Turkey’s Erdogan Is Due for Another Rebuke

Source:Foreign Policy in Focus Date:16Feb2019

I can’t tell you how municipal elections will turn out, because there are very few polls. It seems to me, AKP is censoring them. But, this article explains very succintly my theory of how the voters will behave. They’ll vote on the economy. Can Erdogan win their hearts again?

In the 2017 referendum that bestowed almost unlimited executive powers on Erdogan, he lost Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir, Turkey’s largest cities. A recent poll showed support for the AKP had dropped from 42.5 percent the party got in the 2018 election to 35 percent today.

After 17 years of power, after using every device he could — including stuffing ballot boxes — to build a powerful executive system orbiting around him, it’s hard to imagine Erdogan suffering a setback. But tossing people in prison and intimidating opposition has had little effect on repairing the economy or raising living standards.