He has officially been on the election track since yesterday. Turkeyjust a month after the mega-national trauma on February 6, with the horrors earthquakes leaving some 46,000 dead and 3.5 million homeless. By the decision he signed in front of the TV cameras, Mr. Tayyip ErdoganThe most important presidential and parliamentary elections in decades are scheduled for May 14, a month earlier than originally planned, that is, June 18.

Justifying his decision, the Turkish President referred to the fact that the elections should not coincide with university entrance exams, the start of summer holidays and the traditional Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. This year’s election date refers to an important moment in Turkey’s history, its first relatively democratic elections, which were held on May 14, 1950 and brought a landslide victory for Adnan Menderes’s Democratic Party over the Kemals.

In his statements after signing the relevant presidential decree, Erdogan wished for “an election campaign with meaningful content that will eliminate the traces of the catastrophe on February 6” and stated that there would be no music at his party’s election rallies, as a sign of respect for the dead.

While officials in the ruling AKP party have been accused of gross negligence regarding the seismic vulnerability of some 600,000 destroyed buildings, Tayyip Erdogan is trying to convince the electorate that only his own faction can guarantee a quick disaster recovery and damage compensation. their victims. The first list of 319,000 houses has already been published, which will be handed over to seismographs this year.

The main opposition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, will seek the support of the pro-Kurdish HDP party.

The man who has ruled Turkey for 20 years will contest an extension of his presidential term as head of the Islamist AKP’s People’s Alliance with the nationalist MIR. His main opponent is 74-year-old Kemal CHP leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is backed by the six-party National Alliance, whose main partner is Meral Aksener’s iYi nationalist party. Polls show a tough fight between the two blocs, with the opposition holding a slight lead so far.

The Kurdish vote is expected to play an important role in the outcome of the match. The pro-Kurdish HDP party, which received 11.7% of the vote in the 2018 parliamentary elections, left open the option not to field its candidate in the presidential election if a minimum political agreement is reached with the National Alliance. Kılıçdaroğlu said yesterday that he would visit the HDP and hold consultations with its leaders, drawing criticism from the ruling coalition, which sees the party as an offshoot of the armed PKK. In this atmosphere, yesterday’s decision by the Supreme Court to unfreeze the HDP’s bank accounts, which were “frozen” due to allegations of links to Kurdish “terrorism”, came as a surprise. The judges did not explain the reason for their sudden change of position, while political scientists attributed it to Erdogan’s need to influence the Kurdish electorate.

A Reuters report said that if it wins, the opposition alliance will hand over a key finance ministry to Ali Babakan. The AKP’s deputy prime minister and former “king of the economy” in the recent past, Babajan broke with the ruling party in 2019 and founded his own political formation, one of the junior partners of the six-member opposition alliance.