Erdogan’s election aces

Today all two-month pre-election campaigns are being wound up in Turkey - on June 12 parliamentary elections are being held.

Tomorrow’s poll will determine which political forces will lead the Turkish Republic for the next 4 years. Some journalists called this pre-election period ‘nervous’ and even ‘scandalous. Experts, however, disagree: social polls unambiguously show that the ruling Justice and Development Party is the most likely favourite inthe forthcoming elections. The ‘IKSara’ polling agency suggests that this party will receive 45.5% of the vote, while its main rival, the Republican People's Party, will find itself in second place with 27% of the vote. Nationalists are expected to win the confidence of 11% of voters. Another polling agency, ‘Consensus’, offers other figures with the same sequence: 48.6%, 28.3%, and 11% respectively.

Of course, there are some other forecasts, less favourable for the Justice and Development Party, but no one doubts its eventual triumph. The main question of tomorrow’s elections is not which party will win, but what percentage of the vote it will gain, and whether the figure will be higher or lower than the one in 2007 – back then the Justice and Development Party won the elections with 46.7% of the vote. The main intrigue now revolves around the question of whether the JDP obtains the 367 seats necessary to make amendments to the country’s constitution.  This question remains open, while the party’s intentions are clear: just recently, there was an agitated dispute over the presidential form of the country’s government in the parliament.

According to experts, the main innovation of this election campaign was the high level of political activity, not only in major cities, but also in the provinces. And the Republican People's Party’s efforts have met with considerable success in the regions. The Republican’s new charismatic leader, Kemal Kılıcdaroglu, called by some journalists the ‘Turkish Gandhi’, contributed greatly to this rise in his party’s popularity. The ultra-right National Movement party, which is generally more conservative in the pre-election drive by its nature, also organized several actions in the Kurdish south-eastern regions of the country – for the first time in its 10 years of existence.

Another characteristic feature of this pre-election campaign is the absence of military influence. The generals who made pre-election statements supporting the ruling party might prove bad for the JDP. The party, however, has other aces, the most important of them being the country’s stable development over the past 10 years, with no exception made for the world financial crisis period.

Another ace in Erdogan’s sleeve is his ‘Kurdish initiative’: a program for a peaceful and democratic settlement of the Kurdish problem. Unfortunately, relations between the government and Kurdish separatists have deteriorated recently: Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan even threatened to launch a large-scale military action to win Kurdish independence. Such drawbacks are characteristic of all countries that have to deal with separatist movements within them.

The Justice and Development Party has yet another advantage over its rivals: the personality and image of its leader, Tayyip Erdogan. Mr Erdogan is very popular in Turkey, as well as in other Turkic and Arab countries. His image is associated with the revival of Ottoman Empire glory and with hopes for further stable progress that will lead Turkey to a position of influence in the global political and economic arena. That is why tomorrow a lot of Turkey's 50,200,000 citizens will choose to vote for the political course that the Justice and Development Party and its leader Erdogan offer.

Sergey Rekeda, exclusively to VK.