Praised everywhere abroad and celebrated all night long by his supporters in Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoganre-elected Sunday for five years, finds himself Monday at the head of a country undermined by the crisis and deeply split.
The Head of State won 52.2% of the votes after counting all the ballots, against 47.8% for his rival, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu.
This unprecedented second round did not attract as many voters as the first: even if the participation remains high, it is down three points at the national level (excluding the diaspora), around 85%.
The provinces of the south-east with a Kurdish majority, such as that of Diyarbakir, which voted massively for the opposition, were much less mobilized, with five to six points less compared to May 14, a possible consequence of the alliance in the in-between rounds of Kemal Kiliçdaroglu and his coalition with an ultranationalist formation.
For his part, President Erdogan was able to rely on his conservative base and on the supporters of his ultranationalist MHP ally. The head of state has also made an alliance this year with several small Islamist parties, including the Kurdish party Hüda-Par, which elected four deputies under the label of the AKP, the party of the head of state.
The inauguration ceremony of the president is expected Friday in Ankara, the day after that of Parliament scheduled for Thursday.
The challenge of restoring the economy
Among his priorities, President Erdogan will have to restore the economy and fight inflation in order to restore purchasing power to the population.
Especially if Mr. Erdogan and the AKP want to recover next March the municipalities of Istanbul and Ankara, among others, passed into the hands of the opposition in 2019.
The head of state, who forced the central bank to swallow tens of billions of dollars to keep the Turkish lira afloat before the elections, will also have to finance the increases in the salaries of civil servants and pensions promised during the campaign , underline the economists.
In front of tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters whom he joined in the middle of the night in front of the presidential palace in Ankara, the re-elected president promised a rapid drop in inflation – always above 40% over one year.
“There’s no problem we can’t solve when the bond is so strong [entre nous] “, he launched.
Unequal chances for the two candidates
The Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE), which had sent observers to ensure the regularity of the vote, condemned on Monday “the intimidation and harassment of supporters of certain opposition parties” and denounced “the inflammatory and discriminatory remarks used on both sides, with mutual accusations of cooperating with terrorist organizations”.
The Council of Europe was especially concerned about the context in which “many broadcasters have not fulfilled their legal obligation of impartiality” or given “equal opportunities to the two candidates”.
A telephone interview is also scheduled for the evening with the American president, Joe Biden, announced the special adviser to the Turkish head of state, Ibrahim Kalin.
Mr. Erdogan already spoke on Monday with the German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz, who announced in a press release that he had invited him to Berlin and wanted to give “new impetus” to cooperation between the two countries.
Further talks will follow with several European leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron, Kalin said.
For his part, the CHP mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who wrested Turkey’s economic capital from AKP control in 2019, offered to gather his supporters in his city on Monday. “Don’t worry, everything starts from zero,” promised the one who could be the Turkish opposition candidate for the 2028 presidential election.