Short portraits of the candidates
Elections in Turkey: Erdogan against anti-Erdogan
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the CHP party and presidential candidate of the National Alliance. photo
© Ali Unal/AP/dpa
Erdogan has been in power for 20 years and is now facing the most difficult vote of his career. Two candidates are running against the Turkish President. One has a good chance of beating him.
Sunday’s elections will see a close race for both parliament and the presidency. An overview of the candidates.
incumbent Erdogan
President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (69) has not lost a national election since his conservative Islamic party, the AKP, came to power in 2002. Erdogan became prime minister in 2003 and has been president since 2014.
In his first years in government, Erdogan ensured a remarkable economic upswing. Meanwhile, the Turks are struggling with massive inflation and high unemployment. Since the transition to a presidential system in 2018, Erdogan has wielded more power than ever before. He can largely bypass parliament by decree. The EU Commission recently attested to Turkey’s democratic setbacks and increasing pressure on civil society.
Erdogan comes from the working-class district of Kasimpasa in Istanbul, and his family comes from Rize on the Black Sea. He played football in the amateur league and was mayor of the metropolis of Istanbul in the early 1990s.
In the election campaign, Erdogan is trying to score points with prestigious projects, for example in the armaments industry. Turkey is only big and strong under his leadership, he says. In recent years he has pursued a sometimes aggressive foreign policy. In the Ukraine war he poses as a mediator.
Erdogan promises to get inflation under control – which has reached record levels under his leadership. He also wants to quickly rebuild the earthquake region. He is supported by the ultra-nationalist MHP and small Islamist parties.
The challenger – opposition leader Kilicdaroglu
Strengthening democracy, fighting inflation and corruption and a stricter migration policy – this is how opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu (74) advertises. He presents himself as an alternative to Erdogan: a calm, instead of pithy demeanor and election campaign videos from a simple kitchen, instead of the initiation of large-scale projects.
Kilicdaroglu is not a new face for the Turks either. He has been at the head of the largest opposition party, the CHP, for 13 years, but has not yet had any success in national elections. His candidacy was therefore initially controversial. In the local elections of 2019, the opposition succeeded in wresting the important metropolises of Istanbul and Ankara from the government after two decades. A success that Kilicdaroglu can also claim thanks to clever alliances.
Kilicdaroglu has now brought together six parties from different camps: from nationalist to conservative and ultra-religious to his own secular centre-left party CHP. The left-wing pro-Kurdish HDP, which is considered the kingmaker, also supports him. Everyone wants to abolish the presidential system and return Turkey to a parliamentary democracy.
Kilicdaroglu was born in Tunceli in eastern Turkey and belongs to the Alevi religious minority. He made a career as a bureaucrat in the civil service. The image of the colorless bureaucrat still lingers on him. Has improved profile now and has a good chance to win.
The outsider: Sinan Ogan
55-year-old Sinan Ogan is also running for president as a candidate for a small nationalist alliance. But he has no chance of winning. The fourth candidate, Muharrem Ince from the small Fatherland Party, withdrew his candidacy on Thursday. This increases the probability that the presidential election will be decided in the first round. If none of the candidates gets more than 50 percent of the votes, the runoff will take place on May 28th.