Polls, forecasts and polls have done nothing. Many experts have pointed out that Recep Tayyip Erdogan He was to be evicted from the Presidential Palace on 14 May after losing to the opposition candidate. Kemal Kilicdaroglu. It wasn’t. This 28 May, in the runoff, the Turkish president once again defeated the People’s Alliance’s candidate, once again securing another five-year term.
The president’s victory seemed impossible. The country is currently in a dire economic crisis, with very high inflation rates (50%, although independent research has doubled that) making the standard of living of citizens much more expensive. Also its growing authoritarianism and poor management devastating earthquakes Last February, which killed more than 50,000 people in the country, looked like it would wreak havoc on the president.
In order to understand how Erdogan was able to win against Kılıçdaroğlu despite everything, several factors need to be taken into account. The first and most relevant of these is that the Turkish electorate nationalism powered by rhetoric against Kurdish PKK guerrilla and more than 3 million Syrian and Iraqi refugees The campaigns of both candidates, currently in the Anatolian country, have often focused their discourse on immigration and the “preservation” of Turkish identity, rather than focusing on the more practical aspects. Far from focusing on the more practical aspects, Erdogan’s party AKP campaign has tried to divert attention by focusing its rhetoric many times on immigration and the “preservation” of Turkish identity in the face of these two “destructive” elements. economic aspects put more emphasis on identity issues in their conversations.
media
In addition, during the campaign, Erdogan put all the possibilities at his service. government resources to deliver your message. His information monopoly caused his campaign to make headlines and arenas completely disproportionately compared to the opposition, as all the public and most private media were directed at him. spread your speech. The prime example is that of public television. on TRT According to the report of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), while broadcasting 48 hours of Erdogan’s campaign, he allocated only 32 minutes to Kılıçdaroğlu.
Also, the lack of access to critical media from rural areas of the country has left millions of people uninformed about the campaign. opposition or without access denials related to Some of the president’s statements on television.
So much so that the OSCE “discriminatory and provocative” rhetoric caused the campaign to be partially covered in the media, equal opportunities “constant” arrests of journalists and bloggers for presidential candidates and just before the runoff.
provocative language
“The voters were misinformed by the lack of transparency of the election administration and lack of balanced media coverage “It was worrisome,” said Jan Petersen, head of the election observation mission of the Office for Human Rights and Democratic Institutions.
In this sense, although the OSCE stated that the candidates who participated in the elections were able to win, run your election campaign freelysupporters of various opposition parties continued to confront “Bullying and harassment”, Like the first round.
The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said in a statement that the elections were “characterized by increasingly provocative and discriminatory language throughout the campaign period”. “Media bias and continued restrictions on freedom of expression” are also “a irregular playground PACE added that although the vote “goed well and gave voters the opportunity to choose between real political alternatives”, it contributed to an unfair advantage for Erdogan.