2023-05-29 18:32:11
The president’s triumph seemed impossible. The country is currently immersed in a very serious economic crisis with very high inflation rates (50%, although independent studies set it at double) that have made the standard of living of citizens enormously more expensive. Furthermore, his growing authoritarianism and mismanagement 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 Kiliçdaroglu despite everything, several aspects must be taken into account. The first and most relevant has been the turn of the Turkish electorate towards the nationalism fueled by the discourse against the Kurdish guerrilla of the PKK and the more than 3 million rSyrian and Iraqi refugees who are currently in the Anatolian country. The campaigns of both candidates, far from focusing on more practical aspects, have often focused their discourse on immigration and the “protection” of Turkish identity. The AKP campaign, Erdogan’s party, far from focusing on more practical aspects, has on many occasions focused its discourse on immigration and the “protection” of the Turkish identity in the face of these two “disrupting” elements, trying to divert attention of the economic aspects giving more weight in their speeches to identity issues.
Media
In addition, during the campaign, Erdogan has placed at his service all the state resources to get your message across. The information monopoly led to his campaign taking headlines and spaces in a completely disproportionate way compared to the opposition, since all the public media and most of the private ones turned to spread your speech. The most significant case is that of public television TRT, that it has broadcast 48 hours of Erdogan’s campaign, while it has only dedicated 32 minutes to Kiliçdaroglu, according to a report by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
In addition, the lack of access to critical media from rural areas of the country has left millions of people without any information about the campaign of the opposition or without the possibility of accessing denials of some of the statements made by the president on television.
So much so that the OSCE has denounced “discriminatory and inflammatory” rhetoric, partial coverage of the campaign in the media, lack of equal opportunities for presidential candidates, as well as “continuous” arrests of journalists and bloggers just before the second round.
incendiary language
“Voters were misinformed by the lack of transparency on the part of the electoral administration and the lack of balanced media coverage It was worrying,” said 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 participated in the elections have been able to exercise your electoral campaign freelysupporters of various opposition parties have continued to face “bullying and harassment”, Like the first round.
The elections “were characterized by increasingly inflammatory and discriminatory language during the campaign period,” the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) said in a statement. “Media bias and continued restrictions on freedom of expression” also “created a uneven playing field and contributed to an unjustified advantage” for Erdogan, despite the fact that the vote “went well and gave voters the opportunity to choose between genuine political alternatives,” PACE added.
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