With the presidential and parliamentary elections approaching in Turkey, the internal movement is accelerating, especially in the opposition front, to choose a consensual candidate who will face the strong candidate, current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, especially since the name of the candidate will apparently have a significant impact on the results.
Fateful elections
In Turkey, the upcoming legislative and presidential elections are seen as fateful and exceptional, as they differ from their predecessors in several respects.
It comes after 21 years of continuous rule by the Justice and Development Party led by Erdogan, and 5 years of implementing the presidential system that deepened polarization in the country, and it acquires high symbolism as it coincides with the centenary of the founding of the republic.
It also comes in light of a difficult economic situation in the country, where the structural and structural problems in the Turkish economy combined with the Corona pandemic and some international and regional developments, particularly the Russian war on Ukraine, to increase pressure on the lira and other economic indicators.
It is a card that the opposition raises in the face of the ruling coalition and Erdogan, in addition to the file of the Syrians residing on Turkish soil.
The opposition realizes that the Turkish president is still the strongest and most prominent candidate in the upcoming elections, armed with his political experience, charisma, achievements and a track record of victories in previous elections, in addition to a party machine that is still the most effective among the country's political parties.
Away from the legal and constitutional debate on the eligibility of the Turkish president to run again for the presidency, as the opposition objects to this and some of its parties threaten to go to the Constitutional Court, but the elections come in light of a relative decline in Erdogan’s popularity, justice and development for the aforementioned reasons and others.
Finally, the elections will be held within a system of existing alliances that will have a direct impact on their results.
It is likely that the presidential elections, the most important of course under the presidential system, will not be resolved from the first round, as shown by all opinion polls conducted in the country, and therefore most likely there will be a need for a run-off through which alliances will impose themselves on them, and perhaps even impose themselves on them. Alliances and re-form at the last moment.
The importance of alliances in the upcoming electoral competition and its impact on it can be monitored through the tireless work of the two existing alliances, the public and the people, to win the small parties to their side and try to disrupt the opposite alliance, in addition to the new election law proposed by the ruling coalition and approved by Parliament, where the opposition considered this an attempt to prevent it from winning By weakening the impact of alliances on results.
accurate calculations
The opposition realizes that the Turkish president is still the strongest and most prominent candidate in the upcoming elections, armed with his political experience, charisma, achievements and a track record of victories in previous elections, in addition to a party machine that is still the most effective among the country's political parties.
Therefore, the individual comparison between Erdogan and any other candidate will most likely tilt in favor of the former, especially if the corresponding candidate is a well-known opposition figure.
Therefore, the latter seeks to choose a consensual candidate with special specifications through which he can obtain the support of the opposition parties first and the votes of the electoral base for justice and development second.
In a recent survey conducted by Metropol, 33.3% of respondents said they would elect Erdogan "regardless of the competing candidate's name", 33.7 percent of respondents said they would elect the rival candidate "regardless of his name", while 28.1% said they would decide Depending on who is the competing candidate for the current president, the latter is a high percentage of course indicating the importance of the name, background and history of the competing candidate.
Therefore, for understandable reasons, the initial nominations and expectations tended to be conservative figures, or at least seem conservative or not contradict the conservative segment, and names such as the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara, Ekrem Imamoglu and Mansour Yavas, were mentioned, respectively, especially since the former enjoyed long-time support and promotion. The Good (National) Party is the second largest of the opposition parties, while the name of the second has begun to be heard more recently.
However, the leader of the opposition and the head of the Republican People's Party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, indicated more than once his desire to be the consensus candidate of the opposition parties in the face of Erdogan.
He first said that he would be honored if the opposition chose him as a consensus candidate, then made it clear that he wanted to run but that "the final decision of the heads of the six opposition parties".
Through this implicit candidacy or the initial declaration, the man has theoretically closed the door to the idea of nominating Imamoglu or Yavas, arguing that this may lose the opposition the presidency of the two most important municipalities in the country in favor of justice and development, and armed with the parties law that gives him the absolute right - as party leader - in most Decisions, particularly the identification of candidates for the various types of elections.
The opposition leader's calculations say that the latter's chances today are at their best to compete with Erdogan, whose popularity and that of his party have declined relatively over the past few years.
It is true that the recent municipal elections in 2019 bore good news for him and his party, but firstly, they are local elections with little political impact, and secondly, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) has advanced the rest of the parties by a significant difference, although it has regressed relatively and lost highly symbolic municipalities such as Istanbul and Ankara.
Therefore, Kılıçdaroğlu indirectly announced his candidacy, although he still has not obtained the approval of the rest of the opposition parties with which he coordinates. Rather, it would not be an exaggeration to say that some of them oppose his candidacy and prefer others, who meet the conditions of competition more than from his point of view.
The opposition leader’s indifference to the opinions of other parties and his attempt to put them in front of the fait accompli is based on his assessment, and the assessment of many, that the presidential elections are difficult to be decided in the first round and will need a run-off, and therefore he will be Erdogan’s competitor in it (because his party is the largest opposition party ).
This equation, any run-off between Erdogan and Kılıçdaroğlu, will put all opponents, personalities and parties, to the test of electing the president they oppose (the first) or one of the leaders of the opposition (the second).
By this logic, it may seem that the latter's calculations are correct and that he will have a real and great chance of competing and even winning over Erdogan, given the collective value of the opposition parties' votes.
But he neglects and may deliberately ignore several very important matters.
The first is that the opposition parties, especially the small and new ones, have not finally decided their position on the existing alliances, even if they seem until this moment on the side of the opposition People’s Alliance.
The second is that these parties in particular may prefer to present their own candidate for the presidential elections to increase their presence and opportunities in the parliamentary elections, which could disperse the opposition’s votes.
The third is that the elections are far from accurate and disciplined calculations.
Assuming that the opposition presents him as a consensual candidate before Erdogan, this does not guarantee that its cadres and supporters will vote for him at Erdogan's expense.
The Turkish voter usually votes separately and distinctly in presidential elections from legislative and municipal elections.
He could be opposing the Justice and Development Party and elect his own party without that preventing him from electing Erdogan at the expense of another competitor he is not convinced of, and the aforementioned poll results showed something of that.
Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Kılıçdaroğlu is not the most suitable candidate to challenge Erdogan from the point of view of many.
This is because he lacks charisma on the one hand, and he does not have a political record of victories on the other hand. He has lost all electoral contests of all kinds to Erdogan, Justice and Development since he assumed the presidency of his party.
He is not unanimously agreed within his party. Rather, he has always faced fierce internal competition that led to splits and the establishment of several parties, the latest of which is the Balad Party, led by former leader Muharram Ince.
The latter, for example, in turn will most likely be a candidate in the upcoming elections and will be deducted from Kılıçdaroğlu's balance to one degree or another, which may mean that Kılıçdaroğlu may not come second after Erdogan in the upcoming elections, as he currently calculates.
The man's regional and sectarian roots will also have an impact on a good segment of the electorate, who will find it difficult to tip Erdogan, regardless of their differences with the latter.
Accordingly, Kılıçdaroğlu’s calculations based on an assessment of an unprecedented opportunity for the possibility of defeating Erdogan may be the same as the card to re-elect the current president for an additional term, because it is based on an assessment of an inaccurate position as before, in addition to the fact that he is not yet certain that he will be the consensual opposition candidate in Confront him, as the elections marathon is still in its infancy.