ELECTION Turkey votes in pivotal poll that could end President Erdogan’s 20-year rule
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Istanbul: Turks will vote today in one of the most consequential elections in modern Turkey’s 100year history, which could unseat President Tayyip Erdogan after 20 years in power and halt his government’s increasingly authoritarian path.
The vote will decide not only who leads Turkey, a NATO-member country of 85 million, but also how it is governed, where its economy is headed amid a deep cost of living crisis, and the shape of its foreign policy, which has taken unpredictable turns.
Opinion polls give Erdogan’s main challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who heads an alliance of six opposition parties, a slight lead, but if either of them fail to get more than 50 per cent of the vote there will be a runoff election on May 28. The election takes place three months after earthquakes in southeast Turkey killed more than 50,000 people.
Many in the affected provinces have expressed anger over the slow initial government response.
Voters will also elect a new parliament, likely a tight race between the People’s Alliance comprising Erdogan’s conservative Islamist-rooted AK Party (AKP)
Photo: edging Sisi’s and Egypt’s mediation efforts, and thanking Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani.
Reuters and the nationalist MHP and others, and Kilicdaroglu’s Nation Alliance formed of six opposition parties, including his secularist Republican People’s Party (CHP), established by Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.
The pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) is not part of the main opposition alliance but fiercely opposes Erdogan after a crackdown on its members in recent years. The HDP has shown its support for Kilicdaroglu.
- Reuters