Turkey is waiting for the outcome of the elections
Thousands of voters in Antakya, Turkey, on Sunday to vote for a president of the United Republic of Macedonian republic
In conversations with more than a half dozen voters in the earthquake zone on Sunday, all said they were supporting Mr. Erdogan’s main challenger, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who represents a coalition of opposition parties. They said the government’s handling of the economy in recent years was one of their reasons for pointing it out.
Sinan Ogan is a former academic who has support from a nationalist party. The country’s electoral board considers Muharrem Ince’s withdrawal to be invalid and will count votes for him, even though he dropped out of the race.
Voters will also be casting ballots to fill seats in the 600-member parliament. The opposition would need at least a majority to be able to enact some of the democratic reforms it has promised.
Rasim Dayanir was among hundreds of voters who lined up around a two-story school designated as a polling station — a structure that survived the quake while the others around it are either gone or crumbling. He said he came back to Antakya, the hardest hit city in the earthquake zone, with eight of his family members. They drove by car for about four hours from another southern province to vote.
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The alliance includes the nationalist Good Party led by former interior minister Meral Aksener, and two parties that splintered from the AKP and are led by former prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu and former finance minister Ali Babacan, as well as a small Islamist party.
Kilicdaroglu’s six-party Nation Alliance, has promised to dismantle an executive presidential system narrowly voted in by a 2017 referendum that Erdogan installed and return the country to a parliamentary democracy. They have promised to establish the independence of the judiciary and the central bank, institute checks and balances and reverse the democratic backsliding and crackdowns on free speech and dissent under Erdogan.
He has tried to woo voters by showing Turkey’s defense industry and infrastructure projects, while increasing wages and pensions.
Erdogan has led a divisive election campaign, using state resources and his domineering position over media as in previous years. He has accused the opposition of colluding with “terrorists,” of being “drunkards” and of upholding LGBTQ rights which he says are a threat to traditional family values.
The elections will be watched closely around the world as a test of whether a united opposition can oust a leader who has devoted almost all powers of the state to him.
Turkey is also reeling from the effects of a powerful earthquake that caused devastation in 11 southern provinces in February, killing more than 50,000 people in unsafe buildings. Erdogan’s government has been criticized for its delayed and stunted response to the disaster as well as the lax implementation of building codes that exacerbated the misery.
The country is wracked by economic tumult that critics blame on the government’s policies and a steep cost of living crisis.
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There is no requirement for Turks over 18 to register to vote. Voters are assigned a polling station based on their address.
Polling began at 8 a.m. (0500 GMT) and will close at 5 p.m. (1400 GMT). Media organizations are barred from reporting partial results until an embargo is lifted at 9 p.m. (1800 GMT). There are no exit polls.
If we vote for a new five-year term in office for the increasingly authoritarian Erdogan, the country will either follow what his opposition contender calls a more democratic path or it will be a one-party state.
She said that the worsening economy makes it hard to start a new life now and that the government didn’t take care of the earthquake survivors. She supported the challenger.
Kadife Dik, a 66-year-old woman living on her husband’s pension, also returned to Antakya with her family to vote and found that all of their belongings were stolen from their destroyed home. They looked at the heavily damaged building from the side of the road.
His family drove their own car to Antakya to vote, but they did not get the gas reimbursement promised by Turkey’s disaster management agency. It was worth it for him.
He said that if they had not pulled them out with our own hands, they would have lost their cousins as well.
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That means those displaced by the earthquakes — many of whom lost loved ones, homes, cars, vital documents and other belongings — had less than six weeks after the disaster to change their addresses through the government’s online platform. They had to do it in person by April 2.
They said it was depressing to return to the earthquake zone and see that the government had only removed rubble, but taken no other discernible actions to pave the way for residents to return. A number of them said they would like to come back to their homes, but given the lack of progress, they cannot.
There are deficiencies in the legal system and they need to be fixed. He pointed out that the government didn’t even intervene after the earthquake. Our minds were made up before the earthquake.
People lined up Sunday to vote outside containers acting as improvised polling stations during the presidential and parliamentary elections in the southern Turkish city of Antakya, destroyed by this year’s devastating earthquake.
