With about three weeks to go for Turkey’s General Election, scheduled for 14 May, there is consensus among pundits and pollsters alike that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is on a sticky wicket. In 2018, Mr Erdogan, after winning a referendum the previous year, was elected as president to oversee the transition of the country’s decades-old parliamentary system to a presidential one. Critics of the regime have maintained that the new system has few check and balances, giving President Erdogan almost unfettered rights which he has used to usher in an autocratic style of governance. His supporters, on the other hand, have iterated that the Opposition and civil society groups opposed to the regime ~ supported by the good old ‘foreign hand’ ~ do not want an effective government which the presidential system provides and are being churlish because their eco-system of patronage has been dismantled.

Further, Mr Erdogan is portrayed by them as the only leader who can make Turkey great again. The results of the poll will be consequential given the polarisation in Turkey. To be elected, a candidate must receive more than half the ballots cast. If no candidate receives a majority, then the top two candidates proceed to a second round of voting. Voters will also elect a new parliament, albeit a weakened one whose task in the new system has been limited to rubber-stamping Mr Erdogan’s legislative agenda, write Turkey-watchers Kemal Kirisci and Berk Esen. According to them, the “hyper-centralised system” Mr Erdogan has put in place has left him exposed and vulnerable as never before in his political career.

Because he has concentrated all power in the presidency, voters have a clear target for their ire given the Turkish economy is in the doldrums with widening trade and current accounts deficits, growing public debt, a wildly fluctuating currency, and an Annualised Consumer Price Index running at over 50 per cent officially (but more than double that according to an independent research institution.) The huge damage caused by the earthquake in February, even his most ardent admirers now concede, has brought out the institutional decay and corruption in a system that Mr Erdogan had promised would bring stability and prosperity. Yet, the Opposition’s six-party National Alliance headed by the People’s Republican Party (CHP) was forged last year because individually each party knew it had no chance of beating Mr Erdogan.

On the Opposition’s agenda is a return to a parliamentary system which it promises to strengthen. The National Alliance covers the gamut of political forces in Turkey, ranging from the secular left and right to Turkish nationalist and conservative parties. While it is holding together, the Opposition alliance is not as cohesive as the ruling Justice and Development Party. In fact, even if justified in large measure, by portraying the president as autocratic and promising to return Turkey to the world’s league of democracies, the Opposition may be playing into his hands.

Especially, as that is also the narrative emanating from Western critics. To accuse an alpha and unashamedly nationalist leader, who still has significant support for his Islamist welfare agenda outside of urban centres, of being too powerful may not be the smartest thing to do