Turkish Elections
Published at 21:50 on 30 May 2023
The guy the West wanted to win, Kılıçdaroğlu, lost. Erdoğan, Turkey’s longstanding president with an authoritarian streak, won yet another term in office.
But here’s the thing. Kılıçdaroğlu sounded positively Trump-like in his non-concession “concession” speech, going on as he did about how the election had been stolen from him. And his anti-refugee stance (he promised to summarily expel all refugees from the country) also comes across as more than a little bit Trump-like.
In other words, it really doesn’t look like the narrative in the Western media of a brave liberal democrat challenging an evil entrenched authoritarian is all that accurate. Maybe if the opposition hadn’t chosen such an obviously flawed figure as their standard-bearer, they would have fared better?