Erdoğan reelected by narrow margin in Turkey
Erdoğan reelected by narrow margin in Turkey
A few hours after the official Turkish election commission announced that Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been reelected as president of Türkiye with over 52% of the vote, President Joe Biden congratulated him and said, “I look forward to continuing to work together as NATO allies on bilateral issues and s
Erdoğan has a long history of repressing the Kurdish people and imprisoning their leaders, as have past leaders of the country. And he has prevented or tightly controlled and arrested political protesters, including on International Women’s Day[.] Publicly, he denounced LGBTQ rights during his election campaign.
Erdoğan managed to scrape by against an opponent who was, if anything, more pro-imperialist than him. Leftist and Kurdish parties were not represented in the runoff at all and were repressed during the election. Neither candidate offered any meaningful change for the Kurdish population, a nationally oppressed minority, and there are reports that it was more difficult to vote in Kurdish areas.
It is clear that the struggle in Türkiye isn’t over.