Opposition Roadmap for Undoing Erdogan’s Legacy

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Türkiye’s main opposition alliance, greets his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, in Tekirdag, Türkiye April 27, 2023. (Reuters)
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Türkiye’s main opposition alliance, greets his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, in Tekirdag, Türkiye April 27, 2023. (Reuters)
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Opposition Roadmap for Undoing Erdogan’s Legacy

Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Türkiye’s main opposition alliance, greets his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, in Tekirdag, Türkiye April 27, 2023. (Reuters)
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Türkiye’s main opposition alliance, greets his supporters during a rally ahead of the May 14 presidential and parliamentary elections, in Tekirdag, Türkiye April 27, 2023. (Reuters)

Türkiye’s multi-faceted opposition alliance wants to undo President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's two-decade legacy of highly centralized and religiously conservative rule.

Here is a look at its plan of action should it win next Sunday's parliamentary and presidential vote.

End 'one-man regime'

Opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu has portrayed his six-party alliance, which includes liberals, nationalists and religious conservatives, as a force for democratic change.

The 74-year-old former civil servant has pledged to "bring democracy to this country by changing the one-man regime".

The alliance vows to abandon the presidential system Erdogan introduced after winning a hard-fought constitutional referendum in 2017.

Instead, it wants lawmakers to elect a prime minister and for parliament to have oversight over ministries.

The president would be limited to a single seven-year term.

"Changing the political system will not be easy," said Bertil Oder, a professor of constitutional law at Istanbul's Koc University.

Such changes require a three-fifths majority in parliament, which the opposition will struggle to win on May 14, he pointed out.

Release prisoners

Kilicdaroglu says his first order of business will be to release some of the most high-profile opposition figures jailed under Erdogan.

These include the philanthropist Osman Kavala and the Kurdish leader Selahattin Demirtas, whose freedom has been long-sought by the West.

The opposition pledges to restore "independent and impartial" courts, which Erdogan stacked with allies after surviving a bloody coup attempt in 2016.

It also wants to revive freedom of expression and give independence to the media, now almost completely controlled by the government and its business allies.

"You will be able to criticize me very easily," Kilicdaroglu once quipped, pledging to abolish the criminal offence of "insulting the president".

Defend 'all women'

Representing the traditionally secular CHP party of Türkiye’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, Kilicdaroglu has worked hard to gain the trust of religiously conservative women who wear the headscarf.

Kilicdaroglu has pledged to make the right to stay veiled in public guaranteed by law, to show he has no intention of reversing religious freedoms introduced by Erdogan.

"We will defend the rights of all women," Kilicdaroglu said, vowing to "respect everyone's beliefs, lifestyles and identities".

Kilicdaroglu also wants to rejoin the Istanbul Convention, a European treaty aimed at combating gender-based violence from which Türkiye withdrew under Erdogan's orders in 2021.

Restore economic orthodoxy

The opposition vows an immediate return to economic orthodoxy and a break with Erdogan's "Turkish economy model".

Erdogan's refusal to fight inflation by raising interest rates has sparked the worst economic crisis of his rule.

The official annual inflation rate touched 85 percent last year. Independent economists believe the real rate could have been twice as high, erasing gains of a new middle class created during Erdogan's first decade in power.

But a return to prosperity might take time, requiring the resuscitation of state institutions that became emaciated during Erdogan's era of centralized control.

"Whoever wins the election, Türkiye’s economy is unlikely to experience a quick recovery," said Erdal Alcin, a professor of international economics at Germany's Konstanz University.

Make peace

The opposition knows that Türkiye has irritated its NATO allies by forging a privileged relationship with Russia since 2016. It wants to restore trust with the West while maintaining a "balanced dialogue" with Moscow to end the war in Ukraine.

Ahmet Unal Cevikoz, the head of international relations in Kilicdaroglu's party, is also pushing for "full membership of the European Union", which has long remained on hold.

But the priority, said Cevikoz, is on reconciling with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad -- an essential condition for the "voluntary" return of 3.7 million Syrian refugees living in Türkiye.



The US Election by Numbers

Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
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The US Election by Numbers

Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)
Clark County Election Workers inspect mail-in ballots for the 2024 Election at the Clark County Election Department in North Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, 02 November 2024. (EPA)

Swing states, electoral college votes, candidates up and down the ballot, and millions of potential voters: Here is the US election, broken down by numbers.

- Two -

Several independents ran -- and at least one, Robert F. Kennedy Jr, stumbled into a number of eyebrow-raising headlines.

But in the end, the presidential race comes down to a binary choice, with the two candidates from the major parties -- Democrat Kamala Harris and Republican Donald Trump -- seeking to lead a polarized America.

- Five -

November 5 -- Election Day, traditionally held on the Tuesday following the first Monday in November.

- Seven -

The number of swing states -- those which don't clearly favor one party over the other, meaning they are up for grabs.

Harris and Trump are courting voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, concentrating their campaign efforts there in a push to ensure victory.

In a razor-tight election, just a handful of votes in any of those states could decide the outcome.

- 34 and 435 -

Voters won't just decide the White House occupant on Election Day -- they will also hit refresh on the US Congress.

Thirty-four Senate seats and all 435 spots in the House of Representatives are up for grabs.

In the House, members serve a two-year term. Republicans currently have the majority, and Harris's Democrats will be hoping for a turnaround.

In the Senate, 34 seats out of 100 are available, for a six-year term. Republicans are hoping to overturn the narrow Democratic majority.

- 538 -

Welcome to the Electoral College, the indirect system of universal suffrage that governs presidential elections in the United States.

Each state has a different number of electors -- calculated by adding the number of their elected representatives in the House, which varies according to population, to the number of senators (two per state).

Rural Vermont, for example, has just three electoral votes. Giant California, meanwhile, has 54.

There are 538 electors in total scattered across the 50 states and the District of Columbia. To take the White House, a candidate must win 270 votes.

- 774,000 -

The number of poll workers who made sure the 2020 election ran smoothly, according to the Pew Research Center.

There are three types of election staff in the United States.

The majority are poll workers -- recruited to do things like greet voters, help with languages, set up voting equipment, and verify voter IDs and registrations.

Election officials are elected, hired or appointed to carry out more specialized duties such as training poll workers, according to Pew.

Poll watchers are usually appointed by political parties to observe the ballot count -- expected to be particularly contentious this year, thanks to Trump's refusal to agree to unconditionally accept the result.

Many election workers have already spoken to AFP about the pressure and threats they are receiving ahead of the November 5 vote.

- 75 million -

As of November 2, more than 75 million Americans had voted early, according to a University of Florida database.

Most US states permit in-person voting or mail-in voting to allow people to deal with scheduling conflicts or an inability to cast their ballots on election day itself on November 5.

- 244 million -

The number of Americans who will be eligible to vote in 2024, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

How many of those will actually cast their ballot remains to be seen, of course. But the Pew Research Center says that the midterm elections of 2018 and 2022, and the presidential vote of 2020, produced three of the highest turnouts of their kind seen in the United States in decades.

"About two-thirds (66 percent) of the voting-eligible population turned out for the 2020 presidential election -- the highest rate for any national election since 1900," Pew says on its website.

That translated to nearly 155 million voters, according to the Census Bureau.