So, here we are on the very brink of History. The excitement is palpable. Here in Turkey, we can hardly bear the tension. There is only one question. It hangs in the air, a huge interrogative colouring every thought, leaving space for little but “Who will it be?” Yes folks, time to confront the big, the only, the world-shattering question.
“Who will win Eurovision 23?”
I am teasing you, of course. This Sunday, here in Turkey – or Türkiye if you want to please The President –the Turkish voters go to the polls to send Erdoğan back to his palace to carry on his 20-year rule or, alternatively, to pack his bags. There is a third possibility that the first ballot on the 14th will not produce an overall winner with the necessary 50+% . In which case the two leading candidates, Tayyip Erdoğan and opposition candidate Kemal Kilçdaroğlu, will go head to head on 28th May. We shall be in for two more weeks of tense, increasingly angry and confrontational campaigning.
But there is now a growing confidence that the opposition will pull off a narrow victory in the first ballot. This feeling has strengthened recently because one of the outside candidates, Muharrem Ince, has withdrawn his candidacy. A sex tape has been circulating of him engaged in an “act of congress (this is a family blog so no more detail)” with the result that he has pulled out (no pun intended).
Ince claims his head was photoshopped in to a clip from an Israeli porn site. This, I suppose, is the Internet-age version of “Freddy Starr Ate My Hamster”. How beautiful this Brave New World! Armies of Social Media bots (I am only really familiar with the analogue bot but I am 71 and must stay relevant) sent millions of messages claiming that Kiliçdaroğlu had masterminded the sex tape scandal in an attempt to force Ince out. So Vote for Erdoğan screamed the bots. Kiliçdaroğlu meanwhile counter-claims that the dark hand of Putin is on the bot.
If you are familiar with the figure and personality of the Leader of the Turkish Opposition, the idea that he might have anything to do with Photoshop, let alone Israeli Porn videos, is well beyond the point of credulity. About as likely as John Major and Edwina Curry secretly performing an act of congress I reckon. Sorry? They did what? You’re kidding, right? Well, well, well!
Be that as it may, let us get back to Kiliçdaroğlu. Not for nothing has he been dubbed the Turkish Gandhi. If Margaret Beckett and Tony Benn (five minutes ago I might have said John Major and Edwina Currie) had ever had a love child, it could have been Kemal Kiliçdaroğlu. He is famous for his political broadcasts, shot in his modest kitchen, where he looks mildly irritated that this is all taking him away from finishing the washing up. He has already vowed to move into the more homely palace built by Atatürk if returned as President and turn the 1000+ room colossus built for Erdoğan into a “Museum of Wasteful Extravagance”
I can also tease Kiliçdaroğlu because he has already promised the electorate that if he wins they can insult him as much they like without fear of prosecution. “Young people do not want the police knocking on their doors because of a tweet” he said, rather powerfully I thought. The present incumbent is rather more thin-skinned. According to data from the Justice Ministry, President Erdoğan brought legal action on insult charges against 44,675 people between 2014, when he was first elected to the office, and September 2022. If you were to even put the words “Erdoğan” and “Israeli porn” in the same sentence you could be looking at some quiet time in the cold cells of Silivri. Whoops! Ah well, I am betting on an opposition win. Don’t let me down Kemal!
So here we are, two days away from our Date with Destiny. The stakes, to be serious for a moment, are very high indeed. Nothing less than the direction of travel for Turkey/Türkiye for the next 100 years. To underline the point, the elections come just a few months before the 100th anniversary since the Declaration of The Secular Turkish Republic by its First President, Mustafa Kemal (later Atatürk) on October 29th 1923. So what will it be? Continue down the road (Yola Devam) of Islamisation under Tayyip or change (Değişlik), in a tilt back towards the West and away from one-man presidential rule towards parliamentary democracy.
Even for those wanting change, an election win will be merely the beginning of a mighty task: that of unifying and healing this now very divided country and fixing an economy many believe to be broken. Oh, and there is the small matter of addressing the humanitarian consequences of the biggest disaster in living memory, the recent earthquakes in the East of Turkey; estimated cost 100 billion. Be careful what you wish for Kemal Bay, you just might get it.
I have a very privileged place in which to watch the drama unfold, closeted away on a writers’ retreat with my special friend Jeremy Strong (aka Jay), who actually writes and sells proper books unlike the kind of nonsense I turn out. We are in a beautiful paradise, in the mountains above Fethiye. More than that I cannot tell you because I would have to seek you out and kill you.
Who will win on Sunday? I think the opposition Nation Alliance will scrape through but there will be trouble. Don’t rush out onto the streets. I am being unwise to make a prediction just before the event, but of all the accusations levelled against me in my life wisdom has never been one.
May you live in interesting times, as the Chinese curse goes.