By Athena Papakosta

Turkish voters are weighing their final decision between the two candidates in the country’s presidential election this Sunday.

The pre-election scene of the second round rose with Recep Tayyip Erdogan evolving from an outsider to a favorite for the election victory and evolved with his presidential opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu turning from “Gandhi-Kemal” to “Erdogan-Kemal”.

There is not much time left for the two presidential “fighters” to play their… pre-election change. The atmosphere before the second polls in Turkey is already beyond toxic with the nationalist turn in Turkish political life evident.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan wants to prevail this time too, and even by a margin in order to consolidate his hegemonic position for the “century of Turkey” that begins this year, according to him, while the country completes 100 years since the establishment of the modern Turkish state.

True to the narrative he has built for two decades, the Turkish president is still “playing” with the emotions of the masses by test-launching the domestically produced Tayfun ballistic missile, talking again and again about “liberating Hagia Sophia” while, at the same time, being proud of the fact that he “alone eradicated terrorism”.

The “Grey Wolf” Devlet Bakhceli, head of the Nationalist Action party, as well as the extreme Islamic Huda Par, remains firmly on his side. However, in the final stretch until the second ballot, the nationalist Sinan Ogan, who as a presidential candidate in the first round received 5.2% of the votes and now calls on his voters to move en masse in favor of Tayyip Erdogan, becomes his ally.

The last above example of the Turkish president chooses to copy Kemal Kilicdaroglu who convinces the also nationalist Umit Ozdag of the Victory Party to support him. At the same time and while he is in danger of losing Kurdish voters, he does not stop promising the “here and now deportation” of all refugees, as Turkey is not a “warehouse” as he underlines, turning a blind eye to Ogan’s nationalist voters with this rhetoric.

At the same time, the Turkish president has repeatedly drawn from his campaign quiver new accusations against his presidential rival, insisting that the six-party opposition candidate is working with terrorists.

“Those of the opposition take instructions from the terrorists who are on Mount Qandil” he emphasizes in this regard to add that he talks to… God and takes instructions from the people.

For its part, the opposition is running the pre-election battle in the courts, with the People’s Republican Party filing a lawsuit seeking one million Turkish liras for showing, at previous pre-election rallies, a misleading video in which Kilicdaroglu is said to be working with officials of PKK.

In this video the image of Kemal Kilicdaroglu is iconic and Tayyip Erdoğan himself admits that it is a product of editing. However, for him “this is not important” since as he pointed out last Monday night in the interview he gave to the state channel TRT “members of the PKK support the opposition”.

“A state cannot depend on what one man’s lips say. In a state, there are executive and judicial powers that control its operation”, insists Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who, however, now comes second in the polls.

There are two days left until the polls open in Turkey. Nationalism won already on May 14 and this is reflected in the new Parliament of the country. The outcome of this Sunday’s contest remains unknown for now and it remains to be seen for which of the two candidates the nationalist crowns will bear more fruit.