Page 3 - bne_newspaper_June_22_2018

Top Stories
June 22, 2018 www.intellinews.com I Page 3
an environment dominated by the big man.
Demirtas managed the seemingly impossible feat of turning his handicap — he has been in prison awaiting trial on charges he denies for a year- and-a-half — into an asset.
The Kurdish party’s candidate answered voter questions by post, used his weekly 10-minute phone call to address supporters at a rally and forced state television to set up a studio in an adjacent cell to let him film the 10-minute candi- date’s broadcast to which he is entitled by law.
A lot of early expectation centred on Aksener, who declared her candidacy months before this elec- tion was even called. She forcefully pushed her conservative credentials, insisting only she could defeat Erdogan in a second round of voting.
But the president’s strategy was to ignore her com- pletely and it worked. If there is a second round, it will be between Erdogan and Ince, the main oppo- sition Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate.
For many on Turkey’s centre-left, Ince is precisely the candidate they have waited 16 years for: char-
ismatic and confident enough to challenge the president, but with unimpeachable social demo- cratic credentials.
The CHP candidate has certainly drawn vast crowds to his rallies — even in the Kurdish-majority city of Diyarbakir, once a barren desert for his party.
Ince’s overarching campaign strategy was to make this election a personality contest between himself and the president. It is a risky approach: personality politics are Erdogan’s forte and have helped him win Turkey’s 11 previous national elec- tions, but it is clear the president’s confidence has been rattled during this campaign.
The optics are encouraging for Ince, but there is simply no way of knowing if he has done enough to persuade Turkey’s social conservative voters to pool their lot in with him.
Sunday will begin to settle that question, but it will not be the end of the story.
Michael Daventry is a journalist who runs the Turk- ish political analysis website JamesInTurkey.com