ISTANBUL In a modest, slightly dilapidated apartment building near the center of Istanbul in Kasımpaşa, you can find the president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan former home.
From here, Erdoğan pushed for the leadership of Turkey and the thousand-room presidential palace in Ankara.
Since childhood, Erdoğan lived in poor Kasımpaşa. He only moved out in the 1990s after becoming the mayor of Istanbul.
The president’s critics see him as an autocratic leader who forces his opponents into exile or prison. In Kasımpaşa, the Turkish leader is like part of the family.
“The president is our big brother”
– I’m not talking about him as president. He is Tayyip big brother, a decent man. He is not at all harsh to people, says the pensioner Nuri Karaoğlu.
Karaoğlu remembers how Erdoğan used to buy sweets for the children of the neighborhood on Fridays.
A couple of people tell how Erdoğan has been interested in the residents of his old home corners when people have been sick or the family has been hit by the death of a close relative.
President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was born in 1954 in the poor district of Kasımpaşa in Istanbul.
Served as Prime Minister of Turkey in 2003–2014.
Became president in 2014.
Leads the Justice and Development party AKP with an Islamist background.
And of course Erdoğan’s politics pleases.
The owner of a small corner shop Semiha Karaoğlu Paçal is pleased with the dismantling of religious restrictions.
– Now women who wear Islamic headscarves can go to university and become government officials, such as police officers. This is very important for us, we live in an Islamic country.
In the 1990s, soldiers and politicians supporting the non-religious state banned headscarves in universities as part of an anti-religious crackdown. Now the restrictions have been removed.
Karaoğlu Paçal also thanks the president for Turkey’s development.
– Roads, bridges and airports have been built in the country. And natural gas was drawn here.
Inflation accelerated as a result of Erdoğan’s policies
However, there are enough problems in everyday life, one of the biggest of which is the drastic increase in the price of food.
Inflation has skyrocketed in recent years – now it has been reduced to below 50 percent, which is still the top in Europe.
The economy is indeed a significant election issue. According to economists, Erdoğan’s original idea of lowering interest rates to fight inflation has accelerated inflation.
The president’s supporters see it differently.
– Some parties – perhaps opposition people or businessmen – buy vegetables and dump them into the sea, for example, so that the prices would rise and Erdoğan would get into trouble, Nuri Karaoğlu explains.
He has read about it on the internet, but is not sure who is throwing food into the sea to hurt Erdoğan.
You can feel the tension on the street
It’s a long way from the sleepy and slightly seedy alleys of Kasımpaşa to the middle-class and prosperous Kadıköy district. This is an opposition support area.
Located on the Asian side of Istanbul, Kadıköy is, despite being stubborn, one of the most European areas of Istanbul. Here, religion does not visibly dominate everyday life. The city view could be from almost any southern European city.
In Kadıköy, you can sense the tensions quickly.
An entrepreneur in a street interview Ezra Ege harshly criticizes the president and his allies.
Suddenly, an elderly man starts shouting next to her and tells her to be quiet.
Ege, on the contrary, increases rounds.
– If we want to secure the rights of women and children and a good future, Erdoğan’s re-election must be prevented, says Ege.
Ege predicts big problems for Turkey’s economy when the reckless spending of money related to the election campaign and the artificial respiration of the economy ends.
On Kadıköy’s beach street, you don’t have to take many steps when you meet a supporter of the president.
– We love the president. Thanks to him, we can move freely. No one insults us because of our religious clothing – we can keep our scarves in peace, he says Songül Metin.
The woman with him exclaims that it would be a disaster if the opposition candidate won.
The confrontation is getting worse
Political researcher and columnist Sezin Öney confirms what can be seen on the streets – Turkey is deeply divided.
– In Turkey, the confrontation has only worsened with the elections, although efforts should be made to dissolve it, Sezin Öney says.
According to Öney, the division into two has its own geography.
In big cities, in the south and west, like Izmir and Istanbul, the majority vote for the opposition.
Erdoğan is at his strongest inland and on the Black Sea coast.
– Two Turkeys have been born. One is an inward-looking Turkey that revolves around Erdoğan. Another Turkey wants to open up to the outside world and the most important centers of the economy are also located there.
In Öney’s opinion, the people of Erdogan’s Justice and Development party could perhaps defuse the confrontation if they extended the hand of reconciliation.
So far, the hand of reconciliation has not been seen – on the contrary. Opposition presidential candidate Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has been labeled a supporter of terrorists.
The collision of political continental plates
Sezen Öney speaks in earthquake terms and says that Turkey has two continental plates that are rubbing against each other.
The tension is growing, and some kind of earthquake may be coming.
According to Öney, there is still a third continental plate, i.e. about four million Syrians in the country, whom opposition candidate Kılıçdaroğlu promises to return to Syria in a year.
Read more: “Everything has changed quickly” – The debate about the forced return of Syrians rages in Turkey, and it worries pregnant Ru’a Qassar
Kılıçdaroğlu’s election promise was already on the campaign trail before the first round, but now the issue has become one of the opposition candidate’s main themes.
With the economic crisis, the status of foreigners is an election topic and a political problem for Erdoğan.
Erdoğan’s victory is considered likely. There may be further escalation of tensions and difficult times for the president’s opponents.
Sezin Öney predicts that Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party will turn in a more conservative direction. At the same time, the opposition is angry and disappointed with the election result.
The state apparatus and most of the media have been harnessed to ensure that Erdoğan wins. This is likely to strengthen the discontent of the opposition.
– The opposition can start questioning the current system, and the opposition parties represent almost half of the nation after all.
– I’m not saying that there will be a revolution here, but there may be smaller crises and confrontations ahead. People are really alienating each other, Sezin Öney thinks.
He guesses that even more young people want to leave the country because of the bad atmosphere.
The president is expected to visit
There are no complaints about the young people fleeing the country outside Erdoğan’s old home in Kasımpaşa
Semiha Karaoğlu Paçali, who runs a shop, has one wish for the president after the elections have been successfully concluded.
– I hope he will visit us here, Karaoğlu Paçal says and smiles.
In Kasımpaşa, it is considered clear that the block’s own man will win in the second round of the elections on Sunday.
– He will get 65 percent of the votes, predicts Nuri Karaoğlu.
You can discuss the topic until Sunday at 11 p.m.