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While details remain sparse on a possible state visit by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the grand reception that the Turkish leader could receive has upset several German opposition politicians.

A spokeswoman with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier's office confirmed to DW that an invitation had been extended to the Turkish president some time ago, but said that both Ankara and Berlin were still working on fixing a date.

"Planning for the visit is currently in the beginning stages," deputy presidential spokeswoman Esther Uleer said.

Not only the date, but the classification of Erdogan's visit remainup in the air. The trip could take the form of anything from a toned-down working visit to a pomp-and-circumstance-filled state visit including military honors and a state dinner.

Erdogan 'should stay home'

But some members of Germany's opposition parties feel that any sort of visit would send wrong signals.

Erdogan "is no normal president in a democracy," cautioned Cem zdemir, an MP with the environmentalist Greens.

The Turkish leader has transformed his country "into a kind of Turkmenistan or Azerbaijan with censorship, despotism, nepotism and autocracy" and should be received as such during any visit to Germany, zdemir told the newspapers of the Funke media group.

He urged the German government "to make it clear that any attempt to build Turkish nationalist-fundamentalist parallel structures here will not be tolerated."

March 31, 2016: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan filed charges against German comedian and satirist Jan Bhmermann over his "defamatory poem" about the Turkish leader. German prosecutors eventually dropped the charges on October 4, 2016, but the case sparked a diplomatic row between Berlin and Ankara.

June 2, 2016: The resolution passed almost unanimously. In response, Turkey recalled its ambassador in Berlin and Germany's Turkish community held protests in several German cities. Turkey had repeatedly criticized the use of the term genocide to describe the Ottoman-era Armenian killings, arguing that the number of deaths had been inflated, and that Turkish Muslims also perished in the violence.

July 15, 2016: A faction of the Turkish military tried to overthrow President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, but ultimately failed. Ankara accused Berlin of not taking a clear stand against the coup attempt or not doing anything about exiled preacher Fethullah Gulen's organization, who Erdogan blames for orchestrating the failed coup.

Immediately following the attempted coup, Turkish authorities purged the army and judiciary, detaining thousands of people. The purge expanded to include civil servants, university officials and teachers. German politicians criticize the detentions. Turkish diplomats, academics and military members fled the country and applied for asylum in Germany.

Erdogan's post-coup crackdown has also been condemned by Kurdish protesters at several mass demonstrations in the west German city of Cologne. Often the rallies have called for the release of Abdullah Ocalan, the jailed leader of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which Turkey considers to be a terror group. Ankara has accused Berlin of not doing enough to stop PKK activities.

February 14, 2017: Deniz Ycel, a correspondent for the German newspaper "Die Welt" was taken into custody in Turkey. Other German nationals, including journalist Mesale Tolu, have also been detained in Turkey for what Berlin says are "political reasons." Turkey has accused some of them of allegedly supporting terrorist organizations.

February 14, 2017: Deniz Ycel, a correspondent for the "Welt" newspaper, was taken into custody in Turkey. Other German nationals, including journalist Mesale Tolu and human rights activist Peter Steudtner were detained in Turkey for what Berlin dubbed "political reasons." Turkey accused them of supporting terrorist organizations. Tolu and Steudtner have since been released pending trial.

March 2017: A number of German localities blocked Turkish ministers from holding rallies in their districts ahead of an April referendum in Turkey to enhance President Erdogan's powers. The Turkish leader then accused Germany of using "Nazi tactics" against Turkish citizens in Germany and visiting Turkish lawmakers. German leaders were not amused by the jibe, saying Erdogan had gone too far.

March 30, 2017: Germany accused Turkey of spying on hundreds of suspected Gulen supporters as well as over 200 associations and schools linked to the Gulen movement in Germany. Turkish asylum-seekers have since accused officials working in Germany's immigration authority (BAMF) of passing on their information to media outlets with ties to the Turkish government.

