The end of Kılıçdaroğlu and more Western frustration. What does Erdogan's victory mean?

On July 15, 2016, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appeared on the phone screen of Turkish presenter Handi Furat to call on the people to intervene in order to stop the military coup that was beginning to move, while the Turkish president was vacationing in Marmaris in the west of the country. At that time, all the world's cameras moved towards Turkey, which seemed to say goodbye to democracy to fall into the clutches of military rule again, and Erdogan's opponents saw in his appearance via the application "FaceTime" the end of no return after it. But what happened that day was certainly epic: the coup fell, Erdogan came back stronger than he was, and he is celebrating among millions of supporters that he retains the presidency for a second term, after beating his political opponents who rallied behind his rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

"Bye Bye Kamal"

Confident in the footsteps, Erdogan came out saying goodbye to his political and presidential opponent Kılıçdaroğlu and declaring himself president for another five years and the sole leader of Turkey whose journey will reach a quarter of a century when his current term ends in 2028. Early on Monday, the Turkish president addressed the entire Turkish people from the presidential palace in the capital, Ankara, calling on them to unite and solidarity around national goals and dreams. Erdoğan emphasized the principle of "justice is the foundation of the king," praising the maturity of the Turkish people, and last waxing his opponent when he said his program was aimed at destroying the family and bringing Turkey back to the mercy of the IMF.

Erdogan tried to reassure even those who did not vote for him and chose Kılıçdaroğlu after they were fed up with the displaced Syrians, stressing the principle of "voluntary return" to Syria, provided that the return is safe and away from the fire of the Assad regime. He also referred to a huge housing project involving one million Syrian refugees that Turkey will work on with Qatar, congratulating him on his first victory in the presidential elections through words from its Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

On the other hand, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu did not congratulate Erdogan, expressing his sadness over what he called "the difficulties that await the country," and ignoring the most basic rules of competition that his ally, Meral Aksener, head of the Good Party, adhered to by congratulating Erdogan. In a speech from Ankara, Kılıçdaroğlu called on his supporters not to hesitate to defend democracy, denouncing what he considered an unfair electoral phase without elaborating. Although he thanked all the leaders of the "Six Table" who nominated him to lead the opposition in these presidential elections, many questions began to arise about the future of this party alliance, which shares no intellectual or political premises other than its opposition to Erdogan. Perhaps the most important of these questions concerns the identity of Kılıçdaroğlu's prospective successor to the leadership of the CHP, after he received some criticism about his performance throughout the election campaign.

Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, is one of the most important names now on the table to lead the party. After the disappointment of losing the presidential and parliamentary elections, Imamoglu told supporters and supporters of his party that the disappointment felt by opposition voters is similar to that of five years ago, but that despite this, the opposition managed to achieve tremendous results in the local elections in 2019.

Quiet win

It is true that the results of the presidential election raised the level of tension among many followers, especially the members of the Arab communities fleeing the fires of war or the basements of prisons, which were afraid that the results of the elections would throw them into the unknown, the numbers came to confirm that Erdogan's victory was only a matter of time, after the outgoing president achieved the superiority by 52.18% against 47.82% who voted for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, with a difference of almost two million and 330 thousand votes.

The second round of these presidential elections witnessed a slight decrease in the participation rate, as the participation rate reached 84% compared to 88% in the first round, which observers considered lax on the part of a segment of the electorate that realized that Erdogan's victory became inevitable after he achieved a remarkable lead over his opponent in the first round by 4.5 points. At the same time, turnout abroad has increased, with voter turnout reaching 56% instead of 54% in the first round.

These elections witnessed a set of important data that contributed to the final result, the first of which was the decline in voter turnout in the Kurdish areas, where many voters voted punitively against Erdogan. Although the two candidates achieved almost the same percentages, the decrease in the number of voters in general served the Turkish president, as happened in the state of Van, for example, which witnessed a decline in turnout from 78% to 72%, causing the number of voters who chose Kılıçdaroğlu to decrease from 334,308 to <>,<>. This decline in support for the opposition candidate among the Kurds may be due to Kılıçdaroğlu's adoption of a more nationalist rhetoric in the second round, and then many Kurdish leaders have tended to criticize the opposition alliance in the past two weeks.

The second factor that caught the attention of observers was the areas hit by the earthquake, where the two candidates almost equaled with a slight advantage for Erdogan (50.13%) in Hatay province, one of the areas most affected by the earthquake that struck Turkey and northern Syria last February. Apart from that, Erdogan has gained a lead in most of the quake-affected states, and the number of voters for him has increased in some despite the expectation by some that the earthquake will affect his popularity. Erdogan's victory in the earthquake zones indicates that voters in these areas do not trust the CHP's ability to run the country compared to the AKP's administration and long experience, especially in light of the current conditions that require huge investments and a large government effort for reconstruction.

