SHORT of an outright victory for Turkey’s longtime leader, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, it was the worst result the country’s opposition could have imagined. The challengers had appeared to be heading into the presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14th with a good head of steam. But by 2am on the following day, with more than 96% of the ballot boxes opened, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the candidate of the Nation Alliance, a coalition of six opposition parties, had secured only 44.9% in the presidential election, according to Anadolu, the state news agency. That looked set to be enough to force Mr Erdogan, who had by then received 49.4%, into a run-off. But it was well below what pollsters, as well as Mr Kilicdaroglu himself, had expected. A third candidate, the nationalist Sinan Ogan, received 5.3% of the vote, a surprisingly strong showing. The second round will take place on May 28th.
Mr Kilicdaroglu’s alliance, headed by his own Republican People’s Party (CHP), performed even worse in the parliamentary vote, where it was projected to win only 35%, which Turkey’s complex electoral system is projected to translate into about 211 out of 600 seats. Mr Erdogan’s bloc, known as the People’s Alliance, led by his own Justice and Development (AK) party and the far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), walked away with 45.8%, enough to retain a comfortable majority (an estimated 319 seats) in the assembly. A smaller opposition alliance headed by Turkey’s main Kurdish party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), received 10.3% (around 65 seats).
Mr Ogan may now be able to play kingmaker. In an interview a couple of days before the elections, the nationalist candidate suggested that he and his party may be eyeing ministerial posts in exchange for an endorsement. But so underwhelming was Mr Kilicdaroglu’s performance that the CHP leader would have to woo all of Mr Ogan’s voters to have a shot at winning the second round. That seems unlikely. For the first time in his career, Mr Erdogan had entered the elections trailing his main rival in the polls. He now appears the clear favourite to win in the second round.
Appearing at the CHP headquarters in Ankara, Mr Kilicdaroglu accused AK of delaying the results by filing objections in districts where the opposition was ahead. Some time later, Mr Erdogan addressed thousands of his own supporters from the balcony of his own party’s headquarters, where he has delivered scores of victory speeches. “Somebody is in the kitchen,” he said, taunting Mr Kilicdaroglu, known for recording social media videos from his modestly furnished kitchen. “And we are on the balcony.”
Elections in Turkey have become perhaps the last valve for dissent. But Turks had not given up on democracy, the turnout in the elections showed. More than 88% of eligible voters went to the polls on May 14th, a very high number by any standards. Despite high tensions, no violent incidents took place on election day.
A number of polls published a couple of days before the elections showed Mr Kilicdaroglu with just over 50% of the vote, enough to win in the first round, and a few percentage points ahead of Mr Erdogan, who has run the country for 20 years. This came after Muharrem Ince, a former opposition CHP politician and potential spoiler candidate, dropped out of the race three days before the elections. Mr Kilicdaroglu was thought to have inherited most of Mr Ince’s support, thought to be around 2%. But many of those votes may have gone to Mr Ogan instead.
The stakes in the election could not be much higher. The outcome will determine the direction of Turkey’s foreign policy, especially its increasingly cosy relationship with Russia, and the shape of its economy, currently warped by galloping inflation and the lowest real interest rates anywhere in the world. A constitution that allows Mr Erdogan to keep the courts, the central bank, and other state institutions under his thumb, as well as the patronage system over which he presides, are on the line, too. Five more years of rule by Mr Erdogan would entrench his brand of autocracy. An opposition victory in the run-off, though now looking unlikely, would offer a chance to restore democratic rule, and a path to economic stability.
The election campaign had been uncharacteristically sombre in its early stages, largely as a result of the earthquakes that killed more than 50,000 people in the south of the country at the start of the year. That changed once Mr Erdogan accused the opposition of teaming up with “terrorists”, a reference to the HDP, which most Turks see as the political wing of an outlawed Kurdish insurgent group, and of courting “deviant” LGBT groups. His interior minister, Suleyman Soylu, fanned tensions by warning of a “political coup attempt” on election night. A week before the elections, pro-government protesters attacked an opposition rally in the east of the country, wounding about a dozen people.
Mr Erdogan and his party also framed Mr Ince’s withdrawal from the race as an attempt by exiled supporters of the Gulen community, a religious sect Turkey blames for a violent coup attempt in 2016, to shape the race in Mr Kilicdaroglu’s favour. Mr Ince accuses the Gulenists of mounting an online smear campaign, featuring doctored photos and videos, which he says forced him to drop out of the race. The government has amplified Mr Ince’s claims. “The perpetrators are [the Gulenists] and America,” Mr Soylu said on May 12th. Mr Kilicdaroglu, meanwhile, accused Russia of interfering in the elections on Mr Erdogan’s behalf.
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