Against Erdogan (69 years old), three candidates validated this week by the Electoral Commission will compete with hopes of success for the opposition. According to a poll by the TAG Research Institute, 51.8% of voters want to see CHP (the main opposition party) leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu in the presidency, compared to 42.6% for Erdogan. Kilicdaroglu, smiling on campaign posters under the slogan “Hello, I’m Kemal, I’m coming!” he represents an alliance of six parties, from the left to the nationalist right, and has received the tacit support of the pro-Kurdish party HDP (between 10% and 13% of voters), whose leader, Selahattin Demirtas, is imprisoned. While the head of state travels the country and appears omnipresent on television, Kilicdaroglu, a 74-year-old economist and former high-ranking official, addresses every segment of society on Twitter, via video messages, from his small, dimly lit kitchen. His latest video message to conservative women on Thursday received more than 3 million views. Eurasia Group, a political risk consultant, states in a March 22 note that since announcing his candidacy, the CHP leader has not stopped “broadening his electoral base” (from 30% to 40% of voting intentions), while Erdogan’s base is eroding (from 60% to 50%). “The main challenge for Kilicdaroglu will be to win over the anti-Erdogan voters, who constitute the majority, without triggering fights within the opposition”, Eurasia Group assesses. However, Kemal Kilicdaroglu must take into account the reappearance of Muharrem Ince, the candidate defeated by Erdogan in 2018 who decided to stir the waters. Ince, who disappeared without even greeting his supporters on the evening of the first round of voting, met the CHP candidate this week with a view to a possible agreement. But, for the moment, according to political scientists, including those from the Metropoll Institute, this return could attract the youth who criticize the CHP leader for his lack of charisma. However, the youth vote will be one of the important components of these elections: 70% of the electoral body is under 34 years old, and six million young Turks will vote for the first time on May 14. Finally, a former deputy, Sinan Ogan, from the far right, would appear in the first round. Apart from the serious economic crisis (inflation of over 50% and up to 85% in the autumn), which reduces the incomes of households, the earthquake caused the cracks of the all-powerful state dreamed of by Erdogan to appear. It took three days to trigger the intervention of rescue teams in a hyper-centralized country, and then failures appeared in the distribution of aid, especially tents. But above all, the collapse of the buildings revealed the negligence of the real estate and construction sectors, even those that have registered growth under Erdogan in the last 20 years. The president, who had campaigned in 2003 on the ruins of the 1999 earthquake in Izmir (northwest, 17,000 dead), denouncing the imperfection of the system, now risks paying for the effects of another earthquake. While he was inaugurating on March 24 the construction site of a future hospital in Antakya (south), a region among the most devastated, the video cameras showed that the edifice, scheduled to be opened on May 10, had no foundation. Just like those block buildings that collapsed like Lego games on February 6, according to AFP comments. Incidentally, as an omen, the earth shook again (4.6 degrees on the Richter scale) on Friday in Gaziantep, a few hours before the arrival of the Turkish president.

By Cora Sulleyman