The great assault: the Turkish opposition prepares to overthrow the eternal Erdogan

The Turkish population will go to the polls this Sunday for an election where Erdogan is playing all or nothing. And it seems that at this moment he does not have anything clear. The latest polls indicate that the Turkish president is behind the main opponent, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu.

According to one of them, Kılıçdaroğlu obtains 49.3% of the votes, Erdogan obtains 43.7%, and the rest would go to the opponents Ogan and Ince, who withdrew this Thursday and finally will not participate in the elections.. In the fight for the Assembly, the Popular Alliance, led by Erdogan's Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the ultranationalist MHP party, would receive about 44% of the vote..

Only the AKP would receive 35%, while the MHP would get 8%.. The opposition Alliance of the Nation, made up of six political parties, would obtain 39.9% of the votes: it is made up of the social democratic Republican People's Party, CHP (27.3%), the ultranationalist IYI Parti (12.4%) and other minority parties. As for the leftist Labor and Freedom Alliance, made up of the Green Left Party, which includes the pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party HDP, and the Workers' Party TİP, among other small formations, it would achieve 12 .3% of the votes.

But they are not the only surveys that have been carried out during the month of May. Some even place the opposition leader up to five points above Erdogan, which would be equivalent to ending his aspirations to revalidate the mandate for five more years and send him home in the first round.. And within the government AKP party they know perfectly well that a few hours after voting, the situation is going uphill.. there are nerves. And the circle closest to the president has already released statements that prove it.

electoral violence

The same Turkish Interior Minister, Suleyman Soylu, accustomed to moving in controversy, described the upcoming elections as an “attempted political coup by the West.”. According to the minister, “on July 15 —referring to the failed 2016 coup, they accused, by the Fetullah Gülen brotherhood— it was a real coup attempt. And on May 14 – this Sunday – is his attempted political coup”.

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Soylu was referring to Joe Biden's words before entering the White House, where he expressed in an interview for the New York Times in 2020 that he would support the opposition and Erdogan's departure through democracy without the need for “a coup of State”. “I didn't say it,” Soylu said. “It did years ago, the person who currently runs the United States. When all the methods they tried failed years ago, they expressed that they can only take over Turkey with this method.”. But the trail of risque statements does not end here and the intensity is increasing. Erdogan's partner in government, head of the ultranationalist MHP party, Devlet Bahçeli, stated that “these traitors will receive aggravated life imprisonment or a bullet in the body,” he warned, referring to the opposition parties.

But words don't cause bruises, stones do. The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, one of the most popular opponents in the country and who was about to be a presidential candidate, was attacked with stones in one of his electoral acts to support Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, from his same party. The events occurred in the city of Erzurum, in northeastern Turkey, while the mayor of Turkey's largest city addressed his supporters: “The police are watching this, we are watching you too”.

To the Governor of this city, to the Chief of Police, we are also seeing you. keep going, no problem. Look at the economic crisis, poverty and homelessness,” he said just before his collaborators took him away so as not to receive any impact.. In the words of the mayor of Istanbul, “the square was full. When we arrived, stones were raining everywhere. None of the cops moved a muscle.”. Two days later, a 16-year-old did the same to the bus carrying opposition leader Kemal Kiliçdaroglu..

“I'm Kemal, I'm coming”

In one of the largest opposition rallies, the one that took place in Istanbul, public transport was packed to the brim and the completely overflowing entrances suggested that the attendance would be large: thousands gathered to support the candidate, although the organization did not want to give figures.

“I'm Kemal, I'm coming,” the opposition leader was heard telling his supporters through the sound equipment and as a campaign slogan. The audience, for its part, responded with shouts of joy.. The opposition leader, highly praised among analysts for having been able to unite up to six parties that have historically been antagonists, ran as a candidate before part of the people against. “He's not very charismatic,” many said.. “There are people who believed that the opposition would do better with someone more charismatic, but I think that Kiliçdaroglu has been surprisingly effective as a candidate,” analyst Hogward Eissenstat explains to El Confidencial..

And given the feat of bringing together various ideologies in a country as polarized as Turkey, the praise has not been long in coming.. But they are also aware that, if they win, they will have to respond: “They will have to fix the economy and that will translate into painful reforms,” explains the analyst.. In addition, he also adds that the years of AKP rule will leave a trail that is difficult to erase. “We will have to depoliticize the bureaucracy of the last decades. They are challenges that will make electoral joy very short and they will have to work successfully “. That is why no one puts their hand in the fire about whether the opposition trip will be very long, or if it will only serve to throw out Erdogan.

more than two decades

His followers, present at the rally that the Turkish leader offered at the old Atatürk airport in Istanbul, refuse to think that the dream could end this Sunday. Happy and optimistic, they chanted slogans with all their might. And if the Erdogan side wanted to show muscle by massively attending its most important political event, the one in Istanbul, it did so: one million 700 thousand people, according to the organization, filled the old airstrips.. But the figure —according to the opposition, enormously inflated— would have been between 300 and 400 thousand people.

Gone are those rallies from two decades ago when Erdogan was an emerging force and beat all his adversaries with the gift of speech.. And behind are those late 80s when Erdogan, a complete stranger, convinced his future voters, corner by corner, in chaotic Istanbul, to vote for him in future local elections that he finally won in 1994.. The same ones that led him to be known worldwide for his charisma and that had to be silenced by the elite of that moment, paying the price in the form of jail.. The leader who brought Turkey to the doors of the European Union, then converted the Turkish parliamentary system into a presidential one, silenced any protest against his interests and put thousands of opponents in jail. But what has made him, according to analysts, endanger his presidency has not been the autocratic tic that characterizes him, but a vanishing economy: inflation has reached, according to independent economists, 100% and the devaluation of the lira is dizzying. That is why the new opposition leader, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, has the upper hand in the great assault on Turkey’s presidency.