Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will officially kick off the toughest election campaign of his career on Friday, with the broadest-ever opposition alliance standing between him and a third decade in power.
(Bloomberg) —
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan will officially kick off the toughest election campaign of his career on Friday, with the broadest-ever opposition alliance standing between him and a third decade in power.
Erdogan is expected to make a statement at 2 p.m. local time effectively bringing elections forward by more than a month to May 14 from the original date of June 18, as he showcases a multi-billion-dollar effort to build new homes for survivors of last month’s earthquakes.
Erdogan, 69, faces a vote that has transformed for some into a forum over his increasingly authoritarian leadership, after shifting Turkey to an executive presidency with sweeping powers in 2018.
His rivals, who rarely coordinate on strategy, are this time largely united in a six-party bloc that’s chosen main opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu as its presidential candidate.
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In local elections in 2019, Kilicdaroglu led his Republican People’s Party to victory against Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party in Turkey’s largest cities. Kilicdaroglu isn’t as popular as Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu or Ankara’s Mansur Yavas, but has extended his appeal by promising to appoint them as vice presidents.
Erdogan has attacked the opposition’s promise to govern through consensus as a recipe for a return to the bickering coalitions that produced decades of instability before he rose to power. Though Erdogan remains Turkey’s most popular politician, his party has lost some support among the poor — typically among its most stalwart backers — amid the nation’s worst cost-of-living crisis in 20 years.
On election day, candidates need more than 50% of votes to win in the first round; otherwise they face a runoff two weeks later.
Why Turkey’s Next Election Is a Real Test for Erdogan: QuickTake
A May 14 election would come days after Erdogan allows more than 2 million people to retire early. It would also avoid school holidays and the Hajj pilgrimage, possibly increasing chances of a high turnout, with the exception of university students who usually need to vote from their hometowns and are often a source of opposition support.
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