After a dramatic election night with confusing numbers and mutual recriminations, Turks woke up on Monday to the prospect of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's possible re-election. The run-off election will take place on 28 May. In the first round, according to preliminary data from the High Electoral Council, the incumbent won 49.5 percent of the vote, significantly more than his challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who received 44.9 percent. The president is also going into the second round with a head start. In Sunday's parliamentary elections, his alliance won an absolute majority: 322 of the 600 seats. This could persuade many voters to opt for stable conditions instead of electing a candidate who would have to govern against the parliamentary majority.
Friederike Böge
Political correspondent for Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan based in Ankara.
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Turkish pollsters bent over the data on Monday to understand why many pollsters had been wrong in their forecasts. They had recently seen Kilicdaroglu in front, albeit below the crucial mark of 50 percent. The head of Metropoll, Özer Sencar, says the crucial question is why Erdogan got the most votes, even though the economic situation is worse "than it has been in the past 30 to 40 years". His answer: AKP voters did not blame Erdogan for the economic crisis, but America and the European Union.
America and Europe want bad things for Turkey
Erdogan's supporters accused them of wanting to make Turkey incapable of governing. In addition, 55% of the citizens surveyed do not trust Kilicdaroglu to solve the problems because he has no track record. The opposition's election campaign was strongly focused on blaming Erdogan personally for high inflation. Apparently, she did not reach enough voters with this narrative. This could also be due to the fact that Erdogan controls 90 percent of the media. The same seems to apply to coping with the earthquake damage. The results from the particularly affected regions show that the catastrophe has hardly changed voting behaviour. However, voter turnout there was lower than in the rest of the country.
Pollster Sencar believes that Kilicdaroglu has no chance of catching up with Erdogan's lead in the second round. The president's core voters make up 30 to 32 percent of the population. In the case of Kilicdaroglu, the figure is 20 percent. Sencar has long argued that the opposition alliance has chosen the wrong candidate. The mayors of Ankara and Istanbul would have had a much better chance of beating Erdogan, according to polls by his institute. "Citizens expect their president to have a track record of success and strong leadership."
A few months ago, the picture had looked different. Last October, when inflation had officially risen to 85 percent, Erdogan's approval ratings were so low that unrest spread in his camp. In the months leading up to the election, the president set off a fireworks display of measures. Observers speak of "economic populism". Even the election observation missions of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe criticized this. "The announcements of significant social welfare programs" have given those in power an unfair advantage, they said in a joint statement.