With Türkiye entering the final week of the 2023 election campaign, rhetorical battles have notably escalated. It would be wrong to reduce that development to peak polarization because what observers have called this year’s most important election remains critically important for the country’s future.
The popularly elected president will be able to make serious changes regarding the system of government, the fight against the PKK and the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) terrorists, and the country’s international standing. In this sense, individual voters have been significantly politicized – mainly because the opposition has insisted on talking about the 2023 elections and potential candidates for the last two years.
Even more important, however, is the value that politics have accumulated over the years. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s two-decade fight against tutelage carved out significant room for politicians to exercise power and assume responsibility. At this point, politicians – not the military-bureaucratic tutelage regime – call the shots, and that will continue after this month’s elections.
That is exactly why voters are focused on what Erdoğan or his main opponent, the opposition bloc’s candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, winning would mean for their country.
As pro-government and pro-opposition pollsters project a win for their side’s candidate, the candidates themselves do everything in their power to achieve a first-round victory. It would be unsurprising for voters to be inclined to render the second round unnecessary.
That is why candidates may be expected to opt for inspiring and inclusive statements over strong language. Accordingly, the People’s Alliance stresses that “Erdoğan alone can deliver results” in the fight against food inflation and rising rent and housing prices in major cities. Kılıçdaroğlu, in turn, presented his "economy team" to the Turkish people to persuade voters that he has what it takes to keep his promises.
I think it was meaningful for Kılıçdaroğlu to go with “I promise you” as his campaign slogan. After all, making too many promises and failing to keep them has traditionally been his soft underbelly. Here are some cases in point: Kılıçdaroğlu promised he would not run for party chairperson in 2010 and joined that race within the following week.
He insisted party leaders must not run for president in 2018 – only to run in 2023 and refuse to resign as party chairperson in case of victory. He also promised that no municipal workers would be laid off in the 2019 local elections and turned a blind eye to Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoğlu firing 15,000 employees.
For the record, Kılıçdaroğlu is yet to offer a plausible explanation for his broken promises.
What the Nation Alliance finds most challenging right now, however, is the PKK terrorist organization’s endorsement of Kılıçdaroğlu and the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) leadership making additional demands. Specifically, that movement has been campaigning for the release of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan, jailed HDP co-Chair Selahattin Demirtaş and PKK militants from prison and a new peace process and "autonomy" with reference to "Kurdistan."
Most recently, one of their parliamentary candidates pledged to “reclaim Afrin” – a province in northern Syria formerly controlled by PKK/YPG terrorists.
Under the current circumstances, Kılıçdaroğlu cannot explain what he discussed with HDP representatives behind closed doors or what he offered to the PKK. With the pressure mounting, he unconvincingly stated, “Allah shall strike whoever sides with terrorist organizations.”
Ultimately, the opposition’s presidential candidate's ambiguous counterterror discourse, which does not fully disclose his counterparts like the PKK, PKK/YPG and FETÖ, proves inadequate because he cannot tell the PKK’s ringleaders to mind their own business and his partner, Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) Ali Babacan, insists that “the European Union does not view the YPG as a terrorist entity.”
Last but not least, The Economist recently called on Turkish voters to support Kılıçdaroğlu to “save democracy” – a shameless attempt to meddle in this month’s elections. The political establishment must tell that publication, together with many others in the Western media, that the Turkish people alone shall decide Türkiye’s future and they should shut their mouths.
