Turkish elections: Erdogan kicks off race to stay on to power

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has started the campaign for his party to stay in power. He wants to lead Turkey for more than 20 years.

Six opposition groups have joined forces to take on him in presidential and parliamentary elections on May 14. This is the toughest challenge he has faced so far.

Turkey is dealing with rising prices and is still in shock from two earthquakes that killed 50,000 people. Mr. Erdogan and the party he leads, the AK Party, say they will bring inflation down to single digits. This is a promise that their opponents have also made.

Under President Erdogan, Turkey has become more and more authoritarian, and the resistance is trying to change that.

On May 14, anyone who gets more than half of the votes for president is the clear winner. If that doesn’t happen, the race will go to a second round two weeks later.

If the presidential race goes to a second round, the party that wins the vote in parliament is thought to have a psychological edge.

Turkey’s voters have been divided for years, but 69-year-old Erdogan is facing more heat than ever before. The present leader of Turkey is becoming more and more authoritarian. He runs the country from a huge palace, and his allies run most of the media.

He has been in charge of Turkey since 2003, first as prime minister and then as president since 2014. After a failed coup in 2016, he got a lot more power three years later. Since November 2002, his AK Party has been in charge.

Because of his unusual failure to raise interest rates, more and more Turks blame him for rising inflation. The official price level

A lot of people have also criticised Turkey’s president and ruling party for not changing the way Turkey built things before the February 6 shocks and for not doing a good job with the search and rescue efforts afterward.

In the 11 areas that were hit, millions of Turks lost their homes. Since many of them are seen as bases for the Erdogan party, the east could be where the election is won or lost.