The second round of Turkish presidential elections will be held this Sunday, May 28th. According to the Turkish Election Board, in the first round that was held two weeks ago, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the current president, won 49.51 percent and Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the opposition, won 44.88 percent of the votes.
It was previously thought that Kılıçdaroğlu had a significant chance of winning, but as a number of Turkish political analysts say, a significant portion of voters who are concerned about religion, especially in the Anatolian plateau, chose Erdoğan. The current president’s chance to win again in the second round is high, especially after Sinan Oğan, the third candidate of the Turkish presidential election who won 5.25% of the votes in the first round, supported Erdoğan in the second round. Oğan has strong nationalist tendencies and has a campaign focused on anti-immigrant propaganda.
In recent years, Erdoğan has shown an increasingly religious face and has taken many steps to increase religious restrictions on social freedoms. This new face in a government that was formed on the basis of the separation of religion from politics post Ottoman Empire is Turkey’s current reality. Erdoğan won by forming a coalition consisting of Islamist and nationalist parties.
Cartoon of the week: “Erdogan and the exploitation of religion for electoral purposes” by Syrian cartoonist, Jawad Morad. Source: CartoonMovement.
