Rémi Trieau / Photo credit: POOL / GETTY IMAGES EUROPE / Getty Images via AFP
modified to
12:09 p.m., May 14, 2023
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan voted in Istanbul, the city in which he grew up and began his political career. A strategic city for those who usually say that whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey. However, nothing indicates that this time, the city is acquired to him.
Can he continue in the same direction or take another path? 64 million Turkish voters must choose who will show them the way. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Islamo-conservative president, or Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, the president of a social democratic and secular party? Polling stations have been open since this morning for these presidential and legislative elections.
Erdoğan expected to vote at midday
Erdoğan voted in the morning in this rather conservative and upscale neighborhood on the Asian side of Istanbul, with its large villas surrounded by high walls. The area is cordoned off by the police. You have to pass several checkpoints and be searched to access the surroundings of the school. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is expected at midday.
He votes in Istanbul rather than in Ankara, the capital, because it is his city, where he grew up, where he began his political career. Elected mayor in 1994 with more than 16 million inhabitants and approximately 20% of the country’s population, the megalopolis is strategic. On Saturday, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan held his last three meetings on the banks of the Bosphorus, before going to pray at Hagia Sophia, converted into a mosque in 2020. Quite a symbol.
And to pay a visit to the head of the most powerful religious brotherhood in Turkey. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan used to say that whoever wins Istanbul wins Turkey. Not sure this time that the city is his. The municipality passed into the hands of the opposition in 2019, with a difference of 800,000 votes.