August 18, 2017: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed three of Germany's main political parties as "enemies of Turkey" and told Turks living in Germany not to vote for them in September's general election. He singled out Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU), the Social Democrats (SPD), and the Greens. Merkel said Erdogan was "meddling" in Germany's election.

September 4, 2017: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during an election debate that she didn't think Turkey should become a member of the European Union and said she would speak with other EU leaders about ending Ankara's accession talks. In October, she backed a move to cut Turkey's pre-accession EU funds.

January 20, 2018: The Turkish military and their Syrian rebel allies launched "Operation Olive Branch" against the Kurdish-held enclave of Afrin in northern Syria. The move was criticized by German politicians and prompted large protests by Kurdish communities in Germany.

February 16, 2018: Turkey ordered the release of German-Turkish journalist Deniz Ycel after he'd been held for over a year without charge. According to Turkish state media, Ycel was released on bail from pre-trial detention. Prosecutors asked for an 18-year jail sentence for Ycel on charges of "terror propaganda" and incitement.

Author: Rebecca Staudenmaier

The far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) called for the visit to not take place at all, with AfD parliamentary group leader Alice Weidel saying Erdogan "should stay home."

"The government must certainly not allow Erdogan to hold another propaganda show in Berlin," Weidel wrote in a post on Facebook, adding that such an event would attempt to "incite citizens with Turkish backgrounds and residents of our country against Germany and German society."

German government open to talks

German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government said on Monday that it was "of course" open to discussions with Erdogan and emphasized Turkey's role as a "close and important partner."

Politicians within Germany's governing coalition also viewed the state visit more positively, although they were not without their caveats.

"I've never been convinced by the argument that it would be better not to talk at all with difficult partners,"Foreign Minister Heiko Maas, a member of the Social Democrats (SPD), told the dailyBild.

Members of Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union (CSU), viewed the visit as an opportunity to address outstanding issues.

"We've already rolled out the red carpet for many other heads of state with blood on their hands. If we want to speak only with democratic leaders, then Germany will soon be very alone on the world stage," Elmar Brok, a CDU politician and the chair of the European Parliament Committee on Foreign Affairs, told Bild.

Jrgen Hardt, the foreign policy spokesman for the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, said he "welcomed" the news of Erdogan's possible visit. Still, he noted that it was important for Berlin to address outstanding issues with Germany, such as the detention of German citizens in Turkey.

"During this visit, [...]the German government should not miss any opportunity to also discuss critical issues between Germany and Turkey," Hardt said in a statement.

Ongoing tensions

Erdogan and his government have been heavily criticized by Germany and other Western allies overthe state of civil rights in Turkey and its leaders' growing authoritarianism.

In the wake of a failed 2016 coup, the Turkish government carried out a sweeping crackdown that has seen numerous Erdogan critics detained including German nationals.

Although Die Welt correspondent Deniz Ycel and human rights activist Peter Steudtner have since been released, several German nationals are still being held in detention.

Erdogan has also been vocal in his criticism of Germany, particularly after Berlin banned Turkish politicians from campaigning in Germany during a constitutional referendum last year. Erdogan also backed football star Mesut zil's recent decision to leave the German national team over accusations of racism. zil had also sparked controversy for meeting with Erdogan in May in London.

Despite tensions, the NATO allies are also dependent on one another.

Germany and other European Union countries have relied on Turkey to slow the number of refugee and migrant arrivals in the bloc as part of a 2015 deal. Turkey, on the other hand, is looking to boost its fragile economy amid high inflation.

Should the visit come to fruition, it would be Erdogan's first official trip to Germany since 2014, as well as his first since he assumed office as president.

After years of free market reforms, Turkey's transition slowly begins to reverse. Islamist Abdullah Gul's candidacy as president in 2007 marks a clear shift away from secularist policies, and strains relations between the ruling AKP and the military. However, with broad support from both conservative Muslims and liberals, the AKP wins the parliamentary elections and Gul is elected president.

Then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan tables a constitutional reform increasing parliamentary control of the judiciary and army, effectively allowing the government to pick judges and senior military officials. The amendment, which is combined with measures also aimed at protecting child rights and the strengthening the right to appeal, passed by a wide margin in a public referendum.

