February 5, 2023
By Serin Gillit, BBC World Service
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Opinion polls suggest President Erdogan’s ruling AK Party may lose its majority in parliament.
“We were paying 4,500 lira ($240, £195) in rent last year and our landlord asked us to increase the rent,” Seda said. “The rent has doubled but he still wants us to move out of our apartment.”
She is one of millions of Turks struggling with the rising cost of living in a country where official inflation exceeds 57 percent.
Against a backdrop of this economic turmoil, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced elections for May 14 in an attempt to hang on to power for another 20 years.
The parliamentary and presidential elections will be held on the same day, with opinion polls predicting both will be very close.
Seda is still looking for an apartment, but rent has risen to 30,000 lira and her income is not keeping up. “I feel very anxious. It’s like I’m trying to survive in the jungle.”
President Erdogan has announced record public spending, hoping to stimulate the economy.
His plan includes energy subsidies, a doubling of the minimum wage, increased pensions and the opportunity for more than 2 million people to retire immediately.
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Last May, a kilogram of tomatoes sold in the market cost around 8-10 liras; now it goes for 25 liras.
But one elderly man shopping for groceries at a street stall in Istanbul was less impressed.
“This year we suddenly became poorer. I think the inflation rate we feel in the city is 600 percent, but pensions are only increasing by 30 percent,” he said.
Some analysts argue that moving the election date forward could allow Erdogan to make the most of the stimulus package.
But Atila Yesilada, a consultant at Global Source Partners Turkey, believes inflation will soon eat away at wage gains.
“Unless wages and pensions are re-adjusted, the gratitude currently felt by some voters will fade quickly,” he said.
Erdogan’s main opposition is a coalition of centre-left and right-wing parties known as the Table of Six.
They promised to reverse Trump’s economic policies, introduce tighter monetary policy and restore central bank independence.
However, a presidential candidate has not yet been selected.
A decision is expected to be made on February 13, with many predicting that Kemal Kilçdaroglu, leader of Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), will be selected.
Another much-discussed figure is Istanbul’s mayor, Ekrem Imamoglu.
Last month, a court banned the mayor from politics and sentenced him to nearly three years in prison for insulting election officials. The mayor has rejected the case as politically motivated. He is appealing the sentence and remains in office.
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Ekrem Imamoglu rose to prominence after winning a landslide victory in the Istanbul mayoral re-election in June 2019.
Soner Çagaptay of the Washington Institute think tank believes attempts to ban Istanbul’s mayor from politics could backfire.
He points out that Erdogan himself found himself in a very similar situation in the 1990s, when he was banned from politics by Turkey’s secular courts despite being a popular and successful mayor of Istanbul.
“It made him a martyr and a hero, and it marked a spectacular comeback,” Cagaptai said.
The party that could potentially play a deciding role for the king is Turkey’s third-largest.
The Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) supports the Kurds, had its state subsidies cut off by Turkey’s Supreme Court in January and is at risk of being banned over alleged ties to Kurdish militants.
The party’s former co-leader, Selahattin Demirtaş, has been imprisoned since 2016 on charges of “terrorist propaganda”.
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Critics say Selahattin Demirtaş is in jail because of his growing popularity among voters.
The party’s deputy chairman, Hışar Özsoy, acknowledged that the authorities could shut it down, but he said that would not stop the party or those who support it from continuing their work.
“Even if they are banned, people will find a way to participate in elections using other political parties,” he said.
If the presidential election goes into a second round, Turkey’s next president will most likely be decided with the support of the HDP.
No one has yet officially declared their candidacy for the presidency, including Erdogan himself, and there is debate over whether he should be allowed to run since he has already been elected twice, the maximum number of times.
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President Erdogan has yet to officially announce whether he will run for another term.
Article 101 of the Turkish Constitution stipulates that “The President of the Republic may only be elected for a maximum of two terms.”
“If Erdogan wants to run, he will run,” Cagaptay said.
“He has this image of an underdog taking on the elites, so if someone says he’s not allowed to do this, it might actually help his position. This is the kind of argument that has helped Erdogan in the past.”
There is much at stake in the upcoming elections, which opposition figures say will present a choice between more autocracy and more democracy. The ruling AKP claims that only they can lower the cost of living and maintain stability.
For Erdogan, who has led Turkey since 2003, first as prime minister and then as a directly elected president, the vote will determine whether he can reach a 30th year in rule.
