Putin's Pensioner Problem: United Russia and the Retirement Age

Russian President Vladimir Putin's normally rock-solid approval rating has experienced a sudden drop in recent months.

While it is still high enough to be envied by many political leaders in Western Europe and North America, it is noticeably lower than it used to be. In April 2018, Putin's approval rating stood in a familiar position - 82%. He had just won his fifth Presidential election with 77% of the vote, leaving the second-place candidate, Communist Party member Pavel Grudinin in the dust with 11.77%, and the spectacle of the World Cup was fast approaching. The world was coming to Russia to enjoy one of the world's biggest sporting events outside the Olympics, which had come four years previously.

The World Cup was, by most measurements, a massive success for the Kremlin. There were no incidents of fan violence. Fans from abroad who visited Russia raved about their time spent in the country. The soccer was exciting and featured unexpected results and riveting play. Most of all, the home team considerably over-performed expectations by convincingly winning their group and upsetting a massively favored Spanish squad in the Round of 16. Even in the game where Russia was eliminated against Croatia, the Russian team showed tenacity and fight, holding the Croatians at bay to send the game to extra time and scoring a last-minute goal to tie the game at 2 and send the game to penalty kicks. As a fan, it was sad to see the run end but it's hard to deny the pride felt by the team's run.

In July 2018, Levada Center published a new poll, showing Putin's approval rating down to 67%, a drop of  15% in 3 months. The Russian Public Opinion Research Center put it even lower, at 63%.

The main reason for this drop is simple. Putin and his United Russia party want to raise the retirement age. In Russia, men retire at 60 and women at 55. Under United Russia's plan, the retirement age for men would rise to 65 by 2028, whereas for women it would rise from 55 to 63 by 2034.  The proposal was passed in hopes that it would jump-start the sluggish Russian economy. While no longer in the considerable recession it was in between 2014 and 2017, the Russian economy's recovery has been extremely modest and shaky. The rouble is losing value again, now sitting around 67 per US Dollar after stabilizing around 58 earlier this year because of the spat between the United States and Turkey over the slumping Lira.

At first glance, this retirement age hike doesn't seem like a particularly radical or earth-shattering proposal. A substantial amount of countries have their retirement age around the 65/63 range, and moving the age up 5 and 8 years respectively over periods of ten and sixteen years is considerably gradual. Therefore, from the outside looking in, it may seem a bit unusual that this of all things is receiving relatively fierce opposition. But the proposal is still very unpopular for a few different reasons.

The retirement age as it stands now (60 for men, 55 for women) has been in place since the early 1950s and was signed into law by none other than Iosif Stalin. The fact that the retirement age has not changed in over sixty years, even through the collapse of the Soviet Union and the reformation of Russia under Putin means that this new idea represents a break from a perceived social contract between the Russian people and the Russian government. The Moscow Times reported that Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party, lamented when the bill was introduced that "While we were marveling at the goals scored during the World Cup, the Medvedev government decided to score a goal against every one of us...your children and grandchildren won't forgive you for this." Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the ultranationalist and often foul-mouthed LDPR leader, also pledged that his party would vote against the proposal. It is rare to see the Communists and LDPR oppose United Russia in the Duma, but they did in this instance. The Communists have proposed putting the issue to national referendum, which is unlikely to occur. 

There's also the issue of life expectancy in Russia. Russian men are expected to live to around 66, women around 77. This reality has struck fear into Russians, particularly men, that they would not even live to see their pension benefits. While it's true that the life expectancy for Russian men has steadily rebounded from its previous lows in the 1990s and early 2000s, it is still relatively low and mostly due to the high tobacco and alcohol consumption among Russian men especially. Vodka and cigarettes are not as popular as they once were in Russia but they are still consumed in high numbers. 

Another reason for the unpopularity of these reforms is the extraordinarily poor timing of their proposal. The bill to raise the retirement age was introduced during the World Cup, and the perception's unpopularity was amplified considerably by that timing. By proposing these reforms during the World Cup, it is easy for opponents to claim that the government has monstrously skewed its priorities by dumping billions of roubles into a soccer tournament run by the cartoonishly corrupt FIFA but getting stingy with elderly Russians who want to retire. It is also being interpreted as dishonest to propose legislation which is decidedly unpopular during a time when many are distracted by a soccer tournament their country is hosting. 