Pent-up anger directed by young people at Erdogan, Gul and the Islamist-rooted AKP hits a boiling point in May 2013. The violent police breakup of a small sit-in aimed at protecting Istanbul's Gezi Park spurs one of the fiercest anti-government protests in years. Eleven people are killed and more than 8,000 injured, before the demonstrations eventually peter out a month later.

A fragile ceasefire deal between the Turkish government and the Kurdish rebel PKK group breaks under the weight of tensions aggravated by the war in Syria. Military forces resume operations in the mostly Kurdish southeast of Turkey. In early 2016, the Kurdistan Freedom Hawks (TAK) a breakaway PKK faction claim responsibility for two bombings in Ankara, each killing 38 people.

A military coup attempt against the government shakes Turkey to its core and briefly turns the country into a war zone. Some 260 civilians die in overnight clashes with the army across five major cities. Erdogan, however, rallies supporters and the following morning rebel soldiers are ambushed by thousands of civilians on the Bosporus Bridge. The troops eventually drop their guns and surrender.

In the aftermath of the failed coup, Erdogan announces a state of emergency, leading to arrests of tens of thousands of suspected coup sympathizers and political opponents. Among those detained are military and judiciary officials and elected representatives from the pro-Kurdish HDP party. The purge is later expanded to include civil servants, university officials and teachers.

As part of Erdogan's crackdown against supposed "terrorist sympathizers," Turkey becomes one of the world's leading jailers of journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders. The government shuts down around 110 media outlets in the year following the coup and imprisons more than 100 journalists, including German-Turkish correspondent Deniz Ycel.

With a referendum on expanding Erdogan's presidential powers set for April 2016, AKP officials look to galvanize support among Turks living in Europe, particularly in Germany and the Netherlands. However, the Netherlands forbids Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu from landing in the country, while Germany opts to cancel two rallies. Erdogan accuses both countries of Nazi-style repression.

Erdogan narrowly wins the referendum vote expanding his power. As a result, Turkey's parliamentary system is abolished in favor of a strong executive presidency. Erdogan is also allowed to remain in power potentially until 2029. However, international election monitors claim that opposition voices were muzzled and that media coverage was dominated by figures from the "yes" campaign.

Erdogan secures a new five-year term and sweeping new executive powers after winning landmark elections on June 24. His AKP and their nationalist allies also win a majority in parliament. International observers criticize the vote, saying media coverage and emergency measures gave Erdogan and the AKP an "undue advantage" in the vote.

Author: David Martin

View original post here:
German politicians wary of pending Erdogan state visit ...

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Saturday Turkey will stand its ground after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to slap sanctions on Ankara if it does not free an American pastor.

The United States would be losing a strong and sincere partner if it does not change this attitude, Erdogan said, according to Reuters.

In a tweet on Thursday, Trump threatened to impose economic sanctions on Turkey over its refusal to release American pastor Andrew Brunson who has been detained in the country for more than year.

The United States will impose large sanctions on Turkey for their long time detainment of Pastor Andrew Brunson, a great Christian, family man and wonderful human being. He is suffering greatly. This innocent man of faith should be released immediately! he tweeted.

Brunson, who was transferred to house arrest this week after 21 months of detention in a Turkish prison, has worked in Turkey for more than two decades.

Brunson has been accused of supporting the group Ankara says was behind a failed military coup in 2016 and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK). The pastor, who has denied the charges, faces up to 35 years in jail if found guilty.

Hours after Trumps tweet, Turkey's foreign minister Mevlut Cavusoglu fired back at Trump in a tweet of his own.

No one dictates [to] Turkey. We will never tolerate threats from anybody. Rule of law is for everyone; no exception, he stated.

Brunson was accused of working with Fethullah Gulen, an Islamic cleric who Erdogan claims orchestrated the failed coup in 2016.

Turkey has pressed, so far in vain, for the United States to extradite Gulen over the July 2016 coup, in which more than 240 people were killed. Gulen denies any involvement in the failed coup.

