Opposition in Turkey bets on youth to end Erdogan era after 20 years; understand

Young people are the bet of the opposition of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, current Turkish president, to reverse the result of the first round of elections. Dissatisfied with the government of the leader who has been in power for 20 years, they support the social democrat Kemal Kilicdaroglu, a representative who was appointed by six parties with the intention of ending Erdogan’s hegemony. Turks go back to the polls this Sunday, 28, to decide who will be the country’s next president. The first vote, held on May 14, was close – and the first time the opposition had a real chance of coming to power –, but the current head of state managed to win and reach 49.5%. However, it was not enough to avoid another day of voting. In second place, appears Kilicdaroglu, which reached 44.9% of the votes. In addition to young people (the Türkiye has, this year, 5.2 million new voters), the opposition also counts on the Kurds, who stopped supporting Erdogan and represent 10% of the electorate, and on the housewives to manage to change the result that is heading to leave the current leader plus five years in power. However, despite the efforts, experts do not believe that it will be possible to avoid the victory of the conservative, who has already secured greater control of Parliament, despite having lost 20 seats. If that happens, many young people have already threatened to leave the country. An estimated 72% of Turks between the ages of 18 and 25 want to live outside Turkey if given the opportunity, according to a survey by the Konrad-Adenauer foundation published early last year.

“Young people have lost hope. Every night, the only thing I talk to my roommate about is how to leave, ”he admits, in an interview with the agency AFP, Hasibe Kayaroglu, engineering student from the capital Ankara. “We live in a beautiful country, but poorly governed and the situation is only getting worse. That’s why many young people want to go abroad,” says Emre Yörük, whose older brother pressures him to emigrate, following the example of tens of thousands of young Turks each year. Although many people under 30 are thinking about emigrating, this issue has not come up in the campaigns, dominated in recent days by the debate over the expulsion of 3.7 million refugees living in Turkey. At the end of last year, the head of state criticized those who want to leave the country for “despicable whims”. Kilicdaroglu recently addressed them and asked them to come back. “This country needs you,” he said. Although pessimism prevails among the new generations, some still believe in the victory of the social-democratic candidate. “We have a problem today in Turkey, common in developing countries, which is what we call brain drain, that is, individuals who obtain significant educational training and often go looking for a job in developed countries”, explains the professor of international relations. from UFMG and Ibmec Mario Schettino. He adds that there is great pressure on Erdogan because, generally, “people with a higher educational level support democracy, defend the liberal agenda in relation to the diversity of the population and preach less about the religious issue, a totally different scenario from the vision and Erdogan’s proposals”.

For Christopher Mendonça, political scientist and professor of international relations at Ibmec Belo Horizonte, this position of the head of state generates discomfort in young people and their departure could bring more economic problems to Turkey. “Losing young people in economic activity is something to worry about, because they are the ones who generate the country’s income. We have two types of population, the economically active and the inactive, people who are in advanced age and enjoy what the State provides. Losing youth amplifies the economic crisis the country is experiencing”, he says. The country is the 11th largest economy on the planet, after adjusting for the cost of living, ahead of Canada, Italy and South Korea, according to “The Economist”. However, in the last five years, the currency, the lira, has lost about 80% of its value against the dollar and the country is experiencing its worst economic crisis since the 1990s, with high inflation. “Turkey has had problems mainly due to the devaluation of the Turkish currency and the decrease in economic activity. The level of unemployment has increased, many young people are without jobs and the policy made by Erdogan does not meet this mechanism. Turkey is currently a country with high rates of inflation and de-industrialization,” says Mendonça.

Another defeat for the current head of state is the loss of housewives. In 2018, when he won the presidential elections, he had the support of 60% of these workers, in addition to the Kurds, according to a poll by the Ipsos institute, almost eight points above his vote at the national level, but given the current situation in the country, this scenario has changed. However, he still believes it is possible to reverse this loss. Erdogan has sent his female voters on a door-to-door campaign, one of his preferred electoral weapons since winning Istanbul’s mayoralty in 1994. Emine Erdogan, the president’s wife, is one of the campaign leaders. “There has never been so much chance of victory for the opposition as now, mainly with the change in the Kurds’ thinking, an important support that Erdogan lost”, says Christopher Mendonça. The new Turkish generation is closer to secular Turkey, the one that was founded in the early 20th century after the First World War. Professor of international relations at UFMG and Ibmec Mario Schettino concludes by saying that, despite Erdogan having economic growth in the 2000s as one of his legacies, young people do not remember that, and today, because he has been in power for a long time , it is very easy for the opposition to relate any problem that exists in the country with its government. “The strategy of using young people has to do with the fact that most of them lived their adult lives under the Erdogan regime, since he has been in power for 20 years. Therefore, it is easy for the opposition to associate the problems with the Turkish leader, not least because many of these young people have no memory of the first years of government”, he says. He also says that, in this way, they do not remember the growth and incentive to construction that the Turk did in his first years of government. However, despite the mobilization and strength of the opposition, “I find it difficult to reverse the election because of the small margin of votes that Erdogan needs”, concludes Schettino.