This is not the first time the Kremlin has tried to reform the social safety net to considerable criticism. In 2005, Putin's government decided to overhaul various benefits for its pensioner population by replacing benefits such as free public transportation and subsidies for telephones, housing and medicine with scheduled cash payments. The new program was poorly rolled out with many never receiving their new cash payments. Those who did receive their payments complained that the cost was insufficient and didn't cover their previous benefits. The program was seen as stingy when the Russian economy was soaring high and had a massive budget surplus. In a rare occurrence, the Kremlin decided to back-track and reinstate the old system. 

United Russia's new proposal has passed its first of three readings through the State Duma, but it is not law yet. The Medvedev government has the opportunity to backtrack and work out the kinks of the bill to make it less unpopular before it becomes law or scrap it altogether if they fear its current implementation will weaken their grip on power. If they insist on pushing it through, however, they may completely lose the surge in popularity they received after the annexation of Crimea. Not only that, the proposed change is gradual and even if the Kremlin is right that it will benefit the economy, effects are probably not going to be particularly noticeable. 

The Communists' hopes for a referendum are unlikely, but if it did happen, it could further cement a policy loss for United Russia if the people convincingly reject the change at the ballot box. If the government tries to manipulate the result to their liking, it could doubly backfire.    

It would be silly to expect a Euromaidan-esque Revolution to come of this policy change (if it happens at all), but Putin has been in power for 18 years and none of his close confidants like Prime Minister Medvedev or Defense Minister Sergei Shoygu or Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov command the same level of trust or confidence as Putin himself among the Russian people. United Russia has largely stayed popular in Russia because of its loose policy commitments and big-tent attitude, instead opting to pursue generally popular ideas as they come up rather than sticking to a ideological commitment. It's worked well for them, which makes this proposal a considerable break from that path. And in a twist of irony, the proposal is not at all radical from the outside looking in.

United Russia is in a bit of a pickle here, and their best option may be to backtrack like in 2005. If they push through the current bill and the economic benefits don't come, the unpopularity will linger. If they double down in an attempt to speed up the claim of economic benefits (for instance, moving retirement ages directly to 65 and 63 on January 1, 2019) they risk an even more unpopular proposal and a fired up opposition. If the referendum happens, a defeat at the ballot box is very much in play, and United Russia hasn't suffered many of those. 

Another Erdoğan Victory: Why?

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has been elected. Again. 

First sweeping to power in 2002 as Prime Minister, Turkey has been under Erdoğan’s rule for 16 years. He and his Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, have won every general election with at least a plurality since 2002. They have also presided over two nationwide referenda in 2010 and 2017 respectively, in which their desired policy change has come into effect both times.

Under Erdoğan and the AKP, Turkish democracy is alive, but fragile and sickly. Staggering numbers of journalists sit in Turkish prisons. The press, especially television news, is mostly dominated by pro-AKP talking heads. Two of Turkey’s leading newspapers which regularly criticize the government, Hürriyet (Liberty) and Cumhuriyet (The Republic) have been put under extreme pressure by the government. Though not implemented by Erdoğan, the 10% threshold for political parties to get representation in the Turkish Grand National Assembly has proved restrictive, especially for the Kurdish left-wing People’s Democratic Party (HDP), which lacks any sort of support outside the majority Kurdish regions in the southeast part of the country.

President Erdoğan is often compared to Russian President Vladimir Putin in the sense that he still attempts to pursue some facade of democracy but has increasingly pursued an authoritarian rule. Like Putin in Russia, Erdoğan has a loyal following in Turkey, though his is not as large as Putin’s. The two men came to power at similar times, during internal crisis and widespread uncertainty, and both have gained followings for their insistence that their respective administrations represent stability and prosperity.

Western media outlets, however, cautiously predicted that while Erdoğan’s AKP would win the June 24 election, it would do so with only a plurality resulting in a hung parliament, and that while Erdoğan would win the most votes for the Presidential election, he would fall short of 50% and would need to win a runoff against a second-place contender. This was the year Erdoğan’s power would start to wane, it was claimed, and he may even lose the runoff. The economy was sputtering and the Lira was steadily losing value, Erdoğan’s claims of stability were weakening, it was said.

