Strong Rival, Devastating Quake, Local Issues: Here’s Why Turkey’s Erdogan Facing Tough Election Race

Turkey is heading for crucial election results on Sunday amid a multitude of factors including the recent devastating earthquake, domestic factors, disinformation and Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s two-decade legacy playing a key role.

Polls show Erdogan is facing the toughest re-election race of his career. A six-party opposition alliance united behind the candidacy of Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the social democratic Republican People’s Party, is promising to undo democratic backsliding, repatriate Syrian refugees and promoting rights of Turkish women.

Here is all you need to know about the Turkish elections:

1. The May 14 election is expected to be a tight race between Erdogan and his main challenger Kemal Kilicdaroglu. The latest opinion polls show that the the opposition candidate Kilicdaroglu is marginally ahead.
2. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has served Turkey as prime minister and then president since 2003, is facing the toughest election bid of his career. The opposition has campaigned on domestic issues such as rampant inflation, Erdogan’s increasingly autocratic leaderships and civil rights.
3. Opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is running neck-and-neck with Erdogan, has portrayed his six-party alliance, which includes liberals, nationalists and religious conservatives, as a force for democratic change.
4. Turkey is grappling with a difficult recovery from February’s earthquake, which destroyed or damaged more than 300,000 buildings and left 658,000 people jobless.
5. Erdogan’s government has been accused of setting the stage for the devastation with lax building code enforcement. Some people left homeless or struggling to earn money also found the government’s earthquake response to be slow.
6. Erdogan has centered his reelection campaign on rebuilding the quake zone. He has pledged to construct 319,000 homes within the year and tried to convince voters that only he can guide Turkey through a successful recovery.
7. Refugees, especially from Syria, were once greeted with open arms in Turkey, but anti-migration sentiment is on the rise amid the economic downturn. The Kilicdaroglu-led opposition alliance and other opposition parties have vowed to repatriate Syrians within two years.
8. The opposition alliance has signaled it would pursue a more Western-oriented foreign policy and seek to rebuild ties with the United States, the European Union and NATO allies.
9. Kilicdaroglu, representing the traditionally secular CHP party of Turkey’s founder Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, has worked hard to gain the trust of religiously conservative women who wear the headscarf. He has pledged to make the right to stay veiled in public guaranteed by law, to show he has no intention of reversing religious freedoms introduced by Erdogan.
10. Erdogan, Turkey’s most important and polarising leader in generations, has ruled Turkey since 2003, first as prime minister and as president since 2014. He has been campaigning hard in recent weeks, attending several events across the country.