Last December, the U.S. and Turkey resumed full visa services for the other country after a months-long dispute.

The dispute began in October, when the U.S. mission in Turkey reduced visa services in response to a U.S. mission employee being detained in Turkey.

The Turkish mission in Washington subsequently announced a similar move, with both sides saying they needed to reassess each other's commitment to the security of their personnel.

Read the original here:
Erdogan responds to Trump: We will stand our ground ...

The threatening language of the United States will not benefit anyone, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Wednesday, as relations between the NATO allies soured over the case of a US pastor jailed in Turkey on terrorism charges.

Speaking to reporters in Ankara, Erdogan said Turkey would not make compromises regarding the independence of the judiciary, and said the remarks of the evangelical Zionist mentality in the United States was unacceptable.

He also said his foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, would hold talks with US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo on the sidelines of an ASEAN meeting in Singapore.

Relations between the two NATO allies have spiraled into a full-blown crisis over the trial of Christian pastor Andrew Brunson, who was held for 21 months in a Turkish prison until his transfer to house arrest last week a move Washington dismissed as insufficient.

Erdogans remarks come a day after a Turkish court rejected an appeal for Brunson to be released from house arrest during his trial on terrorism charges, his lawyer said, in a case that has raised the threat of US sanctions against Ankara.

US President Donald Trump threatened last week to impose large sanctions on Turkey unless it frees the pastor, who is accused of helping the group Ankara says was behind a failed military coup in 2016.

Read more here:
Erdogan: US Threatening Language Will Not Benefit Anyone ...

As President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has tightened his stranglehold over Turkey and Turkish society, any elements of pragmatism that marked his first years in office have evaporated, supplanted by ego and ideology.

Erdogans ego is readily apparent. Erdogan has illegally acquired preserved forests and built palaces that dwarf Versailles, let alone the White House. From his early days as prime minister, he conflated himself with the state and considered any criticism of himself and his policies to be illegal. Turkeys courts soon grew full of cases involving journalists, cartoonists, and public intellectuals who suggested Erdogans policies were misguided or wrong. When top aide Egemen Bagis was caught on tape mocking the Quran, Erdogan cared less about his sacrilege than about a man smoking in a cafe after Erdogan condemned the habit.

Such is the case of a leader who increasingly sees himself as Gods equal.

But the world has always been full of self-absorbed leaders: Saddam Hussein ordered Babylon rebuilt with bricks stamped with testaments to his greatness. Kim Jong Un imprisons those who do not adequately cry for the memory of his father. Hugo Chavezs supporters likened him to Jesus. While an order of magnitude less megalomaniacal, Barack Obamas critics made a sport of counting how many times the president referred to himself in his speeches and his staff famously inserted talk of Obama into the White House biographies of almost all past presidents.. As for President Trump, even his supporters must acknowledge that tremendous ego is part of his brand.

What makes Erdogan particularly dangerous is ideology: He famously promised to raise a religious generation. Theres nothing wrong with religion per se, but Erdogan confuses Islam with Islamism and traditional Turkish interpretations with those more aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood. Erdogans interpretation of Islam promotes not tolerance, but its opposite. Furthermore, in a complex region where identities are shaped by a number of factors (ethnicity, education, and family, for example) Erdogan increasingly refuses to tolerate anyone who does not prioritize his own narrow interpretation of Islam over any other personal priorities.

This is where diplomats, analysts, and Erdogan apologists went wrong with regard to Erdogans policy toward the Kurds. True, Erdogan reached out on several occasions earlier in his political career to suggest rapprochement with the Kurds. He even resurrected Kurdistan Workers Party leader Abdullah Ocalan from political oblivion by entering into secret talks which, even if not successful, made Ocalan the indispensable Kurd and transformed him from a prisoner who embarrassed himself in his post-capture confessions into a Kurdish Nelson Mandela.