It looked like the opposition had learned some lessons as well. The Kemalist, social democratic Republican People’s Party (CHP) had nominated a charismatic man of the people for the presidency in Muharrem İnce over the bureaucratic Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, and he was commanding enormous rallies in Izmir, Istanbul, and Ankara. Meral Akşener, the center-right nationalist “she-wolf” of the newly established İYİ (Good) Party was going to cut into Erdoğan’s base and inspire MHP voters angry at Erdoğan to ditch their crimson three-crescent banners for the blue and gold sun flag of the İYİ Party. 

This was not to be. 

While the AKP did not win an outright majority in the Parliament, its partner in the People’s Alliance, the right-wing populist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), saw a mostly-unexpected surge in the polls. Expected to gain only around 4-6% of parliamentary votes, the MHP entered Parliament with a much stronger 11.1%, ensuring the AKP-MHP alliance would retain its majority in parliament. 

İnce won a respectable 30.6% of votes, but couldn’t bring Erdoğan below 50% and the CHP's parliamentary vote declined from 25% in November 2015 to 22.6% in June 2018. 

Meral Akşener, expected to get between 9-15% in the Presidential Election, slumped to 7.3%, and her İYİ Party only scraped 9.9% of votes. Together, Akşener and İnce barely managed to match the performance of the generally unpopular joint CHP/MHP candidate in 2014, Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, who lost to Erdoğan 51.7% to 38.4%. 

Selahattin Demirtas, jailed presidential candidate for the Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), managed 8.4% of the vote while the HDP crossed the 10% threshold with 11.7% of the vote. 

Why did this happen? Why did the predictions of both the Western media and many of Turkey’s own polling agencies turn out wrong? 

The MHP Strikes Back

Perhaps the most surprising performance of the election was that of the aforementioned far-right Nationalist Movement Party. In 2015, the MHP, while not the loudest voice of opposition, was generally against the ambitions of President Erdoğan. It refused to become part of a possible coalition government with the AKP after the June 2015 election, ensuring a second round of elections in November. Its position in Parliament was weakened in the November 2015 elections. 

Not long after the November 2015 election, the MHP shifted from opposing Erdoğan to supporting him. In 2017, they backed the constitutional referendum that set in motion Turkey's transition from parliamentary democracy to presidential democracy, a referendum many saw as a thinly veiled power-grab by Erdoğan. This was viewed as a very risky move on party leader Devlet Bahçeli's part. Many MHP voters were vocally opposed to this referendum and the party's geographic stronghold in the south of Turkey voted predominantly against it. Bahçeli's shift to support Erdoğan also inspired Meral Akşener, a former member of the MHP, to try to usurp power from him. Akşener lost and left the party, founding the more centrist, civic nationalist İYİ Party in response. 

How the MHP managed to rebound in Sunday's election is still a bit unclear, but its resurgence and continued support for Erdoğan and the AKP turned out to be a successful gamble and the party now holds the parliamentary majority for the People's Alliance. 

İYİ Underwhelms

Meral Akşener's İYİ Party appeared on the scene in October 2017. Akşener, a charismatic and seasoned figure in Turkish politics, quickly attracted substantial attention. Early polling for the Presidential Election had Akşener winning second place and heading to a razor-thin runoff against Erdoğan as well as nearly 20% of the votes in the Parliamentary election. 

The İYİ Party was a party that looked like it would become a force to be reckoned with in its infancy. It was led by a popular new candidate. It railed against the establishment. Its center-right platform seemed to be perfect to combat the right-wing AKP and far-right MHP voters who opposed Erdoğan. 

Its momentum did not last, however, and the main reason for that may be its main ally, the CHP. 

In May 2018, the CHP put forth its presidential candidate, the popular and eloquent ex-physics teacher Muharrem İnce. Akşener's presidential bid had been announced months earlier than İnce's, but İnce quickly surpassed her in the polls. The two candidates were not adversaries in the way they would be with Erdoğan. Akşener welcomed İnce when he announced his running for president and expressed her preference for a wealth of candidates. Both İnce and Akşener pledged to support the other if the presidential election went to runoff. Nevertheless, İnce's campaign may have stopped Akşener's momentum cold. 

