Is the Erdoğan era over? Is Turkey finally turning to full democracy? It is difficult to answer these questions and it is important to be very careful when predicting next Sunday’s presidential election. There are many reasons for caution, starting with the fact that it will be a partially free and democratic vote as Tayyp Erdoğan has imposed a lead on Turkish society (32 hours of television for his candidacy, 32 minutes for…). his opponent), thousands are political prisoners, the courts are subservient to the government and the opposition media is silenced. The considerable technical unreliability of Turkey’s polls also plays a role, even if they give opposition bloc candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the Hcp, a certain margin of victory in a country whose economy is being rocked by 160 percent inflation with devastating social consequences, exacerbated by the terrible February earthquake.
First of all, it must be said that the development of voting in the Kurdish regions will have a major impact on the outcome, since they are also the most affected by the recent earthquake that Tayyp Erdoğan inflicted in a catastrophic manner and likely negative electoral consequences for the government will have and the President. There are very misconceptions in the West about the Kurdish vote, because while it is true that it largely goes to the opposition parties, it is also true that according to Le Monde reports, the AKP, Tayyp Erdoğan’s party, was balanced until 2018 30 -35 percent. The reason for this high Kurdish consensus for Erdoğan, which was expressed until yesterday, is interesting as it is based on a clear rejection of large parts of Kurdish society towards the armed struggle and civil war wanted by the PKK and a resulting orientation in favor of the government of Ankara was evoked.
Again, a fact all too often ignored in Europe: Turkey is a country whose political scene has been dominated for thirty years by a senseless and cruel civil war unleashed unilaterally by the adventurous Kurdish and pro-Maoist PKK, which after official estimates have killed well over 46,000 people (6,400 among innocent civilians, 7,800 among the security forces), an enormous number since more than 4,000 people have died from 2015 to date. Tayyp Erdoğan’s personal political success is based not least on the reliability with which he harshly opposed the adventurism of the PKK, even among parts of the Kurdish population.
Today, the HDP, the largest Kurdish party (whose leaders, starting with Selahattin Demirtas, have been unjustly in prison for years), has wisely decided not to run any of their presidential candidates in favor of the six-party bloc – very heterogeneously, to say the least – so claims Erdoğan’s opponent Kemal Kilicdaroglu – who is Kurdish – and in any case it is estimated that in the Kurdish regions the consensus for Tayyp Erdoğan’s AKP has dropped from 30-34 percent to 20-24 percent and these two dates seem a victory of implying opposition.
The real unknown underlying this election round of enormous importance for the Mediterranean region is something else. Will the wave of popular support for Islamism and criticism of the secular state, which has been Tayyp Erdoğan’s great strength for the past twenty years, continue or will it recede? That is the point.
It should always be remembered that the elections in Turkey from 2002 to 2016 were all free and democratic and Erdoğan always triumphed freely in the polls, not only because he guaranteed impressive economic development, but also because he supported the return of the Sharia law and Sharia advocated and endorsed and the widespread destruction of the secular state desired by Kemal Ataturk, combined with the hypernationalist proposal to return to the glory and power of the Ottoman Empire.
In summary, Tayyp Erdoğan was and is the symbol of the failure of the nearly hundred-year attempt to establish a fully secular and liberal democracy in an Islamic country. A step backwards that has matured with a broad and solid popular consensus democratically expressed. So that is the very essence of these presidential and political elections. Is the consensus of the clear majority of Turkish voters intact or is it in crisis in favor of a state no longer governed by secular and liberal principles, but based on Sharia Islam and Tayyp Erdoğan’s authoritarianism?