ISPARTA, Turkey -- Turkish opposition parties have come together in a rare alliance to try to defeat President Recep Tayyip Erdogan after his abrupt decision to call elections more than a year ahead of schedule.
Erdogan, 64, remains the most popular politician in Turkey. The front-runner among the opposition candidates is Muharrem Ince, a physics teacher and five-time member of parliament for the Republican People's Party.
"I see a huge desire for change," Ince said in an interview last week on his campaign bus between rallies in southern Turkey. "Erdogan will be very sorry."
Analysts expect the race to be exceptionally close. If no candidate wins more than 50 percent of the votes, the election goes to a second round, something Erdogan hopes to avoid.
The opposition is, for the first time, organizing an operation to count the entire national vote independently, to counter any attempt at vote rigging.
If the opposition alliance holds and can force a second round, Ince could present a serious challenge to the president. The alliance candidates have pledged to unite behind whoever challenges Erdogan, Ince said.
Erdogan remains a skilled campaigner and a bruising opponent. He is running a campaign on nationalist themes, blaming terrorism and the West for Turkey's economic woes -- rising unemployment, inflation and a falling lira -- and vaunting his social and building programs.
For many, he is still a towering figure and the only convincing candidate for president.
But Ince is offering an uplifting antidote to Erdogan, parrying the president's comments with jokes and cheerfulness.
"The clouds of desperation are hanging over the country," he said. "I promise serenity, happiness, and I promise peace."
In all, four opposition parties have banded together, supporting each other's candidates. They have even offered a hand to the pro-Kurdish Democratic People's Party, whose leader, Selahattin Demirtas, is in jail on various charges, including terrorism and insulting the president.
In a bold gesture, Ince visited Demirtas in jail, risking accusations from Erdogan of collusion with terrorists, but reaching out to a critical part of the electorate. The Kurdish vote, roughly 10 percent of the electorate, could swing the overall vote against Erdogan.
Another opposition candidate, former Interior Minister Meral Aksener, who last year broke from the right-wing Nationalist Movement Party to form her own party, the Good Party, is adding to strains within Erdogan's alliance.
She has proved to be a dynamic force in the opposition -- as she was in the "no" campaign ahead of last year's referendum to create a more powerful presidential system. She has not only drawn away right-wing supporters from the ruling alliance but also has made a strong pitch for women and youth voters with her newly formed party.
Aksener was meeting with opposition allies last week to seal a cross-party agreement to revise the Constitution and return the country to a parliamentary system should they win.
The deal would reverse Erdogan's new, powerful presidential system that by law will come into being with these elections.
That such disparate parties could come together on constitutional changes is groundbreaking in Turkey, as is their outreach to the Kurds. But Erdogan's growing authoritarianism has proved to be a rallying point.
Since a failed coup in 2016, Erdogan has ruled the country under a state of emergency that has allowed him to dominate the media and all government institutions, including the Supreme Election Council.
Observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe criticized last year's vote, saying a "lack of equal opportunities, one-sided media coverage and limitations on fundamental freedoms created an unlevel playing field."
Opposition parties accused Erdogan of falsifying the result by allowing thousands of unstamped ballots to be added to the count.
Determined to prevent fraud, Aksener invited Burcu Akcaru, who used to run an election monitoring group, to join her as co-founder of the Good Party last year.
In the referendum last year, more than 5,000 ballot boxes had no observers and 20,000 boxes were included in the count without a result sheet, Akcaru said in an interview.
"We knew it," she said, "but no political leaders did anything."
This time, Ince has called on an army of volunteer lawyers to help challenge any fraud, and Aksener has vowed to camp outside the Supreme Election Council in case of irregularities. "You will have to remove me with a razor," she said.
A Section on 06/10/2018