Why the outcome of Turkey's tight election race matters for the US | JUST THE FAQS
There's going to be a runoff in the Turkish election. And this is an election that's going to be super meaningful for the people of Turkey. But it's also going to be an election that resonates around the world. There was a vote in which the incumbent president Erdogan and a challenger Kamal Kluhtarulu, it was like a really tight election. And neither candidate got 50% of the votes, which is what they needed to do in order to avoid a runoff. So on May 28th, there will be essentially a kind of second round of this vote. President Erdogan has been in power for almost 20 years.
He's turned Turkey into an authoritarian state, essentially. He's jailed a lot of journalists. He's eroded various democratic institutions in Turkey. Kamal Kluhtarulu is, I don't think he's known at all really outside of Turkey. The platform that he's been running on is really about returning Turkey to a kind of more democratic path. Generally speaking, US administrations like to see countries where they feel that democratic institutions are respected, because that sort of dovetails with the US's own interests in different places around the world. One of the chief issues here for the US is that Turkey is a NATO member, and it's become a disobedient kind of NATO member under Erdogan.
But I think there is the feeling that it's time for Turkey to have a different kind of leader who is more respectful of democratic institutions. The US will be thinking also about, in terms of the war in Ukraine, overall Erdogan has kind of really sort of taken the Russian side in this conflict. And I think that the US perspective of that scene is not very helpful, kind of productive. Both candidates have expressed absolute confidence that they can win this. I don't know if some experts who look at this very closely, they mostly give Erdogan the edge. First of all, he got more votes in the first round, about 5% more. More generally, you know, it's very difficult to unseat an autocrat who controls many of the institutions of state, you know, including the media.
In an authoritarian environment like Turkey, you'd have to think that that would favor Erdogan. Hey, thanks for watching. If you liked this video, check out these other videos from USA Today to stay up to date with all the latest news.
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