It is also worth noting that Gaziantep, one of the largest cities that opened its doors to Syrian refugees, gave Erdogan a comfortable victory in the first round by almost 60 percent, and a landslide victory in the second round by 64 percent, indicating the lack of propaganda that relied on hate speech by Kılıçdaroğlu. In the major provinces, the second round repeated the same scenario as the first round, where the opposition candidate achieved superiority in 6 out of 7 major provinces, led by Istanbul and Ankara, which gave the lead to Kılıçdaroğlu with a slight decline in the percentage of participants. This reveals the weakest point in the performance of the AKP and the president: the economic crisis that the big cities feel the most, of course.

Gay guests of the elections

In his speech to his supporters who came to celebrate the election results, Erdogan pointed to the need to preserve the family, stressing that he will not support homosexuality, in a clear expression of the direction of the president and his party in this file, which was a guest before, during and after the election campaign. The LGBT issue has been a point of contention between Erdogan and some Western powers, as the United States strongly denounced in February 2021 the "anti" rhetoric of LGBT minorities in Turkey, after Erdogan stated that the values of the LGBT community were at odds with Turkish values.

Erdogan, however, did not heed these criticisms. During the election campaign, the president recommended his supporters at a campaign rally in Istanbul's Umraniye district to be kind to mothers, commenting that if the opposition recommends gays, his coalition recommends preserving the family and its ties. Erdogan was surprised that the opposition chose the name "Alliance of the Nation" because he does not defend the continuity of this nation.

Distant Western wishes

Immediately after the announcement of the electoral results, congratulatory telegrams began to reach Ankara from various countries that followed the Turkish democratic entitlement. US President Joe Biden said he looks forward to continuing to work with Erdogan within the framework of NATO, which is the same content that came in congratulating Rishi Sunak, the British Prime Minister, who considered continued cooperation within the framework of NATO at the level of security a priority.

The European Union has expressed its desire to develop relations with Ankara. Erdogan received congratulations from rivals Russia and Ukraine, while Russian President Vladimir Putin congratulated him on the "logical" result, Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky wished to develop relations between Ankara and Kiev to keep Europe safe. This diplomatic speech that pervaded the blessed tweets was completely different from the tone of frustration that appeared in the Western media and revealed in the lines of the reports of some well-known platforms.

We start with France, whose relations with Turkey have been tug-of-war because of its right-wing orientation against the Muslim community headed by Emmanuel Macron, whom Erdogan has repeatedly criticized. Le Monde said the currency collapse crisis and the earthquake crisis could not topple Erdogan, as the man defied opinion polls that predicted his defeat in the first round. Le Monde considered that Erdogan was able to extend his control over the country thanks to his political, psychological, and material power, as more than 15 million Turkish citizens out of 85 million live on aid they receive from the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party. The French newspaper criticized the opposition, which it described as weak and fragmented, for not being able to make stronger promises than those made by Erdogan during his election campaign.

In the same context, the words of the "New York Times" newspaper titled its article as follows: "Despite inflation, earthquake and difficult race, Erdogan is president again." Erdogan's supporters have forgotten Turkey's challenges and supported the president's conservative Islamic values. In an article commenting on the Turkish president's success in extending his term, the British newspaper "The Guardian" said that many Western capitals remained silent throughout the election campaign, hoping that Sunday, May 28, will be the last day of the rule of the man who dominated the Turkish political scene for 20 years. The Guardian said the immediate aim was to prevent the alliance between Erdogan and Putin from being strengthened at the expense of Western powers.

Erdogan said after the presidential run-off to a crowd of supporters in Istanbul that a Western media campaign had targeted him personally from French, German and British platforms by publishing news and cartoons that offended him. But despite the West's lack of enthusiasm for Erdogan's policy and personality, Western countries will be forced to deal with the Turkish president anyway because of his important roles in the Middle East and the Caucasus, in addition to his important role in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict currently taking place in Europe. Similarly, the frustrated opposition will wait 5 years before the next presidential and parliamentary elections in 2028, but it will have an important opportunity to recover from its losses in 2024 when local elections arrive, a test that remains difficult if the People's Party does not succeed in maintaining the Istanbul and Ankara mayoral seats that it snatched from the ruling party in 2019.