upwardly mobile supporters with mortgages and car repayments while also promising to battle inflation. For those in the southeast and effected by the earthquake, Erdogan and the AKP have pledged to speedily rebuild homes. Erdogan will no doubt remind the public that it was he who made it possible, just months before the election, for millions to retire early with decent pensions, a policy which is as close as one can get to buying votes.
And this message is being amplified in an unfair playing field where the airwaves are dominated by the government, and state institutions are used for campaign purposes. Across the aisle, the opposition must campaign in an intimidating climate. Already scores of Kurdish journalists, politicians, and activists have been detained and the Istanbul offices of Kilicdaroglu's CHP were attacked by gunfire.
Despite running ahead in most opinion polls, the opposition still has its work cut out. In order to win it must stay unified, avoid preaching to the choir, and do all it can to convert disgruntled Erdogan voters into embracing, even warily, the opposition.
Dr. Simon A. Waldman is a visiting lecturer at King’s College London and the co-author of The New Turkey and its Discontents (Hurst/OUP, 2017). Twitter: @SimonWaldman1
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