The young and educated townspeople in Ankara voted for the opposition candidate precisely because he had started talking about the deportation of Syrian refugees.
Harsh
Spring storm pauses for a moment, and a small smiling man gets out of the car.
“Uncle Kemal!”
The crowd pushes closer and starts chanting: “Law, justice, democracy!”
The smiling man is Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, 74, Turkish opposition candidate for president. He waves his hand and walks towards the elementary school that serves as the polling place.
Turkey president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had to seriously fight for his position in the presidential election for the first time in a long time. He has ruled the country for 22 years, first as prime minister and then as president.
Counter-candidate Kılıçdaroğlu got behind him a coalition of six parties. He was predicted to win even in the first round. In the end, Erdoğan won by a wide margin and received 49.5 percent of the vote. Kılıçdaroğlu got 44.9 percent, which was a big disappointment.
Opposition Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu voted at Arjanti Elementary School in Ankara on Sunday.
So there is a lot at stake in the elections. Compared to that, the atmosphere in the second round was sleepy. So sleepy that on Thursday Erdoğan fell asleep on live TV. The camera quickly moved to the side, but managed to show the eyes fluttering.
Still, Erdoğan was the clear favorite.
Kılıçdaroğlu’s only chance was considered to be that enough people doze off on election day. On election day, the campaign teams of both parties begged people to go to the ballot box.
Elections the loser was already known before Sunday’s vote. They are the Syrian refugees in Turkey.
When even the six-party coalition failed to bring enough votes to Kılıçdaroğlu, he played a surprising card: Syrians out.
Turkey has 3.7 million refugees, the most in the whole world. Now they want to get rid of them.
“We don’t want to be a European refugee camp,” says a man dressed in a blue checkered shirt in the yard of the polling station on Sunday.
Erdoğan’s time is over, the man states. “When metal is stressed for too long, it gets tired. Erdoğan has ruled for too long and is tired.”
The original language image may have come from the workplace. The man said he worked for the Finnish engineering company Metso.
Opposition supporters enthusiastically greeted Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu at Arjant elementary school on Sunday.
Votes were counted in a class at Kocatepe Mimar Kemal Anadolu High School in the Turkish capital.
The Metso man has nothing against Erdoğan’s nationalism – there should be more of it. He hopes that Turkey would increase its influence in the Middle East and the world.
“There is no need to move our borders, they are in perfectly good places. The age of empires is over,” he says.
Sadly, the Metso man disappears in the chaos of the polling place before I have time to write his name down.
Kılıçdaroğlu is the candidate of the young, liberal and educated.
At least in Ankara, none of the young, liberal and educated people I met found Kılıçdaroğlu’s speeches about the deportation of Syrians problematic. Vice versa.
“Maybe he should have started talking about deportations earlier,” says the 19-year-old biology student Yağmur Koca outside the polling place. “He was a bit too shy as a candidate.”
His fellow students Ceylin Lokmac and Metehan Yildiz accompanied According to them, refugees consume too much of Turkey’s funds.
Opposition supporters expected to see Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu in Ankara.
Hard surface Erdoğan, liberal Kılıçdaroğlu. Such a rough classification clearly does not do Turkey’s candidates – and voters – justice.
Many people do not tolerate Erdoğan because they are worried about democracy, but at the same time they are proud nationalists.
Erdoğan receives praise from many for his good years, but there have already been too many of them. Almost all of Kılıçdaroğlu’s supporters were the first to say they wanted to change. Doesn’t matter what kind.
Almost everyone is worried that Erdoğan will destroy the Turkish economy with his stubbornly low interest rate policy. Inflation is as much as 45 percent, and it is difficult to pay for apartments.
Even in “Little Aleppo” populated by Syrians on the outskirts of Ankara, Kılıçdaroğlu’s harsh words were understood.
“If one day they return us, then we will return,” says the 17-year-old high school student Under. “We love this place, but eventually everyone wants to live in their own home.”
Ali has lived in Ankara for ten years already, i.e. longer than in his hometown in Aleppo, Syria. He expects to receive Turkish citizenship soon. His big brother already got it.
Brothers Suphi Elabit (right), 14, and Mahmut Elabit, 13, were playing soccer in the Altındağ neighborhood of Ankara.
Ali and his friend Mustafa say that they feel very good in Turkey and have not noticed the hardening of attitudes.
An older woman with a scarf comes to interrupt the interview.
“There is nothing wrong with the Syrians! Our president [Erdoğan] has invited them here, so they are our guests.”
Let’s get back still in the school yard. The students in their twenties have not lived a day in a Turkey ruled by someone other than Erdoğan. Therefore, for them, any change is a change for the better.
“It’s like 1984”, English student Ceylin Lokmac says and refers by George Orwell to the classic book about totalitarianism. According to him, Erdoğan gives study benefits to his supporters.
Students talk about an atmosphere of fear.
“Erdoğan makes us feel small,” says Lokmaci. “We can’t speak freely, but still we have to so that something changes.”
They refer to the national hero of Turkey to Mustafa Kemal Atatürkwho founded the Republic of Turkey a hundred years ago in 1923.
“We are Atatürk’s soldiers”, biology student Yağmur Koca says. “We love this country and want to stay here.”
“Even if we lose, there is still hope.”
Metehan Yildiz, 19, Ceylin Lokmaci, 20, and Yağmur Koca, 19, at the Arjant elementary school polling station on Sunday.
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