A deeply divided Turkey is moving towards a mile-stone election to choose its president by a popular vote. .
Less than ten days to go to the polls on August 10, nearly 3 million Turkish citizens living abroad have already started casting their votes for the first time. Some 2.8 million Turkish citizens resident in 53 countries will be voting over the next four days.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (AKP) have campaigned hard to rally support in Europe. The conservative and religious voters are almost certain to support Mr Erdoğan. Kurdish votes in Europe are also thought to be an important factor for Erdogan’s chances of winning the presidency, especially if the election goes into a second round.
Whilst the AKP has been trying to mobilise the overseas vote, his rivals in Turkey have been calling on the largely secular, middle class holidaymakers to return to their constituencies and vote against Erdoğan.
As a recent poll by the US think tank Pew Research Center has confirmed, Turkey’s population is sharply divided over Prime Minister Erdoğan. Those that are happy with Mr Erdoğan’s leadership and the state of the nation and those that think he is leading the country down the wrong path are almost evenly split.
Yet, when asked about the role of Islam in the political life of the country, overwhelming majority (69%) agree that it plays a large role.
A politician with clear Islamic roots, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the undisputed leader of the race for piety. During the presidential election campaign, both the Prime Minister and his party have cast themselves not only the champion of Muslims in Turkey but also in the region and beyond.
The other two candidates running for presidency, the joint presidential candidate of the Republican People’s Party (CHP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu and the candidate of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) Selahattin Demirtaş have also acknowledged the growing religious conservatism of the population and the increasing role of the religion in Turkey’s politics.
Although declaring that “Religion and politics should be kept separate”, the candidacy of Ekmeleddin Ihsanoğlu, a former general secretary of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) was a clear recognition of this growing religiosity.
The People’s Democratic Party (HDP) candidate Selahattin Demirtaş, too, tried to garner support among Turkey’s marginalized religious Alevi minority.
As the prime minister adopts a more aggressive and insulting tone against his rivals, his inner circle also drop more hints of the ‘New Turkey’ that they have in mind. Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc’s widely ridiculed comments about women’s chastity and country’s regression in morality was not the first of its kind. Similar pronouncements have been made daily by leading AKP politicians and by the Prime Minister himself. Earlier this month, Mr Erdoğan advised young women to get married, if necessary still while at school as soon as they could find a suitor.
Meddling in private lives has become a routine activity by Turkey’s government. Taking their cue from the ruling party on almost every issue, the courts follow suit. A local court in the eastern province of Erzurum reduced the sentence of a husband who attacked his wife after seeing her with another man. The court accepted the husband’s defence argument that wearing tight fitting trousers could be considered as “provocative” and an extenuating circumstance.
According to the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) Ankara deputy Gülsün Bilgehan, 129 women were killed in the first six months of 2014 in Turkey. Turkey ranks 120th of 136 nations in the World Economic Forum’s 2013 Gender Gap Index, down 15 places since 2006. With very high domestic violence rates, cases such as the recent one in Erzurum should ring the alarm bells for the government but the authorities do not even seem willing to grant the most basic democratic rights of the victims of domestic violence. As in previous elections, thousands of women in shelters will not be able to register and vote because their safety cannot be guaranteed.
Prime Minister Erdoğan’s ambition is not only to secure an election victory as the 12th president. He also wants to transform the country, to create a “New Turkey”. He pledges to push for a new constitution which would give strong executive powers to the president, tightening his authoritarian grip on the country.
The 10 August 2014 presidential election will be monitored by The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s (OSCE) parliamentarians in coordination with representatives from the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE).
Following widespread complaints of fraud during the recent local elections on March 30, observations and verdict of the mission will be seen as an important test for Turkish democracy.
In their pre-election visit, the PACE delegation highlighted worries over the Prime Minister’s position during campaign, giving him disproportionate access to resources and media coverage. OSCE/ODIHR election observation mission to Turkey has also raised concerns about unequal opportunities for airtime and coverage provided by the media to the other presidential candidates Ihsanoğlu and Demirtaş. According to Turkish sources, between July 2nd and 4th , when candidates held campaign press conferences, the state news channel devoted 204 minutes to Mr Erdogan and a combined total of less than three minutes to his two rivals.
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is the strongest contender and the uneven nature of the race gives him a chance of winning at the first round on the 10th of August with more than 50% of the vote. The existing electoral system may provide him with an even greater advantage of securing a higher percentage of votes if the election runs into a second round two weeks later.
Transformed, Turkey will be. Into exactly what, we’ll have to wait and see.
This post is also available in: Turkish
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