The man who started out advocating his country's membership in the EU is taking Turkey in a different and unpredictable direction.Įrdogan is the Kremlin's choice, the devil Putin has come to know and find useful even if their relations are entirely transactional.
What's not to like in the chancelleries of Europe and Washington?Ĭontrast that with Erdogan. With his position apparently strengthening ahead of round two in these elections, there will be almost certainly disappointment in the West.Įrdogan's rival Kemal Kilicdaroglu is not well known outside Turkey but to Western policy makers he had offered a tonic to the friction and frustrations generated by Recep Tayyip Erdogan.Īn accountant and bureaucrat with a reputation as a clean politician and secularist who wants to restore Turkish western relations and trust with NATO allies. His defeat would have been welcomed as a sign of things to come, the humbling of one populist strongman with others perhaps to follow. A hard truth to swallow for his NATO allies who will have been hoping, albeitly privately, for change.Įrdogan's increasingly authoritarian rule, economic eccentricity and waywardness within NATO have all caused deepening alarm among allies. President Erdogan will have been Vladimir Putin's favourite in this election. Here our international affairs editor Dominic Waghorn explains why.
While the result could change Turkey's future, it could also have a huge impact on the war in Ukraine. Turkey's current president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has been in power for two decades, and is going up against the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu. It might sound irrelevant to this blog, but over in Turkey people are heading to the polls to pick their president, and their choice is being closely watched around the world.
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