By Athena Papakosta

Turkey is voting this Sunday for the first time in five years. On May 14, the parliamentary elections will be held simultaneously with the presidential elections. Double ballots, four presidential candidates, millions of voters, many dilemmas, one battle and, in fact, inconclusive.

The electoral process

Turkey follows a system of proportional representation according to which the 600 seats of the Grand National Assembly are allocated to each party in proportion to the number of votes it receives. In order to enter the Turkish Parliament, the parties must gather at least 7% of the votes.

As far as the presidential polls are concerned, the most popular candidates are two. On one side is the current president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and on the other side is Kemal Kilicdaroglu who manages to threaten him as the presidential candidate of a coalition opposition.

The winner will be whoever gets 50%+1 of the votes in the first round. If no one can gather the required majority then Turkey will go to a second round which will be held, for the position of the president only, on Sunday 28 May.

Polls in the neighborhood will open at 8 local time and close at five in the afternoon. The election results are not expected earlier than nine in the evening.

The faces

In addition to 69-year-old Recep Tayyip Erdogan and 74-year-old Kemal Kilicdaroglu, there are two more candidates who “descend” in the presidential race.

The first is called Muharem Inzte, and according to pollsters and analysts, he is spoiling Kilicdaroglu’s plans for an election from the first Sunday because he is cutting off votes and the election may go to the second round because of him. And this is because he leads the newly founded Homeland Party, Memleket, while he was a presidential candidate of the People’s Republican Party (CHP), which is now led by Kilicdaroglu.

The “frame” is completed by Sinan Ogan who comes from the Nationalist Action Party, MHP and finds support in smaller nationalist parties. In the very likely case of the second round, the voters of Ogan will move – if they go to the polls – and will affect the election result. Together with Ince, they remain too weak electorally to threaten Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu.

The protagonists

These are none other than the current president of the country and the leader of the opposition who wants to beat him.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan is fighting an existential battle after 21 years in power. He wants at all costs to be the president of Turkey on the 100th anniversary of the Turkish republic this year. But opinion polls show he is losing and analysts expect – despite the many problems he is facing – desperate efforts and maneuvers for political survival even at the last minute.

His election strategy was hit by the twin deadly earthquakes of February 6 that exposed the corruption of his regime and by the economy with inflation and precision blowing up his re-election prospects. He carries two decades of power on his back and the wear and tear he has suffered is not…healed with mere promises while the Turkish people have seen the projects demolished and are still paying dearly for the bill at the treasury.

He is not alone in this battle. His candidacy, apart from the AKP party (Development and Justice Party), is supported by the New Welfare Party (YRP), the Nationalist Action Party (MHP), the Great Unity Party (BBP) while he also enjoys the support of the extreme Islamist party HUDA PAR .

At the same time, Kemal Kilicdaroglu needed the support of six parties to succeed in threatening the powerful Erdogan.

The Table of Six, as the united opposition is called, is made up of Meral Aksener of the Good Party (IYI Parti), Temel Karamolaoglu of the Happiness Party (SP), the former deputy prime minister of Turkey, Ali Babacan of the Democracy Party and Progress (DEVA), former Prime Minister and former Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu from the Future Party (Gelecek Partisi) and Gultekin Wisal from the Democratic Party (DP). In addition, Kemal Kilicdaroglu also enjoys the support of the pro-Kurdish HDP party, which however does not support the “Six” and goes to the elections supporting the Labor and Freedom Alliance.

The mayors of Turkey’s two largest cities are proving to be strong cards for the opposition’s presidential candidate. These are Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and Ankara mayor Mansur Yavas who in 2019 deprived Erdogan’s party of victory and gave it to the People’s Republican Party for the first time since 1994. If Kilicdaroglu wins then these two will are the next vice presidents of Turkey.

Next day scenarios

The good scenario is that the result of the ballot box is accepted. The bad scenario is that it doesn’t happen, especially if there is a marginal election result and on the side of the loser is Erdoğan, who in the past, specifically in 2019 when his party’s candidate lost the mayorship in Istanbul, proved that he takes the defeat seriously. At the time, he had pressured the Supreme Electoral Council of Turkey to cancel the vote and repeat the elections which, however, he again lost. “Today?”, the analysts ask, and not only, “what will he do if he loses?”.

Kilicdaroglu’s appeals to the supporters of the united opposition for calm are already becoming more frequent, warning them of possible deviations on Sunday night, while the incident with stones against Imamoglu’s bus has already preceded it.

The pre-election period in Turkey is fraught with tension, and it remains to be seen whether this will dissipate at the polls or whether the country will be swept away by anger and plunged, post-election, into instability while still remaining extremely polarized.