May was a big month for the Turkish Republic. Both the Turkish people and the international community were completely worked up for the elections. After five years of brutal inflation, cases of corruption, and a devastating earthquake, it seemed the people were ready for a change. This mirage of a likely change was shattered by reality when Erdogan once again won with 52% of votes in the second round of elections. What went wrong?
Let me take you back to 2018, when the opposition alliance took back İstanbul and Ankara at the local elections. This major win was making a point from a new political star in Turkey: Ekrem İmamoğlu. His politics attracted not only seculars, liberals, and progressives but also nationalists and even AKP voters. Trust in İmamoğlu has grown significantly in the last five years, not only due to his successful projects in Istanbul but also because of how he communicated with the public. Naturally, opposition voters would have been more inclined to go to the Presidential Elections in 2023 with İmamoğlu as their candidate. Unfortunately, this was not the case. Despite the previous polls showing a greater chance for both the mayors of Istanbul and Ankara the opposition went to the historic elections with the weakest candidate, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.
Kılıçdaroğlu is infamous for failing upwards. After the abrupt departure of the previous party leader Deniz Baykal, he continued his career with steady failures. Under his leadership, the main opposition party lost two presidential elections and a referendum, leading to a significant system change in Turkey. Yet, this did not stop him from becoming the candidate for the most crucial election for the Turkish people.
While the popularity of İmamoğlu grew, the risks also grew with it. The biggest threat to his potential candidacy was getting a political ban due to an alleged court case. The lawsuit was filed in 2019, but a decision came on the 14th of December 2022, right before the opposition alliance declared their candidate. A political ban hanging on the head of İmamoğlu weakened his claim to be the opposition candidate for the big elections as pro-Kılıçdaroğlu groups in the opposition field used a possible political ban to diminish his influence. With İmamoğlu out of the equation, the two possible candidates still remaining were Kılıçdaroğlu and Mansur Yavaş, the mayor of Ankara. Despite Mansur Yavaş doing better in the polls, due to his nationalist background, his candidacy was deemed illegitimate in academic circles: one central point of debate was the influence of Kurdish voters. This paved the way for Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy.
The only real objection came from Meral Akşener, leader of İyi Parti. Akşener and her party briefly left the opposition alliance in order to present a different candidate. While she had talks with both Yavaş and İmamoğlu, it was to no avail. Both Akşener and Iyi Party received major backlash from the opposition media, academics, and CHP voters. Eventually, she had to return to the alliance. The only win from the negotiations was to have both mayors of Istanbul and Ankara present in the campaigning period and make them vice-presidents if the elections were won.
After Kılıçdaroğlu was declared the candidate of the opposition this created major cracks in the opposition voters. We lost the united front we had in 2018. The rupture was deep, though the campaigning period went more successful than in previous years. Kılıçdaroğlu regularly addressed the public through videos published on Twitter. They were able to visit almost every city in Turkey with the whole alliance group which consisted of six parties. While Kılıçdaroğlu campaigned for a unified and democratic Turkey it seems the people wanted something different.
For the first round of elections, three candidates were in the race: Erdoğan, Kılıçdaroğlu, and Oğan. The dark horse, Oğan was the candidate of the Victory Party (Zafer Partisi), which is a one-issue populist party born out of a split from İYİ Parti. After the first round was too close to call, negotiations began. While Oğan decided to join Erdoğan’s alliance, the Party itself supported Kılıçdaroğlu. This led to a sudden shift in Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign. The heart shape which became the symbol of Kılıçdaroğlu’s campaign suddenly disappeared and it was replaced by aggressive anti-immigration propaganda targeting Syrians. While the tactic itself was desperate, this sudden shift was not convincing either.
Could Kılıçdaroğlu have won this election? If he had a tailored thecampaign to the target audience, yes, probably. Would we have had better chances of winning if we had a candidate who had more public trust? Yes. One right could have won us the election but two wrongs made it certain we lost.