Not so easy

If someone from the outside of Turkey wonders what’s going on in Turkey, they might easily be fooled that the country is very much like an Iron Curtain country during the times of the Cold War. An authoritative leader is trying to gather all legislative, judicial and executive powers, as well as party leadership, morality police, chief imam, family’s elder, a village’s headman all as himself. It is as if the secretary-general of a sui generis Communist party is running alone in the presidential elections.
Such an attitude is not, of course, democratic at all. Anyhow, the tall, bold, bald and ever angry man yelling at everyone is no longer talking of the democracy he once said was very much like a train car he would travel in until he reached his destination. Now that he has come to his destination, he is stressing that he will become the “new leader” of the “new Turkey” of “advanced democracy.”

But despite the superficial image of the country, as if only one candidate is running in the presidential election and that candidate will definitely win with an overwhelming majority. Why? Because there is such an image being pumped continuously to the masses as part of the election strategy of the prime minister. How is it possible that every other day someone is leaking to the media a public opinion poll showing the absolute ruler ahead of the other candidates with so many percentage points? Such “leaks” are, of course, attempts to influence the undecided vote, as it is generally believed that the undecided vote tends to eventually go to the strongest candidate. This is no joke if it is taken into consideration that some 23 percent of the Turkish vote has been floating around since the 1983 vote to return to...

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