Turkey’s Runoff Presidential Election: What You Need to Know | WSJ
Turkey is headed to a runoff election on May 28. What happens in this election will have enormous stakes both for Turkey and for the rest of the world. Turkey is a member of NATO, a member of the G20, one of the world's largest economies. It's also a country that has a central geopolitical role in the Middle East and in the war between Russia and Ukraine. Erdogan is one of the only world leaders who speaks regularly with Russia's President Vladimir Putin, making him an important channel into the Kremlin. President Erdogan is facing a number of challenges to his re-election. Turkey has been in a currency crisis over the last two-plus years, in part due to his own economic decisions in which he has pressured the central bank into cutting interest rates in spite of Turkey's high rate of inflation.
It's caused living standards to unravel. The rising cost of food, of housing, of medicine has really narrowed Erdogan's power base and turned some people who used to vote for him against him. Another challenge is the devastation caused by the earthquakes that shook Turkey and Syria in February. It killed more than 56,000 people. People living in the earthquake zone said that they were basically left alone and that state institutions, including the emergency services, the police and the army were slow to arrive, leaving thousands of people underneath the rubble waiting to be rescued. On the other hand, Kamal Kilestorolu is the long-serving leader of Turkey's largest opposition party, the Republican People's Party. If Kilestorolu wins, it would be a historic victory for Turkey's opposition and it would really breathe life into democratic institutions here in Turkey.
He's been a fixture in Turkish politics for decades. He has been leading the Turkish opposition over the last decade. His profile as a kind of elder statesman positions himself as anti-Erdogan. He likes to say that he doesn't use polarizing language. At the same time, he's promising to accelerate Turkey's clampdown on immigrants, promising to push millions of Syrian and Afghan refugees out of the country. Over the last 20 years, Erdogan has made himself into Turkey's most powerful leader in a century and if he's brought down through democratic means, that could inspire hope that other countries could do the same.
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