President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has won the second round of the presidential election in Turkey held on Sunday 28 May 2023 with 52.1% of the vote, while the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu received 47.9% of the vote.
This is very similar to the results in the last election held in June 2018 when Erdogan received 52.6% of the votes competing against five other candidates on the ballot, however just in the very first round.
The difference, between the two candidates representing two competing coalitions namely Erdogan’s People’s Alliance and Kilicdaroglu’s National Alliance, is just two-million votes, meaning the country is polarised almost in half.
President Erdogan has been in power for almost 20 years, having repeatedly won 11 elections and during this process has become a cult-like figure, a seasoned and skilful politician able to engineer alliances with mass appeal through his simple messages delivered with effective oratory skills that is highly appealing to the majority of Turks.
In 2003, Erdogan inherited the Kemalist form of secularism that was stricter than that of most Western countries with the role of Islam in public minimised, symbolised with the Islamic headscarf for women banned in universities, government institutions and parliament. Hijabi women had to either give up the hijab or go out of the country for higher education.
Erdogan gradually lifted those anti-Islamic restrictions resulting in Islam again playing a bigger role in public life leading to some extent gradual Islamisation of the Turkish society that proved popular with the masses, while at the same time leaving the secular constitution of the republic intact.
He also showed independence from Western hegemony in international affairs, embracing pan-Islamic causes, raised his voice against Islamophobia and oppression of Muslims globally, thereby generating admiration from Muslims at large inside and outside of Turkey.
However, as it is said, power corrupts, and as he consolidated power in himself and amongst only a few around him, he increasingly became more authoritarian, abandoning even those Islamic partners who helped him beat the Kemalist secularists in Turkey.
There have been serious accusations of corruption against him as well as evidence of oppression and intolerance of any serious opposition against him who have been demonised as “terrorists” and jailed or exiled.
Winning yet another 5-year term in leading Turkey provides him with a historic opportunity to unite the nation towards reconciliation amongst all Turkish people with an inclusive agenda to govern all sections of the Turkish society with freedom for all and with true representative governance.
After winning the election, Erdogan talked about the “Century of Turkey” referring to the current year 2023, the 100-year anniversary of the foundation of the Republic of Turkey after the fall of the Ottoman Empire and healing the wounds of the February earthquakes by rebuilding Turkey’s destroyed cities.
“We walked this road together. We walked day and night, and you gave this duty to us again. God willing, we will continue to build and rejuvenate the ‘century of Turkey’ together,” Erdogan declared.
Let the Turks unite together in good governance internally with full freedom and externally lead the Muslim World towards a better outcome for the Ummah.
Comments