Despite that seemingly sudden momentum shift, İYİ is still in its early stages. Akşener isn't president, but she's still the leader of the party and may be able to grow its support in the coming years. The only question is whether she'll end up pulling support away from CHP voters or from the AKP/MHP coalition. 

Anti-Erdoğan Islamism Falls Flat

In Turkey, a political party must win 10% of the vote if it hopes to win seats in the Parliament. This rule was implemented in the 1980s and is often criticized by the opposition as excessive and exclusionary. In order to circumvent this obstacle, both pro- and anti- Erdoğan camps mobilized under the banners of alliances. The pro-Erdoğan People's Alliance consists of the AKP, MHP, and much smaller Great Unity Party, known by its Turkish initials BBP, while the opposition National Alliance is made up of CHP, İYİ, Saadet, and Democrat parties.

If you're familiar with Turkish politics, one of these parties should stick out like a sore thumb, and that's the Saadet (Felicity) Party. While the CHP, İYİ and Democrat parties are all secular Kemalist parties (the CHP is center-left, İYİ and DP are center-right), Saadet is a far-right Islamist political party. 

Why would a far-right Islamist party ally with secular parties, you ask? A shared distaste for President Erdoğan. Saadet is vehemently anti-Erdoğan, but it is far too small of a party to win seats with the 10% threshold, so it joined the National Alliance in hopes of accomplishing both parliamentary representation and the ability to chip away at Erdoğan's Islamist base. Temel Karamollaoğlu, Saadet's presidential candidate, never polled particularly high, but he did at times reach 4-5%. Had Saadet reached that 4-5%, Erdoğan would not have won the election outright and Turkey would have been headed to a runoff election. 

However, Saadet underperformed already-small expectations. Temel Karamollaoğlu only won 0.89% of the vote and the party received a paltry 1.35% of the vote for Parliament, which translates to 0 MPs. 

Turkey's next election will be at the latest, in 2023. Erdoğan is stronger than ever, but his grip on power isn't quite absolute yet. The Turkish economy is starting to sputter and slow down. The lira is losing its value - in 2013, $1 bought you 2 lira, today it buys you 4.7 lira. A major reason for Erdoğan's popularity has been the strength of the Turkish economy under his administration, but the cracks are starting to show, and so far he's been remarkably stubborn in tackling the emerging issues.

Erdoğan will have to play it safe with MHP leader Devlet Bahçeli in order to keep his majority in parliament. One day before the election, the Hurriyet Daily News reported that Bahçeli warned of a possible collapse of the alliance. His criticism was vague, but could result in early elections if it's not heeded.

Once More into the Breach: Turkey goes back to the Polls

For the fifth time in four years, the Republic of Turkey is going to the polls for a pivotal election.

In August 2014, Turkey went to the polls to directly elect their president. In previous years, a parliamentary vote elected the Turkish President, a mostly ceremonial position which was far less powerful than that of the Prime Minister's office. That rule was changed, however, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was popularly elected with 51.7% of the vote, decisively beating out cross-party candidate Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu's 38.4% and Kurdish representative Selahattin Demirtaş' 9.7%.

Two elections were held in 2015. The first, in June, pushed Erdoğan's right-wing Islamist Justice and Development Party, known by its Turkish initials AKP, down to 40.87% of the vote, enough for a plurality but short of a majority in the Grand National Assembly. The center-left Kemalist Republican People's Party (CHP) placed second with 25.98% of the vote, while the smaller far-right Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and left-wing Kurdish-interest People's Democratic Party (HDP) picked up 16.29% and 13.12% of the vote.

Coalition negotiations were vigorous but ultimately fruitless, highlighting the polarization between Turkey's four major parties. The AKP refused to govern in a minority government. Negotiations for a unity government between the AKP and CHP broke down. The HDP and MHP both refused to enter into coalition with the AKP. A CHP-MHP minority coalition with "outside support" from the HDP was rejected by the MHP.

A second election was called for November, and the results were a return to the status quo. Despite the predictions pointing towards little change in the result from June and another hung parliament, the AKP rebounded from its weak showing in June as it managed to push some MHP and HDP voters back into its camp while the CHP very, very slightly improved its vote total.

