2023-05-14 17:01:24
It is barely noon, Sunday May 14, in Istanbul, and the polling station of the Turgut-Reis high school is always full. On this day of elections, both presidential and legislative, the most difficult that outgoing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has had to contest since he came to power two decades ago, the establishment, located in the district of Esenler , an industrious suburb on the European side of the Bosphorus, looks like an anthill. On each floor, the voters wait in Indian files in front of the doors of the classrooms, twenty-two in total, that is to say the number of ballot boxes allocated to this voting center.
“There are always a lot of people who vote here,” slips in an assessor accustomed to the place, member of one of the opposition parties and who will not say her name. ” Neverthelessadds the young woman, it seems that the crowd today is even bigger than in 2018, during the last presidential election. »
In this historic stronghold of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), the formation created by Erdogan in 2002, we have been voting for twenty years without stopping for the power in place. In its first year of existence, the AKP obtained 54% of the votes in Esenler, the highest result in the Istanbul megalopolis. It was here in 2013 that nearly 100,000 people rallied in support of then-Prime Minister Erdogan, just days after the Gezi protests.
The explosion of rental prices
In 2018, Erdogan won 67% of the vote in Esenler and the following year, in the municipal elections, his party won the district hands down with 66% of the vote. The proof of its strong presence, especially among the employees of the textile factories, very numerous in this periphery of Istanbul. “But that could change slightly,” predicts Emre, 28, a young father for five months and himself a worker in a neighborhood clothing workshop. He cites pell-mell the wear and tear of power, the economic crisis, skyrocketing inflation and soaring rents.
In Esenler, a family with two children has to pay no less than 10,000 Turkish liras (470 euros) for accommodation due to the influx of residents from the city center, which has become even more unaffordable, the presence of 3.7 million Syrian refugees and corruption. “Above all, I have the impression that people are tired of the divisions and the ambient aggressiveness. We need something elsehe blurts out. I will vote this time for the opposition candidate, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, and for the CHP [Parti républicain du peuple] in the legislative ballot. »
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