A.t Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is as allergic to any other name as he is to Osman Kavala. For years he has made the patron of culture the Turkish foil of George Soros. For Erdogan, Osman Kavala is proof that there must be a conspiracy in the world against him, against him, the creator of “New Turkey”, which he repeatedly claims to be.
Erdogan first claimed that the wealthy entrepreneur, patron of culture and philanthropist Kavala had financed the Gezi protests of 2013. Kavala was acquitted of this charge. Before he could be released, however, the Turkish leadership made a second unproven and equally absurd claim: If he wasn’t the man behind the 2013 protests, then he must have been behind the attempted coup in 2016. And so Kavala has been imprisoned for four years without a sentence.
Because of Kavala, Erdogan now even accepts a confrontation with ten states of the Western community of values. Last week the ambassadors of these states dared to discreetly warn him that the Council of Europe would initiate the first infringement proceedings against Turkey if Ankara does not comply with the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights of December 2019 and does not release Kavala by November 30th .
Try to distract from failure
Instead of responding constructively, Erdogan has declared the ten ambassadors “undesirable persons”, which in diplomatic practice results in their expulsion. Not for the first time, the not exactly conflict-averse Erdogan created such a crisis that should show him as a strong man. And which has the advantage of distracting from its failures and falling popularity.
Because the results of the latest opinion polls do not look good for Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan and his AKP. Turkey’s leading polling institute, Metropoll, has determined that approval of Erdogan and the AKP, which has been in power since 2002, is falling considerably. Probably for this reason, Erdogan announced on Thursday that the next parliamentary and presidential elections would take place in June 2023 – and not earlier. And Erdogan wants to win them over to preside over the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Republic of Turkey on October 29, 2023.
But it doesn’t look like that at the moment. In September, a representative survey by Metropoll showed that 49.8 percent of those questioned do not expect Erdogan to be re-elected; a year ago it was only 39.1 percent. In contrast, the proportion of those who expect Erdogan to win fell from 55.4 percent to 44.1 percent.
His AKP fares even worse. On the Sunday question that Metropoll asked from September 20 to 26, only 31.7 percent of the AKP wanted to vote; that is eleven percentage points less than in the parliamentary election of 2018. Even in the alliance with the far-right MHP, the AKP only has 41.7 percent. That is less than the three main opposition parties in the center. 42.7 percent would vote for the CHP, the Iyi party and Deva. The kingmaker could become the pro-Kurdish HDP, which is currently eleven percent.
Erdogan is troubled by inflation
This continues the erosion that has been eating away at the AKP for several years. It could accelerate this fall. The AKP is particularly affected by three developments. First, inflation is the dominant issue in everyday life. Few believe the statistics of the Turkish central bank, according to which consumer prices are said to have increased by just under 20 percent compared to the previous year. There is a widespread expectation that currency depreciation will rise by up to 50 percent this winter. The unions are already calculating that the minimum wage does not protect against poverty.
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