Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s magic isn’t working. With less than three weeks until the elections, Turkey’s populist leader is trailing the main opposition coalition candidate, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in the presidential (and parliamentary) race. Most polls project Kilicdaroglu to win the first round on May 14 and then the runoff two weeks later. Erdogan is trying to regain his popularity by tapping into people’s money. But while projecting power at home, he also seeks foreign support, balancing it among NATO allies, Russia and other autocracies, as he has done for the past decade.
In the past few months, Erdogan’s government has approved Finland’s NATO membership, which it had blocked since last summer, banned companies from shipping sanctioned goods through Turkey to Russia and attracted Western investors it had previously rejected. But Mr. Erdogan has made it clear to supporters that Turkey no longer cares what the West thinks about its foreign policy, and he has accused them of backing a rival. “Their hostility toward Mr. Erdogan is their hostility toward our country,” Mr. Erdogan said on April 13. “We will thwart this plot.”
Turkey’s relations with the EU and the US are at their worst in decades. Flashpoints include the purchase of S-400 air defense systems from Russia, the military offensive against US-backed Kurdish rebels in Syria, accusations that the US backed the 2016 coup against Erdogan, and disputes over maritime borders with Cyprus and Greece. Tensions would certainly ease under an opposition government, but analysts, diplomats and opposition figures deny that Erdogan’s fall from grace means a fundamental overhaul of foreign policy.