{"id":33400,"date":"2023-05-13T18:47:14","date_gmt":"2023-05-13T18:47:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/?p=33400"},"modified":"2023-05-13T18:47:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-13T18:47:16","slug":"recep-tayyip-erdogan-hands-out-gifts-in-desperate-bid-to-win-turkey-re-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/2023\/05\/13\/recep-tayyip-erdogan-hands-out-gifts-in-desperate-bid-to-win-turkey-re-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan hands out gifts in desperate bid to win Turkey re-election"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Turkey prepares to go to the polls on Sunday in a pivotal election, president\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fanis distributing gifts. In the weeks before the vote, he declared that Turkish citizens would enjoy free natural gas, raised the salaries of public sector workers by 45% after an initial rise earlier this year, and even declared that Turkey had struck oil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new gargantuan grey warship docked in Istanbul over a recent holiday weekend, inviting citizens to walk on deck and enjoy the splendour of Turkey\u2019s new high-tech future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n

After initially promising a quieter election campaign following a deadly earthquake that killed more than 50,000 people in Turkey just three months ago, Erdo\u011fan changed tactics after many polls suggested that opposition challenger\u00a0Kemal K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu is in the lead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a mass rally in Istanbul last weekend, the president broadcast an alleged deepfake video showing a group of banned Kurdish militants expressing their support for his competitor, both of which he regularly portrays as enemies of the state. \u201cThis is very important,\u201d he told the assembled crowd.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the ballot box, the choice confronting voters is stark. Erdo\u011fan, who leads the AKP party, has promised a \u201ccentury of Turkey\u201d, a grand vision that contains much of the supercharged nationalism and populist rhetoric that has allowed him to keep his grip on the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turkey\u2019s opposition, led by K\u0131l\u0131\u00e7daro\u011flu, campaigned on the promise that \u201cspring will come again\u201d, pledging to overhaul Erdo\u011fan\u2019s policies that have reshaped the country throughout his two decades in power: chief among them a return to parliamentary democracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The opposition\u2019s proposals for change are a reaction to 20 years of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s rule. \u201cNo one really knows what a post-Erdo\u011fan Turkey would look like in reality,\u201d said James Ryan of the US thinktank the Foreign Policy Research Institute.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A vast and rapid reconstruction plan that would reshape much of the country\u2019s south destroyed during recent earthquakes formed a central plank of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s campaign for re-election. Just a few weeks after buildings were\u00a0levelled across the town of Nurda\u011f\u0131, mechanical diggers clawed at the earth to build foundations on the town\u2019s outskirts, extending existing government housing for hundreds sleeping in tents near their destroyed homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Kemal
Kemal Kilicdaroglu, presidential candidate of Turkey\u2019s main opposition alliance, at a rally in Ankara. Photograph: Yves Herman\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOur aim is to raise up the earthquake zone,\u201d Erdo\u011fan told survivors a month after the quakes, adding that the government would built 319,000 homes within the first year, and 650,000 in total.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Construction and infrastructure formed the backbone of Erdo\u011fan\u2019s two decades in power, projecting the presence of the state through smooth roads, new airports and vast new buildings in even the smallest Turkish towns \u2013 amid accusations of widespread corruption in the construction industry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some of the millions displaced by the quakes, the government\u2019s promises of fast solutions meant little. Almost a month after she and her family of four were displaced from their home in the southernmost province of Hatay, Elise Aslan grew frustrated with officials from Turkey\u2019s disaster relief agency, AFAD, when they tried to outline her payment options for government housing. \u201cThis isn\u2019t going to be done within a year,\u201d she told them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The officials tried to reassure her. \u201cIn a short time, hopefully everything will be OK,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For observers, Erdo\u011fan\u2019s promises of swift reconstruction form the core of efforts to shift public attention away from the devastating earthquakes, as well as any lingering questions about his government\u2019s lacklustre response in a crisis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He is using his complete control of the media to change the narrative,\u201d said analyst Soner Cagaptay of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, who has written multiple books on Erdo\u011fan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe can curate the news to create a post-truth reality, build news based on lies so people forget they were lies to begin with,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very scary \u2013 if Erdo\u011fan wins, it will be the first victory globally for post-truth politics, an election completely won on lies.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysis by Turkey\u2019s broadcast watchdog found that the president was afforded more than 32 hours of coverage on one state channel, while his competitor had just 32 minutes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile, Turkish fact-checking organisation Teyit said it had identified misinformation circulated by both Erdo\u011fan and the opposition, including cheap replicas of deepfake videos they labelled \u201ccheapfakes\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDuring this election cycle, we encountered nearly 150 examples of false information, ranging from television broadcasts and misinformation on social media to politicians\u2019 own statements,\u201d said Can Semercio\u011flu of Teyit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a deeply polarised country, Erdo\u011fan\u2019s control of the media and his promises that he can fix anything broken during his rule have found willing ears, including claims that only he is capable of remedying an economic crisis caused by his unorthodox policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSo far there has been nothing that our state has been unable to solve or accomplish,\u201d said 33-year-old Yunus \u00d6zbaysal, speaking while out campaigning for the AKP in Istanbul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He added: \u201cOur leader has kept every promise he made. We are certain that he will keep his economic promises, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Turkey prepares to go to the polls on Sunday in a pivotal election, president\u00a0Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fanis distributing gifts. In the weeks before the vote, he declared that Turkish citizens would enjoy free natural gas, raised the salaries of public sector workers by 45% after an initial rise earlier this year, and even declared that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":33404,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_post_source_name":"","_post_source_url":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[6728,3152,5777,10387,11555,1384,8440,9171,11606,5846,9292,7280,911,5455,3577,5491,9809,2264,9584,1971,10598,11715,8995,5539,9515,8145,3874,5423,9683,5441,11973,11698,5424,3805,11377,5333,10334,5349,9176,6264,10236,146,2570,3151,6348,10885,8033,11622,2354,12790,3954,594],"class_list":["post-33400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news","tag-alliance","tag-ankara","tag-banned","tag-campaign","tag-citizens","tag-corruption","tag-crisis","tag-crowd","tag-democracy","tag-displaced","tag-earth","tag-earthquake","tag-election","tag-family","tag-future","tag-gas","tag-gifts","tag-government","tag-hatay","tag-holiday","tag-homes","tag-housing","tag-infrastructure","tag-istanbul","tag-killed","tag-kurdish","tag-lead","tag-lies","tag-millions","tag-oil","tag-one","tag-politicians","tag-politics","tag-president","tag-presidential","tag-rally","tag-salaries","tag-social-media","tag-spring","tag-survivors","tag-tech","tag-truth","tag-turkey","tag-turkeys-president-recep-tayyip-erdogan","tag-us","tag-victory","tag-video","tag-vision","tag-washington","tag-weekend","tag-will","tag-who"],"blocksy_meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33404"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nsemgh.com\/api-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}