Most polls in Turkey show six opposition party candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu ahead of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in the May 14 presidential election showdown. However, the Turkish president has shown signs of recovery in recent days. However, analysts note that in an effort to improve his ratings, he has teamed up with the two extreme parties in Turkey.

Fatih Erbakan’s Islamist Yeni Refah Partisi Party (YRP, New Prosperity Party) claims, as stated in its cooperation protocol with Tayyip Erdogan’s alliance, to change modern Turkish family law and reduce women’s rights. The alliance also includes the extreme Islamist Khuda Par, which, according to the newspaper Cumhuriyet, is the political wing of the Turkish Hezbollah. Sozcu TV journalist Fatih Portakal reports that Huda-Par “should not have mixed education and girls should go to separate schools from boys.” In addition, “women should stay at home and there alone.”

“The most regressive alliance in Turkish history was formed when Khuda Par members ran for parliament on the AKP lists and the YRP officially joined the People’s Alliance. Even the governments of the Nationalist Front of the 1970s did not reach such a stage of regression,” writes Güven Gürkan Oztan in an article in Birgun newspaper. “On the anniversary of the 100th anniversary of democracy, sects, gangs, those who cannot stand even the first letter of the words “freedom” and “equality”, and those who do not allow young people and women to live, gathered. The only common denominator in this alliance is hostility to secular democracy,” concludes Oztan.

Call

An uproar in Turkey was sparked by the call of prominent Fox main news anchor Gülpmin Tosun, who explicitly urged women to vote against Erdogan’s People’s Alliance. “I’m talking to women. With the latest party records, the far-right logic of the People’s Union doesn’t want you to be educated. He doesn’t want you to work. Officially, the President of the country said that women should give birth to children and stay at home. In other words, after 100 years of democracy, women are told not to get an education, to stay at home, not to receive alimony in a divorce, and to be in such need that they submit to violence without protest.

Political scientists emphasize that Tayyip Erdogan’s People’s Alliance, with the participation of Devlet Bahceli’s Nationalist Action Party, as well as the YRP and Khuda Par, is considered a given, that he will not follow a pro-Western policy and distances himself from all Western values, including organizations in which Ankara has taken part so far since. An example of the current Turkish government’s intentions is Turkey’s withdrawal from the “Istanbul Convention”, in which it took the lead in 2012 before deciding to withdraw in 2021, which provoked a strong reaction from women’s organizations.

One of the partners declares the abolition of “blended” education and that “women stay at home and only there.”

Hilal Kaplan, a columnist for the pro-government newspaper Sabah, takes a different view. “Opposition parties led by the CHP paradoxically treat women. Because these parties for many decades hindered women’s rights to work and education just because they wore the Islamic headscarf. At one time, the greatest oppression of women’s rights was manifested. They have a distorted view of women’s rights. Today, all women wearing a headscarf can work and study. There are 101 women deputies in our parliament and 54 women from the AKP. And the thermal power plant occupies the penultimate place in terms of the number of women. We need to see deeds for women’s rights, not words. Some call Huda-Par and YRP regressive because they are religious parties. I won’t accept it. These are not parties whose programs will negatively affect women’s rights.”

Qatar and Saudi Arabia

Some political analysts in Turkey argue that Erdogan was forced to ally with extremist parties in order to get the few votes needed by the People’s Alliance. They also claim that he is trying to send a political message to extreme Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar, from whom he has received a lot of financial support in recent years. They emphasize that he is trying to appear as a genuine representative of the Islamic movement, unlike Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is an Alevi and represents a modernized form of Islam and pro-Western values.

Hilal Kaplan, however, argues that “the parties in the ruling coalition have formed an alliance of principles. This is the difference with the opposition alliance. We are talking about right-wing, conservative, patriotic parties. They represent an alliance of forces and support the unity of Turkey and its firm independence. Yes, indeed, two parties (YRP and Huda-Par) do not have large percentages. However, under the current electoral system of 50% + 1, even one vote is needed for the president, as well as for the majority in parliament. This is a democratic system. In other words, it is also a collaboration of principles and arithmetic.”

However, so far the poll data is not in favor of Erdogan. Ibrahim Uslu, president of the sociological company ANAR, said that “according to our survey, Mr. Kilicdaroglu is in the lead. Its share is slightly above 50%. Well, it seems that the election case can end with the first round, with a percentage of about 51%. Mr. Erdogan’s percentage fluctuates between 40%-42%, and despite his election campaign, which boosted him by a point or two, his numbers don’t come close to 50%. So the data shows that Erdogan has no chance of winning from the first round, while Kılıçdaroglu has this chance, but he is not so comfortable.”

Metropoll president Özer Senjar is more reserved as his own poll puts Kılıçdaroğlu ahead of Erdoğan by just 2.5 points.