In Erdoğan's victory in the run-off, the defeat of Kılıçdaroğlu is reflected. What will become of the opposition in Turkey, after its all-or-nothing gamble failed?
In the end, Erdoğan won the elections in Turkey once again. The incumbent president secured his third term in the run-off held yesterday, Sunday 28 May, in which he defeated Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the Kemalist opposition candidate. When the count was complete, the leader of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) had prevailed with over 52 per cent of the vote, against 48 per cent for his rival. Two weeks ago, Kılıçdaroğlu had held Erdoğan in check by preventing the leader from winning outright in the first round. That result — which had never occurred in 20 years of rule by the Sultan of Ankara — had kept alive a faint hope for those longing for a radical change of direction for the nation, even though the failure to win in the first round had significantly, and considerably, reduced Kılıçdaroğlu's chances.
As if that were not enough, during the last two weeks the man who had been presented as the "Turkish Gandhi" played his cards rather poorly, abandoning the progressive positions and conciliatory tone of the electoral campaign in favour of nationalist slogans, in the hope of attracting new segments of voters. A tactic that proved to be a mistake and, indeed, cost him a substantial share of votes in the Kurdish-majority provinces. Once again, the votes of the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) proved to be the real thorn in Erdoğan's side — indispensable for anyone wishing to challenge his grip on power in Turkey.
In Erdoğan's victory, the bitter defeat of Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu is reflected. On the eve of the presidential election on 14 May, the opposition leader and head of the Republican People's Party (CHP) had appeared to be the outright favourite. Some polls had him winning in the first round. The tone and the arguments he brought to the electoral campaign had presented him to voters as the man who would reopen Turkish society after years of adherence to a confessional, Islamist model of the state. In some people's hopes, Kılıçdaroğlu was supposed to put the pieces of Kemalism back together. To that end, he had set against Erdoğan the broadest and most composite of oppositions — the so-called "Table of Six" — which brought together progressive and left-wing ideas with more conservative positions. A front that was certainly composite and not free from internal contradictions, yet which represented the most serious attempt to build an anti-Erdoğan force since the "Sultan of Ankara" rose to the presidency in 2013.
Informal support for Kılıçdaroğlu had also come from the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which brings together pro-Kurdish and left-wing forces in the country and which is suspected, according to a case filed with the Turkish Constitutional Court, of links with the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). Also thanks to the HDP, Kılıçdaroğlu had managed to secure a wide margin in the Kurdish-majority provinces in the east, without, however, achieving the long-hoped-for first-round victory.
But it was in the two weeks that followed that Kılıçdaroğlu's standing went into irreversible crisis. During the run-off campaign, while Erdoğan appeared to enter a strategic torpor before delivering the decisive blow in the final days, Kılıçdaroğlu tried by every means to win over new segments of the electorate. In particular, he appealed to the more than 2 million voters who had placed their trust in the ultra-conservative candidate Sinan Oğan, who had obtained 5 per cent in the first round. Despite the fact that Oğan's positions, and those of the coalition of parties he represented, were traditionally closer to Erdoğan, the opposition candidate appealed to nationalists by promising to repatriate all 3.7 million Syrian refugees in the country.
A tactic that proved to be reckless and disorienting, calling into question the cornerstones of tolerance and democratic openness on which his candidacy rested. As if that were not enough, Oğan's endorsement of the sultan just days before the run-off confirmed the failure of that choice. Although Oğan was not quite as capable of shifting votes as some had feared, his voters ultimately split between the two candidates and in part voted for Oğan again, effectively cancelling out the hypothetical advantage.
If reaching out to nationalists brought no additional votes to Kılıçdaroğlu, it equally appears to have opened a genuine haemorrhage in the Kurdish provinces, where support for the CHP candidate fell from 81.7 per cent to 75.7. The vote for Kılıçdaroğlu, which had already appeared diminished relative to expectations in the first round, thus proved to be too short a blanket for going all-out in the run-off by straying forcefully beyond the issues that had defined his electoral campaign. A move that also cost him support in some urban centres historically regarded as CHP strongholds. In Istanbul's Maltepe district, for example, voters appeared more divided, some observers told Middle East Eye.
When Kılıçdaroğlu appeared on the scene of these elections, many presented him as the figure capable of bringing Turkey closer to Western democracies. It was no coincidence that Kılıçdaroğlu was the candidate who was supposed to ignite participation among younger segments of the electorate, also drawing in the vote of the more than 5 million young people called to vote for the first time.
In reality, the events of the days that followed clearly showed how much 20 years of Erdoğan's leadership have contributed to genetically shaping Turkish politics, which has become ever more a crystalline expression of the profound cultural divisions within society. A society in which Erdoğan has established himself as the defender of the demands of the Muslim population and those attached to traditional values. In geographical terms, the sultan has skilfully consolidated support in the provinces of central Anatolia. It is no coincidence that his most impregnable stronghold is Konya, a city with a reputation as one of the most religious and conservative in the whole of Turkey. If this face of Turkish society has found in Erdoğan an irreplaceable leader, the same cannot be said of the opposition. With Kılıçdaroğlu, the president's opponents attempted to build an alternative even in communicative terms, pursuing that process of personalisation that also reached the younger generations to whom Kılıçdaroğlu began to speak insistently on TikTok. An attempt that, however, appeared to be a pale imitation of the original, especially when Kılıçdaroğlu tried to follow his rival onto the terrain of security and the management of refugees.
It is likely that Kılıçdaroğlu's defeat will mark his end as leader of the CHP — as it will the end of the coalition he had been called upon to represent. In his first public appearance after the defeat, he did not say he would resign as head of the party he has led since 2010. There is also the question of how much credibility remains for an opposition that went all-out at precisely the moment when Erdoğan seemed a wounded lion, weakened by Turkey's galloping inflation, which had fuelled growing discontent among part of the population.
What is likely is that the outcome at the ballot box will leave within the ranks of the opposition a radical question about where the future of opposition to the sultan should tend. A direction that cannot and must not be the exclusive preserve of old-school politics, but which must find direct expression in the demands that, day by day, arise within a civil society increasingly caught between East and West, Islamism and Kemalism, authoritarianism and democratic openness.
