Türkiye's election: opposition struggles in search for Erdoğan challenger
Expert Sahib Bekir's forecast on Caliber.Az

INTERVIEWS  10 March 2023 - 17:10

The Turkish opposition bloc has nominated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the head of the Republican People's Party (CHP), as a candidate in the upcoming presidential elections, the Sabah newspaper reports. According to the newspaper, six parties of the opposition bloc issued a statement to this effect after the meeting in Ankara.

Al Monitor reports that Temel Karamolloğlu, leader of the Felicity Party (Saadet Parti), announced his candidacy on behalf of the entire opposition bloc.

Sabah notes that Meral Akşener, leader of Türkiye's Good Party (Iyi Parti), who last week announced she was leaving the opposition bloc, has rejoined it and also attended a meeting in the Turkish capital. Akşener was leaving the bloc due to disagreement over the presidential candidate.

In January, Turkish leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced that Türkiye's presidential and parliamentary elections would be held on May 14. The elections were originally scheduled for June 18, but Erdoğan has repeatedly said the vote could take place earlier. His party has pointed out that the elections in June will coincide with the peak of the tourist season, so it would be better to postpone them.

Pre-election polls show that the battle in both the presidential and parliamentary elections will be fierce. But the nomination of Kılıçdaroğlu seems to cast doubt on this - it is not the first time he has tried to take the helm of the country and each time he failed to succeed.

How can we characterise the decision of the coalition of opposition parties? Is there any chance of winning the presidency with such a candidate? Will Türkiye's foreign policy undergo significant changes if the opposition comes to power? And first and foremost, we should be interested in how this might affect engagement with Azerbaijan.

Sahib Bekir, a Turkish political expert and founder of the information-analytical resource Voice of Türkiye, told Caliber.Az that he does not think there will be a postponement of the elections.

"I used to think it would be easier for the authorities to put the date back to June 18 because of the aftermath of the earthquake, but recent polls have shown that Erdoğan's rating hasn't actually fallen, has remained at the same fairly good level.

In addition, the recent split within the opposition which I think Erdoğan will also use. Especially closer to the elections, appealing to the voters by saying look, they almost quarreled among themselves when the election was about two months away, and these people want to lead 85 million Türkiye. That is why it is safe to say that the elections will take place on May 14," the expert noted.

What do Meral Akşener's latest demarche and Kılıçdaroğlu's nomination mean? The move was very negatively received even by most opposition-minded Turks, Bekir said.

"On the one hand, when she left the coalition, many really supported her because there is a dislike for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, especially among young opposition members. And there are several reasons for this. First, the man lost almost every election to Erdoğan. Turks call him "loser oglu". Secondly, he is too old. He is already 75. That is, even Erdoğan is now 69 years old. The opposition says they are in favour of a new generation coming to power, but in the end they again confirm this elderly man as the single candidate. The third major disadvantage for him is his religious affiliation. He is associated with the Alawites. And they are about 10 per cent of the population. Although Türkiye is a secular country, religion plays an important role here. The Sunni majority might not vote for Kılıçdaroğlu. I think because of these disadvantages Akşener wanted Mansur Yavaş, the mayor of Ankara, to be confirmed as a presidential candidate.

Anyway, Kılıçdaroğlu showed that he is not a democrat but a very power-hungry man. This will also play in Erdoğan's favour if he uses these facts in his PR campaign. I believe that with Kılıçdaroğlu at the helm, it will be very, very difficult for the Turkish opposition to win the elections.

Türkiye earthquake has killed 46 thousand people and affected areas, the population of which usually votes for Erdoğan in the majority.

This would be a disadvantage for Erdoğan if the opposition could use it in the right way and not as blunt and snarky as they have done. It might have helped the opposition. After all, when people have tragedies of this magnitude, they always put the state in the place of the culprit. But the opposition has performed so poorly in this situation that Erdogan's rating has not even dropped. According to Reuters and opinion research companies close to the opposition, not much has changed. Even Kemalist resources showed a decline in the president's popularity of only 2-3 per cent. And this can be attributed to a temporary shock, quite surmountable. After all, in a month or so, when people get over their shock after the tragedy, they will start paying attention to who is ready to build them houses, to revive their cities - and Erdoğan has already started this work, and a couple of months later mass construction will be rolled out in the affected regions. People will see that. Besides Erdoğan likes to repeat the slogan: they talk and we work," said Bekir.

According to him, in addition, many Turks have a logical question: if the 6 opposition parties, and especially the largest of them, the Good Party and the RPP, have long been in conflict, could not agree and choose a single leader, how are they going to lead the entire greater Türkiye, resolve geopolitical issues with other countries in the world, or overcome the consequences of disasters that also happen?

"This situation reminds me of what happened last year in Israel. There too, more than five opposition parties came together and managed to wean Netanyahu out of power. But after one year, the ruling coalition fell apart. Because the only thing that united them was hatred and fear of Netanyahu. That is, the medley of ideologies that came to power immediately began to antagonize each other.

Türkiye is experiencing exactly the same now. All 6 parties in our opposition coalition are sharply different from each other in ideology. They are leftists, nationalists, and Islamists. There are a lot of contradictions between them. So, even if they win, they will not last more than a year, and this government will be confrontational.

As for their attitude towards Azerbaijan, when there was the last war in Karabakh, some of the MPs from the Republican Party said that they do not need to actively help your country. However, we should not forget that there is the Iyi (Good) Party in the coalition, and they are Turkic nationalists. So, the good thing is that there are forces in the opposition that will not allow a decision to weaken relations with Azerbaijan. So, it seems to me that in general, relations will not change, whatever the outcome of the election. The only difference is that under Erdoğan the relations between our country and your country will become even stronger, while in case of victory of the opposition, the process will slow down a little and not be so fast. Personally, for that reason, I am in favour of Erdoğan's victory, and I have never concealed it, because it benefits the Turkish world in general. And there are few Turkists in the opposition," the analyst concluded.

Caliber.Az