The fact that elections in Turkey led for the first time in the history of the country to the second round, shows that Erdogan began to lose his absolute power. Today, the president will demand another five years at the helm of the country in the midst of a deep crisis. economic crisisafter a deadly earthquake that claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people, and in the shadow of serious accusations against his government of corruption and abuse of power.

However, Erdogan has dealt with many, and perhaps more serious, crises in the past. Among them, one prison term, one unfulfilled coup and a series of mass demonstrations. Not only did he manage to come out of all this unscathed, but it seems that he often managed to come out victorious.

In 1998, 44-year-old Erdogan, then mayor of Istanbul, was still a rising star in political Islam. That same year, a court sentenced him to ten months in prison for inciting religious violence and banned him from politics for life. Three years later, taking advantage of a general amnesty, he, along with other Islamists, created a political party that promised to improve the government of the country. Finally he won them elections and became prime minister in 2003.

Since then, he has ruled with religious piety at home and pragmatism abroad, winning allies with his charisma and patriotic zeal. He was the one who made the law that women working in the civil service could wear hijabs, the one who helped build hundreds of mosques and the man who negotiated with Europe for Turkey’s accession to the EU. On the other hand, he preyed on dissident artists, journalists and politicians, locking some of them up in prisons on charges that many described as non-existent.

Violent repression

All this did not happen painlessly. In 2013, mass protests broke out against the government over the creation of a shopping center on the site of a large Istanbul park. He was forced to crush these demonstrations with extreme violence and hundreds of prison sentences. In 2016, a group of military and political figures tried to seize power, creating chaos in the country. In the end, Erdogan won. “They will pay dearly for betraying Turkey,” he said at the time. The continuation is about the same. New persecution, tightening control over the media and the Internet, and even more controlled individuals in important institutional positions – he made his son-in-law finance minister.

Now, with his government under fire for its unpreparedness and belated response to deadly earthquakes, and with the value of the hryvnia plummeting, Erdogan is pushing for more spending and lower interest rates, despite inflation that makes more Turks feel bad every day. themselves poor.

Today, over 64 million voters are invited to return to the polls after a very politically charged two-week hiatus to elect a leader to serve as President of Turkey for the next five years.

Recall that in the first round of the presidential elections two weeks ago, Recep Tayyip Erdogan received 49.5% and 27.1 million votes.

Opposition presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu, on the other hand, came in second with 44.9% and 24.6 million votes.

Runner-up in the first round, Sinan Ogan (who finished the race with 5.2% and 2.8 million votes), announced his support for Erdogan. However, one of the main supporters of Ogan’s presidential candidacy so far, the leader of the Victory (Zafer) Party, Umit Ozdag, whose faction received 1.2 million votes and 2.2% of the vote in the May 14 parliamentary elections, announced that he would vote for Kılıçdaroğlu in parliamentary elections. the second round, thus taking a position against the Erdogan-Ogan duo.

The roughly 200,000 Syrians in Turkey, who are already eligible to vote as Turkish citizens after years of living in Turkey, are estimated to be more likely to vote for Erdogan.