The Irish Times view on Turkey’s election: Erdogan edges ahead

Turkish stock markets got the jitters yesterday with the lira down to a two-month low on news that a presidential run-off election will now determine the fate of the divided country’s 20-year leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

With the count virtually complete, Erdogan was on the verge of an overall majority with 49.4 per cent of the vote to rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s 45 per cent, and far-right candidate Sinan Ogan with 5 per cent. In his last election, in 2018, Erdogan won outright against three other candidates with 53 per cent of the vote

The odds must be with him in the run-off in two weeks, a measure of his surprising, enduring popularity at a time of soaring inflation of 44 per cent, his increasingly authoritarian rule and anger over his government’s sluggish response to the earthquake earlier this year in which some 55,000 people died. But overnight results suggest the president’s support in eight party strongholds hit by the earthquake dipped by just two to three points. Erdogan remains popular with rural, working class and religious voters.

Pre-election polls had suggested a narrow majority for Kilicdaroglu, who led a six-party opposition alliance which had also hoped to take a majority in parliament, now likely to be retained by Erdogan’s AKP and his nationalist MHP allies, according to early voting estimates.

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Ironically, as the republic prepares for the 100th anniversary of its founding by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, it appears it is also taking another step away from the latter’s democratic and secularist traditions. And from its aspiration to join the European Union, whose leaders have repeatedly warned against the authoritarian drift and, despite Turkey’s Nato membership, Erdogan’s willingness to cosy up to Vladimir Putin.

The high turnout of 89 per cent reflects voters’ engagement with what many had seen as a potential turning point in the country’s history. It is unlikely that his new majority will make it any easier for Erdogan’s writ to run in a country so manifestly polarised.