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SİVAS, Turkey — When asked about the importance of Sunday’s election in Turkey, Hikmet Teker did not mince his words.
“He has to go,” the 58-year-old said, standing in his empty barbershop, with a picture of Mecca above the mirror and the air heavy with the cloying scent of cologne.
It’s perfectly clear who “he” is, but these are not words you expect to hear too often in the city of Sivas. Nestled in the rugged Anatolian highlands, a 700-kilometer flight east of Istanbul, Sivas is traditionally a bastion of conservative religious support for President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his ruling AK party.
But even here cracks are emerging, and they help explain why Erdoğan is now in the battle of his political life. In the shops and cafés only a stone’s throw from the twin 13th-century minarets that dominate the heart of the city, a striking number of people insist that, after two decades at the helm, the strongman has outstayed his welcome.
Under tight security — with riflemen on the red-tiled rooftops of the main square and special forces troops peering from high windows with binoculars to look for potential attackers in the crowd — opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu made a flying visit to Sivas on Thursday, venturing into what would generally have been seen as the lion’s den.
By the standards of Turkey’s massive people-power election rallies, it was a modest affair, with a few thousand flag-waving supporters chanting “You are our hope.” But it’s significant that Kılıçdaroğlu reckoned there were important votes to win in central Anatolia in the final throes of a too-close-to-call election. Banners in the crowd hailed him as “Demokrat Dedem” — my democratic grandpa — and read “My Kemal would not steal.”
In his address to the crowd, Kılıçdaroğlu played hard upon the economic fears biting into the heart of poor, agricultural communities around Sivas, promising that more teachers and farm technologists would be sent to struggling rural towns and villages. The broader province of Sivas has a population of about 650,000 people.
Kılıçdaroğlu argued Sivas was hemorrhaging, with its people either heading abroad or moving to the big cities in western Turkey.
“There are more people from Sivas in Istanbul than living here in Sivas. They are emigrating constantly. It’s bleeding out. The government in power is taking them for granted,” Kılıçdaroğlu said in an exclusive interview with POLITICO on the sidelines of his rally in Sivas.
“The government thinks whatever they do, these people will vote for them. But in a democracy, Sivas should give them a lesson and ask: Why did not you deliver, why are we left behind?”
Inflation inferno
While many people in Sivas remain die-hard AK supporters, the country’s out-of-control inflation and the fear of growing autocracy and political persecution are winning converts to Kılıçdaroğlu’s cause. Other voters are switching their allegiance to Kılıçdaroğlu as they think his opposition coalition is more likely to repatriate Turkey’s huge Syrian refugee population, which they accuse of forcing down wages.
The economy is undoubtedly the No. 1 factor behind the switch. Teker the barber noted with dismay that people are now simply shaving at home rather than entrusting themselves to a few deft flicks of his cut-throat razor. But his brother Bayram, standing with crossed arms by the window, stressed growing fears about the government’s repressive power. “There’s a 90 percent chance the opposition will win, as long as the government doesn’t steal it — and there’s an 80 percent chance they’ll steal it,” he said.
An AK party-supporting cook in a black apron from the restaurant next door, who had been eavesdropping, decided he did not care for the direction of the conversation and headed back to his kitchen.
In a butcher’s shop nearby, Taci Samyeli’s haunches of unsold mutton remained tightly wrapped in clingfilm, and he complained the price of a prime cut had soared to 260 lira from 50 lira in the latest spurt of inflation. He scoffed at the idea that people could shift to vegetables, which are also prohibitively expensive, and said shoppers were dramatically cutting back on meat to eat more pasta, potatoes and soups. He will also be voting against the government on Sunday.
In another sign of the astronomical explosion of costs, 48-year-old shoe seller Sebahattin explained his rent had just leapt fourfold and that his monthly income of 8,500 lira (€398) was outweighed by his expenses of 10,000 lira (€468). He also had deep concerns that the AK party, which he once supported, now threatened basic freedoms and that people feared speaking out.
When asked whether Kılıçdaroğlu’s opposition would do any better, both Sebahattin and Teker used the same resigned phrase: “Let’s try it.”
Erdoğan’s home turf
Still, no one in the barber’s, the butcher’s or the shoe shop really thought the AK party was in serious trouble in Sivas. The key factor for Kılıçdaroğlu in an election in which every vote will count, however, is how many of the all-important swing voters he can carry.
Just glancing down the city’s streets, the election still felt like a home game for the 69-year-old leader. Huge placards of the president were strung across the streets, and even fluttered from the balconies of apartments, while Kılıçdaroğlu’s posters were almost nowhere to be seen.
Lining the roads into the city center, billboards praised the AK party for opening a high-speed rail connection to Sivas and developing the Togg, a luxury electric vehicle built with domestic technology.
Yasemin, a 53-year-old pensioner, and Ebru, a 34-year-old housewife, conceded soaring prices were squeezing families, but they stressed they would both stick with Erdoğan “to the end” as salaries were also rising.
Several AK party supporters in Sivas were won over by Erdoğan’s argument that support for Kılıçdaroğlu from the pro-Kurdish HDP party represented a security threat. Law and order were buzzwords. Ebru said a vote for the opposition was going “to bring terrorists to power.”
Perched on a chair outside a teahouse, Mehmet Kaya Koçan, a flamboyant retiree in a chocolate-colored shirt, lime jacket and a stripy tie, lavished praise on the president.
“We have planes, ships, roads, oil and gas,” he said, buying into Erdoğan’s campaign speeches that cast the country as an increasingly self-sufficient industrial powerhouse.
Indeed, Koçan speculated that Turkey’s export muscle could even resolve the food inflation problem. “They keep talking about the price of onions and potatoes, so sell a plane and buy a ton of potatoes,” he quipped.
When asked the same question as Teker the barber — what was the most important issue in the election? — he didn’t hesitate for a moment:
“That Erdoğan wins.”
