President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Tuesday that Turkey's young people will be key in the nation’s next general and presidential elections, set for 2023.
"More than 6 million of our young people will vote for the first time in the 2023 elections,” he told the Local Administrations' Youth Festival in the Turkish capital Ankara.
"The key to the upcoming elections is our young people, not this or that party.”
"The dreams, expectations, thoughts, determinations, and proposals of our young people are of vital importance to us,” he added.
Turkey has the largest percentage of young people of any European nation, with almost 16% of its overall populace between 15-24 years of age. Thus, Turkey's political future is expected to be highly affected by the preference of young voters.
It is expected that around 7 million youth will vote for the first time in the 2023 elections.
Generation Z is a demographic generation that comes after Generation Y and precedes Generation Alpha. Although there is an ongoing discussion on who is suitable to fit into Generation Z, usually it is regarded as people who were born between 1997 and 2012. Their personality traits are usually summed up as individualistic, questioning, social on the internet and easily bored due to their quick access to information.
In 2017, Turkish voters decided to switch from a parliamentary system to an executive presidential system of governance. The following year, incumbent Erdoğan won reelection under the new system.
Turkey is set to hold nationwide elections in 2023, when citizens will choose the president as well as all 600 members of Parliament.
All the officials would be elected to five-year terms, though the president also has the power to call for early elections, as he did in 2018.
