Known for its staunch opposition to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the London-based weekly The Economist drew the ire of the president’s supporters again with a cover calling for a victory for the opposition.
The cover with the title “The Most Important Election of 2023” was adorned with tags “Save Democracy” and “Erdoğan Must Go.” Social media users were furious while presidential spokesperson Ibrahim Kalın laughed away the cover in a tweet. “They got excited again,” Kalın wrote on Thursday, ten days before Türkiye will decide whether to extend the tenure of Erdoğan or vote for his three other rivals.
Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu appears to be the strongest rival, representing a six-party opposition bloc.
In the accompanying article, the weekly claimed Erdoğan's defeat would show “democrats everywhere that strongmen can be beaten.”
“A new government would repair battered relations with the West,” the article reads. Quoting the sentence, Kalın said he was “well aware of the context of this rhetoric.” “Calm down, your days of issuing orders to my country are long gone. The Turkish nation will have the final say when they cast their vote,” he tweeted.
The upcoming elections are critical for the opposition and seemingly for foreign media obsessed with tagging democratically elected presidents as "dictators." For the opposition, it is the last chance to unseat Erdoğan from office as their vote erodes with every election they lose.
For foreign media, it means the West will have to face an uncompromising Türkiye, which pursues global diplomacy while "sticking to its guns" and improving its local defense industry against multiple security threats it is subject to.
Earlier this year, The Economist ran another anti-Erdoğan cover titled "Empire" and "dictatorship." The publication's report accompanying the body, which reads "Turkey's Looming Dictatorship," claimed Türkiye is on the brink of a disaster as it may go from a "deeply flawed democracy into a full-blown dictatorship."
The piece, again conveniently, ignored over two decades of democratic elections the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) and its leader Erdoğan easily won, mainly with a landslide victory, with the opposition admitting defeat.
