With the heat of the electoral race rising 4 days before the presidential and parliamentary elections in Turkey, attention is focused on the identity of the 13th president in the history of the Turkish Republic.
Among the 4 presidential candidates, the race is mainly between the current President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the opposition candidate, head of the Republican People’s Party, Kamal Kılıçdaroğlu. And with the imposition of a legal ban by the Supreme Council for Elections on publishing the results of opinion polls according to the rules of the election law, the dominant question remains: “Will the presidential elections be decided in the first round, or will they head to a run-off?”
Both Erdogan and Kilicdaroglu confirm their ability to resolve the elections in the first round, but the other presidential candidates, Muharram Ince and Sinan Ogan, expect a run-off.
Asharq Al-Awsat polled the opinions of a number of analysts, writers and experts about the expected scenarios for the presidential elections. The writer and political analyst, Murad Yetkin, believes that it is not possible to give an explicit answer regarding the decision of the elections in the first round. “Because opinion polls and the fields of electoral gatherings do not speak one language.”
Yetkin considered that the “silent majority” will determine the outcome of the elections from the first round or from the run-off, adding: “If Kilicdaroglu wins, whom opinion polls suggest he will win from the first round, this will be due to the votes of the silent majority that have not yet revealed themselves. But its direction is clear.
Balance of hope and fear
Yetkin pointed out that the ruling Justice and Development Party uses all the capabilities of the state to mobilize for Erdogan’s electoral rallies. He said that the president changed the balance of hope and fear in favor of fear, due to his impassioned speech warning that “Turkey would drown” if he left office, in addition to “propaganda based on (disinformation), which amounted to printing posters of the “Republican People’s Party” in a fake way. There are promises made by Kilicdaroglu to cancel the Presidency of Religious Affairs, which was founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
Political science professor Evren Balta agreed with Yetkin’s view that Erdogan usually resorts to intimidation and intimidation from the future, and that this method succeeded in the previous elections over 20 years. However, Balta saw that Kilicdaroglu’s success in changing the opposition’s traditional line of complaining about the existing situation and criticizing it, into a discourse that sows hope and heralds the “coming of spring” made a difference in favor of the opposition candidate. He pointed out that this same slogan succeeded in the campaign of Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, in the local elections in 2019.
Knockdown
On the other hand, the prominent writer in Hurriyet newspaper, who is close to Erdogan, Abdulkadir Selvi, expected that the president and the ruling Justice and Development Party would decide the elections with a “new knockout blow,” and that Erdogan would win the presidency in the first round by more than 52 percent. .
Sylvie built his prediction on the image of the large crowd at Erdogan’s mass conference in Istanbul last Sunday, and on opinion polls that are conducted and whose results are not announced due to the ban, confirming that the voter turnout will range between 85 and 90 percent, and that voter participation will reach an unprecedented record in history. country.
Selvi confirmed that the presidential elections will be decided in the first round with Erdogan’s victory, and that two polls from two reliable parties confirmed that the percentage of those who believe that the elections will be decided in the first round is 65 percent, compared to less than 25 percent who believe that they will be decided in the run-off.
-The writer said that Turkish voters love stability, noting that as the election date approaches, the votes of Muharram Ince and Sinan Ogan decrease, and accordingly Erdogan will decide to win in the first round.
-Contrary to Yetkin’s view, Selvi saw that the “silent majority” would vote for Erdogan, and that undecided conservative voters were preparing to give a lesson at the ballot box.
Tired 21 years old
The writer and political analyst, Steiner Stein, drew attention to the fact that the ruling Justice and Development Party’s organizations are facing the repercussions of 21 years of exhaustion that caused them to lose their enthusiasm, which was observed in gatherings in central Anatolia, which includes the largest bloc of conservatives. He pointed out that the idea of ”leader (Erdogan) taking to the field and (Justice and Development) winning the elections” has remained dominant since the June 7, 2015 elections, in which the party lost its majority for the first time, and established the practice of irresponsibility in the party’s organizations. Stein criticized the decline in the activity of electoral party representatives, such as knocking on citizens’ doors, comparing that to the enthusiasm shown by the “Republican People’s Party” organizations, even if they need to renew blood and strengthen communication with young people.
The Turkish writer believed that economic problems remain like “a bomb that may fall on everyone’s heads,” regardless of who wins the elections. And he considered that Klichdaroglu would get a large percentage of the votes of the conservatives who traditionally voted for Justice and Development and Erdogan, thanks to the formation of the “Nation” coalition that included parties such as “Democracy and Progress”, “Future”, “Happiness” and “Good”, which are parties It has a large base among conservatives.
He stressed that it is important for the “nation” coalition to show its determination to maintain work to keep the conservatives on its side after the elections.
The director of the Eurasia Company for Studies and Opinion Polls, Kamal Ozkiraz, said that the “Justice and Development” party has become “an old and completely rural” party, and that it may witness a large loss of votes in a way that is difficult to monitor through opinion polls.
He explained that the “National Movement” party has exhausted itself in the major cities, and is draining the “Justice and Development” party in the heart and east of Anatolia and the Black Sea region. Its votes will go to the “Good” party led by Meral Aksnar, and the “Republican People’s Party” will get the highest votes from all. parties in the Kurdish regions.
He pointed out that Kilicdaroglu is the closest to deciding the elections from the first round, and he may reap votes in an unimaginable way, and that Erdogan has lost part of his voters and about half of the voters of the “National Movement” party, and that the biggest problem he faces is the conservative voters who are boycotting the elections and the Kurdish voters.
Muhammad Ali Kulat, head of the “MAC” polling company, predicted that Kilicdaroglu would decide the presidential elections in the first round.
Jan Seljuki, head of the “Turkey Report” center, said that the presidential elections will be decided in the first round by a large percentage.
