Why Erdoğan is Still Popular: Turkish Voters Explain

On 18 May, four long days after President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s firm lead in the first round of Turkey’s elections, opposition candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu gave a press statement to rekindle lost faith in his voters.

The hall echoed with his campaign slogan “United we will win”. Above the stage, read the words ‘The Republican People’s Party (CHP) – Founder of Turkey’. The country’s main opposition party is as old as the republic itself, but the last time it came to power was in 1946.

On 28 May, Erdoğan beat Kılıçdaroğlu with 52.18% of the vote. Speaking to young Turkish voters reveals a vast divide in how they view Erdoğan, the opposition, their country and each other.

Cansu – a sustainability consultant and Kılıçdaroğlu voter – trusted Kılıçdaroğlu’s all-welcoming rhetoric and promise to end one-man rule.

The secularist CHP recently tried reaching across the aisle and drew support from a motley of parties representing right-wing, left-wing, religious and Kurdish voters. The opposition also hoped that a rolling economic crisis and the catastrophic earthquakes in the south-east would slash support for Erdoğan’s Government. But this wasn’t enough to topple the President’s electoral powerhouse fuelled by an incumbency advantage, nationalistic rhetoric and absolute control of the media landscape. 

Though criticised for its response to the earthquakes in early February, causing scores of preventable deaths, Erdoğan and his AK Party won massively in the quake-hit region, not breaking with tradition.

Berra – a computer engineer and an Erdoğan voter – believed the disaster would seal his political fate. She was shocked at how unprepared the Government was, leaving many people under the rubble for days on end.

Other Erdoğan voters said they assumed the victims must have been looking at deeds not words, trusting the Government for recovery. Despite experts warning against hasty efforts to rebuild concrete structures, housing reconstruction in the region began as early as in March. In heavily affected Hatay, a state hospital was built from scratch in two months.

As the first round ballot results came in, vitriol from anti-government social media users ensued. Some wished more death on the earthquake victims, calling them gerizekalı (retards), and expressing regret for their donations to relief charities. Scandalous and therefore quickly amplified, the posts stirred deep-seated resentments among the conservative voter base.

A few days later, the Health Minister posed at the reception desk of a new hospital in Hatay where patients were now being admitted. He smiled in front of a huge sign that read “humanity is built on compassion”. The run-off was just seven days away. 

For numerous Erdoğan supporters, the insults they endure on the posh streets of Istanbul are not uncommon.

Elif – a pre-school teacher who has been the target of hate speech – said that leftist voters above middle age were particularly hostile towards conservative Muslims because the latter now have education, status and money, carving a space for themselves everywhere.

For Süreyya – another Erdoğan voter – “leftist voters” could be the couple who repeatedly scowled at her eight-year-old daughter İnci, a keen piano player, who got too excited ahead of an Evgeny Grinko concert, or the parents at an intelligence games championship who were baffled to discover that İnci went to a religious school.

She was quick to associate such behaviour with support for CHP – a party with a toxic anti-religious legacy in the minds of millions. Süreyya also said she believes that the vast majority of Kılıçdaroğlu voters don’t want designated prayer rooms in public spaces or to see headscarved women in state offices.

Esra – a conference interpreter who voted for Kılıçdaroğlu – wasn’t among the voters Süreyya referred to. As a feminist, she considered the erstwhile headscarf ban a violation of human rights and has always stood against such practices. She surmised a heartfelt, barely questioned, bond with Erdoğan among his supporters, which she partly ascribes to his fixing the headscarf problem.

Indeed, Erdoğan granted headscarved women the right to go to university, work in the public sector, and stand for election in 2013. A decade on, his female supporters have other motivations to vote for him.

Süreyya wasn’t charmed by Erdoğan’s charisma and disagrees with his economic policies – but trusts his intentions as a leader. “He tries his absolute best, works restlessly, rallies Turkic nations for example, which matters to me,” she said.