In 2017, Turkey voted on a national referendum that aimed to change the parliamentary democracy system to a presidential system similar to that of the United States, France and Brazil. It was widely considered among President Erdoğan's critics to be a consolidation of power and another move towards authoritarianism in the already-fragile Turkish democracy. The referendum very narrowly passed 51.4% to 48.6% and seemed to unite many of the anti-Erdoğan factions: secular social democrats, far-right nationalists, and Kurds. Despite the MHP's support for the changes proposed in the referendum, many MHP voters spurned their party's official campaign and voted against the referendum.

Turkey's next election was originally scheduled for November 3rd, 2019. On April 18th, however, President Erdoğan, echoing his recently-turned allies in the MHP headed by Devlet Bahçeli, called for an earlier election. Yet Erdoğan took it one step further than Bahçeli and decided to move the elections up from November 2019 to June of 2018, two months earlier than Bahçeli's proposal for August 2018. 

The direct election of the Turkish President in these upcoming elections has brought a new face and a new party into the forefront. Meral Akşener, a former member of Parliament from the MHP, founded the Good (İyi) Party in October 2017. The İyi Party in practice seems to be a more moderate nationalist party, a center-right counterpart to the center-left Republican People's Party, and an alternative for disillusioned MHP members who dislike their party's alliance with the AKP. Indeed, soon after its creation, four MHP MPs and a CHP MP defected from their parties and became members of the Good Party. 

Meral Akşener is a fascinating, seasoned and charismatic figure. She is a practicing Muslim, but does not wear a headscarf and her party praises the secular governmental framework championed by Turkey's venerated founding father, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. According to The Economist, she frequently is heard "peppering her speeches with wisecracks and jokes." In direct presidential polls, she trails Erdoğan, but not by much. Her campaign is also somewhat of a crusade against the bloated, corrupt and ineffective establishment in Turkey which has frustrated many who are sick of Erdoğan, in power since 2002. While Akşener's political career is not young, she has experienced a political revival with her vigorous campaigning against the constitutional referendum in 2017 and her break from the MHP. 

Now that the President of Turkey is a position set to take on more power than it had before, the campaign has become one of considerable interest. Erdoğan has not formally declared his candidacy, but likely will do so soon under the People's Alliance, a coalition between the AKP and MHP. In a way, this may be a admittance of weakness as the MHP's alliance with AKP and the rise of Meral Akşener has split MHP voters. Parliamentary representation for political parties in Turkey relies on surpassing a threshold of 10%, which the MHP would have trouble attaining without allying with Erdoğan. Members of Parliament are also not going to be able to run for both a seat in the Grand National Assembly and the Presidency.

Meral Akşener herself looked like she may have had to run as an independent due to a technicality regarding the Iyi Party's being too young to stand in the Parliamentary election, but in a show of solidarity, fifteen MPs from the CHP changed over to the Iyi Party, securing her ability to run as a member of her new party and her party's ability to elect representatives. The center-left CHP has two candidates who have declared interest so far: Didem Engin and Öztürk Yılmaz. The party's leader, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, previously said he would not run for president, but that may change as the campaign jump-starts over the next month. Polls indicate that Erdoğan will likely win the first round, but unlike in 2014, he will probably have to head to a second-round runoff, most likely against Akşener.

Akşener has one difficult problem standing in her way, however: the Kurds. As a former member of the MHP, Turkey's Kurdish population is unlikely to rally to her cause, and some of the more conservative Muslim Kurds may support Erdoğan over her. Aksener was a supporter of the Turkish military operation in Afrin in northern Syria, a Kurdish enclave which offered little resistance. While Aksener is critical of Erdoğan, she is still nationalistic and may continue Turkey's involvement in Syria against the enclave that the Kurds in Syria have carved out for themselves. While the Syrian Democratic Forces are not exactly the same as the terrorist organization known as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the two organizations do share an ideology and former PKK fighters likely work in the SDF's armed ranks. The main difference is that the SDF is a militant group that has mostly fought against Islamic State, whereas the PKK has been fighting a sort of guerrilla war against Ankara. Whatever your views on the conflict between Turkey and the PKK are, it is understandable why the Turkish government does not support this group.

