Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Kemal Kilicdaroglu star in the electrifying final showdown of the Turkish presidential election on Sunday. Sixty million voters choose between two different paths, with consequences for world order.
Despite this, in a conservative country, the two rivals try to embody continuity in their own way. The first option would give the current president a second and final term – under the new Constitution – to mark an era. Twenty-five years at the helm.
For his part, Kiliçdaroglu, as head of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), aims to connect with the secularist and nationalist legacy of General Atatürk and with the traditional alignment with Washington. All this with social democratic and liberal touches and, lately, some xenophobic gesture.
Kilicdaroglu is even quietly rescuing the first decade of the Justice Party and Erdogan’s (AKP) by surrounding himself with ministers from that time, who aspire to repeat.
69-year-old Erdogan – five years younger – has the peace of mind of having won 2.5 million more votes than Kilicdaroglu in the first round, when he was a few hundred thousand votes away from automatically becoming president .
Likewise, the AKP will control the Parliament with its current partners in the MHP, with the possibility of fishing in the future in the waters of a rival alliance too heterogeneous to survive the weather.
After four days of silence, since some very optimistic polls were not confirmed, Kiliçdaroglu returned to the arena redoubling his anti-immigration credentials. This did not prevent ultra-nationalist candidate Sinan Ogan, who had won 5.2% of the vote, from recommending the vote for Erdogan. But he did manage to close an agreement with the xenophobic Victory Party – which had supported Ogan – for the repatriation of millions of Syrian refugees within a year.
“The Syrians will leave”, say Kiliçdaroglu’s new posters. The head of the opposition has also pledged to maintain the current policy of disqualifying HDP mayors accused of links to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Even so, the leader of the HDP, Selahattin Demirtas, has again asked from his cell for the vote for Kiliçdaroglu, his letter for release. However, a demobilization of the Kurdish left-wing electorate is not ruled out, which would be fatal.
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu had to fight against an exposure of Erdogan on air sixty times larger. In addition to the partisan use of state resources. He also complains that the telephone companies yesterday blocked the mass dissemination of the SMS in which he promised to take care of the interest on non-payments on credit cards.
However, his dalliance with the ultra-right has finished bolstering his social democratic credentials.
“They have turned Turkey into a repository for immigrants”, cries the candidate, in a hurry to make peace with Baixar al-Assad, a step before repatriations. Erdogan, on the other hand, is looking for gradual exits, which do not ruin his reputation in the Sunni world.
In a campaign full of low blows, it stands out the dissemination in Erdogan’s rallies of a barrage montage in which the terrorist leadership of the PKK pronounces itself against the AKP and in favor of “change”.
The fact is that since the end of the fighting in Syria, voices have grown in favor of the return of the 3.7 million Syrian refugees to Turkey. The deprivations of millions of Turks after the earthquake have intensified the pressure.
Aksaray, in Istanbul, is one of those neighborhoods “that no longer seem Turkish”. Although many Syrians and Afghans are seen there, because they are working in textile basements in other peripheral neighborhoods such as Bagcilar. There is a lot of floating population, waiting for some mafia to take them to Europe. Syrians, Afghans, sub-Saharans, Maghrebs and increasingly Iraqis.
Very close to a Somali barbershop, a sidewalk stall sells used shoes. The third worldization of the historical district of Fatih, which is also a re-Islamization, extends to neighboring areas. This is not the kind of cosmopolitanism – the Indonesian restaurant closes on Fridays – that many of the young middle-class people expected. These young people are migrating to more tolerant neighborhoods on the Asian shore, if they cannot migrate to the West.
“Either we close the doors to hell or we open a new phase of struggle in a darker Turkey, with more oppression, poverty and pain,” writer Burhan Sönmez, president of Pen International, told La Vanguardia.
At a CHP stall, Duygu, a cook who was born the year Erdogan came to power and will be voting for the first time, blames him for “injustice and division”. The AKP’s heavy campaign song plays in the background: “He is the voice of the oppressed, the free voice of the voiceless world, Reeecep Tayip Erdogan, the nightmare of tyrants, Reeecep Tayip Erdogan.”
“He’s a strong man,” he summarizes as Beyda, veiled, beautiful and raised in Germany, stirs. In contrast, Vakifbank has just been crowned European champions against another team of Turkish volleyball players in shorts.
A tourist, Valérie, provides perspective: “This animation and this coexistence of extremes in France is already impossible”.