In March, the last summit of the Organisation of Turkic States (OTS) was hosted by founding member Turkey. Ahead of the elections run-off, Erdoğan boasted of stronger bonds with Turkic states. Elif voted for Erdoğan mainly because she trusts his leadership skills, which she doesn’t see in Kılıçdaroğlu. 

Berra, meanwhile, found no other options at the ballot box: “I’ve been critical of the Government in recent years, I still am. But because the YSP was in the opposition bloc, they lost my vote.”

The CHP entered the election with a six-party alliance and was openly supported, though not formally joined, by the Green Left Party (YSP). The party is accused by Erdoğan voters of having a Kurdish separatist agenda and connections with terrorism.

With nationalist and right-wing parties grabbing the majority of the seats in Parliament, the run-off presidential election was swept by a nationalist, anti-refugee tide that eventually found its home in Erdoğan.

The sharp-tongued, desk-thumping rhetoric Kılıçdaroğlu adopted in the run-up to the second round – in contrast with his previously calm, inclusive campaign – failed to convince enough voters. 

Süreyya found his efforts laughable. “He set up this irrational alliance and they are constantly falling out with each other,” she said. “How can you trust them with governing the country?” She referred to a crisis within the opposition bloc in early March, resulting in the nationalist İyi Party leader’s fiery exit and awkward return three days later. Kılıçdaroğlu’s candidacy was clearly unwelcome by the second-biggest party in the alliance.

Voters like Elif watched and took note: “They would bring nothing but chaos in the country.”

Cansu laid hopes in Kılıçdaroğlu for meritocracy, freedom of thought, and the rule of law. Esra highly appreciated his emphasis on human rights.

According to World Justice Project, Turkey comes 116th out of 140 countries on the rule of law. The 2023 Index of RSF ranks Turkey 165th in press freedom. Thirty-seven journalists and media professionals are in jail.

Süreyya argued that Turkey didn’t have a freedom of expression problem, despite more than 44,000 insult cases having been opened since Erdoğan was first elected President in 2014. During the terms of his five predecessors, the total number of insult cases stood at 1,716.

Spanning government institutions and private companies, cronyism and patronage run deep in Erdoğan’s Turkey, creating a solid web of loyalists for the President. Transparency International ranked the country 101st in its 2022 Corruption Perceptions Index. But corruption is not a feature of Erdoğan’s Government alone.

Elif didn’t believe that the meritocracy or anti-corruption argument was a reason to support Kılıçdaroğlu: “He would find that laughable himself. He has a lot to account for in his own party.”

Indeed, numerous CHP municipalities are mired in nepotism and bribery. In May, the New York Times reported that a developer in Hatay won zoning approval for a housing project after donating more than $200,000 to a local football club, of which Mayor Lütfü Savaş of the CHP is an honorary president. On 6 February, the earthquake razed the apartment complex to the ground, killing 68 people.

İrem – a political scientist and opposition voter – assumed that some of Erdoğan’s young, educated, female supporters might be benefiting from the Government’s patronage network, hence their voting choices.

At university, Berra watched her friends find jobs through their relatives, but she feels lucky that she didn’t need to ask for favours from anyone. As a junior student, she applied for the national internship programme of the Office of the President. It listed vacancies in Turkey’s leading defence and technology companies which otherwise would have been unavailable to her. That’s how she started her career as a computer engineer and is now working in the aviation industry. Berra is hopeful for more job opportunities in the future, trusting continuous government investments in defence and technology – one of Erdoğan’s campaign promises. 

In the days that followed the first round, the silence of Kılıçdaroğlu and his party spoke volumes. It was not prepared for a run-off and had no plan B.

Ten days after its definitive loss, nobody in the CHP is being held accountable or voicing any criticism. With Kılıçdaroğlu at the helm since 2010, the CHP has lost every general election against Erdoğan, not to mention two referenda.

“After so many defeats, he still doesn’t want to bow out, can you believe it?” Süreyya said, in an almost commiserating tone. “How can we respect him?”