But behind the headlines, there was one commonality in Erdogans outreach: an implicit demand the Kurds prioritize Islam over their own ethnic identity. This is why Erdogan imprisoned Selahattin Demirtas, the leader of the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party (HDP). Erdogan was willing to allow Demirtas and the HDP to operate openly so long as they supported his Islamist agenda. When it became clear they would not, he ordered Demirtas and other top HDP leaders imprisoned on dubious charges.

There is an irony to Erdogans pattern of punishing Kurds for being insufficiently Islamist: While Kurds often date their nationalist struggle back to the early uprisings that both challenged and marked Mustafa Kemal Ataturks early efforts to consolidate his own dictatorial control over Turkey, the spark for many early Kurdish uprisings was Ataturks abolishment of the caliphate and his desire to separate mosque and state. But then again, Erdogan is the anti-Ataturk, an Islamist instead of a secularist who seeks to extricate Western liberalism from Turkish society rather than promote it.

As the Kurds have refused to subordinate their ethnic and cultural rights to Erdogans agenda, he has embarked on what increasingly appears to be a campaign of ethnic cleansing, if not genocide. Consider just his recent actions.

Erdogan seeks credit because Turkey hosts more Syrian refugees than any other country. But not all refugees are created equal. Turkey is implementing a broader strategy: Just as Syrian President Bashar Assad plays a demographic game to get Sunnis to flee his country to lower their proportion relative to the rest of Syrian population, Erdogan is offering many of those Sunni refugees Turkish citizenship so long as they settle in traditionally Alevi or Kurdish areas. His goal: Erase the Kurdish character in the heart of those areas, which have traditionally been the Kurdish homeland. Erdogans treatment of the Yezidis underlines the point: Turkish authorities refuse to even register them as refugees, thus denying them the ability to access emergency services. Simply put, he hopes Sunni Islamists stay and any and all non-Sunnis or non-Muslims go.

Sometimes, the erasure of Kurdish communities is more deliberate. While Western governments wrung their hands over the gratuitous Russian, Iranian, and Syrian decimation of Aleppo, once Syrias largest city, Turkeys destruction of Sur, Cizre, and Nusaybin was just as wanton and deliberate. And then theres the Ilisu Dam: Not only has it submerged the millennia-old town of Hasankeyf, a Kurdish architectural and cultural treasure, but it also threatens to starve Iraqi and Syrian Kurdistan of much-needed (and legally owed) water.

Finally, there is the case of Afrin, the district of Syria that was controlled and governed by Kurds until Turkish forces invaded for the stated purpose of eradicating terrorism, never mind that the Turkish government was unable to cite a single terrorist incident originating in Afrin. Erdogans policy in Afrin has been unapologetic ethnic cleansing and slaughter. Turkish forces and Islamist proxies in Syria have not only killed at least 10,000 Kurds and, according to counts by local organizations, drove 180,000 Kurdish residents out of their homes, but they also settled Sunni Arabs from elsewhere in Syria and Iraq to prevent any return. In short, Erdogan is doing to Kurds in Syria what Saddam Hussein did to the Kurds in Kirkuk.

Genocide is a term too often misused and conflated with ethnic cleansing. But while Ataturks Turkey tolerated Kurds so long as they subordinated their cultural identity to the Turkish constitution, Erdogans hatred goes further. Both Erdogans rhetoric and that of Dogu Perincek, today the intellectual leader of the Turkish military, increasingly appears to fulfill the various definitions of genocide enshrined in the Genocide Convention and the Rwanda Media Case.

Erdogan benefits and always has benefited from officials who deny reality for the sake of diplomatic nicety or wishful thinking. In the last week, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis provide just the most recent examples. Its time to call a spade a spade, however. As Erdogan plots his future course, its increasingly likely he will deserve not honors and accolades, but a place in the docket at The Hague.

Michael Rubin (@Mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner's Beltway Confidential blog. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Pentagon official.

