When Recep Tayyip Erdoğan first led his Justice and Development party (AKP) to victory, he used a campaign of fear and hope: promising an economic renaissance and to save Turkey from rival politicians bringing “poverty, famine and hunger”.
Two decades later, the president, who has towered over his nation like no other leader since the republic’s founder Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, is deploying the same strategy. But this time the “tall man” of Turkish politics is fighting for his political life as he presides over a deep cost of living crisis that many say is of his own making.
True to his populist and divisive style, his campaign strategy ahead of Sunday’s presidential and parliamentary election has been to launch tirades against his opponent, link the fate of the nation to his own, and dole out numerous state giveaways, including raising public sector wages just days ahead of the vote.
To roars from a vast crowd at a typical event for his supporters on Sunday, Erdoğan strutted the stage, wagging his finger as he has chastised the main opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu for being “pro-LGBT”, and called him a “drunkard”, with no apparent evidence.
Yet in a sign of the battle he faces, Erdoğan has trailed Kılıçdaroğlu in most polls in the final week of the campaign, which has been dominated by the country’s economic malaise, with inflation running above 40 per cent and the lira at record lows.
A decision by Muharrem İnce — a minor party candidate who lost to Erdoğan in 2018 — to drop out of the presidential race three days before the vote may bolster Kılıçdaroğlu’s chances of clinching the more than 50 per cent of the vote needed to avoid a run-off.
Erdoğan, who has served three terms as prime minister and is seeking a third term as president, was already facing the most cohesive opposition in years. Kılıçdaroğlu leads a coalition of six diffuse parties united in their quest to oust the strongman, who they blame for sinking the economy with unorthodox policies.
But even his critics and opposition members caution that it is unwise to bet against Erdoğan, who has bounced back from a series of setbacks and remains one of Turkey’s most popular politicians in a deeply polarised nation.
“People want to see someone who can govern Turkey during tumultuous times. Erdoğan is saying, ‘I’m the only guy who can steer this ship to a safe harbour in stormy weather,’” said Aslı Aydıntaşbaş, a fellow at Washington-based think-tank Brookings Institution.
Erdoğan, a football fanatic who once went by the nickname Imam Beckenbauer in an allusion to German football star Franz Beckenbauer, has orchestrated about a dozen election victories since rising to national prominence after becoming Istanbul mayor in 1994.
His political ambitions were briefly interrupted in 1998 when he was sentenced to prison for inciting “religious hatred” in an avowedly secular state for reading a poem in public that said “the minarets are our bayonets”.
The conviction burnished Erdoğan’s appeal with conservative, pious voters in Turkey’s Anatolian heartland, a large segment of society that remains core to his support. After founding the Islamist-rooted AKP in 2001 and leading it to power a year later, he cleared the way for marginalised religious conservatives to take a bigger role in the secular republic.
During the first decade of Erdoğan’s rule, Turkey enjoyed a period of prosperity as economic output per capita shot up and his government invested heavily in infrastructure, setting off a construction boom funded by cheap credit. A new class of millionaires emerged, many from the religious heartland who secured lucrative government contracts, helped by their links to the AKP and its patronage networks.
But as he and his party began to dominate the political landscape, concerns about Erdoğan’s drift to authoritarianism grew. Those fears burst into the open in 2013, when he violently cracked down on the Gezi park protests, which started in Istanbul but evolved into a national movement.
Three years later, he cracked down harder after surviving a coup attempt, launching a sweeping purge that targeted the military, civil service, academia and the Kurdish opposition. He deepened his control over all arms of the state since replacing Turkey’s parliamentary democracy with an all-powerful executive presidency after pushing through a 2017 constitutional referendum.
Now many inside and outside Turkey question how the strongman, who has spent years centralising power — and the institutions he has sought to bend to his will — will respond if he loses.
“If [Kılıçdaroğlu] wins by a margin of like 2 percentage points, that is huge and the country starts to shift into post-Erdoğan [mode]. If it’s closer than that . . . then Erdoğan could start doing the shenanigans,” said Selim Koru, an analyst at the Ankara-based Tepav think-tank.
When opposition candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu won Istanbul’s mayoral election in 2019, the city in which Erdoğan cut his political teeth, the Supreme Election Council annulled the results after the president alleged voter irregularities. İmamoğlu won the rerun, but many voters viewed the saga as evidence of the electoral authorities caving in to political pressure.
There is far more at stake for Erdoğan in Sunday’s vote. But opposition officials and analysts are putting their faith in Turkey’s institutions, especially the military, in the hope they would ultimately push back against any attempted power grab.
“In Turkey, the understanding that legitimate power results from elections is entrenched, it’s the basis of our democracy. There is a big difference between manipulating the conditions ahead of the election or creating an unequal playing field and refusing to go,” said Menderes Çınar, a professor of political science at Başkent University in Ankara.
Erdoğan said in a television interview late on Friday that he will respect the results of the election. “We came to power democratically in Turkey, just as we came to power with the people’s support, if our people make a different decision, we will do whatever democracy requires,” he said. “Those who do not respect the result of the ballot box do not respect the people.”
The president’s base, which includes the loyalists who took to the streets to defend him during the failed 2016 coup attempt, insist he can secure a legitimate victory. “I can’t deny that we have economic problems, but the defence industry, the energy sector and transportation are the priorities,” said Yusuf Kemal Bayrak. “These projects are why I am leaning towards voting for Erdoğan.”
The 20-year-old engineering student was among hundreds of thousands of energised AKP supporters who waited in long queues to see the president give a fiery address at a sprawling, defunct airfield on the outskirts of Istanbul.
Erdoğan used the rally to once again rattle off his legacy of infrastructure projects — and deliver tirades of unfounded allegations against the opposition.
“My brothers and sisters, we will not permit our homeland to be divided, we will not let Kılıçdaroğlu, who wanders around with these terrorist organisations, divide this homeland,” Erdoğan said.
Tapping into society’s deep fissures, especially between the devout and secularists, sustains Erdoğan’s popularity, said Çınar.
“The fear among his supporters is that their gains are a result of his paternalism helps Erdoğan consolidate his power,” he said. “This time, that fear may not be great enough to bind them to Erdoğan.”