A woman votes at a polling station in Diyarbakir, Turkiye, on May 14, 2023. Voters are heading to the polls on Sunday for landmark parliamentary and presidential elections that are expected to be tightly contested and could be the biggest challenge Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan faces in his two decades in power.
Erdogan has ruled Turkiye as prime minister or president since 2003. Pre-election polling suggested he faced the toughest re-election battle of his two decades leading the NATO member country, which has grappled with economic turmoil and the erosion of democratic checks-and-balances in recent years. Pre-election polls gave a slight lead to Kilicdaroglu, 74, who was the candidate of a six-party opposition alliance. He leads the centre-left, pro-secular Republican People's Party, or CHP.
The latest official statistics showed inflation at about 44%, down from around 86%, though independent experts believe costs continue to rise at a much higher rate. The price of vegetables became a campaign issue for the opposition, which used an onion as a symbol. In this election campaign, Erdogan used state resources and his domineering position over media to try to woo voters. He accused the opposition of colluding with "terrorists," of being "drunkards" and of upholding LGBTQ+ rights, which he depicts as threatening traditional family values in the predominantly Muslim nation.
The alliance includes the nationalist Good Party led by former Interior Minister Meral Aksener, a small Islamist party and two parties that splintered from the AKP, one led by a former prime minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and the other by a former finance minister, Ali Babacan. Ahmet Yener, the head of the Supreme Electoral Board, said the voting ended with no report of any "negative" incidents.