2023's most important election

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Turkey is now officially called "Türkiye" by the U.S. and other assorted countries but not by the Associated Press, whose official style guides the Star Tribune and many other news organizations.

"Türkiye is the best representation and expression of the Turkish people's culture, civilization and values," Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said when the rebranding effort began in 2021.

This Sunday, Turkey has an even more monumental opportunity to overhaul its image: defeating Erdogan in a national election.

It's "the most important election this year," according to the Economist. That's saying something, considering the magazine is known for understatement as much as understanding geopolitics. "If Turkish voters can sack a strongman, democrats everywhere should take heart," the editors assert.

"It is the most important election globally," concurred Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. Erdogan, Cagaptay said in an interview, was the progenitor of "native populist politics" in this century. He has never lost an election. If he's defeated, "it would constitute the bookend of authoritarian populism globally."

Erdogan "has consolidated a lot of power, eliminated checks and balances, erased institutional autonomy for the courts and government agencies such as the Foreign Ministry and central bank, and locked up opponents," Cagaptay said. "So if Erdogan wins at this stage, I think he will stay at Turkey's head as long as he is alive. Whereas if he loses, there's a real chance for Turkey to revert to democracy under a government led by a President Kilicdaroglu."

That would be Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the consensus candidate from the usually fractious opposition. A mild-mannered technocrat, Kilicdaroglu isn't the larger-than-life figure Erdogan has become in Turkey. But life itself has become smaller for most Turks, as economic mismanagement has led to hyperinflation that spiked to 86% last year while the lira lost 60% of its value vs. the dollar over two years — all a sharp departure from Erdogan's early tenure, which saw rapid growth turn Turkey into more of a middle-income country.

Erdogan's economic mismanagement cost livelihoods. However, his earthquake management and government corruption that allowed substandard construction may have cost lives.

The Turkish government's response to the "humanitarian disaster" from the February earthquakes was "feckless and shambolic," Cagaptay wrote in Foreign Affairs magazine.

Turks were moving from the "grief phase" to the "anger phase, where they were going to start discussing whether there was corruption linked to the government that resulted in casualties, and also whether relief came on time," Cagaptay said.

International efforts were timely, thanks in part to organizations like UNICEF, which was already in country and is still providing essential services to 3 million people, including 1.5 million children vulnerable in immediate and long-term ways, including the risk of falling into poverty or even child labor or child marriage.

"We tend to forget about such things once they fall out of the headlines, but three months in, it's still a crisis," said Michael Nyenhuis, president and CEO of UNICEF USA.

Nyenhuis, a Minnesota native (and former Minneapolis Star newspaper carrier), is now delivering for UNICEF. The apolitical organization works with any and all governments, including in war-torn Syria, which was also hit hard by the quake. However, UNICEF's heroic relief efforts have to eventually be led by the host country's government.

"We play this really important role as a bridge," Nyenhuis said during a recent brief stop back home. "But the long-term solutions really need to be handled by the government." The earthquake, estimated to have killed as many as 50,000 in Turkey alone, "is overwhelming as it would be for any country of that size to have that big of a disaster, which is why they need international support in those early stages."

Without commenting specifically on Turkey's election, Nyenhuis said that "I'll just generally say that elections in countries tend to divert attention from other critical needs in a country. And that's true here — in our own country — and we see that all around the world, that those really heightened political seasons are distracting to some of the ability to respond to the needs of a country; it's just the reality."

The reality of Ankara's earthquake response has been diluted by Erdogan's near-total control of most media outlets, Cagaptay said. "It's what happens when a government has complete control of an information flow," with Erdogan-allied businesses owning about 90% of media outlets. What's more, added Cagaptay, an estimated 80% of citizens only read Turkish, limiting the influence of outside analysis.

Cagaptay's take on Erdogan's control of the information space is reinforced by Reporters Without Borders' recently released World Press Freedom Index, which ranked Turkey 165^th out of 180 countries. "Authoritarianism is gaining ground in Türkiye, challenging media pluralism," the report stated, adding: "All possible means are used to undermine critics."

Sunday's stakes are high outside of Turkey, too. A member of NATO but not the European Union, Turkey under Erdogan has tested Western unity by maintaining close ties to Russia and has effectively blocked Sweden's necessary ascension to NATO. If Erdogan emerges victorious on Sunday or in a possible runoff a fortnight later, "he will just continue to coldly and boldly pit Russia and the U.S. and Europe and others against each other to get what he wants," Cagaptay said.

Conversely, he added, a victory by Kilicdaroglu would mean that Turkey "will revert back to democracy and the rule of law. He will reinstate checks and balances, judicial institutional independence [as well as] the Foreign Ministry and the Treasury. Investor confidence in the country will restore financial inflows, and the economy will kick into action. Turkey will also align more closely with the transatlantic community."

The prospect of a profound change in Turkey increased on Thursday when Muharrem Ince, one of two poorly polling candidates also contesting the election, dropped out.

Polls are close, but "if I woke up in a year," Cagaptay mused, "I would know who won based on what the country's name is.

"If it's Türkiye, and that's what everybody says on CNN, I can tell you Erdogan won. It's become the brand of a new Turkey fashioned in the image of Erdogan."

Whether it's Turkey or Türkiye, the most important thing is to call the country a vibrant democracy, which is why Sunday's election is indeed the year's most important.