How Leftwingers Could Help Take Down Erdoğan | | Steven Methven: Ertuğrul Kürkcü, honorary president of the leftwing, pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP), recently described Sunday's election in Turkey as a chance "to defeat Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's march to fascism". But on the eve of the election, Twitter announced it would heed a demand from the Turkish government to block certain accounts – likely those of opposition parties. If Kürkcü's assessment was correct, had Elon Musk, in a country in which Erdoğan controls most of the media, just helped the authoritarian president take another step towards a third term?
With neither Erdoğan nor his main rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu having passed the 50% threshold required to win, a run-off election will now take place on 28 May. But the incumbent has done better than many expected. Despite overseeing a shocking economic crisis – inflation hit 85% last October – and facing criticism for his slow response to February's devastating earthquakes, Erdoğan appears to be closest to the threshold. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) is also set to be the largest in parliament – though it suffered its worst result since Erdoğan took power 20 years ago.
But Kürkcu, speaking to Novara Media as the first results began to roll in, wasn't surprised. "A neck to neck election result, that's what I can predict now," he said. However, as "the state agency traditionally starts displaying in their statistics at least 60% in favour of Erdoğan," the fact that early results put the incumbent at around 50% "means there's been a considerable fall in Erdoğan's support".
Turkey's third largest party, HDP, played a vital role in creating the conditions that give this election a fighting chance of blocking Erdoğan's progress towards outright autocracy. Early last year, it invited other leftwing parties to form a political alliance. Six months later, the Labour and Freedom Alliance was announced, strategically aligning socialist and leftist parties with those representing Kurdish liberation. In a recent interview, Turkish writer Alp Kayserilioglu described the Alliance as "a strong left bloc" which is "maybe new in the entire history of modern Turkey, but for sure new in the history of the AKP era". | |  | FEATURE Where Are the Shadwell Fire Survivors Supposed to Go? by Rivkah Brown
Two months after their state-sanctioned slum burned down, killing one of their housemates, six of the Tower Hamlets survivors remain homeless. Rivkah Brown reports. Read more... |  | FEATURE The Biggest 'Renewable' Power Plant in the UK Burns Wood Processed in Poor, Black Communities in the US by Simon Childs
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