While Akşener has campaigned in the southeastern part of Turkey, her being able to rally the Kurds to her cause is unlikely, and she may have to look elsewhere to secure victory in the Presidential election. The Iyi Party is a center-right party in practice, the AKP is right-wing, and the MHP is far-right. As stated previously, while Akşener believes in the principle of secular government, she is a practicing Muslim and sometimes described as devout. This may enable her to win over moderate AKP voters in Turkey's urban centers, people who are Muslim and who have conservative values but may not necessarily want religion in the government. In the national referendum last year regarding the transformation from parliamentary to presidential democracy, densely populated areas surrounding Istanbul and Ankara voted down Erdoğan's "Yes" campaign...but just barely. The AKP is still influential and powerful in these cities, though it is not dominant the way it is in the heartlands such as Konya. If the Iyi Party presents itself as an alternative in these areas and pushes the election to a runoff, this is where Aksener could make the pivotal difference, converting just enough votes from AKP to Iyi may push her ever so slightly over the top. 

The latest polls have Erdoğan in a convincing lead for the first round of the Presidential Election, but not enough to avoid a runoff. Akşener looks like the primary challenger who will be going up against him in the second round. She trails him narrowly in the second round, 52.2%-47.8%. As the campaign develops and the elections draw closer, it will become more evident as to whether Akşener can tap into moderate AKP voters having doubts about Erdoğan. She seems to be pulling most of her votes from CHP and MHP voters at the moment, but her charisma, popularity and populist sentiment may be just enough for her to produce a monumental upset.   

As of May 7th, 2018, Turkey's election showdown has become more defined.

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will appear as a member not of the AKP, but of the Cumhur İttifakı (People's Alliance), a coalition of the AKP and MHP.

His opponents are numerous. On May 4th, the CHP nominated Muharrem İnce as their presidential candidate. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the leader of the CHP, stuck to his claims that he would not run for president, Selahattin Demirtaş was nominated from behind bars to be the HDP's candidate, Meral Akşener will carry the banner of the İyi Party, and Temel Karamollaoğlu will run with the Saadet (Felicity) Party, an Islamist anti-Erdoğan party. A handful of minor party and independent candidates will also run. Doğu Perinçek has expressed his interest in running with the left-wing nationalist Patriotic Party, Vecdet Öz with the center-right Justice Party, ex-MHP member Sinan Oğan, ex-AKP member and economist Tuna Bekleviç.

Despite the wealth of candidates running in the Presidential Election, only about three of these stand a chance at winning the Presidency: Erdoğan, İnce, and Akşener. 

İnce and Akşener, though rivals in the Presidential Election, have shown an ability to cooperate due to their shared anti-Erdoğan stance. For the parliamentary election, CHP and İyi have teamed up with the far-right Saadet (Felicity) Party and the center-right Democrat Party. Together these four parties (CHP, IYI, DP and SP) make up the Nation Alliance, a direct rival to the AKP-MHP coalition. A poll conducted on the 1st of May puts the People's Alliance at 270 parliamentary seats, the Nation Alliance at 230, and the Kurdish HDP at 100, resulting in a hung parliament. This alliance building would bypass the 10% election threshold, 

While İnce and Akşener seem to understand that they will need each others' support to defeat Erdoğan, their parties do differ on one important issue: the Kurds and the HDP. During coalition negotiations, the CHP expressed interest in bringing the HDP into the anti-Erdoğan coalition, but Akşener and the İyi Party did not support this. İnce has expressed interest in visiting Selahattin Demirtaş in prison as well as claiming that “The HDP are also children of this nation". 

Erdoğan is almost guaranteed to win the first round of the Presidential Election as he heads the most politically united group in Turkey, but he is unlikely to win with over 50% of the vote, which will force him to a runoff. He will almost certainly face either İnce or Akşener in that runoff. İnce and Akşener both narrowly trail Erdoğan in runoff polling, and it looks like they will attempt to use different strategies in their hopes of unseating the current President. It seems as though İnce will try to rally the Kurds to his ticket in a second round by appealing to their frustration with Demirtaş still in prison, whereas Akşener will try to chip away at Erdoğan's base by appealing to her faith and her center-right political platform. 

Both strategies are ambitious in Turkey's polarized political climate. No first-round presidential polls have been conducted since İnce was chosen as the CHP's candidate, so it remains unclear as to whether he or Akşener will command more support in the first round of voting. The most recent poll had Akşener edging out second place with 24% of the vote whereas a generic CHP candidate would receive about 20%, but İnce is a popular and charismatic candidate just like Akşener.