BLOG: Thoughts on Turkey’s upcoming presidential elections

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In Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s novel “Chronicle of a Death Foretold,” the reader knows as he or she starts reading the novel, that the character Santiago Nasar is going to be murdered because Marquez begins his novel at the end and then he goes to the beginning, and the story unfolds. The candidacy of Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu made me think of Marquez’s novel because it seems to me, whether fortunately or unfortunately, that he does not stand a ghost of a chance to win this election. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be elected and the only question that remains is whether or not he will be elected on Aug. 10 in the first round with more than 50 percent of the vote or on Aug. 24, in the second round.

Why is that so? Here is why and how I think Ä°hsanoğlu was chosen. There are reports, denied by Kemal Derviş, that he was the first to suggest it. Derviş’s credentials are the following: high-level official in the World Bank, administrator of the UNDP (United Nations Development Program) and Minister of State for Economic Affairs under Bülent Ecevit; presently, he is vice-president of the Brookings Institution. These credentials would be perfect for the Republican People’s Party (CHP) – less so for the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), but they are the junior partner. So, why was Derviş himself not chosen? Well, he is a liberal and a secularist, and Catherine, his second wife, is an American citizen, when what is needed is a dyed in the wool conservative and a pious Muslim. Ekmeleddin Ä°hsanoğlu, a former Secretary General of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) is a serious academic and intellectual, and a conservative and a pious Muslim.  So, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the CHP chair, and Devlet...

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