See original here:
Turkeys Recep Tayyip Erdogan doubles down on genocide

ISTANBULMuharrem Ince was having a good week. The boisterous, silver-haired Ince is the main opposition candidate running against Turkeys longtime leader Recep Tayyip Erdogan for president of Turkey. He was speaking to a crowd in the overwhelmingly ethnic Kurdish town of Van on June 4. And he was letting the incumbent have it.

Ince played a video of Erdogan giving a speech to a Kurdish audience the day before, then suddenly stopping and leaving the podium when his teleprompter malfunctioned.

"Those who speak from the teleprompter cannot solve the Kurdish issue, Ince said. Those who speak from the heart can."

Erdogan called the snap June 24 elections in April, likely hoping to catch his opponents off guard and consolidate power as president following a referendum last year that grants new powers to the head of state and transforms the nation of 83 million from a parliamentary to a presidential system.

The election comes at a time when Turks and international observers have grown worried about Erdogans arrogation of power, especially after a failed July 2016 coup attempt that ignited a crackdown by the president against opponents, journalists and civil society. Since then, Turkey has been governed under emergency law. Thousands of people have been arrested, tens of thousands purged from the civil service, and the press severely restricted. After these elections were announced, Erdogans opponents initially feared the president would steamroll his opponents to consolidate even more power.

But Turkeys embattled opposition for once has failed to follow the script. Three important opposition parties have joined together with a smaller party to form a block that includes liberals, Islamists, and nationalists, and they have pursued a strategy to woo the minority Kurds who are seen by many analysts as the lynchpin of the elections.

Both Ince and Meral Aksener, the elegant auburn-haired female leader of the new nationalist party called Iyi, are charismatic on the stump, taking square aim at Erdogan, who will be running for reelection on the same day as voters decide on a new parliament. Their alliance includes the Islamist Felicity Party, which is led by one of Erdogans former fellow travelers, and another minor party.

All the major opposition parties appear to be coordinating strategies to energize their bases and maximize their shares of seats in parliament against the ruling Justice and Development Party, known as the AKP, while seeking to deny Erdogan an outright majority in the presidential race in order to trigger a July 8 runoff.

The opposition has been rejuvenated, says Sinan Ulgen, a Turkey specialist at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Now the opposition is driving the agenda. In the past it was the Erdogan and the AKP. Erdogan is still most likely to win. But there is enough reason to think that the outcome is far from being pre-ordained.

The election is the first since the referendum last year and will immediately trigger the changes, transforming Turkeys government by eliminating the post of prime minister and shifting authorities between parliament and the executive. Critics say the new system will be more autocratic, giving the president too much power, while Erdogans supporters say it will make the government more democratic and accountable.

Truth is, no ones quite sure how the new system will operate in practice. But anxiety over a potential watershed moment in Turkeys political history has galvanized Erdogans opponents.

For once Turkeys opposition parties are trying to break out of their various bubbles. Ince, the secularist, is noting that his sister wears the hijab and that he doesnt oppose religious piety. Aksener, head of a political trend traditionally hostile to Kurdish aspirations, has called for allowing the jailed Kurdish presidential candidate, Selahattin Demirtas, out of prison. Felicity, the Islamist party, holds campaign events featuring music and dancing.

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To be sure, Erdogan remains Turkeys most popular politician, and not just because his fiery fusion of Islamist and nationalist populism appeals to a broad swathe of voters. Over the 16 years that Erdogan and the AKP have dominated Turkish politics, the countrys GDP has tripled, pulling poor, rural Turks into the ranks of the urban middle class. His path to winning a majority of votes appears far clearer than that of the opposition. AKP members and supporters say they are content to run on their track record, including Erdogans ability to generate giant public works projects like airports and hospitals.

The opposition doesnt have a great vision or clear vision for what they will do; they dont promise any hope to people, Harun Armagan, an AKP spokesman, told The Daily Beast. We will work for a society where everybody will able to go to university, get the best health care. We are working for nuclear power plants to make 100 percent of Turkeys energy produced here.

