Thus, early presidential and parliamentary elections have been scheduled in Turkey for May 14, which means that Turks will elect their president and parliament on that day. More precisely, Turks and Kurds, whose votes will also have a significant impact on the outcome of the elections, as discussed below. But in any case, they will be citizens of Turkey. Why do we emphasize seemingly obvious things? Because they are still not obvious to everyone. We ourselves, admittedly, used to perceive the events in Turkish domestic politics as an arena of struggle for the entire Islamic Ummah, so we can understand those who still think that these elections will determine their Caliph. No, friends, the president and parliament of a specific state — the Republic of Turkey — will be elected. By you, if you are its citizens. And not by you if you are not. And it is from this basic premise that we must proceed — whatever the choice may be, it will be the choice of the Turkish people (including its numerous Kurdish part), based on their representatives’ understanding of their national interests and public welfare.

Today, it is unlikely that there is a single serious analyst who can confidently and unequivocally say who will win these elections. The main contenders are known — Recep Tayyip Erdogan of the ruling coalition of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which has been joined by the Great Unity Party (BBP) and may be joined by the newly founded Welfare Party (Yeniden Refah), founded by the son of Necmettin Erbakan. On the other side is the united candidacy of Kemal Kilicdaroglu of the coalition led by his Republican People’s Party (CHP), the Good Party (IYI Parti), the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA), the Future Party (Gelecek Partisi) and the Felicity Party (Saadet), which is in negotiations for support with the leftist Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) — the political wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) terrorist organization.

Sociological polls give very different results — from those predicting Erdogan’s victory to those suggesting the victory of his main rival. And the figure of this rival remained one of the main intrigues of Turkish politics until the last moment, almost leading to a split in the opposition coalition. On March 3, Meral Aksener, the leader of the second most important party in the opposition coalition, IYI Parti, announced that she was leaving the coalition because she disagreed with the nomination of Kemal Kilicdaroglu as the coalition’s candidate instead of popular mayors Ekrem Imamoglu or Mansur Yavas. But as former Turkish President Suleyman Demirel, who participated in many coalition negotiations, once said, 24 hours is too long for Turkish politics. Therefore, about a day later, Aksener returned to the coalition after Kilicdaroglu declared that if he won, Imamoglu, Yavas and the leaders of all coalition parties would be his vice presidents.

Kilicdaroglu himself is a rather unpopular figure, even among many of Erdogan’s opponents. Therefore, many immediately rushed to congratulate Erdogan on an early victory in the elections, but we would not be in such a hurry — as the saying goes, «don’t count your chickens before they hatch».

The Turkish Political Landscape

The leaders of a very diverse opposition coalition, many of whose members are united only by their dislike of the current government, have managed to overcome their divisions, including some who have left the coalition, such as Abdullah Gül, Ali Babacan and Ahmet Davutoğlu. This is not good news for the ruling coalition.

Another important intrigue now is whether the opposition coalition will be supported by the leftist Kurdish HDP party and whether they will be able to reach an agreement on cooperation. The main obstacle to this is the principled position of IYI leader Meral Akşener, who herself comes from the once-leading Turkish nationalist party MHP, which she left due to disagreements with Erdogan.

The ruling coalition faces a similar problem — it is equally important for it to attract the growing Kurdish electorate, especially its conservative part, which has partially distanced itself from the AKP due to its coalition with the MHP. The Islamic Kurdish party Huda Par could help solve this problem for Erdogan, but an open alliance with them is impossible due to their coalition with the MHP. Therefore, it can be said that both main Turkish coalitions need the Kurdish voters, but their mobilization is hindered by the radical nationalist participants in these coalitions, and their success or failure will largely depend on how they manage to solve this problem.

Erdogan and Turkish Hopes

Now let’s talk about the main point with which this article began. Great hopes were placed in the current president of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, some of which he has fulfilled and some of which he has not. However, the hopes of Turkish citizens were different from those of many who saw him as a leader of the global Islamic Ummah. Let the Turkish citizens themselves judge which hopes were fulfilled and which were not.

As for the foreign Muslims who had these hopes for him, we repeat what we have been writing since 2016. Yes, President Erdogan has achieved a lot in foreign policy. He has been successful in some aspects and not in others — we have been writing about both for all these years. But the most important thing to understand is that he is the leader of what is called a nation-state in modern politics, meaning a country that belongs to its people and citizens, not to some international forces and movements. If anyone thought that he would be able to overcome these limitations as an international Islamic leader, it is long overdue to get rid of these illusions.

Furthermore, we would like to emphasize that the connection with these limits and the strength of Turkish Muslims in comparison with representatives of many Muslim peoples and communities that do not have their own successful nation-states lies precisely in this. Therefore, we want to emphasize that no matter who wins these elections, it is very important that at least this achievement — a consolidated Turkish state — is preserved and does not collapse into civil war, as has happened in many neighboring countries.

National Unity and Rejecting Sectarianism

The responsibility lies with both the opposition and the government, who must understand that both the winner and the loser must compromise in order to preserve national unity and reject sectarianism from both sides. In the opposition, this applies to those who hope to return to the old discriminatory order against believers, the fight against which helped Erdogan win the support of the country’s Muslim majority.

Today, Kılıçdaroğlu seems to be declaring that there will be no return to these orders if he wins, citing the presence of the pro-religious Saadet, Gelecek, Deva parties in the coalition supporting him. However, many of his supporters, who openly call for the banning of Islamic groups and Koran courses and insult Islamic holy sites, do not inspire confidence in the truthfulness of such declarations…

On the other hand, today we hear, including in the Russian-speaking community, that even if Erdogan loses the elections, he does not have the right to transfer power to the Kemalists, and in that case Muslims should go to the streets and establish their power by force. One does not have to be an outstanding analyst to understand that in this case Turkey is either waiting for a hot civil war or for its transformation into a marginal country like Belarus after 2020, when Lukashenko did exactly that by manipulating the elections, or a semi-civil war like the one going on in Iran, where protests against the regime flare up and then simmer down.

Allah is the witness, this is not what the Muslim brothers and a Muslim Turkey should wish for. Therefore, whoever wins these elections, it is very important that they do so in a fair fight and that their victory is recognized by the loser, as is usually the case in modern countries. And yes, we understand very well that in the case of a change of power in Turkey, there are risks not only of anti-religious revenge attempts, but also of settling scores with opponents, and so on. However, the systematic elimination of these risks cannot be the indefinite preservation of power by one group, disregarding the real feelings of society.

Here, it is more appropriate to agree with those political figures and forces in Turkey who declare that the country needs a more balanced political system in which the winner does not take all, but maintains dependence on coalition allies in parliament and parliamentary opposition. Therefore, as friends of Muslim Turkey, we wish for fair and just elections and for the Turkish people to choose the best future for themselves so as not to lose the good they have and to preserve and multiply it.