Not even an earthquake has been able to with him. Recep Tayyip Erdogan scored his eleventh consecutive victory, yesterday Sunday in Turkey, although without running over his rival, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu. With more than 99% of the votes counted, the current president revalidates the position, with an advantage of 2.2 million votes over the opposition candidate. In other words, Erdogan won 52% of the vote, against 48% for Kilicdaroglu.
The participation was once again extremely high, over 85%. However, it has fallen almost five points compared to the first round, a fact that would have greatly harmed Kilicdaroglu, whose electoral base is less disciplined. Where participation has increased, by 11%, is in the emigrant vote, which traditionally benefits the president who reconfirms office.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan broke into song in his first triumphal speech, yesterday at the gates of his private residence in the Istanbul district of Üsküdar. Meanwhile caravans of girls covered in black from head to toe waved flags from the car.
Optimism, in fact, had already changed sides with the results of the first round, in which Erdogan caressed 50% of the votes, a fact that contradicted almost all polls. Since then, a certain demobilization of Kiliçdaroglu's voters was perceptible, because of the jug of cold water, despite having won in all the big cities - something that happened again yesterday - and even in the district of Istanbul where Erdogan votes
Kiliçdaroglu's turn to the right at the end of the campaign, in order to capture the ultra-nationalist and anti-immigrant vote, could have accentuated this demotivation, especially among voters drawn by left-wing Kurdish nationalism. The proof is that in the south-east of Turkey the participation has been around 75%, instead of 85%.
The first impression is that the two candidates have distributed almost equally the votes that in the first round went to the ultra Sinan Ogan, of the Ancestral Alliance.
Two hours after the polls closed, the caravans of cars celebrating Erdogan's victory could be heard in neighboring districts of Istanbul, such as Üsküdar. Not in the more affluent neighborhoods, which are adverse to him.
The noise, after ten o'clock, was already deafening. Before Erdogan even appeared on the balcony of the presidential palace in Ankara - instead of the headquarters of his party -, a fact that the opposition considers a new example of misappropriation of public resources.
In any case, this is where Kemal Kiliçdaroglu's presidential dream ends and probably his political career, at the age of 74, despite a commendable performance.
In his first victory speech, still in Istanbul, Erdogan again played with the words: "Bay Bay, Kemal!", he repeated several times as a farewell (bay also means sir, in Turkish).
In his first words in his district of Istanbul, Üsküdar, Erdogan said that "every election is a rebirth for us". He has also again associated the opposition with the LGBTI movement. "For us, on the other hand, the family is sacred." Despite his triumphalism, the truth is that Erdogan has lost again in the city where he was mayor and, with 98.5% polled, also in Ankara (in Izmir he barely managed one out of three votes). All this looks bad for the AKP in the run-up to next year's municipal elections, although in a hyper-centralized country like Turkey, this fact poses a more than bearable threat.
Kilicdaroglu, in truth, has been a much more solid and hard-to-gnaw candidate - even without raising his voice - than almost anyone expected, even though he has been the general secretary of the People's Republican Party for thirteen years ( CHP). It was an unequal struggle against the roller of the Justice and Development Party (AKP), which not only has ten times as many militants, but which, after twenty years in power, is beginning to become dangerously confused with the State.
Erdogan's victory in the presidential elections will facilitate governance, since the AKP is the only party capable of forming a majority in Parliament. Although he has enough support from the ultras of the MHP – his crutch for the last few years –, the foreseeable breakdown of the heterogeneous National Alliance that supported Kilicdaroglu in the coming days could open up new possibilities for him.
During the previous presidential elections, the first under the current presidential system, the candidate of the CHP was Muharram Ince, who was defeated with a much worse result, in the first round. This time, Erdogan has had to go all out and, along the way, the state's coffers seem to have bottomed out, just as inflation of 44% is pushing the economy of many families to the limit . Monday will be a difficult day for the Turkish lira, which on Friday already touched its historic low against the euro.
Erdogan's victory will have consequences on the world stage. It is no coincidence that the first leaders to congratulate him were both the Emir of Qatar and the Hungarian President, Viktor Orbán. It follows that Sweden will remain at NATO's door, at least for the coming months. And also that there will be no changes in Ankara's active neutrality in favor of negotiations in Ukraine.
Millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey, meanwhile, will have gone to sleep with the feeling of gaining time. Millions of Turks, on the contrary, almost half of the census, with the feeling of having lost a golden opportunity, due to the accumulation of mishaps and poorly resolved catastrophes.
Barring surprises, if Erdogan completes his second and final term as president - under the new presidential system - he will have been at the helm of the country for a quarter of a century, and would exceed in years and rival in influence the founder of the Turkish Republic , Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Something that the Kemalists, defeated yesterday, do not forgive him.
