Son of a truck driver fires up opposition to Erdogan’s rule
The voters who have kept Recep Tayyip Erdogan in power for the last 15 years come from places like Elmalik. Nestled at the foot of the mountains an hour’s ferry ride from Istanbul, life in the village centres around the mosque and three tea shops in the main square.
Nearly 70 per cent of its 2,000 residents voted for Mr Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2015. Last year, three quarters of them supported the Turkish president in a referendum to change the country’s constitution.
But in this week’s elections Elmalik is giving Mr Erdogan something besides its votes: a challenger from his own heartland. The village is home to Muharrem Ince, a 54-year-old former physics teacher whose fiery populism has energised Turkey’s opposition and rattled Mr Erdogan’s ruling conservative party.
His campaigning has breathed new life into the Republican People’s Party (CHP), the secular Left-leaning party which founded the Turkish republic and once dominated the country’s politics but has lost a string of elections to Mr Erdogan since 2003.
Mr Ince’s canny outreach to a motley crew of opposition parties and unlikely allies – including Kurds, Islamists, and Right-wing nationalists – has forged a broad political front against Mr Erdogan and is giving the Turkish president his toughest election challenge in years.
Driving Mr Erdogan from the presidential palace will still be an extremely difficult task. He is broadly popular in Turkey and has presided over strong economic growth and vast spending on infrastructure.
He also enjoys fawning media coverage from both state media and private outlets and has used emergency powers since a failed coup in 2016 to crack down on political opponents and critical journalists. The AKP was accused of stuffing ballot boxes during the 2017 referendum and critics believe they will try it again on Sunday to ensure they hold on to power.
The polls have been erratic, but most put Mr Erdogan on around 48 per cent of the vote while Mr Ince has 30 per cent, while smaller candidates split the rest. If Mr Erdogan does not get more than 50 per cent then the election will go to a second round, where he will face Mr Ince head to head. The CHP hopes that other opposition parties will then rally around Mr Ince, giving him the votes to edge out Mr Erdogan.
This is the first presidential election since the 2017 referendum, which transformed the presidency from a largely symbolic role to one with sweeping powers. Parliamentary elections will happen at the same time, where an alliance led by Mr Erdogan’s AKP may lose its overall majority in the Grand National Assembly.
The opposition’s hopes are pinned on Mr Ince’s populist style. During his rallies, he paces on top of his campaign bus and assails Mr Erdogan for losing touch with the Turkish people.
“While you eat quail eggs in the garden of your palace, people are eating genetically modified foods. People can’t buy even a cup of tea and you drink white tea that costs 4,500 lira (£723) per kilo,” he roared.
In contrast, Mr Erdogan has seemed less sure-footed than in previous elections. In one speech, he promised that he would step aside if voters said “tamam” the Turkish word for “enough”. Within hours the hashtag #tamam was trending on Twitter and the CHP has plastered the phrase on its campaign material.
His fortunes may also be dented by the falling Turkish lira, which has lost 20 per cent of its value against the dollar in the last six months, driving up food prices and forcing a hike in interest rates. While the CHP has long been viewed as the party of Turkey’s secular elite, Mr Ince is a practising Muslim and the son of a truck driver. People were stunned to see a party which once supported banning the
‘While you eat quail eggs in the garden of your palace, people are eating genetically modified foods’
hijab in universities put forward a presidential candidate whose mother and sister both wear the headscarf.
“We are ordinary people,” Mr Ince’s younger brother Huseyin said. “We are Leftists but we’re also the children of Muslims. We go to the mosque on Friday like everyone else.”
Mr Ince is able to appeal to religious voters who previously would never think of voting for the CHP. “I’m an Ince voter, not a CHP voter,” said Ayse, a 31-year-old in a hijab. “He has made the CHP a more welcoming party.”
He also reached out to Kurds, who make up 19 per cent of the population but have been politically marginalised by both CHP and AKP governments. Mr Ince broke with his party leaders and voted against a law that stripped Kurdish MPS of their immunity from arrest. After the leader of the main Kurdish party was jailed in 2016, Mr Ince went to visit him in prison. The gesture was politically risky and led to attacks from Mr Erdogan, who accused him of associating with terrorists. But it was appreciated by many Kurds, who are expected to vote for Mr Ince in a second round.
“Twenty years ago I could never have imagined voting for the CHP. They made mistakes in the past but I believe they are fixing them,” said Mehmet Sahtekim, a 33-year-old Kurd.
Even members of Mr Erdogan’s own AKP are prepared to admit that Mr Ince has raw political talent.
“A typical CHP guy doesn’t bother dealing with the ordinary man. Ince, on the other hand, is our type of guy. He tries to reach out to people,” said Egemen Bagiş, a former AKP government minister who remains close to Mr Erdogan. “Ince has learned the tricks from the AK Party.”
Back in Elmalik, the main street is covered in photographs of Mr Ince. Mulayim Aydin, 78, was among the village majority that voted for Mr Erdogan in the last elections. But he said he would vote for Mr Ince this time. “I think Ince will be a good president, he’ll be better than this one.”