Expected in Turkey for tomorrow's vote. The runoff will tell who, between outgoing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the opposition candidate, Republican Kemal Kilicdaroglu, will govern the country for the next 5 years.

The 88% reached in the first round confirms that Turks want to choose the next president, even after the catastrophe of the earthquake of last February 6. In total, 64 million voters are expected to vote in a country of 83 million inhabitants, about two million have already voted abroad.

The outgoing president in the first round has guaranteed the majority of seats in Parliament and his Islamist and conservative AKP party, despite losing votes compared to the past, confirms itself first with 35.58% of the votes, which guarantee him 267 of the 600 seats in parliament.

In numerical terms, little has changed compared to the first round: Erdogan retains the initial gap and only the undecided (8.2%) could turn the situation in favor of the opposition.

The May 14 vote once again revealed a polarized country, split in two. On the one hand, 49.5% of voters who just two weeks ago expressed their preference for Erdogan, choosing the continuity of a leader in the saddle for 20 years, first as prime minister and then since 2014 as president of the Republic. On the other hand, a coalition of several parties, which obtained 45%, close around the candidate Kilicdaroglu, who precisely in that continuity sees the threat of a regime with one man in charge advance. The leader of the opposition is at the head of the Republican Party CHP, secular, secular, Kemalist in the indissoluble bond with the founder of the Turkish homeland, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. In a word, a nationalist party, by birth and definition; in recent years he has never stopped accusing Erdogan of having betrayed the founding values of the Republic, Islamizing the country and delegitimizing the figure of Ataturk and the connotations of the 'Fatherland' as "the fathers" had wanted it.

The CHP has obtained the support of the Kurds of HDP, forced to present themselves without a candidate and as the Green Left due to judicial events, which came close to 10%.

The first round ended with a lead of just 2.5 million votes for Erdogan, very few in a country that has 64 million voters and where turnout is traditionally very high. To make the second round necessary 5.17% of the votes, equal to 2.8 million preferences, obtained by the 'third inconvenient', the ultra-nationalist far-right Sinan Ogan. After the first round, the spotlight was on the former Grey Wolf, who for years had disappeared from the Turkish political scene and who now supports the president in the race.

(Halil Kahraman/dia images via Getty Images)

A rock split in two above a house in Eski Kahta village in Adiyaman, Turkey, March 1, 2023

In these two weeks, the two candidates focused on the 8 million abstentions of the first round. However, the 5.17% of the votes obtained by Ogan has relaunched the ultra-nationalists with a hard fist, the Turkish extreme right that has seen in the opening to Kurdish parties in politics and the arrival of millions of Syrians fleeing the war the distortion and betrayal of the values of the homeland.

It therefore seems clear that regardless of who is elected in tomorrow's ballot, the elections in the Land of the Crescent already have an undisputed winner: nationalism. The last two weeks have been a race to win the votes of the extreme right in which the opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu in particular stood out. Disappointed by the failure to win in the first round, he cracked down on his staff, changed strategic consultants and gave greater centrality to the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, now a vice-presidential candidate: the man who in 2019, after 25 years, had wrested the most important metropolis of the country from the president's party with a campaign focused on the adverse sentiment towards Syrian refugees that now acts as a needle of the balance.

Kilicdaroglu raised the tone with a video in which he accused Erdogan of not having been able to defend the borders, of having sold out citizenship and the right to vote (140 thousand Syrians vote in Turkey), of having brought 10 million refugees into the country (3.9 million according to the UN) and envisaged the arrival of another 10 million in case of reconfirmation of the president in office. The culmination of Kilicdaroglu's change of course was the alliance with the xenophobic and nationalist ultra-right party Zafer (Victory), led by Umit Ozdag, author of a tough campaign against migrants.

With Ogan's endorsement in favor of Erdogan, the game for the presidency seemed closed, but it is not certain, while Kilicdaroglu's Alliance with Ozdag would guarantee the opposition 1.2 million votes, almost half of the entire package collected by Ogan in the first round.

The agreement between Kilicdaroglu and Ozdag was sealed by a 7-point protocol, in which the repatriation of Syrians in one year stands out. Ozdag also anticipated that, if Kilicdaroglu wins, he will serve as interior minister; and less than a week before the run-off, huge banners reading 'Syrians will leave' have appeared in the country's major cities.

AP

Tayyip Erdogan arrives at the polling station

To reach an absolute majority, Erdogan once again needed to ally himself with the nationalists of MHP, who obtained 10% of the vote, enough to guarantee 50 candidates, while the new Refah party, of religious inspiration, obtained 5 parliamentarians thanks to 2.82% of the consensus. There will therefore be 322 parliamentarians of the coalition that supported the Turkish president, the majority of the 600 seats that make up the Parliament of the capital Ankara; and 213 parliamentarians from the six-party alliance that challenged Erdogan under the leadership of Kemal Kilicdaroglu.

The challenger's party is confirmed as the second largest party and main opposition force with 25.3% and 169 seats in Parliament. Iyi's nationalist allies took 9.7% and won 44 seats, thus completing the composition of the 213 opposition parliamentarians. On the other hand, 65 parliamentarians were won by the left-wing alliance between the pro-Kurdish HDP and the workers' party with 10.54%, which allows them to exceed the very high threshold of 10% and enter Parliament. HDP, at risk of unconstitutionality, presented itself in the elections with the symbol of Green Left and obtained 61 seats with 8.9% of the votes. The Workers' Party, born from a split from the Turkish Communist Party, with 1.73% placed 4 parliamentarians.