(Istanbul) The Turkish opposition returned to the campaign on Tuesday after the disappointing results of its presidential candidate, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, who is trying to rally the youth vote against incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who came first in the first round.
“We have twelve days, we have to get out of the tunnel (and out of) the darkness,” wrote Kemal Kiliçdaroglu for those young people “who cannot even afford a coffee” in an inflation-ridden Turkey and of which 70% of the electorate is under 34 years old.
“You only have one youth,” launched the 74-year-old secular Social Democratic candidate, at the head of a motley coalition of conservatives, nationalists and center-right and left-wing liberals.
The opposition has banked on the supposed fatigue of the Turks after twenty years in power of Mr. Erdogan, in particular that of the more than 5 million young people who were to vote for the first time.
PHOTO ALI UNAL, ASSOCIATED PRESS
Recep Tayyip Erdogan
They also capitalized on the economic context and the fall of the Turkish lira, which pushed inflation up to 85% in the fall.
But denying most of the polls, the head of the Islamic-conservative state won 49.5% of the vote on Sunday against 44.89% for Mr. Kiliçdaroglu.
More than 5% of the vote went to the third man, former ultranationalist MP Sinan Ogan, 55 years old.
Demobilization risks
In fact, the campaign implicitly started even before the formalization of the results of the first round, which mobilized nearly 89% of the electorate.
On the night of Sunday to Monday, while the count was in progress, President Erdogan appeared triumphant, arms raised, outstretched towards an enthusiastic crowd at the balcony of his AKP party in Ankara.
By contrast, the surroundings of the headquarters of the CHP (Republican People’s Party) remained deserted.
Kemal Kiliçdaroglu warned on Tuesday that his party should “fight much harder to get rid of such brutal power”, whose camp denounces the desire to silence any opposing voice and the restrictions imposed on the press.
Because despite the support provided by the majority of Kurdish voters, the opposition failed to worry Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
“Kemal Kiliçdaroglu is not a new name for young people either, he is 74 years old, he has been (at the head of the CHP, editor’s note) since 2010 and he has not really succeeded in energizing young voters”, notes Berk Esen, political science researcher at Sabanci University in Istanbul.
“The opposition is completely demobilized; it will be difficult for them to regroup again to win” on May 28, he believes, predicting a “lower participation rate” than that of Sunday.
Turks abroad will be called upon to vote on Saturday.
The ability to remobilize opposition voters is one of the unknowns of the second round, particularly in the southern areas of the country affected by the February 6 earthquake which killed more than 50,000 people.
In particular in the province of Hatay, the most devastated and the only one among the heavily impacted regions not to have massively renewed the president, who multiplied the promises to rebuild in the year 650,000 destroyed homes.
Another question concerns the postponement of the votes granted to Sinan Ogan.
The former ultranationalist deputy has not yet announced whether he would support one or the other candidate, but he said he was hostile to any concession on the Kurdish question.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan will not necessarily need these votes, however: victory in the first round escaped him by less than half a point, or around half a million votes, out of 64 million voters.
“The second round will be easier for us. There is a difference of five points (between the two candidates, editor’s note), nearly 2.5 million votes. It seems that they have no possibility of bridging this gap”, commented on Tuesday Ibrahim Kalin, spokesman and close adviser to Mr. Erdogan.
The outgoing president has already secured his majority in parliament on Sunday with the elected representatives of his AKP party and his nationalist allies from the MHP.