“It is not clear whether we are going to have an election or a war!” Those were the words of Mansur Yavaş, the mayor of Ankara, at a rally held a week before Turkey went to the polls in the first round of our general election. As we head for a May 28 run-off, with the country divided and disbelieving following a strong showing for the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, on May 14, it seems more true than ever.
Yavaş spoke on a weekend where both the incumbent and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the presidential candidate for the Republican People’s Party, held rallies in Istanbul. Kılıçdaroğlu’s supporters gathered on the Asian side of the city on the Saturday, while Erdoğan had his rally a day later in the now-abandoned Atatürk airport on the European side of Istanbul.
I went to the Kılıcdaroğlu rally, held at the Maltepe Coastal Park, which overlooks the Sea of Marmara. People arrived at the nearby port using ferries and Maltepe railway station via the regional trains. The vendors were selling scarves, pin badges, T-shirts, and flags featuring opposition politicians or the country’s founder, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.
Inside the venue, the crowd was in the hundreds of thousands, and two huge screens relayed the on-stage action to people at the back. The first speaker was Temel Karamollaoğlu, the leader of the Islamist Felicity Party, who criticised the government’s delayed response to the February earthquakes. Next came Yavaş.
The mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem İmamoğlu, spoke about the 2019 local elections – how he won the election, only for the government to annul the results, leading to a second round where he went on to win by an even larger margin.
Other political figures spoke, but really everyone was waiting to hear from one man. As darkness fell and the air cooled, Kılıçdaroğlu made his entrance. By this time the rally had been going on for four hours and people were finding it difficult to stand. He kept his speech concise, promising democracy, innovation, reforms, and justice. “No child in this country will ever go to bed hungry!” he said. “No impoverished citizen will have their electricity, water, or gas cut off. Together, we will transform this country into a paradise and live in harmony!”
This Sunday was the moment of reckoning – election day. When I arrived at the polling station in a nearby elementary school, I was greeted by the largest crowd I had ever seen. Hours after casting my ballot, I returned to the school at five in the evening to watch the votes being counted. Party observers and citizens are allowed to oversee the counts and object to any irregularities.
After a few hours, every vote was counted, and I hurried back home to follow the nationwide results. Usually when there’s a big election like this, Turkish people gather with their families or friends to watch the results come in, accompanied by a large amount of snacks and drinks. The sale of alcohol is prohibited on voting days, so there is always a pre-election run on beer. This year the supermarket booze sections have been stripped bare.
And then the results came in. The Anadolu Agency reported that Erdoğan had secured 49.42% of the votes, and Kılıçdaroğlu 44.95%. The reaction among my friends was shock and hopelessness. We all voted for Kılıçdaroğlu and even the most reputable polls had put him in the lead, with a strong chance of winning in the first round. It seems that Erdoğan managed to win large majorities in areas hit worst by the earthquake, which offset the pro-opposition vote in the cities.
One of my friends was angry. “Since 2018, we have had the pandemic, perhaps the worst economic crisis in our country’s history, soaring unemployment and inflation rates, and a surge in young voters,” he said, exasperated. “And despite all that, Erdoğan’s vote share only decreased by 3%?” Now we hold our breath, again.
