Türkiye braces for a tight race in the May 14 elections between incumbent President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, who boasts the support of a seemingly unified opposition bloc. Mustafa Şen, deputy chair of Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which dominated Turkish politics for more than two decades, is confident of another win.
Speaking in a televised interview on Wednesday evening, Şen said the most recent surveys they conducted showed that Erdoğan would garner 53% of the vote while the AK Party, which will compete in simultaneous parliamentary elections, may garner 41% of the vote. Şen said the People’s Alliance their party formed with Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and Great Unity Party (BBP) also exceeded 51% in the opinion polls.
“We see signs of a possible rise in the coming days,” Şen told the broadcaster CNN Türk. Şen dismissed surveys showing Kılıçdaroğlu ahead of Erdoğan conducted by some polling companies and noted that those companies’ polls in previous elections turned out to be wrong.
Şen acknowledged a decline in AK Party’s votes but was confident in a rise. He said the current economic situation may not be altogether the result of the decline, stressing that inflation, which is viewed as the cause of the drop in AK Party’s votes among the government’s critics, had a tendency to decrease. “It is not realistic to say that the economy is altogether problematic,” he said, pointing out increasing production and other positive aspects of the economy.
“Our citizens are aware of current problems but they are also aware that Erdoğan can solve them. They know that Erdoğan can heal the wounds after the earthquake,” Şen said, referring to the Feb. 6 earthquakes, which killed tens of thousands of people and devastated a large part of provinces in the southeastern region of the country. He said people did not harbor any hope for the “table for six” opposition bloc. “We conducted surveys before the earthquakes as well on who the people want to see as the next president and Erdoğan has always secured the lead. Kılıçdaroğlu came second only recently. Ekrem Imamoğlu, Meral Akşener and Mansur Yavaş had second or third spots,” he said, referring to the Istanbul mayor, Good Party (IP) chairwoman and the Ankara mayor, respectively. The AK Party’s surveys are conducted in 77 provinces, through phone calls and online.
People’s Alliance secured more than 53% of the vote in the 2018 general elections while the AK Party alone garnered 42.6% of the vote, ahead of its main rival, the CHP, which stood at 22.7%.
