Suffering a popularity decline, Erdoğan strives to undermine opposition parties

Mahmud al-Batakoshi

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan goes through tough times these days due to the current drop in his popularity among Turkish citizens.

This comes at a time opposition leaders Ahmet Davutoğlu and Ali Babacan ride on the crest of a wave of popularity because of Erdogan’s misguided policies.

Videos of the two political figures are viewed by a huge number of Turkish citizens as soon as they are posted on the online video-sharing platform Youtube.

Yearning for change, Turkish citizens search for alternatives to Erdoğan and his coterie. They want to get out of the dark tunnel the Erdoğan regime placed Turkey into.

According to a recent survey, the popularity of the ruling Justice and Development Party dropped by 81% among Turkish voters.

Worse still for Erdoğan, leader of the opposition Republican People’s Party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, puts his full weight behind the newly founded Future and Democracy parties. Kılıçdaroğlu asked 15 members of his party, who are members of the Turkish parliament, to resign from the party and join the new parties so that they can field candidates in the next general elections.

The decline in Erdoğan’s popularity is causing shock to the Turkish president and his ally, Devlet Bahçeli, who is the leader of the Nationalist Movement Party.

Bahçeli advocates the amendment of six laws, a process whose outcome will be a complete change on the Turkish political scene. The laws include the one that regulates the work of the political parties and another that regulates general elections.

However, the potential amendments aim to disqualify the Future and Democracy parties from running in the next elections.

They will prevent lawmakers from changing their party affiliations. This means that they will prevent lawmakers from joining the two new parties that have to have representation in the parliament to be able to participate in the elections.