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Erdogan sets stage for May 14 Turkish election

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday signalled that he intended to bring the date of Turkey’s most consequential general election in generations forward by one month to May 14.

The announcement sets the stage for a vote that could either extend Erdogan’s Islamic style of rule into a third decade or turn the country on a sharply more secular — and potentially predictable — course.

The 68-year-old leader stamped his mark on Turkey by rolling back a fiercely secular tradition established in the mostly Muslim nation by its founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk one century ago.

He oversaw years of economic booms and busts as well wars and even a failed but bloody coup.

His supporters revere him for giving a voice to the marginalised and creating a thriving new middle class in the nation of 85 million people.

But his opponents highlight an authoritarian streak that emerged in the second decade of Erdogan’s rule.

The country enters the election with much of its media under the government’s stranglehold and thousands of activists and politicians — many of them Kurds — languishing behind bars.

The NATO member’s allies meanwhile remain uneasy about Erdogan’s mercurial foreign policies — most recently exemplified by his refusal to accept Sweden and Finland’s bids to join the Western defence bloc.

– Evoking history –

Many analysts think the upcoming election is too close to call.

Erdogan’s secular opposition enters the campaign divided over everything from policy to strategy and has not agreed on a candidate to field against Erdogan.

Turkey’s next general election is officially due to be held on June 18.

But Erdogan’s allies have been hinting for weeks that they may bring the polls forward because of religious holidays and school exams.

Erdogan delivered a campaign-style speech to his ruling party Wednesday in which he recalled the day contemporary Turkey held its first free election in 1950.

That May 14 vote was won by Adnan Menderes — a prime minister who was toppled by a military junta in 1960 and executed a year later.

Erdogan was himself deposed and briefly jailed when he was mayor of Istanbul in the 1990s and often compares himself to Menderes.

“The late Menderes said on May 14, 1950 ‘enough, the people will have their say’, and emerged victorious at the ballot box,” Erdogan said in televised remarks.

“Our people will give their answer to the (opposition) on the same day 73 years later.”

– Divided opposition –

Erdogan enters the election with his approval ratings bruised by a year-long economic crisis that saw inflation touch 85 percent late last year.

But the fractured opposition has still not united around a single candidate after more than a year of heated talks.

Their best hope at one stage appeared to be Istanbul’s popular mayor Ekrem Imamoglu.

The telegenic 52-year-old beat Erdogan’s ally in landmark 2019 municipal elections in which the opposition also swept to power in the capital Ankara…

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