The opposition’s attempt to ride the nationalist tide looks doomed
of Turkey’s presidential election on May 14th, Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the opposition’s joint candidate, campaigned on a message of hope, inclusion and economic recovery. For the second, which takes place on May 28th, he has run a decidedly more negative campaign, doubling down on his pledge to send millions of Syrian refugees based in Turkey home and ruling out peace talks with Kurdish separatist rebels.
. The leader of the centre-left Republican People’s Party took 44.9% of the vote, much less than pollsters had given him on the eve of the elections, compared to 49.5% for Mr Erdogan. Mr Kilicdaroglu had hoped to win a majority and avoid a second round. Instead, he barely avoided a first-round defeat.
As a policy, the refugee plan is a non-starter. Studies show that only a fraction of the 3.6m Syrians who have found refuge in Turkey over the past decade want to go back. The country’s dictator, Bashar al-Assad, does not want to see them return. Any attempt to deport refugees by force would turn Turkey into a pariah state, poisoning relations with Europe.
Mr Kilicdaroglu would have no chance of winning the presidency without the backing of Turkey’s main Kurdish party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party , and its 5m voters. But Mr Erdogan has ensured that the support of the’s political wing—has come at a heavy price. For weeks he has hammered home the idea that the opposition is somehow in league with the.
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