“I don’t appear to understand my society,” she said. “My hope hindered my understanding of the reality, of how degraded and ignorant our society has become.”
On the streets of her Besiktas neighborhood in Istanbul, where most people have traditionally voted against the ruling party, and in opposition party headquarters across Turkey, supporters of Erdogan’s challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, were grappling with election results replete with uncomfortable truths — and wondering whether any path to victory remained in the election’s second round.
Independent polls before the vote showed Kilicdaroglu leading the incumbent by a few points, buoying opposition hopes after two decades in Erdogan’s shadow. But the final outcome, a nearly five-point win by Erdogan, raised questions including whether some respondents had hidden their prejudices against Kilicdaroglu, a member of Turkey’s persecuted Alevi religious minority who talked openly about his faith during the campaign.
It was not just his faith. Before the election, there had been disputes within the opposition over whether Kilicdaroglu was the best candidate to face Turkey’s dominating leader, given that others within Kilicdaroglu’s party were more popular or charismatic.
Nationalist parties fared better than expected Sunday, and a hard-right presidential candidate, Sinan Ogan, garnered more than 5 percent of the vote. The success of the nationalists suggested that Erdogan’s smearing of the opposition as “terrorists” had gained traction with the public — at least more so than Kilicdaroglu’s appeals for a return to democracy and justice, things he said had been lost under Erdogan’s autocratic rule.
Sari was hard on herself, citing blind spots that held true for other opposition supporters. “I know Istanbul, Antalya, Izmir,” she said, citing places where the opposition was strong. Voters, she had assumed, were angry about the dismal economy and the inadequate government response to deadly earthquakes in southern Turkey a few months ago. But those concerns didn’t seem to register when election day finally came.
“I thought people would make certain conclusions,” Sari said. The results had hardened her conviction to leave Turkey, she said, in the hopes that in a few decades the country might eventually change.
Kilicdaroglu and senior members of his Republican People’s Party, or CHP, huddled Tuesday in Ankara to find a way to stave off disaster when Turkey’s voters return to the polls on May 28 for the runoff. At least one senior official, responsible for election monitoring, stepped down, as part of what Turkish media outlets reported was a larger shake-up in the management of a once-confident campaign, now suddenly adrift. The candidate, meanwhile, issued the latest of his rallying cries to the public, this one focused on young people.
On Twitter, Kilicdaroglu spun the support for ultranationalists as evidence that voters wanted “change.” But it was also clear, he said, that “we are the party that has to fight much harder.”
Young people had the most to lose if Erdogan remained, he said, if things stayed as they were. “You are not able to afford anything,” he wrote. “Your joy of life has been stolen. Youth is supposed to be carefree. They haven’t let you experience this even for a day.”
A few miles from Kilicdaroglu’s office, in the presidential palace, Erdogan received some of his electoral allies Tuesday, including the leader of a hard-line Islamist party that has pushed for the annulment of a law protecting women from violence.
“The opposition needs to understand that it can no longer win elections with terrorist organizations,” Erdogan said in a televised interview broadcast Tuesday evening, doubling down on his baseless allegation that Kilicdaroglu was aligned with Kurdish militants because he had received support from a Kurdish-led opposition party.
Erdogan, whose loyal base includes conservative Muslims, said he would travel to the earthquake zone, where he had received strong support, and hold “rally-like meetings…
Read More: Turkey opposition pessimistic about defeating Erdogan in runoff election