Polls show Erdogan winning in a head-to-hand match with Ince, the candidate of the secular liberal Peoples Republican Party, known as the CHP, which is Turkeys second largest party. But its only a slight majority. Many Turks have been concerned about Erdogans heavy-handed rule over the last five or six years. Plus, Turkeys economy has been faltering, with the lira hitting all-time lows and inflation at double digits, burdening consumers in Erdogans base.

Theyve stumbled because the economic numbers are bad, said Aaron Stein, a Turkey specialist at the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank. Life is more expensive. The government blames outside powers for the troubles. But people are savvy enough to understand the government is largely responsible.

In contrast to his usual energetic, combative image, the 64-year-old Erdogan appears tired and easily flustered on the campaign trail, as shown by the teleprompter mishap. In the past hes been blessed with colorless opponents who made him look good. His main rival in 2014, Ekmeleddin hsanolu, was a bland chemist who refused to hold rallies during the holy month of Ramadan. Even then Erdogan won with less than 52 percent of the vote. The referendum last year adopting a presidential system passed by about the same margin.

Of course, Erdogan may lose, Veli Agbaba, a CHP lawmaker and party leader, told The Daily Beast. At the end of 16 years there is an AKP that is old, outdated and cannot offer anything new to the public. All they do is promise a bad copy of our election manifesto.

In Ince, the president has met a worthy opponent, a streetfighter whos 10 years younger and has roots in the same rough Black Sea town of Rize that Erdogans family comes from. Hes such a shot in the arm for the oppositioncharismatic, a good speaker, said Stein. He attacks Erdogan on substantive issues.

Aksener, 61, also plays a vital role. She broke away from the Nationalist Movement Party, or MHP, after its leader Devlet Baheli aligned with Erdogan. She could pull nationalist voters away from the president's camp. The Felicity party gives quavering pious voters queasy about Erdogans authoritarian tendencies an excuse to vote against him.

Notwithstanding the fact its leader is in jail, the Peoples Democratic Party, or HDP, which draws Kurdish and leftist votes, will be key. Demirtas, a brash and outspoken 45-year-old, was locked up in November 2016, accused of supporting armed Kurdish separatists in their decades-long war against the Turkish state. So he is unable to campaign himself except through brief social media appearances. Erdogan also competes for the votes of pious and traditional Kurds, so whether and how they vote will be a crucial factor in the election outcome.

For the opposition to deny the AKP a majority in parliament, under current rules the Kurdish-led HDP likely needs to win more than 10 percent of the vote, which would allow it to form a bloc in parliament.

Kurds are the ones that will determine the outcome, said an analyst at one research organization, who spoke on condition she not be identified. The rest of the vote are consolidated. But the Kurdsno one knows which way they will sway.

Opposition candidates see this election as the best chance they have to weaken Erdogan, if not defeat him, by at least snatching away control of parliament. Opposition parties have promised a return to the parliamentary system, bolstering of democratic institutions, and an end to Turkeys combative regional role and what they describe as Erdogans divisive domestic policies. Askener, who has hired Google AdWords to promote her candidacy and the party, has promised among other things to lift Erdogans outlawing of Wikipedia.

Erdogan politics, which is constantly fighting both inside and outside, will end, said Agbaba, the CHP lawmaker. We will bring about social peace among the divided sections of our country, and we will repair our neighbors and international relations.

Erdogan supporters acknowledge recent economic troubles, but say theyre confident that voters will continue to trust the president based on his lengthy track record. Erdogan has been either president or prime minister of Turkey since 2003, and previously served as the highly popular mayor of Istanbul, the countrys commercial and cultural heart. Armagan, of the AKP, said that volunteers flood the partys offices asking to help out with the elections. He dismissed the oppositions gestures toward embattled groups, including Kurds, that the AKP has sought to draw into politics over the years by addressing mundane concerns such as irrigation in rural areas and housing costs.

The strategy the opposition has is very cheap, he said. They think they will get the pious vote if they have a candidate who wears hijab, that if you put up a Kurdish candidate you get the Kurdish vote. Its like a white American saying, I have black friends.

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Can Voters Bring Down Turkey's Erdogan?