2023-05-29 18:32:11
The triumph of the president seemed impossible. The country is currently mired in a serious economic crisis with very high inflation rates (50%, although independent studies set it at twice that) which have made the standard of living of citizens enormously expensive. In addition, its growing authoritarianism and the bad management of devastating earthquakes of last February, which left more than 50,000 fatalities in the country, it seemed that they were going to take their toll on the president.
To understand how Erdogan was able to prevail against Kilicdaroglu, several aspects must be taken into account. The first and most relevant has been the fall of the Turkish electorate towards the nationalism fueled by the discourse against the Kurdish guerrilla of the PKK and the more than three million of Syrian and Iraqi refugees which are currently in the Anatolian country. The campaigns of one candidate and the other, far from focusing on more practical aspects, have on many occasions focused their speech on immigration and the “protection” of Turkish identity. The campaign of the AKP, Erdogan’s party, far from focusing on more practical aspects, has on many occasions focused its speech on immigration and the “protection” of Turkish identity against these two “disruptive” elements , looking to divert attention from economic aspects giving more weight in their speeches to identity issues.
Media
In addition, during the campaign, Erdogan has put at his service all the State resources to convey your message. The information monopoly allowed his campaign to hit headlines and spaces in a completely disproportionate way in front of the opposition, since all the public media and most of the private media were thrown into spread his speech. The most significant case is that of public television TRT, which has broadcast 48 hours of Erdoğan’s campaign, while it has only devoted 32 minutes to Kilicdaroglu, according to a report from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
In addition, the lack of access to critical media from rural areas of the country have left millions of people without any information about the campaign of theopposition or without the ability to access denials of some of the statements made by the president on television.
So much so that the OSCE has denounced “discriminatory and incendiary” rhetoric, partial media coverage of the campaign, lack of equality of opportunities for presidential candidates, as well as “continuous” arrests of journalists and bloggers just before the second round.
Incendiary language
“Voters were misinformed due to the lack of transparency on the part of the electoral administration and the lack of balanced media coverage it was worrying”, concluded the head of the electoral observation mission of the Office for Human Rights and Democratic Institutions, Jan Petersen.
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In this sense, the OSCE has specified that, although the candidates who appeared in the elections have been able carry out their electoral campaign freely, supporters of various opposition parties have continued to face “intimidation and harassment”, as in the first round.
The elections “were characterized by increasingly incendiary and discriminatory language during the campaign period”, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (APCE) highlighted in a statement. “Media bias and continued restrictions on freedom of expression” also created one uneven playing field and they contributed to an unjustified advantage” for Erdogan, despite the fact that the poll “went well and gave voters the opportunity to choose between genuine political alternatives”, PACE added.
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