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joked on Twitter on April 1 that Vladimir Putin had not yet called Erdogan. Later on in the day, he shared a news link suggesting the Russian president had indeed placed a call.
Rimmer in an April 1 note to investors said that he sees Erdogan’s so-called victory as Pyrrhic. “The Turkish president's grip on the levers of power is starting to loosen as one by one... all of Turkey's main population centres reject [E]rdonomics and his inchoate dictatorship. This election, for municipalities and mayoralties, was a referendum on the AKP and its totem and despite the dirty tricks and media manipulation, this is a slap around the chops.
“Will anything change?... It's EM so it's axiomatic. Nothing ever changes—except for the worse. [Erdogan] still has control over most levers of power in Turkey. The YSK (Supreme Election Council) could easily decide to overturn the very close result in Istanbul where Imamoglu ('son of the priest') seems to have [won]. Don't think [Erdogan] won't be considering such a move. (Any such attempt to contest votes would prompt a real crisis, I opine.).”
The AKP and MHP still control parliament between them, Rimmer noted, adding: “With no elections [scheduled] for four years, [Erdogan] is under no real pressure yet but having opponents in all town halls means he won't be able to keep the gravy train running for his acolytes. As with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin, Erdogan's deal with the people who keep him in power is that he enables them to continue economic predation and corruption and if that contract is broken then his support will evanesce. This all takes time, however, so while this may be the beginning of the end, we may have to wait for years, and rather like the Brezhnev Stagnation, you might waste half a lifetime waiting for 'zastoi' to end.”
2.3 Erdogan loses an election and a new cycle of controlled chaos breaks out. No-one should be surprised
Kilicdaroglu takes a smack to the gob for freedom.
On June 7, 2015, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development
15 TURKEY Country Report May 2019 www.intellinews.com