Stations in Erdogan’s life
- Born in 1954 in Istanbul, he graduated from the Faculty of Economics and Commerce at Marmara University.
- He assumed the position of head of the Welfare Party in Istanbul in 1985, then as mayor of Istanbul in 1994.
- He founded the Justice and Development Party in 2001, to be the lever that brought it to power.
- He ascended to rule Turkey in 2004, and at first he was prime minister, then became president with executive powers with the amendment of the country’s political system in 2017.
3 main challenges
The Associated Press considered that there are several mainly internal challenges that faced Erdogan before the end of his term, and may continue with him after his re-election, including:
- A severe cost of living crisis that experts blame on the government’s mismanagement of the economy, while Erdoğan believes that low interest rates tame inflation, contrary to traditional economic theory, and pressures the central bank to reverse his view.
- Observers considered that Turkey has witnessed criticism regarding the status of public freedoms, a point exploited by the opposition, which threatened to return Ankara to a more democratic path.
- Turkey is also reeling from the aftermath of a powerful earthquake that devastated 11 southern provinces in February, and Erdogan’s government has been criticized for its late and stalled response to the disaster, as well as lax enforcement of building codes that exacerbated the losses.
internal and external reflections
For his part, the expert specializing in Turkish affairs, Karam Saeed, specified in exclusive statements to “Sky News Arabia”, the repercussions of Erdogan’s victory for a second term on the internal and external levels in a number of points, saying that:
- Erdogan’s victory means that the Justice and Development Party is still popular within Turkish society, despite all the challenges that Turkey faces at this time.
- The victory also means that all opinion polls conducted in the past period, which were closer to the Western approach in interpreting the Turkish electoral scene, will be politicized and biased, as most of them favored Kemal Kilicdaroglu’s victory.
- Despite this, these elections proved that the opposition was able to achieve a major breakthrough in the Turkish street, given the close results so far, and thus was able to identify with the aspirations of Turkish society after it was entrenched with its ideological ideas.
- As for the external repercussions, in my estimation, President Erdogan will continue to endorse Turkey’s identification with the eastern axis, with the continuation of Turkey’s turn towards Russia, calm in the Middle East files, strengthening relations with Turkey’s regional surroundings, and completing development in relations with a number of countries, including Egypt.
- Erdogan’s most prominent file will be to control the tension with the Western powers, and the Turkish president and his party will be more careful not to reach the point of estrangement with any country from a pragmatic viewpoint between the West and Turkey.
#Erdogans #victory #Turkey #world